Democratic Party Neoliberals Monday morning quarterbacking
After twenty year of betrayal of working class Democrats face the consequences of their "Clinton strategy" in full force: in 2016
Presidential elections workers abandoned them in droves
Clinton family grip on the Dems, the neoliberal grip, might weaken
Bill, Hillary, Barack and the rest should do the decent and honorable thing: disappear completely, along with the rest of their
vicious elitist Neoliberal Democrat ilk. Progressives who have insisted on backing these criminals – and who have tried to bully
those of us on the actual left into joining them in that ugly and viciously circular embrace – need to make themselves over or
just drop off the face of the political landscape and let people who are more serious and radical step in.
Trump was right to point out that the
Clintons and their allies atop the Democratic National Committee rigged the game against Bernie.
This rigging of DNC was consistent with the neoliberal corporate Democratic Party elite’s longstanding vicious hatred of left-wing of
the party and anti-plutocratic populists. They hate and viciously fight them in the ranks of their pro-Wall Street Party. It's
"Clinton Third Way Democrats" who essentially elected Trump, because Bernie for them is more dangerous than Trump (It
was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump Naomi Klein Opinion The Guardian, Nov 9, 2016)
Under Bill Clinton the Democrats have become the party of Financial Oligarchy. At this time corporate
interests were moving to finance as their main activity and that was a very profitable betrayal for
Clintons. They were royally remunerated for that. Clintons have positioned the Dems as puppets of financial oligarchy and got in return two major things:
Money for the Party (and themselves)
The ability to control the large part of MSM, which was owned by the same corporations who were
instrumental in neoliberal takeover of the USA.
When the neoliberal media have to choose between their paymasters and the truth, their paymasters
win every time. Like under Bolshevism, they are soldiers of the Party. In any case, starting from Clinton Presidency Democratic Party lost any connection with the majority of the USA population.
Bill Clinton was more Davos Man than Democrat. A puppet of Robert Rubin, a prodigious fundraiser who became his Treasury
Secretary, Clinton embraced neoliberal vision of a global future in which corporate investors were unregulated and the social
contract was history. That's why the majority working-class Americans, feeling abandoned by the Democrats, got on the hook of the
Republican re-definition of class struggle as struggle for nation sovereignty (which is the essence of nationalism.) In
other words, Democrats (and Clintons personally) created conditions for the rise of far right and neofascism in the USA.
The fact that after Presidential Election of 2016 they recruited factions of intelligence agencies (Brennan faction in CIA, Comey
faction in FBI) to depose Trump makes the situation even worse.
Like Republicans, Clinton Democrats now completely depends on "divide and conquer" strategy. Essentially they became
"Republicans light." That's why they used "identity wedge" politics to attract African American votes (which
is ironic as Bill Clinton probably helped to incarcerate more black males
than any other president) and minorities (especially woman and sexual minorities.)
As if Spanish and African-American population, as a whole, have different economic interests then white
working class and white lower middle class.
We can say that Dems became a party which represents an alliance of neoliberal establishment and minorities, where
minorities are duped again and again (as in Barack Obama "change we can believe in" bait and switch
classic). This dishonest playing of race and gender cards was a trademark of Hillary Clinton campaign.
Clintons understood well that their "The Third Way" turn represents the major betrayal of
the working class, but they counted (and pretty successfully until 2016) on the fact that white
working class "has nowhere to go" and will vote for them anyway, as a lesser evil. But in 2016 they
were up to a big and unpleasant surprise -- white working class turned to right wing
populists. So Clinton Democrat are instrumentals in the big "Far right Renaissance". They
essentially created all the necessary preconditions for it.
Clinton's strategy was that workers have nowhere to go, and that was true for almost two decades, But then came Trump....
All those hissy hits of Democrats (and neoliberals MSM controlled by the same interest groups; see, for example Krugman in
NYT) after Hillary Clinton landmark defeat just reflect this fact. As rejection of Democrats by lower middle and working class
is now a permanent factor in US politics (The
Democrats' Davos ideology won't win back the midwest Thomas Frank Opinion The Guardian, Apr 27, 2017)
Clinton Dems now are trying to ally themselves with intelligence agencies
(which became a real political force during 2018 elections), sliding to neofascism. They position themselves as the Second War
Party, trying to outdid in jingoism Republicans. It is pretty ironic that Pelosi opposed Trump wall, which cost around 1% of
the cost of F35 program (F-35
Program Costs Jump to $406.5 Billion in Latest Estimate).
But as the head of "Davos Party" she wants to derail and if possible to impeach Trump: no even slightest deviation from
neoliberal Washington consensus is allowed and now intelligence agencies are recruited to ensure this.
It is clear that the US financial and business elites represented in Davos are far more interested in global markets and corporate investors than they are in ordinary Americans' needs.
Essentially US Democrats are a wing of "Davos party" and that situation can't be changed by promoting "National
Security Democrats" (format staff of three letter agencies, or military) to counter rising far right in the USA. The
latter is just a desperate move by the party brass after Hillary Clinton fiasco (which worked for Congress elections in 2018). If
this works, it is only because due to blunders and betrayal of his voters by Trump, who became something like Republican Obama),
In any case, financial oligarchy still dominates (or more correctly have bought) the Democratic Patty as Jeff Faux noted in
his article in Nation (The Party of Davos The Nation , Jan 26, 2016):
Davos is rather the most visible symbol of the virtual political network that governs the global market in the absence of a
world government. It is more like a political convention, where elites get to sniff one another out, identify which ideas and
people are “sound” and come away with increased chances that their phone calls will be returned by those one notch above them in
the global pecking order.
Americans are of course prominent members of this “Party of Davos,” which relies on the financial and military might of the US
superpower to support its agenda. In exchange, the American members of the Party of Davos get a privileged place for their
projects–and themselves. Whether it’s at Davos, at NATO headquarters or in the boardroom of the International Monetary Fund,
heads turn and people listen more carefully when the American speaks.
“Davos Man,” a term coined by nationalist scholar Samuel Huntington, is bipartisan. To be sure, Democrats tend to be more
comfortable with the forum’s informal seminar-style and big-think topics like global poverty, cultural diversity and executive
stress. Bill Clinton goes often, and Al Gore, John Kerry, Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Joe Biden and other prominent
Democrats are familiar faces. Republicans generally prefer more private venues. George W. Bush, of course, doesn’t do anything
unscripted. But people like Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Condoleezza Rice have all worked the Davos circuit.
That the global economy is developing a global ruling class should come as no shock. All markets generate economic class
differences. In stable, self-contained national economies, where capital and labor need each other, political bargaining produces
a social contract that allows enough wealth to trickle down from the top to keep the majority loyal. “What’s good for General
Motors is good for America,” Dwight Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary famously said in the 1950s. The United Auto Workers agreed,
which at the time seemed to toss the notion of class warfare into the dustbin of history.
But as domestic markets become global, investors increasingly find workers, customers and business partners almost anywhere.
Not surprisingly, they have come to share more economic interests with their peers in other countries than with people who simply
have the same nationality. They also share a common interest in escaping the restrictions of their domestic social contracts.
The class politics of this new world economic order is obscured by the confused language that filters the globalization debate
from talk radio to Congressional hearings to university seminars. On the one hand, we are told that the flow of money and goods
across borders is making nation-states obsolete. On the other, global economic competition is almost always defined as conflict
among national interests. Thus, for example, the US press warns us of a dire economic threat from China. Yet much of the
“Chinese” menace is a business partnership between China’s commissars, who supply the cheap labor, and America’s (and Japan’s and
Europe’s) capitalists, who supply the technology and capital. “World poverty” is likewise framed as an issue of the distribution
of wealth between rich and poor countries, ignoring the existence of rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich
countries.
The conventional wisdom makes globalization synonymous with “free trade” among autonomous nations. Yet as Renato Ruggiero, the
first director-general of the World Trade Organization, noted in a rare moment of candor, “We are no longer writing the rules of
interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.” (Emphasis added.)
With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald Trump,
and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate media coverage
of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton campaign thought
they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so, this strategy really blew
up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt concerns, and that's what handed
Trump the presidency.
If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats
take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome. And they do not want to do that.
Instead they decided to launch a smoke screen to hide their fiasco in the form of Russiagate hysteria.
Trump essentially run as independent using Republican Party as a host. And then Republican Party tried to capture him after the victory
converting him into the run-of-a-mill republican -- a stooge of MIC. Which was an easy move that was fully successful in just three
month after inauguration. Extinct of neoliberal/neocon Trojan Horses within Trump entourage such a Jared Kushner make it "slam
dank".
Trump was right to point out that the Clintons and their allies
in DNC rigged the game against Bernie. Now we know that FBI helped to achieve this particular result. But even he can't predict
that elimination of Sanders would be such a disaster for Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Hillary lost not merely because she misread the “real” people, she decided to run a very divisive and nasty
negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According to WikiLeaks emails from campaign John Podesta, Clinton
colluded with the DNC and the media to raise what they thought would be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the
middle of the road to hide her agenda.
... ... ...
Clinton called this her “pied piper” strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing presidential candidates
and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates. This enlisted mainstream media who then focused
to Trump and raise him above all others assuming that would help Hillary for who would vote for Trump. This was a deliberate strategy
all designed to propel Hillary to the White House.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump
should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”
If we look back on April 23, 2015, just two weeks after Hillary Clinton officially declared her presidential campaign, her staff
sent out a message on strategy to manipulate the Republicans into selecting the worse candidate. They included this attachment a
“memo for the DNC discussion.”
The memo was addressed to the Democratic National Committee and stated bluntly, “the strategy and goals a potential
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field.”Here we find that
the real conspiracy was Clinton manipulating the Republicans. “Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work
the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper.”
“Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the
Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate.”
The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate Clinton called for forcing “all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election.”
It was not Putin trying to rig the elections, it was Hillary. Clinton saw
the Republican field as crowded and she viewed as “positive” for her. “Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel
to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton then took the strategic position saying “we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent
the mainstream of the Republican Party.”
Her manipulative strategy was to have the press build up Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. “We need to be elevating
the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously.”
This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream media to elevate Trump and then
tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie
had to be ground down to the pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders’ presidential
campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did not want a fair election because
she was too corrupt.
What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated by Hillary herself conspiring with
mainstream media, and they sought to burn him to the ground. Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out
to speak against the violence she has manipulated and inspired.
This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be intentionally divisive for the nation
all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the constitution and the country. No wonder Hillary could not go to
the stage to thank her supporters. She never counted on them and saw the people as fools. The entire strategy was to take the White
House with a manipulation of the entire election process. Just unbelievable. Any Democrat who is not angry at this is clearly
just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the roses. You just got what you deserve.
Neoliberal MSM are now justifiably discredited, along with some most obnoxious neocons like Robert Kagan, Max Boot, and
Bill Kristol. Kristol lost his magazine "Weekly Standard", which for many year was the flagship neocon publication. Max Boot
got under the fire from Tucker Carlson, who suggested that he only good for painting houses (which actually is true, judging from
the quality of his perditions and policy recommendations). Victoria Nuland quickly resigned, as she particulate in
distribution of Steele dossier. And may be more then that.
Neoliberal MSM remains very kind to Obama and the Wall Street Democrats. What else we can expect. Clinton Democratic Party was
all about throwing the people under the bus in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Hillary candidacy was about betrayal of working Americans.
Thomas Franks was especially clear about this in this speech watch-v=pmCibWptzZQ
This was the Clinton Legacy, and that's why "serial betrayer" Obama, who also belongs to Clinton DemoRats camp
(while hating Clintons; money makes strange bedfellows) , and the rest of the
Democratic Establishment went along for the ride — and hit the electoral brick wall. Bill Clinton great idea of betrayal of
working class backfired: he thought that the working people have nowhere to go and body slamming the people who get you elected has
no consequences for Democratic politicians. Worked
for him and Obama. But it finally backfired with Hillary.
For the professional class of politicians and the wealthy this was not about civil rights, this was not about decency and justice,
and it certainly was not about compassion and kindness even if they were very careful to keep mouthing the words and giving lip service
to the pretenses of social (but not economic) equality. It was all about money and power. Theirs. Narrowly focused greed that was willfully blind to all that was happening around it. Washington
and New York and London and Berlin are thick with it.
And now that their mighty God has betrayed them and bestowed its power on its other, more faithfully vicious children, they are running
around without a mission or a purpose other than themselves, not knowing what to do next.
Michael Moore in his facebook post urged to
"Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused
to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together."
They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off."
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused
to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come
together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans
did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead
the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't
paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need
for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all
"You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature
and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans
preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country,
you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane,
insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and
didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe
women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a
raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live
in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see:
#1 above).
As neoliberal elite definitely prefers Trump to Sanders, so the DNC rigging of primaries was consistent with the neoliberal
Democratic Party elite’s (Clinton wing of the Democratic Party) longstanding vicious hatred of left-leaning progressives and anti-plutocratic
populists in the ranks of their party (The
Guardian)
...Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war,
and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. They chose Hillary even though they
knew about her private email server. They chose her even though some of those who studied the Clinton Foundation suspected it was
a sketchy
proposition. To try to put over such a nominee while screaming that the Republican is a rightwing monster is to court disbelief.
If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack
they’d chosen because it was her turn. Choosing her indicated either that Democrats didn’t mean what they said about Trump’s riskiness,
that their opportunism took precedence over the country’s well-being, or maybe both.
Clinton’s supporters among the media didn’t help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate
enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality
of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her.
... ... ...
...the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted
of:
Hillary was virtually without flaws.
She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a
super-lawyer, a caring
benefactor of women and children, a
warrior for social justice.
How did the
journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the
other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting.
What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach?
Neoliberal elite feared that they lost political control and resorted to intelligence agencies dirty tricks
What has happened on November 8, 2016 can be described as a repudiation of the neoliberal globalization and the US neoliberal elite.
If is even more significant if you understand that Trump essentially run as an independent: Unlike Hillary he was shunned by the Republican
elite. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, actively worked against Trump’s nomination. Many senior Republicans
refused to endorse him, or even give him their support. The Republican National Committee did not raise money for Trump to the extent
it had for other Republican candidates for president.
Now we know that appointing of Mueller (WDM guy in FBI) was the "insurance policy" for the Clinton wing of Dems.
Obama probably appointed Brennan to do this and Brennan
with some help from Clapper, MI6 and Rosenstein succeed in May 2017, putting Trump on a very short leash.
It is now clear that the tiny elite (0.01%) with the help of intelligence agencies (top brass of which belong to the neoliberal
elite) controls the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives, and fundraisers; all major MSM; the country’s
biggest corporations, their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks, their top
officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington; as well as bunch of super wealthy individuals
who invest directly in politics.
Democratic party became a neoliberal party of top 10%, the party of bankers and white collar professionals. After Bill Clinton
sold the
Democratic Party to Wall Street it is Financial Oligarchy, who determines the agenda of the Party, not voters. At this time corporate interests were moving
to finance as their main activity. Clintons have positioned the Dems as puppets of financial oligarchy and got in return the
ability to control the media, which was owned by the same corporations.
When the MSM have to choose between their paymasters and honesty, their paymasters win every time.
Hillary Clinton’s defeat is all the more remarkable in that her campaign not only enjoyed unconditional support of major
neoliberal MSM, but
also almost twice outspent the Trump campaign on television and radio advertisements, as well on get-out-the-vote efforts.
The net result is that the Democratic party lost the lion share of working class voters and have no chances to attract them back in foreseeable future, unless it
rejects its neoliberal ideology, re-adopt the New Deal principles and remove the current leaders, especially Clinton and Obama families.
The best article on this issue that so far I managed to find is Sophia A. McClennen article in Salon which is devoted to defeat of Sanders,
not Trump victory on November 8, 2016, despite all "sure" prediction of Hillary win.
Shortly after Bernie Sanders publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton a new hashtag trended on Twitter:
#DemExit. The hashtag offered Sanders supporters
a chance to vent their frustrations with the Democratic Party and with the sense that their candidate had been pressured into an
endorsement. Rather than reach out to these disaffected voters, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ignored them. Understood
within the larger narrative that Sanders supporters were just whining brats who refused to concede and move on, #DemExit was dismissed
as just more sour milk.
But now that the latest leak of DNC emails proves that Sanders supporters have a legitimate right to feel cheated, #DemExit increasingly
seems like an appropriate response to a rigged system.
The new leak shows that the DNC never took the Sanders campaign seriously, even when he was winning state after state. Rather
than recognize that Sanders was attracting new voters to the party, members of the DNC chose to mock them and close ranks around
Clinton.
Here are 10 reasons why the #DemExit movement has a valid reason to want nothing to do with the DNC. Having DNC chair Debbie
Wasserman Schultz resign is not enough for #DemExit supporters because their concerns run throughout the ranks of the DNC. Until
party leaders take these concerns seriously they will have to spend their convention watching potential voters jump ship.
1. Superdelegates
It is important to recognize that frustrations over party politics are not uniquely tied to the email leaks. The frustration over
the superdelegate system is one clear example that distrust of the DNC goes deeper. The fact that the party even has superdelegates
is a sign of its anti-democratic, pro-oligarchy stance.
As Branko Marcetic
of In These Times reports the superdelegate system was created specifically to challenge the will of voters. According to Marcetic,
“When a Sanders supporter criticized superdelegate Howard Dean for sticking with Clinton despite Sanders’ landslide victory in Vermont,
Dean tweeted back: “Superdelegates don’t represent the people.”
In addition, the fact that Clinton superdelegates were regularly reported by the media in her delegate tally contributed to the
sense that Sanders couldn’t win. So it was not just the existence of the superdelegates; it was the way they were covered by
the corporate media that pissed off Sanders supporters. Any party with a superdelegate system should be prepared to alienate voters.
This time it worked.
2. The Debate Schedule
The DNC created a debate schedule designed to make it hard for candidates to challenge Clinton’s status as the “presumptive” nominee.
Debates were held on weekends, at times that conflicted with other events, and were generally slotted to attract fewer viewers. From
the start, well before it was clear that Sanders was gaining momentum, folks were already complaining that the debate schedule was
slanted towards Clinton.
According
to a piece in The National Review from November some Democrats thought it was no accident the DNC scheduled a debate in Iowa
on the night of a big Iowa Hawkeyes game. The next two debates were also scheduled for less viewer heavy weekend slots.
The drama over the debate schedule got worse as the DNC refused to add more debates to give Sanders a chance to continue to build
momentum.
As The Intercept reports the DNC laughed at the idea of adding another debate prior to the California primary, even though Fox
News offered to host one. Fox News wrote that,
“the race is still contested, and given that you sanctioned a final trio of debates, the last of which has not yet been held, we
believe a final debate would be an excellent opportunity for the candidates to, as you said when you announced these debates, ‘share
Democrats’ vision for the country.’” There never was a California debate set up. Not on Fox News or any other venue.
Politico reported that legal experts gave conflicting views on whether the practice constituted a violation of campaign finance
law. But whether or not it was legal was not the only point. Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center,
who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, stated that “It clearly goes against what was intended
for the joint fundraising committees.” Given the already significant war chest Clinton had to run her campaign it is not surprising
that Sanders supporters would find this news disturbing.
The primary elections were rife with claims of election fraud. From the purging of voter rolls (Brooklyn) to cutting poll locations
(Arizona, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico), to the debacle of the California primary, there were numerous situations where the DNC could
and should have called for an investigation. Despite the fact that in many cases it was Democratic voters that were directly affected,
the DNC made no move to support voters’ claims of election fraud.
Committee delegates selected by Clinton and Wasserman Schultz voted down several measures dear to progressives’ hearts: “amendments
advocating single-payer health care and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, several proposals to halt climate change, language
criticizing Israeli ‘occupation’ of Palestine and an amendment explicitly opposing the TPP trade agreement.” As Marcetic shows, delegates
to the committee with corporate ties were among the most avid in promoting pro-business policy completely out of step with the sort
of progressive values that once separated Democrats from Republicans. Unsurprisingly, those very same delegates were the ones connected
to Clinton and Wasserman Schultz.
6. Documented Attempts to Discredit / Dismiss Sanders
As if the previous issues were not evidence enough to justify the #DemExit movement, the Guccifer 2.0 leaks now offer Sanders
supporters copious examples of ways that the DNC simply did not respect the Sanders campaign. It is important to note that
Wasserman Schultz was not alone in this general attitude. Even more disturbing, we have no examples of any DNC staffer suggesting
that Sanders deserved a better shake than he was getting.
Some of the most
egregious examples can be found here.
DNC Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach also vetted a Politico story by reporter Ken Vogel before it was sent to editors: “Vogel
gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach wrote to Miranda. “Let me
know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”
Today the polling for a potential Donald Trump win is increasingly frightening.
Even Michael Moore is predicting a Trump win. While there
are a variety of forces that are working together to advance the Trump campaign, the DNC’s actions are certainly not helping. If
Trump wins in November, the DNC will certainly bear a good portion of the blame.
"... not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad. ..."
"... "Elizabeth Warren cries and tries to regain ground with voters" [Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe ]. The deck: "Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, her ideological soulmate, rolls along, tears-free." Ouch. ..."
"... IMO it was her later waffling, insincerity, and backtracking on M4A that caused progressives to realize not only that she was not committed to solving the most important issue identified by Dem voters, but that she may not have a fire in her belly to address the nation's other urgent crises and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion. ..."
"... Trump as the not-Democrat has such an edge among the disaffected who are still angry enough to vote ..."
"... I think that I can answer that. Jimmy Dore put out a 5-minute video showing her in action. A protestor heckled her in front of a meeting and she went into deer-in-spotlight mode and shut down. In the end she had to be rescued by Ayanna Pressley and I was thinking – "She really wants to debate Trump? Will she shut down then too?". (Some language) ..."
Warren (D)(1): "What is happening with Elizabeth Warren?" [Chris Cilizza,
CNN ].
"Less than two months ago, it looked as though Elizabeth Warren might just run away with the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination
. Then that Warren wave hit a wall. Starting right around mid-October, Warren's numbers not only stopped moving upward but also
began trending down
Add it all up and there's plenty of reason to believe that Warren's full-fledged support for Medicare for All -- coupled with
her less-than-successful attempts to defend that position in the last two debates -- led to her current reduced status in the
race."
If this were true, Sanders should drop as well. I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren
botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad.
"Elizabeth Warren cries and tries to regain ground with voters" [Joan Vennochi,
Boston Globe ]. The deck: "Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, her ideological soulmate, rolls along, tears-free." Ouch.
More: "According to the Des Moines Register, "after a long pause and with tears in her eyes, the senator from Massachusetts said
'yeah,' before telling the story of the divorce from her first husband," and how painful it was to tell her mother that her marriage
was over.
To showcase the significance of the encounter, Warren tweeted out a clip."
Dead Lord. You don't tweet out your own tears to show sincerity. Have somebody else do it! Isn't anybody on her staff protecting
her?
I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad,
and were seen as bad.
The establishment is trying mightily to salvage something useful from Warren's surprisingly rapid decline in the polls, constantly
pushing the refrain that M4A was somehow the kiss of death for her.
In fact, she rose to prominence by riding on Sanders policies like Medicare for All, canceling student debt, and free
college. "I'm with Bernie" was her frequent reply on several policy issues, and she co-sponsored Sanders' Medicare for All Senate
bill to great effect on her own "progressive" cred.
IMO it was her later waffling, insincerity, and backtracking on M4A that caused progressives to realize not only that she
was not committed to solving the most important issue identified by Dem voters, but that she may not have a fire in her belly
to address the nation's other urgent crises and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion.
Six years wait for the ACA to piss almost everyone off.
Trump as the not-Democrat has such an edge among the disaffected who are still angry enough to vote. Especially since
the whole and only DNC message will be 'you can't possibly vote for Trump!!!'
I think that I can answer that. Jimmy Dore put out a 5-minute video showing her in action. A protestor heckled her in front
of a meeting and she went into deer-in-spotlight mode and shut down. In the end she had to be rescued by Ayanna Pressley and I
was thinking – "She really wants to debate Trump? Will she shut down then too?". (Some language)
So the person who saves Syria from occupation by IGIL is a terrorist ? Just a few years ago, CNN praised #Iran 's Qassem #Soleimani for defeating
ISIS.
Just a few years ago, CNN was praising Qassem
#Soleimani for being
the driving force behind the defeat of ISIS. Today they call him a "terrorist" and expect
you to believe them.
"... The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. ..."
"... In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813, governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power" or an agent a foreign power. ..."
"... The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this Court's effective operation. ..."
"... On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD ..."
"... which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. ..."
"... Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he ..."
"... seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation? ..."
"... "JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do." ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Do you believe that? ..."
"... BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true. ..."
"... Allegedly, George Papadopoulos said that "Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign" , and Papadopoulos was shocked at Halper's saying this. Probably because so much money at the Pentagon is untraceable, some of the crucial documentation on this investigation might never be found. For example, the Defense Department's Inspector General's 2 July 2019 report to the US Senate said "ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work." ..."
"... very profitable business ..."
"... Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey. In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama). ..."
"... Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. ..."
"... and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama ..."
"... Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.) ..."
"... There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since. ..."
"... Reform is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid a free-fall into oblivion. ..."
"... The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State . ..."
Former US President
Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned
180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs.
The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the
Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers
to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or
her own personal reasons. Either way, it's treason (crime that is intended to, and does,
endanger the continued functioning of the Constitution itself*), and Mr. Obama is now being
actively investigated, as possibly having done this.
The Russiagate investigation, which had
formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the
prior President. Although he, of course, cannot be removed from office (since he is no longer
in office), he is liable under criminal laws, the same as any other American would be, if he
committed any crime while he was in office.
A
December 17th order by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court severely
condemned the performance by the FBI under Obama, for having obtained, on 19 October 2016 (even prior to the US Presidential
election), from that Court, under false pretenses, an authorization for the FBI to commence
investigating Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, as being possibly in collusion with
Russia's Government. The Court's ruling said:
In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is
useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the
government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813,
governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an
order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to
grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it
provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power"
or an agent a foreign power.
The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that
is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on
electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its
heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this
Court's effective operation.
On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions
of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information
to NSD [National Security Division of the Department of Justice] which was unsupported
or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in
which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to
their case for believing that Mr. [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign
power.
On December 18th, Martha McCallum, of Fox News,
interviewed US Attorney General Bill Barr , and asked him (at 7:00 in the video
) how high up in the FBI the blame for this (possible treason) goes:
MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he [Obama's FBI Director James Comey]
seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation?
"JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you
can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career
professionals to do."
MACCALLUM: Do you believe that?
BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely
that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged
by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers
below him is simply not true.
The current (Trump) A.G. there called the former (Obama) FBI Director a liar on that.
If Comey gets heat for this possibly lie-based FBI investigation of the US Presidential
nominee from the opposite Party of the sitting US President (Comey's own boss, Obama), then
protecting himself could become Comey's top motivation; and, in that condition, protecting his
former boss might become only a secondary concern for him.
Though Halper actually did no such studies for the Pentagon,
he instead functioned as a paid FBI informant (and it's not yet clear whether that money came
from the Pentagon, which spends
trillions of dollars that are off-the-books and untraceable ), and at some point Trump's
campaign became a target of Halper's investigation. This investigation was nominally to examine
"The Russia-China Relationship: The impact on US Security interests."
It seems that the Pentagon-contracted work was a cover-story, like
pizza parlors have been for some Mafia operations. But, anyway, this is how America's
'democracy' actually functions .
And, of course, America's
Deep State works not only through governmental agencies but also through
underworld organizations . That's just reality, not at all speculative. It's been this way
for decades, at least since the time of Truman's Presidency (as is documented at that
link).
Furthermore, inasmuch as this operation certainly involved Obama's CIA Director John Brennan
and others, and not only top officials at the FBI, there is no chance that Comey would have
been the only high official who was involved in it. And if Comey was
involved, then he would have been acting in his own interest, and not only in his boss's -- and
here's why: Comey would be expected to have been highly motivated to oppose Mr. Trump,
because Trump publicly questioned whether NATO (the main international selling-arm for
America's 'defense'-contractors) should continue to exist, and also because Comey's entire
career had been in the service of America's Military-Industrial Complex, which is the reason
why Comey's main
lifetime income has been the tens of millions of dollars he has received via the revolving door
between his serving the federal Government and his serving firms such as Lockheed Martin .
For these people, restoring, and intensifying, and keeping up, the Cold War , is a very profitable business . It's called
by some "the Military-Industrial Complex," and by others "the Deep State," but by any name it
is simply agents of the billionaires who own and control US-based international corporations,
such as General Dynamics and Chevron. As a governmental official, making decisions that are in
the long-term interests of those investors is the likeliest way to become wealthy.
Consequently, Comey would have been benefitting himself, and other high officials of the
Obama Administration, by sabotaging Trump's campaign, and by weakening Trump's Presidency in
the event that he would become elected. Plus, of course, Comey would have been benefitting
Obama himself. Not only was Trump constantly condemning Obama, but Obama had appointed to lead
the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 Presidential primaries, Debbie Wasserman Schultz ,
who as early as
20 February 2007 had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in the Democratic Party
primaries, so that Shultz was one of the earliest supporters of Clinton against even Obama
himself. In other words, Obama had appointed Shultz in order to
increase the odds that Clinton -- not Sanders -- would become the nominee in 2016 to
continue on and protect his own Presidential legacy. Furthermore, on 28 July 2016, Schultz
became forced to resign from her leadership of the DNC after WikiLeaks released emails
indicating that Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie
Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which
favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She
was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey.
In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose
Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama).
Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for
them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. He wants Warren to get the
voters who otherwise would go for Sanders, and he wants the Party's billionaires to help her
achieve this (be the Party's allegedly 'progressive' option), so that Sanders won't be able to
become a ballot option in the general election to be held on 3 November 2020.
He is telling
them whom not to help win the Party's nomination. In fact, on November 26th,
Huffington Post headlined
"Obama Said He Would Speak Up To Stop Bernie Sanders Nomination: Report" and indicated that
though he won't actually say this in public (but only to the Party's billionaires), Obama is
determined to do all he can to prevent Sanders from becoming the nominee. In 2016, his
choice was Hillary Clinton; but, today, it's anyone other than Sanders; and, so, in a sense, it
remains what it was four years ago -- anyone but Sanders.
Comey's virtually exclusive concern, at the present stage, would be to protect himself, so
that he won't be imprisoned. This means that he might testify against Obama. At this stage,
he's free of any personal obligation to Obama -- Comey is now on his own, up against Trump, who
clearly is his enemy. Some type of back-room plea-bargain is therefore virtually inevitable --
and not only with Comey, but with other top Obama-appointees, ultimately. Obama is thus clearly
in the cross-hairs, from now on. Congressional Democrats have opted to gun against Trump (by
impeaching him); and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama -- and against the
entire Democratic Party (unless Sanders becomes its nominee, in which case, Sanders will
already have defeated that Democratic Party, and its adherents will then have to choose between
him versus Trump; and, so, too, will independent voters).
But, regardless of what happens, Obama now is in the cross-hairs. That's not just political
cross-hairs (such as an impeachment process); it is, above all, legal cross-hairs (an
actual criminal investigation). Whereas Trump is up against a doomed effort by the Democratic
Party to replace him by Vice President Mike Pence, Obama will be up against virtually
inevitable criminal charges, by the incumbent Trump Administration. Obama played hardball
against Trump, with "Russiagate," and then with "Ukrainegate"; Trump will now play hardball
against Obama, with whatever his Administration and the Republican Party manage to muster
against Obama; and the stakes this time will be considerably bigger than just whether to
replace Trump by Pence.
Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes
the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second
American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's
hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.)
There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly
increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political
realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since.
The US already has a
higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on this planet.
Americans who choose a 'status-quo' option will produce less stability, more violence, not more
stability and a more peaceful nation in a less war-ravaged world. The 2020 election-outcome for
the United States will be a turning-point; there is no way that it will produce reform.
Americans who vote for reform will be only increasing the likelihood of hell-on-Earth. Reform
is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will
be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led
by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the
dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid
a free-fall into oblivion.
The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic
Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the
Deep State .
That's the reality; and the process that got us here started on 26 July 1945 and secretly continued on the American side even after
the Soviet Union ended and Russia promptly ended its side of the Cold War. The US regime's
ceaseless thrust, since 26 July 1945, to rule the entire world, will climax either in a Third
World War, or in a US revolution to overthrow and remove the Deep State and end its
dictatorship-grip over America. Both Parties have been controlled by that
Deep State , and the final stage or climax of this grip is now drawing near. America thus
has been having a string of the worst
Presidents -- and worst Congresses -- in US history. This is today's reality.
Unfortunately, a lot of American voters think that this extremely destabilizing reality, this
longstanding trend toward war, is okay, and ought to be continued, not ended now and replaced
by a new direction for this country -- the path toward world peace, which FDR had accurately
envisioned but which was aborted on 26 July 1945. No matter how many Americans might vote for
mere reform, they are wrong. Sometimes, only a minority are right. Being correct is not a
majority or minority matter; it is a true or false matter. A misinformed public can willingly
participate in its own -- or even the world's -- destruction. That could happen.
Democracy is a
prerequisite to peace, but it can't exist if the public are being systematically misinformed.
Lies and democracy don't mix together any more effectively than do oil and water.
"... But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC. ..."
"... Last year I was asked to write a scenario for what might happen with a renewed DNC theft of the election's nomination process. To be technical, I realize, it's not called theft when it's legal. In the aftermath of suits over the 2016 power grab, the courts ruled that the Democrat Party is indeed controlled by the DNC members, not by the voters. When it comes to party machinations and decision-making, voters are subsidiary to the superdelegates in their proverbial smoke-filled room (now replaced by dollar-filled foundation contracts). ..."
"... I could not come up with a solution that does not involve dismantling and restructuring the existing party system. We have passed beyond the point of having a solvable "problem" with the Democratic National Committee (DNC). That is what a quandary is. A problem has a solution – by definition. A quandary does not have a solution. There is no way out. The conflict of interest between the Donor Class and the Voting Class has become too large to contain within a single party. It must split. ..."
"... A second-ballot super-delegate scenario would mean that we are once again in for a second Trump term. That option was supported by five of the six presidential contenders on stage in Nevada on Wednesday, February 20. When Chuck Todd asked whether Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar would support the candidate who received the most votes in the primaries (now obviously Bernie Sanders), or throw the nomination to the super-delegates held over from the Obama-Clinton neoliberals (75 of whom already are said to have pledged their support to Bloomberg), each advocated "letting the process play out." That was a euphemism for leaving the choice to the Tony-Blair style leadership that have made the Democrats the servants' entrance to the Republican Party. Like the British Labour Party behind Blair and Gordon Brown, its role is to block any left-wing alternative to the Republican program on behalf of the One Percent. ..."
To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat
Trump. But when Trump's billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into
an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and
Nevada, it's obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party.
Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
in which money votes. (If "corporations are people," so is money in today's political
world.)
Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a
brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the
One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has
assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question:
Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor
Class trump the voting class?
This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the DNC
on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No Hope
or Change." That is, no change from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the
One Percent.
All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC. The way Rome's
constitution was set up, candidates for the position of consul had to pay their way through a
series of offices. The process started by going deeply into debt to get elected to the position
of aedile, in charge of staging public games and entertainments. Rome's neoliberal fiscal
policy did not tax or spend, and there was little public administrative bureaucracy, so all
such spending had to be made out of the pockets of the oligarchy. That was a way of keeping
decisions about how to spend out of the hands of democratic politics. Julius Caesar and others
borrowed from the richest Bloomberg of their day, Crassus, to pay for staging games that would
demonstrate their public spirit to voters (and also demonstrate their financial liability to
their backers among Rome's One Percent). Keeping election financing private enabled the leading
oligarchs to select who would be able to run as viable candidates. That was Rome's version of
Citizens United.
But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean
the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system
would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with
Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC.
Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times have been busy
spreading their venom against Sanders. On Sunday, February 23, CNN ran a slot, "Bloomberg needs
to take down Sanders, immediately." Given Sanders' heavy national lead, CNN warned, the race
suddenly is almost beyond the vote-fixers' ability to fiddle with the election returns. That
means that challengers to Sanders should focus their attack on him; they will have a chance to
deal with Bloomberg later (by which CNN means, when it is too late to stop him).
The party's Clinton-Obama recipients of Donor Class largesse pretend to believe that Sanders
is not electable against Donald Trump. This tactic seeks to attack him at his strongest point.
Recent polls show that he is the only candidate who actually would defeat Trump – as they
showed that he would have done in 2016.
The DNC knew that, but preferred to lose to Trump than to win with Bernie. Will history
repeat itself? Or to put it another way, will this year's July convention become a replay of
Chicago in 1968?
A quandary, not a problem
Last year I was asked to write a scenario for what might happen with a renewed DNC theft of
the election's nomination process. To be technical, I realize, it's not called theft when it's
legal. In the aftermath of suits over the 2016 power grab, the courts ruled that the Democrat
Party is indeed controlled by the DNC members, not by the voters. When it comes to party
machinations and decision-making, voters are subsidiary to the superdelegates in their
proverbial smoke-filled room (now replaced by dollar-filled foundation contracts).
I could not come up with a solution that does not involve dismantling and restructuring the
existing party system. We have passed beyond the point of having a solvable "problem" with the
Democratic National Committee (DNC). That is what a quandary is. A problem has a solution
– by definition. A quandary does not have a solution. There is no way out. The conflict
of interest between the Donor Class and the Voting Class has become too large to contain within
a single party. It must split.
A second-ballot super-delegate scenario would mean that we are once again in for a second
Trump term. That option was supported by five of the six presidential contenders on stage in
Nevada on Wednesday, February 20. When Chuck Todd asked whether Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth
Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar would support the candidate who received
the most votes in the primaries (now obviously Bernie Sanders), or throw the nomination to the
super-delegates held over from the Obama-Clinton neoliberals (75 of whom already are said to
have pledged their support to Bloomberg), each advocated "letting the process play out." That
was a euphemism for leaving the choice to the Tony-Blair style leadership that have made the
Democrats the servants' entrance to the Republican Party. Like the British Labour Party behind
Blair and Gordon Brown, its role is to block any left-wing alternative to the Republican
program on behalf of the One Percent.
As Aristotle noted already in the 4th century BC, oligarchies turn themselves into
hereditary aristocracies
Sounds like a reading of the thesis of Piketty, yet hereditary aristocracies must be
endogamous and–if they are to keep wealth in the family–consanguineous, which
does not have much appeal for modern elite, for sound genetic reasons .
Also Water Scheidel show in his Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to
Prosperity, the failure brought about competitive fragmentation and selection. Political,
economic, scientific, and technological breakthroughs followed and allowed Europe to take off
"It wasn't until Europe "escaped" from Rome that it launched an economic transformation that
changed the continent and ultimately the world. What has the Roman Empire ever done for us?
Fall and go away".
Piketty himself was clear in his first book that the two world wars brought about a huge
leveling of wealth. But cities were levelled too. Piketty went on to assert–in his
second and even weightier tome–that a struggle for equality has been the great driver
of human progress. Yet from doorstopper of Walter Scheidel
the Neolithic long before the Bronze Age conquests, the "natural" human condition seems to
have been inequality, while actual change to that condition often came in the aftermath of
war (or plague and famine). Reduction of inequality by ideologically driven political change
was often violent and ultimately at the cost of widespread pauperisation.
Studies of social status within ethnically homogenous groups show that genetics plays a
substantial role in outcomes. Thus if elites and underclasses are drawn from parent
populations by selective recruitment, they will differ genetically from the general
population. It will take many generations for those differences to dissolve. This is not an
"ugly" fact. It is not a "beautiful" fact. It is just a fact. This fact helps explain why
it is so hard for societies using the levers of social policy to eliminate group
disparities in outcomes. It is a fact that we should be aware of in thinking about
inequalities of income and wealth.Studies of social status within ethnically homogenous
groups show that genetics plays a substantial role in outcomes. Thus if elites and
underclasses are drawn from parent populations by selective recruitment, they will differ
genetically from the general population. It will take many generations for those
differences to dissolve. This is not an "ugly" fact. It is not a "beautiful" fact. It is
just a fact. This fact helps explain why it is so hard for societies using the levers of
social policy to eliminate group disparities in outcomes. It is a fact that we should be
aware of in thinking about inequalities of income and wealth.
There is no quandary. The US democracy has long become "one dollar – one vote". Those
who still believe that Dems represent working people should not take IQ test to avoid being
deeply disappointed.
In a struggle between oligarchy and democracy, something must give
America hasn't been a democracy for decades there is no contest oligarchy (Deep State) won
a long time ago. The only struggle is to continue the facade/charade that we are a
democracy/democratic republic.
The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two
parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens
the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
The Deep State consists of the very wealthy who are greedy for more wealth and power.
There are 607 billionaires in the US. There is no reason for the Deep State members to
formally collude they all know what needs to be done and how to do it. They use a relatively
small amount of their money to place their minions in positions of power heads of the movie
industry, the media, the federal government, academia. From then on if the lessers in these
groups want to keep their jobs/lives they will toe the line. It becomes self sustaining from
tax money and the Deep State glories in more wealth and power. Here is an excellent example
of the Deep State in action: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the
First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of a representative democracy. Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v.
Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and
power almost total influence in elections. By gaining control of the SCOTUS the Deep State is
able to further their goals.
There is no quandary. The US democracy has long become "one dollar – one vote". Those
who still believe that Dems represent working people should not take IQ test to avoid being
deeply disappointed.
You are right about it being a class war. It is this class war that the neoliberal
establishment does not want us to see, hence creating other divisions such as racial,
gender/trans, religious, etc. so we fight one another instead of uniting and fighting
them.
When the many shades of surveillance are added in to your establishment existential
threat, the Matrix feels really close at hand.
My guess is that your understanding stems from years of paying attention. Do you have any
recommendations for sites that have helped?
I take it that your support of Bernie, with his imperfections, is due to you seeing him as
a possible shift in the neoliberal order. My concern is that his imperfections are also
baggage that is keeping people from supporting him - the woke agenda, panicky human-caused
climate change agenda, supporting most of the MIC agenda. The first two are areas in which
debate has been/is being shut down, which is a real red flag.
Thank you for any reply, or none. I always appreciate the big picture.
I'm a historian by training focusing on the Outlaw US Empire and everything related, which
is a very wide field of inquiry. Yes, I started out paying attention as an adolescent during
the 1960s with 1968 being a very important year for me. I'd read the Warren Commission Report
a year earlier and thus began my real education. I passed out flyers for RFK in 1968 prior to
the California Primary and watched again as the cities burned earlier that Spring. I pursued
a career and tried to find love, but after 20 years I returned to college. Aside from college
libraries, various alt-websites have served well over the years--Z-net, CommonDreams, The Oil
Drum, MoA--along with a mixture of news sites that are nowadays all based in Russia or China.
The one person I've learned more from online is Dr. Michael Hudson, whose Super
Imperialism I bought and read after it was published during my senior high school year.
And Noam Chomsky, not so much from his prose but from all the sources he consulted. Yes, I'm
an end note and bibliography junkie. Solitude and time to study were also important assets.
Knowing I was being lied to by Media and politicos was also helpful and thus made me seek out
an objective historical narrative whereby I discovered I wasn't alone in my quest. Currently,
Hudson's historical big picture is the one in which I believe the most merit lies--4,000+
years of Class War between creditors and debtors frames the West's existence, including its
religions, which are its longest lasting institutions. And I highly value genuine discourse
with associates.
Sanders: ideas
Warren: Sanders ideas, but I'd do it better.
hizzoner: Sanders is a Russian agent.
Butte: cliche, cliche, cliche
klobe: rhetoric, name drop, cliche, rhetroic, name drop a 3rd way SC pol.
Don't think America is going to Vote in Someone who Defrauded Others with Claims of being
Part Native American.
Maybe Bloomberg may have been Out of Line a few times. A "Horse Faced Lesbian" - what if
it were an accurate description? A "Fat Drunkard" - to someone who is correctly described -
is it really that offensive?
If it were said in an inappropriate context - say for job interviews - we can see the
error; but reading about Warren calling an Male Actor as "Eye Candy" puts her brand of Sexist
Comments in the same Boat.
What was Fauxahontas' Native American Name, anyway?
"Doesn't like Horses"?
The media is cheering wildly for Warren and saying that she won the debate, but I found her
to be utterly repugnant. She comes across, to me, as even more shrill, harsh, angry and
unlikeable than Clinton did at her worst.
Bloomberg is revealed as having said in public that all the disposable income of the poor
should be taxed away so that they will not have funds with which to do mischief like buying
fast food or sugary drinks.
Bloomberg described Sanders as a Communist who cannot be elected. In this he was
correct.
Bloomberg was described by Warren as a cold-hearted and insulting man who openly scorns
women, gays and minorities.
Mayor Pete mocked Klobuchar for her inability to remember the name of the president of
Mexico. She asked if he was calling her "stupid."
These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the
convention. In the mayhem there, the "winner" will probably have to choose one of the "losers"
to be his VP running mate.
"... However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele dossier should be included in the ICA report. ..."
"... But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of intelligence information" they had. ..."
"... "Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said." ..."
"... Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." ..."
"... Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his probe to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic, is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into the FBI's probe, most notably Carter Page. ..."
"... Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract. ..."
"... Durham's criminal investigation into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel. ..."
"... "Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker. ..."
"... Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin. ..."
"... Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov. ..."
"... However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and "Surkov." ..."
U.S. Attorney John Durham – charged with the criminal probe into the FBI's Russia
investigation of the Trump campaign – has been questioning CIA officials closely involved
with John
Brennan's 2017 intelligence community assessment regarding direct Russian interference in
the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.
In May 2017, Brennan denied during a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence that its agency relied on the now debunked Christopher Steele dossier for the
Intelligence Community Assessment report. He told then Congressman Trey Gowdy "we didn't"
use the Steele dossier.
"It wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had," Brennan
stated.
"It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was
done. It was -- it was not."
However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was
used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in
the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele
dossier should be included in the ICA report.
But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former
FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should
be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan
said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of
intelligence information" they had.
According to a recent report by The New York Times, Durham's probe is specifically looking
at that January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which concluded with "high confidence" that
Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered an influence campaign in 2016."
"Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director
John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular
result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest
they interfere with that goal, the people said."
Sources with knowledge have said CIA officials questioned by Durham's investigative team
"are extremely concerned with the investigation and the direction it's heading."
Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S.
democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her
electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump."
But not everyone agreed with Brennan. The NSA then under retired Adm. Mike Rogers stated it
only had "moderate confidence" that Putin tried to help Trump's election. As stated in the
New York times Durham is investigating whether Brennan was keeping other intelligence
agencies out of the loop to keep his narrative that Putin was helping Trump's campaign
public.
"I wouldn't call it a discrepancy, I'd call it an honest difference of opinion between
three different organizations, and, in the end, I made that call," Rogers
told the Senate in May 2017.
"It didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources."
According to The Times Durham is reviewing emails from the CIA, FBI, and National Security
Agency analysts who worked on the January, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia's
interference in the election.
Durham's office could not be reached for comment. DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec also could
not be reached for comment.
However, Brennan told MSNBC's "Hardball" last week,
that Durham's questioning is dangerous.
"It's kind of silly," he said.
"Is there a criminal investigation now on analytic judgments and the activities of C.I.A.
in terms of trying to protect our national security? I'm certainly willing to talk to Mr.
Durham or anybody else who has any questions about what we did during this period of 2016
."
Durham And FBI Spy Stefan Halper
Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his
probe to the Pentagon's
Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully
scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge
academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic,
is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into
the FBI's probe, most notably Carter
Page.
Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several
sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's
contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract.
Further, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is also
investigating the over $1 million in contracts Halper received from the ONA, as
first reported at SaraACarter.com. It is, of course, a separate investigation from Durham's
but on the same issues.
The Office Of Net Assessment, according to sources with knowledge, is sometimes used as a
front to pay contractors, like Halper, who are conducting work for U.S. intelligence agencies.
It is for this reason, that Durham is investigating the flow of money that Halper received and
whether or not agencies other than the FBI were involved in the investigation into Trump's
campaign and whether or not, the contracts were accurately accounted for in the reports
received by Grassley.
Durham's criminal investigation
into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the
secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed
by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of
questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the
FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.
"Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to
recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked
theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker.
But it is Halper's role overseas and concern that the CIA may have been involved that is
leading to more questions than answers. In 2016, in what appeared to be an unexpected move,
Halper left the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. He
told papers in London – at the time – that it was due to "unacceptable Russian
influence."
Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the
seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on
several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the
course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.
Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had
invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian
Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov.
Moreover, the New York Times recent report suggests that Durham's probe into Brennan is also
looking closely at an alleged secret source said to have direct ties to the Kremlin. It is not
certain if the same secret Kremlin source discussed by Brennan is the same source used by
Halper in his reports.
However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State
Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and
"Surkov."
Interesting, isn't it.
Surkov is Vladislav Surkov, an aide of Vladimir Putin who is on the U.S.'s list of
sanctioned individuals, and Trubnikov is none other than Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Trubnikov was
the First Deputy of Foreign Minister of Russia and he formally served as the Director of
Foreign Intelligence Service. He is also a source of Halper.
Hill.TV host Krystal
Ball said Sen. Elizabeth Warren 's (D-Mass.) "campaign was
lost long before this election cycle."
Ball pointed to Warren's "decision not to run in 2016 - she sat out the most critical
election of our lifetime even though she knew better than I did the flaws of Hillary Clinton " Ball then slammed
Warren's decision to not endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2016 noting "when her
supposed friend and ally Bernie Sanders, who allegedly shares her politics and was fighting for
the same values she had staked her career on got into the race and started sky-rocketing in the
polls challenging Hillary for the lead, rather than making the movement choice and backing the
progressive, she sat it out."
Ball claims Warren's "attempts to co-opt revolutionary rhetoric in service of an
establishment campaign, like Disney doing socialism, satisfied no one and left her unable to
win more than 1 county and Iowa and an embarrassing distant fourth behind Klobuchar in New
Hampshire."
Click on the video above to catch Ball's full remarks.
Here's another view: Zionist Bloomberg and Zionist Biden and Zionist Buttigieg and Zionist
Klubachar and Zionist Warren and Zionist Sanders competing to race against Zionist Trump. I
think I know who the winners and losers are already.
The 2020 presidential race was always going to be an uphill battle for Elizabeth
Warren.
Almost from the get-go, political pundits fretted about Warren's electability, setting in
motion a self-fulfilling prophecy now reflected in the
New Hampshire primary results . Warren's disappointing showing on Tuesday comes on the
heels of a stirring debate performance and a strong third place finish in the Iowa caucuses
-- two wins largely ignored by mainstream media commentators, who focused almost entirely on
Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, with a spare thought for Amy Klobuchar's rise and Joe
Biden's descent.
Defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election is priority number one for the
Democratic establishment, and a moderate candidate with the potential to sway swing voters
and Republican defectors has long been billed as the wisest course. But by constructing a
dichotomy between the self-described revolutionary leader Sanders and the aggressively
non-threatening trifecta of moderate candidates (not to mention Bloomberg, who is suddenly
the darling of cable news), the networks and pundits with the greatest persuasive power have
ignored and undercut Warren's unique potential to unite the progressive left and hesitant
center.
Warren seems to have unfairly inherited some of the hallmarks of Hillary Clinton's
reputation. Clinton's devastating 2016 upset sparked practical questions as to whether a
woman could win the presidency at all. And Warren's false claim to Native American heritage
sealed a reputation for untrustworthiness that has stuck long after that conversation faded
away. If Clinton, with all of her name recognition and experience, couldn't win against
Trump, what hope could there be for the woman widely considered her successor?
Warren's progressive policies and folksy demeanor also framed her for many as a sort of
second-tier Sanders, not far enough left for the progressives and too far left for gun-shy
moderates. But it is precisely this position that makes her the most electable
candidate.
Warren and Sanders are mostly aligned on their signature issues, but how they present
these issues is entirely different, as are their proposed paths to achieve them. Sanders does
not shy away from the word "socialist." He declares outright that his Medicare-for-All plan
will raise taxes. He says billionaires should not exist. These declarations and convictions
are brave and they are admirable. But they also inspire commentators like
Chris Matthews to worry on-air that a Sanders administration will begin executing the
wealthy in Central Park, French revolution style.
Warren takes a more measured approach in selling her policies, focusing on how she'll
achieve them rather than the eventual outcome. She doesn't say billionaires should not exist,
she proposes a wealth tax. Warren doesn't say "socialist," choosing instead to present the
economic and social advantages to her plans without the label. The other key difference
between Sanders and Warren is that, while Sanders has identified as far left for his entire
political career,
Warren was a committed Republican long before she became a progressive Democrat. As other
commentators have noted , this
history might not earn her many points with committed leftists, but it does put her in a
unique position to appeal to the moderates and Republicans that candidates like Buttigieg and
Klobuchar are trying to court. After all, she used to be one of them. And perhaps most
importantly,
polls continue to show Warren performing just as well as those candidates, if not better,
in hypothetical general election matchups against Trump.
Yet the mainstream media seems determined to undermine her viability.
Sanders and Buttigieg finished neck and neck in the Iowa Caucuses (whose dubious import is
a conversation for another day), with Warren close behind in third. As the dust around the
disastrous vote-counting began to settle, the media centered the conversation on Sanders,
Buttigieg, and Biden. For example, this headline from The Washington Post reads: "Buttigieg and Sanders take lead, Biden fades in
partial results from marred Iowa caucuses," ignoring Warren's close third place finish
entirely in favor of Biden's fourth.
During Friday's Democratic debate, many critics noted the
relatively short speaking time given to Warren in comparison with her white male
competitors. Afterwards, coverage again focused on Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Biden, and Sanders,
despite Warren having the highlight of the night, when she responded to
Buttigieg's embarrassing stumble on a question about race.
"... Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to journalist and side-piece Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes. ..."
"... What's next on the real-life House of Cards? ..."
A
week of two-tiered
legal shenanigans was capped off on Friday with a
New York
Times report that Attorney General William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to
scrutinize the government's case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn,
which the Times suggested was " highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political
interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors."
Notably, the FBI excluded
crucial information from a '302' form documenting an interview with Flynn in January, 2017.
While Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to misleading agents over his contacts with the former
Russian ambassador regarding the Trump administration's efforts to oppose a UN resolution
related to Israel, the original draft of Flynn's 302 reveals that agents thought
he was being honest with them - evidence which Flynn's prior attorneys never pursued.
His new attorney, Sidney Powell, took over Flynn's defense in June 2019 - while Flynn
withdrew his guilty plea in January , accusing the government of "bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
In addition to a review of the Flynn case, Barr has hired a handful of outside prosecutors
to broadly review several other politically sensitive national-security cases in the US
attorney's office in Washington , according to the Times sources.
Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC,
Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and
others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to
journalist and side-piece
Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at
former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.
Earlier this week, Barr overruled the DC prosecutors recommendation for Stone, resulting in
their resignations. The result was the predictable triggering of Democrats across the spectrum
.
According to the Times , "Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun
grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases -- some public, some not
-- including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to
the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal
deliberations."
The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what
career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader
turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr's recent
installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea , as interim United States attorney in the
District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top
prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu.
Mr.
Flynn's case was first brought by the special counsel's office, who agreed to a plea deal
on a charge of lying to investigators in exchange for his cooperation, before the Washington
office took over the case when the special counsel shut down after concluding its
investigation into Russia's election interference.
-New
York Times
thanks b...no shortage of hypocrisy in all this...
regarding @ 4 mike r which @8 ian2 linked properly to, i enjoyed the last paragraph which
i think sums it up well.. here it is..
"I continue to believe that the United States cannot effectively restrict the spread of a
technology under Chinese leadership without offering a superior product of its own. The fact
that the United States has attempted to suppress Huawei's market leadership in the absence of
any American competitor in this field is one of the oddest occurrences in the history of US
foreign policy. If the US were to announce something like a Manhattan Project for 5G
broadband and solicit the cooperation of its European and Asian allies, it probably would get
an enthusiastic response. As matters stand, America's efforts to stop Huawei have become an
embarrassment."
The reason European customers trust Huawei is because Huawei uses open-source software or at
least makes their code available for inspection by customers.
Closed-source software cannot provide secrecy or security. This was vividly demonstrated
last month when
NSA revealed a critical vulnerability in Windows 10 that rendered any cryptographic
security worthless.
Rashid's simulated attack exploits CVE-2020-0601, the critical vulnerability that
Microsoft patched on Tuesday after receiving a private tipoff from the NSA. As Ars
reported, the flaw can completely break certificate validation for websites, software
updates, VPNs, and other security-critical computer uses. It affects Windows 10 systems,
including server versions Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. Other versions of
Windows are unaffected.
The flaw involves the way the new versions of Windows check the validity of certificates
that use elliptic-curve cryptography. While the vulnerable Windows versions check three ECC
parameters, they fail to verify a fourth, crucial one, which is known as a base point
generator and is often represented in algorithms as 'G.' This failure is a result of
Microsoft's implementation of ECC rather than any flaw or weakness in the ECC algorithms
themselves.
The attacker examines the specific ECC algorithm used to generate the root-certificate
public key and proceeds to craft a private key that copies all of the certificate
parameters for that algorithm except for the point generator. Because vulnerable Windows
versions fail to check that parameter, they accept the private key as valid. With that, the
attacker has spoofed a Windows-trusted root certificate that can be used to mint any
individual certificate used for authentication of websites, software, and other sensitive
properties.
I do not believe this vulnerability was a bug. It is more likely a backdoor intentionally
left in the code for NSA to utilize. Whatever the case, NSA must have known about it for
years. Why did they reveal it now? Most likely someone else had discovered the back door and
may have been about to publish it.
(I
commented on these same issues on Sputnik a few weeks ago.)
The other possible US objection is that Huawei will only let their customers spy, not third
countries.
Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Feb 11 2020 21:57 utc | 24
It reminds me a joke about Emperor Napoleon arriving in a town. The population, the
notables and the mayor are greeting him, and the Emperor says "No gun salute, hm?". Mayor
replies "Sire, we have twenty reasons. Fist, we have canons", "Enough", replied Napoleon.
Isn't the "other possible US objection" exactly "Enough"? Of course, USA is not a mere
"third country", USA is the rule maker of rule based international order.
Last year I was so mad at USA bulling Huawei and ZTE, decided to buy a Huawei Honor View
V20 PCT-L29 Smartphone. Global version on T-Mobile network . Still fumbling
at the setting. This smartphone installed GPS and BeiDou (BDS). I never used Google searches
but instead DuckDuckGo long ago
I'm amazed that Chief Poodle Boris did not obediently obey His Master's Voice.
What is going on?
I could understand if this was DNC/CIA-MI6 passing orders down the line (a la Skripal) to
upset Trump but the US Intel Community has no interest in such a snub from the UK Govt.
Obviously this isn't the UK Govt asserting their independence from US instruction because
such a thing has never happened in my lifetime.
Wierd.
Anyway, too bad I won't be able to read the thread on my phone tomorrow as Bruce has just
broken the thread with his million-character link. :-(
I'm amazed that Chief Poodle Boris did not obediently obey His Master's Voice.
What is going on?
Posted by: Ash Naz | Feb 12 2020 0:20 utc | 39
However I cringe and the obedient vassals, and Boris who may well be the Chief Poodle,
given that exceedingly cute Justin is from another breed, Newtrumplander. But even poodles
have privacy concerns, you know? What you web surf, what you buy, whom do you send gifts and
WHAT gifts (dominatrix set?). However you trust NSA to use all that info solely for good
causes, well, you know, not everyone is an exhibitionist...
I'm amazed that Chief Poodle Boris did not obediently obey His Master's Voice.
Posted by: Ash Naz | Feb 12 2020 0:20 utc | 32
The reason is said to be that they've already bought and installed a lot of the
Huawei equipment, and the new decision is just a fake, to justify the position.
The reason is said to be that they've already bought and installed a lot of the Huawei
equipment, and the new decision is just a fake, to justify the position.
The financial angle makes sense, but what is the price of disobedience?
@Piotr Berman:
But even poodles have privacy concerns
The preventing blackmail angle makes sense too
And how useful to be able to use blackmail to get allies to jump when ordered? It's often
said that Washington has no real friends, just obedient vassals.
It would appear to me that the UK, by allowing Huawei (limited) access to their market,
are achieving several advantageous outcomes.
1) They are preventing potential for a duopoly of Eriksson & Nokia on the hardware by
allowing a third player into the market.
2) By only allowing a maximum of 35% of the market share, they prevent Huawei from quickly
out-competing the others on price and capturing a monopoly.
3) They are only allowing access to the network comm's market, and not the core of the
system, which may or may not protect against unwanted data capture and intrusion (by exactly
whom remains the question - as per the article above).
4) It allows the four main network providers (especially EE, owned by BT) and the
accompanying state surveillance apparatus the ability to familiarise themselves with Huawei
tech/code/vulnerabilities which may be invaluable going forward. On this point alone, the USA
(and Australia, among others) are doing themselves a great disservice by missing out on a
learning experience from arguably the world leader in this technology.
As md|Feb 12 2020 8:29 utc|44 alluded to, they are claiming to allow clintele access to
all code (and the freedom to modify it as desired). So denying them access to a particular
market only hinders the technical understanding of the technology and its implementation,
leaving such states behind.
The USA (and its' vassal client states) once again shoot themselves in the foot in a vain
attempt to create and re-create the archetypal "boogeyman" for the populace to wring their
hands over and keep them up at night. Fools.
I enjoy David Goldman (Spengler) article at Asia Times. He accurately notes the vast lead
Huawei/China has and then provides "but we can do something" bromides. What do mean "we",
kimosabe?
Per a quote from Newt Gingrich's book ""Trump vs. China: Facing America's Greatest Threat",
quoted recently by David Goldman. Gingrich didn't say who was the greatest threat, Trump or
China.
"It is not China's fault that in 2017, 89% of Baltimore eighth graders couldn't pass their
math exam
"It is not China's fault that too few Americans in K-12 and in college study math and
science to fill the graduate schools with future American scientists
"It is not China's fault that, faced with a dramatic increase in Chinese graduate students
in science, the government has not been able to revive programs like the 1958 National
Defense Education Act
"It is not China's fault the way our defense bureaucracy functions serves to create
exactly the 'military-industrial complex' that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about
"It is not China's fault that NASA has been so bureaucratic and its funding so erratic
that there is every reason to believe that China is catching up rapidly and may outpace us.
This is because of us not because of them
"It is not China's fault that the old, bureaucratic, entrenched American
telecommunications companies failed to develop a global strategy for 5G over the 11 years
that the Chinese company Huawei has been working to become a world leader "
Here is another Orwellian irony that has been forgotten down the MemoryHole.
Way back in 2014, Edward Snowden revealed that the Americans (and the NSA in particular)
were spying on Huawei dating back to at least 2007.
This American spying occurred before the current national security hysterics about Huawei,
indeed, before most people in the USA had even heard of the company itself.
As this article states,
"In the final analysis, the NSA spying campaign against Huawei has two fundamental
purposes. First, Huawei (unlike the American telecommunications companies) does not allow the
NSA free access to its infrastructure to conduct spying on its products' users. Accordingly,
as part of its mission of spying on the entire world's population, the NSA hacked into
Huawei's systems in order to gather information traveling through its infrastructure.
Second, the spying campaign against Huawei is part of broader efforts to protect the
profits and interests of American telecommunications companies at the expense of Huawei. This
is the purpose of the NSA's particular interest in Huawei's executives and their 'leadership
plans and intentions.'"
The other possible US objection is that Huawei will only let their customers spy, not third
countries.
Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Feb 11 2020 21:57 utc | 20
So it seems. In the words of Ren Zhengfei 'When we transfer the tech, they can modify code
on top of my tech, once that's through, it's not only shielded from me, it's shielded from
everyone else in the world US 5G will be their own thing, there's no security concern, the
only concern will be the U.S. keeping American companies (which bought it) in check.'
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg seemed perfect, a man who defended the
principle of wine-based fundraisers with military effrontery. New York magazine made his case
in a cover story the magazine's Twitter account summarized as:
"Perhaps all the Democrats need to win the presidency is a Rust Belt millennial who's gay
and speaks Norwegian."
(The "Here's something random the Democrats need to beat Trump" story became an important
literary genre in 2019-2020, the high point being Politico's "Can the "F-bomb save Beto?").
Buttigieg had momentum. The flameout of Biden was expected to help the ex-McKinsey
consultant with "moderates." Reporters dug Pete; he's been willing to be photographed holding a
beer and wearing a bomber jacket, and in Iowa demonstrated what pundits call a "killer
instinct," i.e. a willingness to do anything to win.
Days before the caucus, a Buttigieg supporter claimed Pete's name had not been read out in a
Des Moines Register poll, leading to the pulling of what NBC called the "gold standard" survey.
The irony of such a relatively minor potential error holding up a headline would soon be laid
bare.
However, Pete's numbers with black voters (he polls at zero in many states) led to multiple
news stories in the last weekend before the caucus about "concern" that Buttigieg would not be
able to win.
Who, then? Elizabeth Warren was cratering in polls and seemed to be shifting strategy on a
daily basis. In Iowa, she attacked "billionaires" in one stop, emphasized "unity" in the next,
and stressed identity at other times (she came onstage variously that weekend to Dolly Parton's
"9 to 5" or to chants of "It's time for a woman in the White House"). Was she an outsider or an
insider? A screwer, or a screwee? Whose side was she on?
A late controversy involving a story that Sanders had told Warren a woman couldn't win
didn't help. Jaimee Warbasse planned to caucus with Warren, but the Warren/Sanders "hot mic"
story of the two candidates arguing after a January debate was a bridge too far. She spoke of
being frustrated, along with friends, at the inability to find anyone she could to trust to
take on Trump.
"It's like we all have PTSD from 2016," she said. "There has to be somebody."
... ... ...
What happened over the five days after the caucus was a mind-boggling display of
fecklessness and ineptitude. Delay after inexplicable delay halted the process, to the point
where it began to feel like the caucus had not really taken place. Results were released in
chunks, turning what should have been a single news story into many, often with Buttigieg "in
the lead."
The delays and errors cut in many directions, not just against Sanders. Buttigieg,
objectively, performed above poll expectations, and might have gotten more momentum even with a
close, clear loss, but because of the fiasco he ended up hashtagged as #MayorCheat and lumped
in headlines tied to what the Daily Beast called a "Clusterfuck."
Though Sanders won the popular vote by a fair margin, both in terms of initial preference
(6,000 votes) and final preference (2,000), Mayor Pete's lead for most of the week with "state
delegate equivalents" -- the number used to calculate how many national delegates are sent to
the Democratic convention -- made him the technical winner in the eyes of most. By the end of
the week, however, Sanders had regained so much ground, to within 1.5 state delegate
equivalents, that news organizations like the AP were despairing at calling a winner.
This wasn't necessarily incorrect. The awarding of delegates in a state like Iowa is
inherently somewhat random. If there's a tie in votes in a district awarding five delegates, a
preposterous system of coin flips is used to break the odd number. The geographical calculation
for state delegate equivalents is also uneven, weighted toward the rural. A wide popular-vote
winner can surely lose.
But the storylines of caucus week sure looked terrible for the people who ran the vote. The
results released early favored Buttigieg, while Sanders-heavy districts came out later. There
were massive, obvious errors. Over 2,000 votes that should have gone to Sanders and Warren went
to Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer in one case the Iowa Democrats termed a "minor error." In
multiple other districts (Des Moines 14 for example), the "delegate equivalents" appeared to be
calculated incorrectly, in ways that punished all the candidates, not just Sanders. By the end
of the week, even the New York Times was saying the caucus was plagued with "inconsistencies
and errors."
Emily Connor, a Sanders precinct captain in Boone County, spent much of the week checking
results, waiting for her Bernie-heavy district to be recorded. It took a while. By the end of
the week, she was fatalistic.
"If you're a millennial, you basically grew up in an era where popular votes are stolen,"
she said.
"The system is riddled with loopholes."
Others felt the party was in denial about how bad the caucus night looked.
"They're kind of brainwashed," said Joe Grabinski, who caucused in West Des Moines.
"They think they're on the side of the right they'll do anything to save their
careers.
An example of how screwed up the process was from the start involved a new twist on the
process, the so-called "Presidential Preference Cards."
In 2020, caucus-goers were handed index cards that seemed simple enough. On side one, marked
with a big "1," caucus-goers were asked to write in their initial preference. Side 2, with a
"2," was meant to be where you wrote in who you ended up supporting, if your first choice was
not viable.
The "PPCs" were supposedly there to "ensure a recount is possible," as the Polk County
Democrats put it. But caucus-goers didn't understand the cards.
Morgan Baethke, who volunteered at Indianola 4, watched as older caucus-goers struggled.
Some began filling out both sides as soon as they were given them.
Therefore, Baethke says, if they do a recount, "the first preference should be accurate."
However, "the second preference will be impossible to recreate with any certainty."
This is a problem, because by the end of the week, DNC chair Tom Perez -- a triple-talking
neurotic who is fast becoming the poster child for everything progressives hate about modern
Dems -- called for an "immediate recanvass." He changed his mind after ten hours and said he
only wanted "surgical" reanalysis of problematic districts.
No matter what result emerges, it's likely many individual voters will not trust it. Between
comical videos of apparently gamed coin-flips and the pooh-poohing reaction of party officials
and pundits (a common theme was that "toxic conspiracy theories" about Iowa were the work of
the Trumpian right and/or Russian bots), the overall impression was a clown show performance by
a political establishment too bored to worry about the appearance of impartiality.
"Is it incompetence or corruption? That's the big question," asked Storey.
If there is one thing that is clear as we end this truly insane week it is that it was a
good one for President Donald Trump.
Between his acquittal in the Senate over an impeachment that is the apotheosis of three
years of patent nonsense and the fiasco that were the Iowa caucuses, Trump comes out of this
first week of February in better shape than he's been since he won the election back in
2016.
The Democrats have made a complete mockery of their candidate selection process. At least
back in 2016 when Trump knocked people off one by one the GOP didn't openly try to rig
primaries against him.
Of course, Trump isn't as much of an outsider as he portrays himself, so his real threat to
the entrenched political establishment in The Swamp was never as great as someone like, say,
Ron Paul's was in 2012.
But the depths the DNC are willing to dig deep to in order to stop Bernie Sanders from being
their nominee are truly breathtaking. In 2016, the Clinton machine had declared her the
candidate. Bernie was getting in the way of her coronation as the first woman president.
In 2020, however, no one actually running for the Democratic nomination, except maybe Bernie
Sanders in a perfect world, can actually beat Donald Trump. So, the whole process is really
academic at this point.
Honestly, after this week the only person who can beat Trump nationally is Trump himself.
So, that leaves me with 65/35 odds he'll be re-elected.
But with impeachment behind him, an agenda of retribution against his accusers ahead of him
and a Democratic party deep in the preparations for committing ritualistic suicide Trump should
have no problem carrying at least as many states as he did in 2016.
Caitlyn Johnstone believes that the DNC's ineptitude is a ruse, a clever ploy to look
stupid and corrupt but doing so to ensure their preferred outcome, which is a brokered
convention and the return of Hillary Clinton from the grave,
as I said recently , "like some zombie whose head we forgot to cut off."
While I love Ms. Johnstone's thesis, I think she's missing the much more salient point. As
the Democrats flop from one fiasco to the next, they are doing two very important things.
First, they invalidate the idea they operate as a functional organization. This excludes
them as people who can solve the country's problems to voters who are pretty content with
President Trump.
Second, it sets the stage for an irrevocable split of the party itself as the Bernie Bros
become more convinced the party doesn't represent them. I'm convinced that the end game for
the DNC is to drive Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard from the party through these shenanigans.
This is why no matter who is eventually declared the winner in Iowa, the winner there is
Donald Trump.
And, guess what? There's only 49 more states like this to go!
I'm really regretting swearing off popcorn.
The good news is that, for now, the markets recognize that the biggest threat to U.S.
political stability has been averted. Stocks bolted to new all-time highs after Trump's
acquittal, but couldn't follow through to end the week.
It only gets better from here if the DNC is set on sowing distrust, chaos beneath a veneer
of practiced stupidity.
So, while there are a number of sincere challenges to global growth both right in front of
us (the coronavirus) and far ahead of us (the growing insolvency of the European financial
system now that Brexit is finished) equity markets are more than capable of rallying for the
next few sessions.
But expect volatility to increase from here. The dollar is strengthening. While the euro
narrowly avoided a catastrophic January close last Friday, the dominant bear trend reasserted
itself with a vengeance this week, breaking below the all-important $1.10 level.
And that should finally see eurobond prices begin to collapse. The rally we've seen over the
past two weeks has been nothing short of ridiculous. A classic 'false move.'
Oil is now in a bear market after 2018's reaction high above $86 per barrel Brent and the
terrible results and guidance from industry leaders this week like Exxon-Mobil (XOM) and Royal
Dutch Shell (RDS.A) only reinforce that view. If not for some noises from
OPEC+ and the hopes that Russia will go along with extending current production cuts kept
Brent from collapsing further this week as shorts piled on early.
But everything comes down to King Dollar and whether real fear which lurks just behind the
headlines grips the plumbing of global markets, which had an outstanding week.
This surge in the dollar confirms the December low as significant which sets up a difficult
few months. Given everything else we're experiencing from the shutdown of major Chinese cities,
travel, etc. there's every reason to be cautious here even if the equity markets keep grinding
higher, though I'd
expect a whole lotta grinding sideways from both equities and gold while this goes on.
Expect a lot of this schizophrenic behavior as capital sloshes from stem to stern trying
to figure out where it should best be deployed in this age of central bank heroin
.
The central banks are still desperate to keep a lid on volatility to extend the lie that
they have things under control, but if that's the case then why is the Fed still having to
deal with repo market
interventions being oversubscribed and the rate creeping back up toward its target Fed
Funds rate and IOER (Interest on Excess Reserves)?
They've lost control over the short end of the yield curve.
And that's where things get interesting for this election cycle.
For Trump, the primary season should work out well as the Democrats continue imploding. And
I have no doubt he will now go on the warpath to take down those who he rightly feels wronged
him and the country. And he'll be merciless on Twitter using it to goad the Democrats into even
more lunacy, more mistakes.
This is what he truly excels at and it will all but guarantee him surviving any crises that
appear on the horizon between now and November.
For now, New Hampshire is next. Bernie should win the most votes it in a walk. But the real
winner, regardless of anything else will be Trump.
DNC is trying to drive Bernie and Tulsi out of the party. What they don't realize is that
doing so will irrevocably drive more than their supporters out as well, as the party faithful
realize their faith is unfounded.
The GOP Old Guard screwed over the Libertarian wing also for years. Exhibit A: Ron
Paul.
It boils down to this:
It does not matter if you are Democrat leaning or Republican leaning. As soon as you
attempt to do any real and fundamental change, banksters bring out their big
guns and fund whatever candidate or party to maintain the status quo. US elections are about
tinkering around the edges, never about fundamental improvements that would be to the
detriment of the banksters.
If you have an IQ >100, more than one testicle and the mental clarity, then you know
that the true enemy is and always has been: International Banksters. Without them there could
be no MIC, no Wars, no welfare for the rich and no excess of socialism for the poor. Without
them, perpetual deficit financing would be impossible. They alone are the financial drug
dealers who keep everyone addicted.
Nothing will change until you bring out the proverbial pitchforks, rope and
guillotines.
"But with impeachment behind him, an agenda of retribution against his accusers ahead
of him ..."
An "agenda of retribution" is exactly what Dems want us to think this is. But when these
cases reach court, we'll find out that they are just normal criminal prosecutions, for real
crimes, with real evidence, that would have been brought to the arrest phase a long time ago
except that Trump has taken all the time necessary to gather evidence on the one hand, and to
let the Dems exhaust their quiver of anti-Trump arrows on the other. Think back to July 5th,
2016 when James Comey went in front of the cameras and rattled off a long list of serious
crimes by Hillary and then said she wasn't going to be prosecuted. Trump could have brought
charges on January 20th, 2017 but he didn't. These last three years have been the largest,
most thorough criminal investigation, of the largest number of people, in human history.
Brace yourself for the next phase. And BTW, the sealed indictments are up to 144,844 nationwide.
If were not for Bernie Sanders single-handily, we would not have 'democratic socialism'
whatever that means...no one in the democratic party pushes socialism like he does...somehow
Warren got 'tied up in the moment' and went with Medicare for All, then backed off. Let him
win the nomination, he will be crushed, like Jeremy Corbyn, and the the USA 'socialist
movement' will end...there are NO young Bernie Sanders out there...so another 4 years of
Trump, but the democrats can remake themselves more center focused. If the Republicans win
President, Senate and House, good chance for rebound as usually the ruling party takes the
hit and dems get their chance again 2024...their is always hope. New leadership (Schumer,
Pelosi and Perez) will also be needed required for a new era.
The Democrats are not imploding, the scam that turned the Democrat Party, the workers
party, into another Republican party another bosses party, is failing. The democrats were
more corrupt than the Republicans because the Clinton's sold the Democrats to the
Corporations, pretended to be the workers party, whilst kicking all the workers out.
The scam is ending. Now the scam where the Republican party was stolen from conservative
libertarians to the Corporations, also needs to be tackled.
The USA is a very long way from being a democracy.
I disagree that Sanders can't beat Trump. It's 4 more years later, with another 4 years
extra of youth able to vote for this guy. It's been stated before, the new generations have
been brought up suckling on the socialist tit of the American school system and media for
over 20+ years and they are as indoctrinated as any 20th Century socialist enthusiast. Only a
matter of time before the chickens come home to roost. With Trump the battle may have been
won, but the war will likely be lost unless something drastically changes. - My $.02
In another ZH article, Steve Banning pointed out that both Sanders and Trump have
identified fundamental/similar problems in the country, but that they differ on how to solve
them. Not sure about that being true of reality.
I'd argue that both parties are destroying the US with Crony Capitalism and Bifurcated
Socialism.
Crony capitalism is letting the rich (1%) get richer.
Bifurcated Socialism is where the TBTF and the MIC get obscene amounts of fiat money on
one extreme, and the very poor get just enough welfare to keep them from starting a French
Revolution.
Everyone else in the middle (the 20-99%) has to deal with Darwinian Capitalism - survival
of the fittest.
The only true winners are the banks and (((those))) closest to the source of money
creation, because both militarism and socialism keep increasing the debt burden . Alas, 99.9%
off the population and 95% of ZH bloggers fail to see this, and will opt to attack one side
or the other - in this Banksters game of Divide and Conquer.
Central Banking is antithesis to Free Markets. The cost of interest is price fixed by a
monopoly bank. Not only can the FED create money, but with that money they create artificial
demand. The wealth gap will never close so long as the Federal Reserve exist.
The very same night Elizabeth Warren's big message is "I don't take billionaires' money!"
Liz has the political instincts of Hilary Clinton. Trump will crush her. pic.twitter.com/cM85kcPYUn
The very same night Elizabeth Warren's big message is "I don't take billionaires'
money!" Liz has the political instincts of Hilary Clinton. Trump will crush her. pic.twitter.com/cM85kcPYUn
"... Sanders and Warren have set themselves apart from the field in having the most credible foreign policy visions and the strongest commitments to bringing our many unnecessary wars to an end. Biden remains wedded to too many outdated and unworkable policies, and just on foreign policy alone Bloomberg is running in the wrong party's primary. Buttigieg is the least formally qualified top presidential candidate on the Democratic side, and his inability or unwillingness to answer most of these questions shows that. If the moderators bother to ask them about foreign policy, the candidates will have another opportunity to address these issues in the debate tonight, and Buttigieg won't be able to get away with saying nothing. ..."
Most of the candidates' responses were predictable. Biden's North Korea policy would be
every bit as unrealistic as Trump's, but he shows even less willingness to negotiate.
Bloomberg's positions were unsurprisingly the most hawkish of the bunch. If there was an option
for using force, he was for it. All of the candidates were unfortunately in agreement with
defining Russia as an enemy.
One of the weirder questions asked the candidates whether they would consider using force to
"preempt" a nuclear or missile test by either Iran or North Korea. Only Yang and Warren said
no. It isn't clear how many of them were serious and how many were just making fun of the
absurdity of the question, but it is disturbing that most of the candidates asked about this
would entertain taking military action against another country because of a test. Maybe it
doesn't need to be said because it is so obvious, but using force to stop a nuclear or missile
test is not "preemption" in any sense of the term. A test is not an attack to be preempted, and
taking military action to prevent a test would be nothing less than an unprovoked, illegal act
of aggression. To her credit, Warren recognizes
how dangerous such an attack would be:
No. Using force against a nuclear power or high-risk adversary carries immense risk for
broader conflict. Using force when not necessary can be dangerously counterproductive. Again,
I will only use force if there is a vital national security interest at risk, a strategy with
clear and achievable objectives, and an understanding and acceptance of the long-term
costs.
In general, Warren's answers were the most substantive and careful. She not only answered
the questions that were put to her, but she gave some explanation of why she took that position
and why it was the appropriate thing to do. She correctly rejected Trump's regime change policy
in Venezuela, and acknowledged that "Trump's reckless actions have only further worsened the
suffering of the Venezuelan people." On North Korea, she remained open to continuing direct
talks with Kim Jong-un, but qualified that by saying, "I would be willing to meet with Kim if
it advances substantive negotiations, but not as a vanity project." Her negotiating position
was similarly reasonable: "A pragmatic approach to diplomacy requires give and take on both
sides, not demands that one side unilaterally disarm first." Both Warren and Sanders correctly
criticized Trump for the illegal assassination of Soleimani, and they recognized that the
president's escalation had put Americans at greater risk. When asked about taking military
action against Iran, Warren rejected the idea of a war with Iran and said the following:
I want to end America's wars in the Middle East, not start a new one with Iran. The litmus
test I will use for any military action against Iran is the same that I will use as I
consider any military action anywhere in the world. I will not send our troops into harm's
way unless there is a vital national security interest at risk, a strategy with clear and
achievable objectives, and an understanding and acceptance of the long-term costs. We will
hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that
Congress play a primary role in deciding to engage militarily.
The most revealing set of responses came from Pete Buttigieg in that he gave very few
responses and had remarkably little to say about his plans. He failed
to answer most of the questions he was asked. Of the 36 individual questions included in
the 11 sections, he answered only 17 by my count, and many of those were recycled clips from
previous speeches, interviews, and debate statements. Despite leaning heavily on his military
service in Afghanistan in his campaigning, he failed to answer all of the questions asked about
Afghanistan and the U.S. war there. Buttigieg's failure to respond to most of these questions
underscores the former mayor's lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge, and it shows
that after almost a year his campaign still doesn't have their foreign policy worked out.
Sanders and Warren have set themselves apart from the field in having the most credible
foreign policy visions and the strongest commitments to bringing our many unnecessary wars to
an end. Biden remains wedded to too many outdated and unworkable policies, and just on foreign
policy alone Bloomberg is running in the wrong party's primary. Buttigieg is the least formally
qualified top presidential candidate on the Democratic side, and his inability or unwillingness
to answer most of these questions shows that. If the moderators bother to ask them about
foreign policy, the candidates will have another opportunity to address these issues in the
debate tonight, and Buttigieg won't be able to get away with saying nothing.
I don't trust Warren on this, her flimsiness and pandering and propensity to outright lie
remind me too much of Romney (who speak of the devil got a backbone for once this week!).
Bernie is definitely the best bet for a softer foreign policy.
Warren is one of the most honest politicians. Check her Politifact file, she does far
better than even Bernie. Of course neither compares to Trump, his Politifact file is a
Pants on Fire dumpster fire.
The one thing, and it's only one thing, that causes you to say this is the controversy
over her ancestry. But I don't believe she lied, she was raised with the family lore that
she had native ancestry and she believed that family lore.
If I had a dollar for every white midwesterner who told me that they had Native ancenstry,
I wouldn't be typing comments on disqus, that's for sure. My personal internet comment
typer would be doing the typing for me as I dictated from my throne of mammon.
Im not even really disagreeing. Even if she was wrong, I find it wild that these attacks on
her are playing well in Trumpville, since white midwesterners (my people) falsely claiming
Native heritage is a most common genre.
My guess is that after South Carolina it will be Sanders vs. Bloomberg vs. one of the other
more mainstream Dems, either Mayor Pete, Warren (she's been tacking to the mainstream,
right on economics and "left" on wokeness) or Biden, in that order. A fall-off in funding
will knock everyone else out of the race (or a failure to move the voting needle if Steyer
is self-funding).
... Biden's fundraising has fallen off, and it is unlikely major donors are going to send
cash to a candidate who just ran fourth in Iowa and could run fourth or fifth in New
Hampshire.
...Klobuchar is now in the second tier in New Hampshire, behind Sanders and Buttigieg, but
right alongside Biden and Warren. A third-, fourth- or fifth-place finish would be near-fatal
for them all.
...As for Warren, in her battle with Sanders to emerge as the champion of the progressive
wing of the party, her third-place finish in Iowa, and her expected third-place finish in New
Hampshire, at best, would seem to settle that issue for this election.
Uncle Joe's presidential road show may be a bore and a bust, but the upcoming expose of Biden
& Son International, Inc. should provide a dumpster-load of drama and comedy all summer
long. I wonder how many special guest appearances there will be by the Kerrys, the Clintons,
the Obamas and other nice folks Joe knows from DC.
@anon
IMHO, Bloomberg is ... just one year younger than Bernie, so this is his final rodeo too.
...After the Iowa deep state operation, (it was NOT incompetence), it is clear that the
PTB will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to ensure that Socialist Sanders is not the
nominee. Remember, he already has a heart condition. Just sayin'.
The very part-time mayor of South Bend will soon be yesterday's news after South Carolina.
Unlike suburban whites, blacks have too much common sense to vote for a homosexual.
@follyofwar
If it ends up Bloomberg vs Trump what we've got in this country will have transmogrified
further from an oligarchy to a full blown aristocracy–certainly a
plutocracy–where only billionaires can afford to play king. That race won't be Dems vs
GOPers, as both gentlemen have posed as one before switching to the other for simple
expedience. Who will be the veep candidates? A Rockefeller and a Rothschild?
Bootyjudge is just a short, gay and white version of Obama. But he typifies a government
bureaucrat in that he's politically left wing, sexually deviant and hates normal, everyday
Americans especially if their skin is white.
The DNC knows that if Biden were to win the nomination he'll commit so many gaffes, like
burbling about corn pop, his hairy legs and enjoying kids sitting on his lap, among other
things, that Trump would have a field day on Twitter and easily win a second term.
So it's shaping up to be a contest between orange Jebulus vs. anal Pete. By the time the
presidential debates arrive both candidates will be vowing to crush white nationalism and
improve the lives of black and brown people. White people need not apply.
Nevertheless, Trump's cult like almost all white base will cheer madly for a man who
claims to represent them in words only, but almost never in deeds.
Bezos held a party in DC recently at his place attended by top officials from the Trump
Administration. Jared Kushner was there before. They hang out together.
How odd that Bezos is somehow portrayed as some anti-Trump owner of WaPo. Bezos serves his
role in Beltway...
As has always been said, Centrist Dems - The Right Wing Democrats dominating the
Democratic Party... prefer Trump to Sanders.
It will always be that way. They figure they can stick out four more years of Trump just
like they did with Bush and have their victory in 2024.
They are living in the past.
2020, with continued corruption by Centrist Dems? Will result in massive gains for
Republicans and massive losses for Centrist Dems. The top party leadership of Centrist Dems
are fine with that as long as their own seats are protected from Republican challenge. Deals
will be made.
If you look at Trump term? Not much has really changed other than the rabble (Right,
Center, and Left) being at each other's throats more than usual. That's they way the elites
like it. Rabble like that, so easily divided?
The system isn't broken. It's working exactly the way it's intended to work. It ain't a
bug, it's a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system
is torn down and replaced with something healthy.
* * *
Correct, the entire system and most likely that's a long time from now.
Unfortunately.
"... How can they change? The owners are the warmongering monopoly capitalist ruling class. Are you imagining that any decision can ever be made by the lowly peons, the rank and file? ..."
Unless They Change The Democrats Deserve To LoseTrisha , Feb 6 2020 16:12 utc
|
6
The Democratic Party seems to intend to lose the 2020 elections.
The idiotic impeachment attempt against Trump ended just
as we predicted at its beginning:
After two years of falsely accusing Trump of having colluded with Russia [the Democrats]
now allege that he colludes with Ukraine. That will make it much more difficult for the
Democrats to hide the dirty hands they had in creating Russiagate. Their currently
preferred candidate Joe Biden will get damaged.
...
Trump should be impeached for his crimes against Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
But the Democrats will surely not touch on those issues. They are committing themselves
to political theater that will end without any result. Instead of attacking Trump's
policies and proposing better legislation they will pollute the airwaves with noise about
'crimes' that do not exist.
There is no case for impeachment. Even if the House would vote for one the Senate would
never act on it. No one wants to see a President Pence.
The Democrats are giving Trump the best campaign aid he could have wished for. Trump
will again present himself as the victim of a witch hunt. He will again argue that he is
the only one on the side of the people. That he alone stands with them against the bad
politicians in Washington DC. Millions will believe him and support him on this. It will
motivate them to vote for him.
The Senate acquitted Trump of all the nonsense the Democrats have thrown against him.
The state party is now being forced to walk back their error of giving @BernieSanders
delegates to @DevalPatrick who received zero votes in Black Hawk County. Press can dm
me.
We have known for over 24 hours as verified by our county party that @BernieSanders won
the #iacaucuses in Black Hawk County with 2,149 votes, 155 County Delegates. #NotMeUs
#IowaCaucuses
The whole manipulation was intended to enable Buttigieg to claim that he led in Iowa even
though it is clear that Bernie Sanders won the race. It worked:
If a progressive is about to win #IowaCaucuses:
- remove final polls
- use mysterious app created by former Clinton staffers
- Funnel results thru untested app
- Claim app fails
- Hold results
- Reveal only 62% to give false impression of who won
- Refuse to reveal final results
But the cost of such open manipulations is the
loss of trust in the Democratic Party and in elections in general:
In sum: We are 24 hours into the 2020 campaign, and Democrats have already humiliated their
party on national television, alienated their least reliable progressive supporters,
demoralized their most earnest activists, and handed Trump's campaign a variety of potent
lines of attack.
The other leading candidates are not much better. Sanders might have a progressive agenda
in domestic policies, but his foreign policies are fully in line with his party. Matt Duss,
Sanders' foreign policy advisor, is the son of a lifelong key front man for CIA
proxy organizations. He spills out mainstream imperial blabber:
The only thing that Trump's Venezuela regime change policy achieved is giving Russia an
opportunity to screw with the US in our own hemisphere. That's what they were
applauding.
Giving a standing ovation to Trump's SOTU remarks on Venezuela were of course the
Democratic "resistance" and Nancy Pelosi . That was before she theatrically ripped up her
copy of Trump's speech, the show act of a 5 year old and one which
she had trained for . She should be fired.
Impeachment, the Iowa disaster and petty show acts will not win an election against Donald
Trump. While they do not drive away core Democratic voters, they do make it difficult to get
the additional votes that are needed to win. Many on the left and the right who dislike Trump
will rather abstain or vote for a third party than for a party which is indistinguishable
from the currently ruling one.
Either the Democrats change their whole course of action or they will lose in November to
an extend that will be breathtaking. It would be well deserved.
Posted by b on February 6, 2020 at 15:57 UTC |
Permalink The donor class owners of the "Democratic" party have every incentive to
support Trump, who has cut their taxes, hugely inflated the value of their assets, and
mis-directed attention away from substantial issues that might degrade either their assets or
their power, by focusing on identity politics.
It's obvious to me that the two war parties function as one. The Democrats have been winning
since Trump took office--they get their money and they get their wars. If Trump wins, the
Democrats win as billionaires flood more money into the DNC. If Trump loses, the Republicans
win for the same reasons.
The behavior of a five year old is an appropriate reference point for most of the people
working in DC, albeit engaged parents expect more of their children. This vaudeville routine
is giving satisfaction to Republicans, Trump supporters, and those who have been looking for
a clearer opportunity to say "I told you so" to diehard Democratic believers (who will
continue to refuse to listen).
For an American, even one who has always been somewhat cynical regarding cultural notions of
democracy and the "American Way," the show has become patently and abusively vulgar and
revulsive. It does not appear to be anywhere near "hitting bottom." There can be no recovery
without emotional maturity, and the leaders in Washington exhibit nothing of the kind. The
level of maturity and wisdom of the individuals involved is determinative of the political
result, not the alleged quality of the politics they purport to sell. Right now we don't have
that.
"Unless They Change The Democrats Deserve To Lose"
Aren't there 2 levels of "change"?
1. How can they change? The owners are the warmongering monopoly capitalist ruling
class. Are you imagining that any decision can ever be made by the lowly peons, the rank and
file? If you thought anything like that, you should try to find one single instance, in
all history, of this "party" ever having done anything at all out of line with the express
policy of the owners of the country (the high level of people-friendly noise, intended for
the voting peons, never translates into any action of that sort.)
2. If you mean change the electoral policy to win this election, how could they
conceivably manage to change this late? Like a supertanker launched at full speed trying to
make a sharp turn a few seconds before hitting the shore, you mean?
Anyway, in both cases forget what it "deserves", it should be destroyed and buried under,
not only lose.
It would take extreme mental contortions to take U.S. "democracy" seriously at this
point.
I would like to believe that it makes some difference who is elected, but increasingly
doubtful.
How different would it really have been had Hillary been elected (much as it pains me to
consider such a scenario)?
Trump was elected (aside from interference from AIPAC) partly because he was republican
candidate and for some that's all it takes but aside from that because;
- end pointless wars
- improve healthcare
- control immigration
- jobs for coal miners
- somehow address corruption and non-performance of government
- improve US competitiveness, bring back jobs, promote business, improve economy
He claims having improved the economy but more likely is done juice from the FED.
So really, what grade does he deserve?
And yet people are rallying to his side.
Personally I think that the entrenched interests have moulded Trump to meet their
requirements and now it is inconvenient to have to start work on a new president, unless it
would be one of their approved choices.
I voted for Trump because of Hillary.
Now I would not vote for Trump given a decent choice. Fortunately there is an excellent
alternative.
All who count have known for a long time that Trump will have a second term. Baked in. (1)
The Dems agitate and raucously screech and try to impeach to distract or whatever to show
da base that they hate Trump and hope to slaughter! him! a rapist! mysoginist! racist!
liar ! He is horrors! in touch with the malignant criminal authoritarian ex-KGB Putin! Russia
Russia Russia - and remember Stormy Daniels! ( :) ! )
The top corp. Dems prefer to lose to Trump, I have said this for years, as have many
others. In rivalry of the Mafia type, it is often better to submit to have a share of the
pie. Keep the plebs on board with BS etc. Victim status, underdog pretense, becomes ever more
popular.
1. Trump might fall ill / dead / take Melania's advice and wishes into account, or just
quit.
People still talk like democracy really exists in USA.
They channel their anger toward Party and personality.
If only the democrats would ... If only Sanders would ... If only people would see that
...
A few understand the way things really are, but most are still hoping that
somehow that the bed-time stories and entertaining kayfabe are a sort of
democracy that they can live with.
But the is just normalcy bias. A Kool-Aid hang-over. This is not democracy. It is a soft
tyranny encouraged by Empire stooges, lackeys, and enabled by ignorance.
The lies are as pervasive as they are subtle: half-truths; misdirection; omitting facts
like candidate/party affiliations with the Zionist/Empire Death Cult.
The REAL divide among people in the West is who benefits from an EMPIRE/ZIONIST FIRST
orientation that has polluted our politics and our culture and the rest of us.
Wake up. War is on the horizon. And Central Banks can't print money forever.
After watching Pelosi it reminded me that during the Geo. W. Bush era the Democrats were
always claiming to be the adults in the room. It's odd that Mayo Pete's 'husband' is never
seen or heard from. I wonder why? Biden's toast and Epstein didn't kill himself. AND Seth
Rich leaked Hillary's emails to Wikileaks.
-- --
The Clinton-Obama administration had scores of corrupt officials and associates (the
Podestas, for instance). It was necessary to create a firewall once Trump won the nomination.
As so, they attacked his campaign manager, his national security adviser, his family,
himself, using all the means of FISA, wire tapping done by NSA and CIA and Mi6 and probably
Mossad.
Red Ryder | Feb 6 2020 16:56 utc | 14
-- --
Trump is an installment of The Mossad via blackmail and media manipulation, check "Black
Cube Intelligence", a Mossad front operating from City of London. It would make sense the
establishment in the US would eavesdrop on him. Mossad on the other hand would wiretap the
wiretapers and give feedback on Trump. The Podesta you mentioned once threatened the factions
with "disclosure" possibly to keep the runaway black projects crazies in check not that I
wish to play advocate of these people.
-- --
After they lose again in November, they will unleash their street thugs, Antifa, to terrorize
the winners. Meanwhile for the purists of the Liberal Cult there will be many real suicides.
So, bloodshed and death will become reality.
Red Ryder | Feb 6 2020 16:56 utc | 14
-- --
Yes, what we need is just a nazi party in the US to keep communism in check, right? We are
half way there with Trump already aren't we? "Black Sun" technologies (which a part off I
described above) already there, leaking to anyone interested enough that would aid in the
great outsourcing for the Yinon project, so why not? "Go Trump 2020"! (sarcasm)
For whatever reason the only thing the Dems seem to find more terrible than a loss to Trump
is a win with Bernie. I'm no fan of Bernie but it's clear they're out to sabotage the one guy
that would actually beat Trump in an election
While I have no illusions that a Sanders administration will have good foreign policy
objectives, is there not something to be said for shifting money away from the
military-industrial complex in the US? In general Sanders gives me the impression that he
wants to reduce US intervention in foreign affairs in favor of spending more money on
domestic issues. Even a slight reduction in pressure is helpful for giving other countries
the ability to expand their spheres of influence and becoming more legitimate powers in
opposition to the US and EU. Based on this I still see voting for Sanders as helpful even if
he won't bring about any meaningful change in the US's foreign policy.
it's not an actual Stalin quote, but often used as such
he did say something in the same vein, though.
it IS absolutely spot on here:
"It's not who vote that counts, it's who counts the votes"
congratulations, DNC, you're on a par with Joseph Stalin; the most ruthless chairman the
Sovyets have ever had.
so here is your real Russia Gate.
oh, come and smell the Irony. In fake wrestling the producers determine the winner in advance
and the wrestlers ate given their script to follow. The Dems have no intention to win this,
look at the clowns they have running the show not to mention the flawed candidates . The
script calls for the king of fake wrestling, Trump himself, to win yet again. Only a
concerted effort by the Dems and Deep State media, along with some tech help from Bibis crew
can engineer this result, but they are all on board. Dems willing to wait for 2024 when the
producers will write them in for a big Win over somebody not named Trump. The world will be
ready for a Green change by then, and Soros/Gates boys will have their chance to step up to
the plate again.
Enjoy the show if you wish, I'm changing the channel.
Yes pft, the favored candidate of the DNC is clearly Trump.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Feb 6 2020 19:25 utc | 58
Only if the ungrateful commoners who identify as Democrats or moderates can't be brought to
heel and give their full throated support for the DNC's favoured Cookie Cutter candidate who
might as well be one of those dolls with a string and a recording you hear when you pull the
string.
Then yes, they would prefer 'fore moar years!!' of the Ugliest American ever to be
installed as President of the United States.
One of things I respect about Tulsi Gabbard is she ain't no Doll with a string attached.
When she made the comment about cleaning out the rot in the Democratic Party, she left no
doubt her intent and goals. And to take on hillary, the Red Queen to boot, why that was
simply delicious.
Alas, the View, the DNC, it's web of evil rich and the media will never forgive her for
Soldiering for her Country.
It has been a bad few days for the establishment, really bad.
In a 51-49 vote, the Senate refused to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald
Trump and agreed to end the trial Wednesday, with a near-certain majority vote to acquit the
president of all charges.
As weekend polls show socialist Bernie Sanders surging into the lead for the nomination in
the states of Iowa, New Hampshire and California, the sense of panic among Democratic Party
elites is palpable.
Former Secretary of State and Joe Biden surrogate John Kerry was overheard Sunday at a Des
Moines hotel talking of the "possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party --
down whole."
Tuesday, Trump takes his nationally televised victory lap in the U.S. Capitol with his State
of the Union address, as triumphant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a humiliated Speaker
Nancy Pelosi sit silently side-by-side behind him.
Democrats may declare the Trump impeachment a victory for righteousness, but the anger and
outrage, the moans and groans now coming off the editorial and op-ed pages and cable TV suggest
the media know otherwise.
History, we are told, will vindicate what Pelosi and the Democrats did and stain forever the
Republican Party for voting to acquit.
Perhaps, but only if some future Howard Zinn is writing the history.
Reality: The impeachment of Trump was an attempted -- and failed -- coup that not a single
Republican supported, only Democrats in the House and their Senate caucus. The impeachment of
Trump was an exercise in pure partisanship and itself an abuse of power.
What was the heart of the Democrats' case to remove Trump?
Trump failed to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the White House, and held
up military aid to Kyiv for several months, to get Zelenskiy to hold a press conference to
announce that Kyiv was looking into how Hunter Biden got on the board of a corrupt energy
company at a retainer of $83,000 a month while his father was the chief international monitor
of corruption in Ukraine.
The specific indictment: Trump's suspension of military aid imperiled "our national
security" by denying arms to an "ally" who was fighting the Russians over there, so we don't
have to fight them over here.
And what was the outcome of it all?
Zelenskiy got his meeting with the president. He got the military aid in September. He did
not hold the press conference requested. He did not announce an investigation of the
Bidens.
No harm, no foul.
How did President Obama handle Ukraine?
After Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and intervened to protect pro-Russian secessionists in
the Donbass, Obama's White House restricted U.S. lethal military aid to Kyiv and provided
blankets and meals ready to eat.
What punishment did House and Senate Democrats and anti-Trump media demand for the pause in
sending weapons for Ukraine?
Capital punishment, a political death penalty.
Democrats demanded that a Republican Senate overturn the election of 2016, make Trump the
first president ever impeached and removed, and then ensure that the American people could
never vote for him again.
Nancy Pelosi's House and the Democratic minority in the Senate were demanding that a
Republican Senate do their dirty work and keep Trump off the ballot in 2020, lest he win a
second term.
For four years, elements of the liberal establishment -- in the media, "deep state" and
major institutions -- have sought to destroy Trump. First, they aimed to smear him and prevent
his election, and then to overturn it as having been orchestrated by the Kremlin, and then to
impeach and remove him, and then to block him from running again.
The damage they have inflicted upon our country's institutions is serious.
U.S. intelligence agencies are being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham for their
role in instigating an investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign. The FBI has been
discredited by exposure of a conspiracy of top-level agents to spy on Trump's campaign.
The media, by endlessly echoing unproven claims that Trump was a stooge of the Kremlin,
discredited themselves to a degree unknown since the "Yellow Press" prostituted itself to get
us into war with Spain. Media claims to be unbiased pursuers of truth have suffered, not only
from Trump's attacks, but from their own biased and bigoted coverage and commentary.
Always at least a dribble of Beltway, uniparty propaganda that Russia is "our" enemy ruled by
a dictator, etc: "After Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea .." Can this columnist not acknowledge
that the people of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine after Uncle Sam helped stage a coup
and handpicked its new figurehead? He is still on record espousing the claim that Russia
"hacked" the 2016 U.S. election.
Anyone who believes that people above the level of sacrificial flunky "being investigated
by U.S. Attorney John Durham for their role in instigating an investigation of a U.S.
presidential campaign" will be charged with a felony is dreaming.
Mr. Buchanan's jobs as Stagehand Right in the Washington puppet show are to whitewash the
imperialism and to lead enough Red sheep to vote in the next Most Important Election
Ever.
Ooh, lookie lookie, Trump is being impeached! Cheer the noble Democrats striking a blow
for freedom and virtue! Or boo the corrupt Democrats for putting on this farce! Take your
pick.
But whatever you do, don't pay any attention to the ongoing third-world invasion on our
southern border, or the trillions we are wasting on pointless winless foreign wars, or the
tens of trillions (that's not a mis-print) we are wasting bailing out and subsidizing Wall
Street and financial engineering, don't pay any attention to the fact that most of our drugs
are now made in Communist China with very little quality control, and yet prices for these
same drugs in the US are skyrocketing. And don't get me started on the growing industry of
"Surprise Medical Billing." I could go on but you get the idea.
Yes, impeachment was a bad joke. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Mr. Buchanan continues in his refusal to mention that the Maidan Revolution in the Ukraine
was a color revolution backed by the Obama-era State Department, the CIA and various
Soros-affiliated NGOs. But he dutifully invokes the Russian annexation of Crimea while never
mentioning the fact that it followed a referendum on the issue which was supported by the
vast majority in Crimea.
"Reality: The impeachment of Trump was an attempted -- and failed -- coup that not a single
Republican supported, only Democrats in the House and their Senate caucus. The impeachment of
Trump was an exercise in pure partisanship and itself an abuse of power."
Reality–Mr. Buchanan is still smarting from his boss Nixon getting busted, and will
stoop to new lows to exonerate him and others on the same trajectory. Of course, impeachment
is not a coup, and the Democrats made a strong case. It is other than surprising in an
election year where Trump threatened to burn any Republican Senator to the ground that they
are "united".
It is laughable that there was this "perfect call", yet he stonewalled any and all efforts
to enable witnesses to come forward. Why not have the Bidens, Guiliani, Parnas, Mulvaney, and
everyone associated to this scandal be allowed to speak their minds in the Senate? What is
the GOP so afraid of?
Several questions remain:
Why did Trump task Giuliani, in a personal capacity, to press Ukraine on the Bidens rather
than Trump asking the Department of Justice to investigate? Why were several key
administration officials "in the dark" about the activities of Giuliani?
Why did one Trump lawyer say to Senators that the House never authorized a resolution
(when it did) for subpoenas of Trump officials, when that same lawyer stated in 2019 that
resolution was unnecessary since they would testify on their own behalf?
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted to a quid pro quo and then walked it
back. Could he testify as to explain why? Why not allow other Trump officials to testify as
witnesses to exonerate Trump?
Trump stated he is concerned about adult children benefiting from their father's name? Why
did he give his children a place in his administration?
Trump's lawyers argued that in order to convict him, the Senate must find him guilty
"beyond a reasonable doubt". Except that has never been the standard ever used in past
impeachment trial. Why would they make this claim?
Time for a senate investigation into Joe Biden's blatant corruption and abuse of power in the
Burisma matter. There has already been a shitload of evidence gathered by Ukraine prosecutors
and a French journalist and it all points to Joe actually being guilty of everything the Dems
charged Trump with. Subpoena all of it plus sworn testimony from Joe and Hunter themselves
(though they will both have to take the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination).
@Truth3
You'd think at 82 and presumably secure financially Pat would let 'er rip once in a while,
but he had bigger stones three decades ago when he had a mainstream career in middle age to
protect. I met him a couple of times in the '80s, and the pugnacious brawler image he liked
to project -- back then, at least -- is not what comes across in person. He was a little
reserved and diffident (maybe it was the company). Nothing wrong with that, of course, but
you didn't sense a zest for engaging and confronting.
All the coup members should be arrested and tried for treason. Including those working at the
corporate news networks who cheered this on.
Also, the Democratic party will cease to be a viable national party by 2030. (ok, it
really should be 2032, because that will be the first presidential election they will not be
viable, but I'll stick with 2030).
Why? Simple: a political party based on a coalition solely devoted to hating the other
side won't work. Political parties, unlike wartime militaries, need a constructive agenda to
unite behind. Meaning the party must want to do certain things when in power that everyone in
the party agrees on, not merely to trample on their political opponents
Ironically, that's why Bernie's going so well: he's got a constructive agenda. Yes,
socialism is evil, but all the other candidates merely say the same flavor of "defeating
Trump is paramount." Socialism is at least something to implement beyond recriminations
against whitey.
@Corvinus
lmao. Our personal paid media-matters troll, Corvinus, is desperately trying to spin his
conspiracy theory hoax again. Go, Corvinus, go, earn Mr. Soros's paycheck you maginificent
lying bastard!
@Anonymous
"Subpoena all of it plus sworn testimony from Joe and Hunter themselves (though they will
both have to take the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination)."
Then charge them with Obstruction Of Congress. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when
someone exercises their rights?
@gsjackson
Remember this is the guy that was attacked on stage by Jewish thug-wannabees the day he
announced his Presidential Campaign and he bounced them off the stage solo.
He knows the Elephant with the hooked nose well enough is he still afraid of Mossad?
It makes me wonder. Even though Jews are over-represented in elite institutions, the great
majority of Deep State is still made up of goyim. Then, why are they all so servile to Jewish
agendas and Jewish wishes? Do goyim lack a mind of their own? If Jews say 'gay marriage',
deep state goyim run to fetch the stick. When Jews 'more Wars for Israel', deep state goyim
roll over. If Jews say, 'bail out Wall Street', deep state goyim just go along. If Jews say,
"fuc* the first and second amendments", deep state goyim nod along. Look at cuck goyim in
Virginia grabbing guns to serve their Jewish masters. If Jews say 'let's get Trump', deep
state goyim bark and bite.
It could be that deep state goyim just happen to share the same ideas and values as the
Jews. Or it could be their minds were molded by Jewish-run media and academia. Or they're
just afraid of Jewish power that, via media, blackmail, and bought off politicians, can
destroy anyone. Indeed, the sheer chutzpah of all those Jews coming out of the woodwork to
unseat an elected president.
Jewish attitude is "Powers Is Ours. All you goyim are just guests at the table."
Jews are captains of the ship. Deep State goyim must man the engines with no sense of
direction or destiny of their own.
@Corvinus
Trump is scump, and yes, he was sniffing at Hunter for political reasons. But there is no
smoking gun that he violated any law. It's all speculation.
Still, Trump did something that was unethical even though he was probing into corruption.
He did it for political reasons. After all, if Trump is concerned about corruption, he should
begin with US defense budgets.
But Dems are also full of shit. They began with the agenda, "Let's impeach Trump" and
grasped for ANYTHING to carry it out. It didn't begin with the possible violation on Trump's
part but with the desire to get Trump somehow someway. Impeach Trump was the apriori agenda
from the day he was elected.
Besides, if Trump should really be removed, it's for the murder of hero Soleimani. And
Obama should have been impeached for his war crimes. But nope. It's some fantasy about Russia
Collusion or some triviality about Hunter, another scumbag. Jewish Power pushes American
Politicians to do evil things around the world and expresses OUTRAGE only when Jews don't get
what they want.
You pretend to be a proggy, but you're just Hasbara. It's so obvious. Give it up.
@Priss
Factor Henry Ford was the last WASP to resist jew banking and finance. 100 years ago, Ole
Henry bought a newspaper dedicated to attacking the jew, and he disseminated the Elders of
Zio through all his dealerships. He also tried to prevent the jew's favorite project at the
time ..WW1. The jew stomped Ole Henry double plus good and got their war. The WASP
establishment took careful note of Ford's humiliation, and took in the jew as a junior
partner in running and looting the country. 100 years later, the jew is running government,
media, and finance ..with the WASP as a very junior partner, mostly playing the role of
useful idiot providing the cannon fodder and taxes for jew wars.
@Truth3
You and other "blame da jooz" lurkers at Unz clearly haven't spent much time around
non-Jewish White leftists as Pat obviously has. There is no great conspiracy he is trying to
avoid.
I went to a college where every single professor was doing their best to indoctrinate the
students and 90% of them were Anglo or Nordic.
For every Jewish leftist lawyer you can point at in DC there are a thousand non-Jewish
White lawyers behind the scenes.
Liberalism is a sickness that would still exist even if you got rid of the Jews. Have a
look at Deutschland if you doubt this.
Here is the kicker: The non-Jewish leftists know they are lying. It isn't some brainwash
job by the Jewz. Liberal professors and media commentators know they are lying. They think it
is all justified. In their minds we are the problem and lies or gulags are just fine if the
end is the same.
The worst leftist of all time was not Jewish and in fact sent a lot of Jews packing. His
name was Stalin, maybe you have heard of him.
@Truth3
But that get-out is a bit easy. It's like ghetto denizens complaining about "the man".
Yes, philosophical high ground, media high ground, rent-a-mob management ground and
self-unaware ability to act decisively and shamelessly has been taken. Now what? Order up a
box of Red Bull?
The sad fact is that there are REAL reasons for getting Trump's ass dragged off into the
sunset, but they involve wars and hits for you-know-who, so nobody is ever going to mention
those.
Pat Buchanan describes all the steps of a corrupt political system to remove a sitting US
President from office with bogus charges, and their handlers in the media played the
loudspeakers and an inaffable role. This gang bears the responsibility that all the major
institutions are untrustworthy. CNN leads the lying press crowd. I was not surprised hearing
that the Iowa caucus did produce any results yet. As it seems, the "right" person didn't come
out first; Joe Biden. The corrupt Democratic Party starts already at the beginning of the
primaries by rigging the election. The Dems are still suffering from the defeat of the Queen
of Darkness, Hillary Clinton, and their corrupt entourage. The Democratic Parts seems
incapable to clean out this Augean stable. The last telling example has been the charade of
impeachment. As long no Heads will roll, the Democratic Party will remain in the political
quagmire, and corruption will prevail.
What Sanders is doing is revolutionary, in the sense that he is raising enough money to run a
national campaign, and winning, without taking corporate money.
American politics is controlled by a two-party cartel, and candidates have to join the
cartel and take the corporate money to get elected, resulting in policies like high
immigration that make sense to the Chamber of Commerce but not to many voters. Sure, you can
pander to voters and then do the bidding of the Chamber, but a candidate that does more than
pander is a stronger candidate.
You could have a real populist right if you had a candidate who could generate campaign
funding solely from grass roots contributions and refused to take corporate money. Granted
this is not the culture of the GOP, but the reality is that the program of the American
cartels is deeply unpopular with huge swaths of the American people, and the future belongs
to the group that can effectively carry out a hostile take-over of the organization and then,
not having to obey the corporate donors, puts in place a political program that actually
accomplishes the agenda: something like mandatory everify rather than say stupid symbolic
fights about a "wall" that never gets built, or maybe conduct a foreign policy that does not
have to have pre-approval from Sheldon Adelson.
It makes me wonder. Even though Jews are over-represented in elite institutions, the
great majority of Deep State is still made up of goyim. Then, why are they all so servile
to Jewish agendas and Jewish wishes?
Jews have lots of wealth and control the narrative. Plus the average Jew is smarter than
the average goyim.
Do goyim lack a mind of their own?
In many cases yes.
It could be that deep state goyim just happen to share the same ideas and values as the
Jews. Or it could be their minds were molded by Jewish-run media and academia.
The latter is the case.
Jews are captains of the ship. Deep State goyim must man the engines with no sense of
direction or destiny of their own.
This has happened many times in history the out come not so good for Jews.
Henry Ford was the last WASP to resist jew banking and finance.
And Henry Ford actually produced something of value. As opposed to most rich Jews who
produce financial products , which are detrimental to most goyim, but very lucrative
to Jews.
@John
Johnson"The worst leftist of all time was not Jewish and in fact sent a lot of Jews
packing. His name was Stalin, maybe you have heard of him."
No the worst leftist of all time was the creator of it all, Karl Marx, who absolutely was
Jewish. Jews like to use goy cat's paws like Stalin, Roosevelt and Bush to do their dirty
work but never forget who's behind it all.
@Johnny
SmogginsNo the worst leftist of all time was the creator of it all, Karl Marx, who
absolutely was Jewish. Jews like to use goy cat's paws like Stalin, Roosevelt and Bush to do
their dirty work but never forget who's behind it all.
Marx was half-Jewish and White egalitarian marauding predates Marxism. Napoleon and
Lincoln both believed in war for equality.
Did the Jews force Stalin to send millions to the Gulag? Was pol pot also forced by the
Jews to kill his own people? Pretty amazing that Jews were able to manipulate even Asian
leftists when there were zero Jews in those countries.
The corollary of blaming Jews for everything is that non-Jewish leftists are never
responsible for their own actions. This is amusing since behind closed doors leftist leaders
will admit certain politically incorrect truths which shows they are not Goy-drones. But
according to the Unz Blamin' Jews club they are just victims of manipulation. Poor wittle
victims that are consciously lying and would send us all to gulags if they could.
Can this columnist not acknowledge that the people of Crimea voted to secede from
Ukraine
Whose Side Is God on Now?
April 4, 2014 by Patrick J. Buchanan
In his Kremlin defense of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began
listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older
deeper bond.
Crimea, said Putin, "is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was
baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the
culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and
Belarus."
Indicting the "Bolsheviks" who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, "May God
judge them."
Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of
the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Putin is plugging into some of the modern world's most powerful currents.
Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America's arrogant drive for
global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR
disintegrated.
He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a
hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.
It seems to me, that in a sense, Buchanan is declaring that Putin is 'planting Russia's
flag' as the new moral center of the dying ((murdered)) Western world, with Moscow as the "
the Third Rome".
As the West descends into the moral 'sewer', Putin's Russia is returning to the ideals of
Christian virtues and traditional values.
"But the war to be waged with the West is not with rockets. It is a cultural, social,
moral war where Russia's role, in Putin's words, is to "prevent movement backward and
downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state."
Would that be the "chaotic darkness" and "primitive state" of mankind, before the Light
came into the world?"
In other words, Patrick Buchanan knows very well indeed who the villains are vis-a-vis
Crimea, and Russia, vs. the ((Globohomo)). And he's willing to say so, eloquently, when it
suits him to do so.
But even so, there was that vomit reflex moment when I read "writes WCF's Allan
Carlson, "Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values . "
So Pat does pepper his articles with paeans to the Globohomo vernacular of the day, I
suppose for reasons of appealing to the masses, such as they are. But if you've been reading
Pat for as long as I have, you know he's well aware of the subtle nuances behind claims of
'annexing Crimea', but this column is all about the obvious corruption on display with the
impeachment farce, and how the Democrats all gush when Obama does something corrupt, but howl
and screech when it's 'done' by Trump.
So in that context, he's simply using Crimea as an example of Democrat hypocrisy. Like
trying to impeach Trump for endeavoring to uncover the rat-hole of uber-corruption between
Obama/Hillary/Biden/Nuland – and the former regime in Ukraine.
IOW, what Trump did, (what he was actually impeached for) was the "off the reservation"
attempt to expose their uber-corruption. That he trusted the current ((regime)) in Ukraine,
and in his own deepstate, was his monumental error.
Then, there's this:
The NSC and State Department have been exposed as employing individuals with an
exaggerated view of their role in the origination and the execution of foreign policy.
Disloyalty and animosity toward the chief executive appear to permeate the upper echelons
of the "deep state."
The arrogance on display from all those diplomats, with sanctimonious outrage, at a
president that actually thinks *he's* in charge of foreign policy! 'Who does he think he
is?!, to decide when Ukraine gets their belligerent weapons to use on Putin's/Hitler's
aggressive Russia?! These decisions are all made wayyyy above that asshole's pay grade, and
we need to put him in his place!'
Not in our lifetime have the institutions of government and the establishment been held
in lower regard.
Almost all now concede we have become an us vs. them nation.
Liberal Jews, who hate Trump's guts with the searing heat of a thousand exploding suns,
vs. war mongering neocon Jews, who also hate Trump, but see in him a very pliant and useful
idiot.
@ Priss
Or they're just afraid of Jewish power that, via media, blackmail, and bought off
politicians, can destroy anyone.
Bingo
If you're a goyim in the administration, and you mumble something about how much the wars
are costing, either in untold trillions or in political capital, the dagger-eyed glowering
would be immediate from every Jew in the room. 'So, we have a little wannabe Himmler here.
He'll soon fine out what happens to Adolf wannabes, when he gets his arse handed to him, and
he's out on the streets'. Make him the first on your list.'
Everyone with two synapses to rub together, knows that all these wars are Jewish
supremacist wars of conquest. Duh. Even the war on Yemen, is a proxy war against Iran. So the
moment anyone tries to rein in the belligerence, he's going to have Hymie to pay. And that is
what this really is all about. Trump's holding back weapons from Ukraine, is seen as counter
productive to the ((greater agenda)), and so they pile on. And if the president of the United
States, can be keelhauled for a year, and impeached, for daring to obstruct the Eternal Wars
for Israel*, then how well will some lesser veck fare if he too thinks the wars are not the
greatest thing since sliced bread?
The Jews are uniform and connected on certain subjects. The Eternal Wars are one of them.
I know some liberal Jews. To this day, they seem to worship Obama, and loath Trump with
obvious distain, (clear hatred), but when it comes to the wars, they're kosher.
That's why there's perfect conformity from both isles in DC, on the need to continue the
wars. That's why both Fox news and ABCNNBCBS.. et al, are all perfectly aligned on that
particular issue. Which is why Tulsi has been 'Ron Pauled'. When it's something all Jews are
all aligned on ** , then it's unwritten, and woe be to any wrong-minded goyim, who's brave
enough to step over that particular line.
*Obama got a pass on a lot of things, because the liberal Jews gushed when he walked into
the room. Trump gets no such leeway.
** .. in reality, since first entering Congress in 1991, Sanders has compiled a lengthy
record of support for war and defense of the predatory interests of American
imperialism."
Sanders' record demonstrates what he considers "necessary wars." It also includes the NATO
air war against Serbia in 1999, launched on the pretext of stopping the imminent ethnic
cleansing of Kosovars.
In 2001, Sanders joined in a near-unanimous vote in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan.
Today -- now that the nearly twenty-year-long war is widely unpopular -- Sanders conveniently
declares that his earlier vote was a "mistake." But he has continued to endorse US wars in
the Middle East, including the US proxy war in Syria.
Sanders has also supported Israel's repeated assaults on Gaza, imperialist war crimes made
possible with the support of the United States. In a 2014 town hall meeting, Sanders shouted
down an antiwar protester who challenged his support for Israel even as it was committing
egregious crimes against the Palestinian population.
Moreover, Sanders has publicly voiced support for the use of assassinations and
"extraordinary rendition" in the so-called "war on terror." In 2015, when asked whether
anti-terrorism policies under a Sanders administration would include drones and special
forces, Sanders replied that he supported "all that and more."
I'm amazed Pat even posts here when half of you guys couldn't analyze the contents of a
turkey sandwich without some screed about Jews.
Jews are depicted as some monolithic bloc and yet Israel would undoubtedly take Trump over
Sanders.
So the first Jewish president would be rejected by the world wide Jewish conspiracy? Some
conspiracy.
As a reminder the presidential candidate that actually wanted government troops to kick in
doors and take guns was an Irish Texan. But I'm sure that's somehow the fault of Jews even
though the Jewish candidate has been a moderate on guns.
In the fifth paragraph, Pat writes: "Tuesday, Trump takes his nationally televised victory
lap in the US Capitol with his SOTU address, as Mitch McConnell and a humiliated Speaker
Nancy Pelosi sit silently side-by-side behind him."
I'll forgive Pat the senior moment, as he surely knows that VP Pence, not Mitch McConnell,
will be sitting next to our senile Speaker.
@Rurik
"In other words, Patrick Buchanan knows very well indeed who the villains are vis-a-vis
Crimea, and Russia, vs. the ((Globohomo)). And he's willing to say so, eloquently, when it
suits him to do so.
[I]f you've been reading Pat for as long as I have, you know he's well aware of the subtle
nuances behind claims of 'annexing Crimea', "
Please. Just run "Crimea" in the search engine against Mr. Buchanan's columns. -- >
11/22/2019: " .. 2014, when Vladimir Putin's Russia seized Crimea .." What's subtle or
nuanced about "seized"? Do I need to show you some of his other Beltway bits, like his
standing assertion that Russia "hacked" the 2016 US election?
I repeat: Mr. Buchanan's jobs as Stagehand Right in the Washington puppet show are to
whitewash the imperialism and to lead enough Red sheep (like you?) to vote in the next Most
Important Election Ever.
Refute it, or admit it. Neither should require another 1,300 words.
Jews are depicted as some monolithic bloc and yet Israel would undoubtedly take Trump
over Sanders.
in the comment right above this one, I just wrote
"Liberal Jews, who hate Trump's guts with the searing heat of a thousand exploding
suns, vs. war mongering neocon Jews, who also hate Trump, but see in him a very pliant and
useful idiot."
Jews don't control everything. But when it comes to N. America's foreign policy, you'd
have to be a huge knucklehead not to know of AIPAC, CFR, and PNAC, and all the other Jewish
supremacist institutions herding our congress-critters like so many sheep, to their Eternal
Wars for Israel.
Or ,
..you can explain how its in the American people's interest to spend seven+ trillion, (all
of it borrowed at interest) to slaughter, main and displace millions of innocent people, who
just happen to be inconvenient to Israel's imperial ambitions. While simultaneously getting
tens of thousands of young American soldiers dead, maimed or so soul-shattered they're
committing suicide at some 20 a day?
Or, would you really have us all believe, that Saddam did 9/11, and that he and Gadhafi
had WMD, because they "hate our freedom", and so we have to "fight them over there, so we
don't have to fight them over here"
?
@John
Johnson But for the Jews who controlled the Communist party in the Soviet Union grooming
and promoting him, Stalin would've been a minor tyrant terrorizing the peasantry in the
Georgian countryside. Unfortunately for them, their pet got out of control and started to
bite the hand that fed him. The corollary to this is Jews in the US promoting "civil rights"
and then having some of their negro pets (like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) turn on them.
Remind us friend, where the idea for Marxism came to Asians from? The answer of course is
from the Jew Marx with financing provided by Jacob Schiff and other wealthy Jews. Perhaps Pol
Pot may have found some other outlet for his murderous instincts but as has been the case in
so many instances around the world, it was Jewish Marxism that not only lit the fuse, but set
it up to begin with.
Don't get me wrong, do gooder Christian types are nearly as much to blame for the mess
we're in as the Jews. The difference is that while Christians are naive, gullible and stupid,
their motivations are essentially good even if the outcome is bad. With Jews, the motivation
behind what they do is pure malice.
You seem new here. Welcome. Do some more reading and exploring and then comment more.
You're not the first newbie to wander in from Breitbart ready to defend Israel and the Jews
without first having educated himself, and you won't be the last.
Do I need to show you some of his other Beltway bits, like his standing assertion that
Russia "hacked" the 2016 US election?
from my little screed
"So Pat does pepper his articles with paeans to the Globohomo vernacular of the day, I
suppose for reasons of appealing to the masses, such as they are."
Mr. Buchanan's jobs as Stagehand Right in the Washington puppet show are to whitewash
the imperialism and to lead enough Red sheep (like you?) to vote in the next Most Important
Election Ever.
Refute it, or admit it.
I admit it!
HAHAHAAAAHAAA!!!
I'm actually a Trump supporter because, that's right! I'm a racist!!!
HAHAHAAAHAAAA!
That's why we're all pretending that the Dems are actuyally way worse than Trump when it
comes to the Eternal Wars, because we all secretly love Trump, because he called Mexicans
'bad hombres!! And he said Obama wasn't born here, and we all love that kind of
RACISM!
HAHAHAAAAA!!!!
When ever he mocks Maxine Waters, we all laugh at how racist we all are, and that's why
Pat and the Deplorables and all of us closet racists are going to pull the lever for
Trump!
Because we're racists!! And we don't even worship Obama!! the One!!!
HAHAHAAAHAAAA!!!!
White supremacy, baby!!!
HAHAAAHAAAAAAA!!!!
You're going to get four more years of Orange clown racism! He grabs fulsomely offered
gold-digger's pussies like crazy, and we don't even care!!!
We even like, that he likes women, and isn't even gay!!
HAHAHAAAA
I was just talking to a buddy of mine, and we were lamenting some of Trump's more
egregious disappointments, (assassinating world leaders, tossing Bibi's salad, etc..). But
there was one thing about which we could agree, as bad as Trump is, (and he's a disaster), we
are very much going to enjoy the show, as Hillary and Madow and Maxine and all the other
white-male-castrating hags and losers and SJW POS, will be soul-raped on election day.
That, might go a long way towards mollifying Trump's disastrous presidency.
Sometimes I watch those videos of the reaction to the 2016 election, and the tears, and
howls of existential angst, from Hillary supporters, and boy oh boy are those memories
great.
@RurikJews don't control everything. But when it comes to N. America's foreign policy, you'd
have to be a huge knucklehead not to know of AIPAC, CFR, and PNAC
Zomg Jewish lobbies. You can actually be against aid to Israel while not taking the view
that Jews control every single war and leftist action. Not everything has to be about the
Jews.
Or, would you really have us all believe, that Saddam did 9/11, and that he and Gadhafi
had WMD, because they "hate our freedom", and so we have to "fight them over there, so we
don't have to fight them over here"
What would make you think that I believe Saddam did 9/11? I have said nothing of the
sort.
It's actually possible to be against foreign wars and also against blaming the Jews for
everything. Anglo leaders have started foreign wars without the influence of Jews. If that
angry Austrian didn't start a needless war with Poland we wouldn't be in the mess we are in
today. Then he went and made his great dunderheaded move of attacking Russia before defeating
Britain. Did the Jews make him do it while they were in boxcars? The Romans started all kinds
of needless foreign wars without Jewish influence. But if a US president does it then MUST BE
the Jews. Nevermind that GWB talked about wanting to get even with Saddam or that Cheney had
all sorts of war industry connections. Just blame Jews, it's the Unz way. Thank you Mr.
Jewish Unz for providing this forum.
Disagree w/ Buchanan's key premise: the coup leaders, as Rick Wiles identified them, the Jew
Coup, got everything they wanted and still have tethers in place to force more from Trump, in
the fullness of time.
-- Give us Golan or we'll unleash "six ways til Sunday"
-- Give us Jewish capital in Jerusalem or we will unleash "six ways til Sunday"
-- Convey gas rights in Golan to Cheney, other Jewish and American interests or we'll
unleash "six ways til Sunday"
-- Kill Soleimani or we'll unleash "six ways til Sunday"
-- Give us full sovereignty and political cover to take all of ersatz Israel, Palestinians
be damned, or we'll unleash "six ways til Sunday"
-- Ensure that Syria remains fragmented and without financing to rebuild or we'll unleash
"six ways til Sunday"
--
By the way: those of you familiar with gematria or Kabbalah -- remember Schiff's "parody" of
the Trump phone call? Among its other weird references that, I suspect, were not without
esoteric meaning, Schiff repeated the number seven. Does that mean anything?
IMHO, the outcome -- 'acquittal' in the Senate -- is just as pre-ordained by Schiff-Nadler
– Engel – Schumer, as was the No vote on witnesses: Dems are just as dirty as
GOP; they'd have been pissing in their Guccis if Republicans had voted to call more witnesses
who might have implicated Democrats in corruption.
AGREE that Pelosi has been humiliated: nothing Jew Coupers like better than using, then
humiliating a Catholic; that she is Italian (Roman) is cream cheese on the bagels.
@Johnny
SmogginsBut for the Jews who controlled the Communist party in the Soviet Union
grooming and promoting him, Stalin would've been a minor tyrant terrorizing the peasantry in
the Georgian countryside.
Where does Lenin fall into this revisionist history? He had nothing to do with the rise of
Stalin? Why didn't the Jews rally around Trotsky, an actual Jew?
Anyways the Jews dominated the NKVD, not the central party. They executed anyone including
Jews. Their top leaders were eventually executed by Stalin to cover up his crimes. Their
hegemony in the NKVD was eventually broken but the "Jewish USSR" myth remained for
decades.
Remind us friend, where the idea for Marxism came to Asians from? The answer of course
is from the Jew Marx with financing provided by Jacob Schiff and other wealthy Jews.
This is exactly the irrational thinking that I am talking about. If some Asian dictator
kills a million people you actually blame a half-Jew's Communist book even though said book
never called for killing a million people. Total removal of responsibility. You are giving a
free pass to any blood thirsty leftist.
Don't get me wrong, do gooder Christian types are nearly as much to blame for the mess
we're in as the Jews. The difference is that while Christians are naive, gullible and stupid,
their motivations are essentially good even if the outcome is bad.
This shows you don't even understand leftiest leadership in the US or EU. They are mostly
secular, not Christian. They are not manipulated children. They know exactly what they are
doing and fully intend to
transform the US into Brazil.
Whites like Edwards and Beto are not the pawns of some Jewish indoctrination project. They
know full well that they are lying to the public. Nothing on this website would surprise
them. You could tell them all about Jewish lobbies or Jews in the NKVD and they wouldn't
care. Leftists have an egalitarian vision and don't care about what you have to say.
@John
Johnson Can we agree that a person needn't actually be a believer himself to carry the
ideals that the religion espoused?
Marx may have never worn a yarmulke or even believed in God but that doesn't mean that his
actions, perhaps unconsciously, weren't rooted in Jewish ideals. And every single SJW, even
the most stridently atheist, is animated by Christian ideals about making the world a better
place.
Bottom line – Whites are in the sorry state we're in because of both Jews and
Christians but Jews were, and are, motivated by a poisonous hatred of Whites. We'll have to
deal with dumb Christians and SJWs on our own, we don't need Jews with all their money, power
and hate helping them.
You're right though; Before we can tackle the Jewish problem we have to clean our own
house first.
Actually the Establishment is doing fine: the government employs more people, spends more
money, and exerts more influence than ever, while big tech censors legitimate
opposition/dissent.
It's the American people who are screwed by being chained to this freak show by the
coercive tax system, especially when it's obvious voting makes no difference.
"Already, the odds of a modern 30-50-year-old dying from suicide, alcohol, or drugs in
America are 10 times as high as the odds an 18-35-year-old in 1960 had of dying in
Vietnam." https://t.co/RrudZ1cvwX
@Corvinus
Maybe you should contact Gordon Duff over at VT. He'd probably hire you in a New York minute.
It seems that you don't even have the decency to admit that the Impeachment was nothing but a
Deep State orchestrated circus or more accurately farce actually unbelievably promoting the
NeoNazi State of Ukraine as our "ally" who were fighting the evil Rooskies on our behalf.
Number one. Why would it be in the interest of the American people to get involved in a
proxy war with Russia? A nation that happens to have more nukes and a more effective and
deadlier method of delivering them than we do. According to military analysts we are at least
two decades behind them.
Next even if Russia was a valid target. They are not attacking Russia they are attacking
Dombass, dumb ass which happens to be a breakaway region of Ukraine.
Two. Talk about being low life sniffling scum they embrace John Bolton the epitome of
Neocon subversion as an "ally". Just shows how low the establishment demoncrats have sank
proving that they have no moral compass whatsoever and like the CIA the ends justify the
means.
What you and the DemonCrats have shown is that you aren't any better than Trumpenstein but
probably in many ways far worse.
@Corvinus
Hey Corvinus,
The Democrats swung and missed. It was a Hail Mary effort that was bound to fail but their
blind hatred of Trump would not allow them to see the inevitable outcome. The Democrats
simply can't accept that their annotated one (Hillary) was just not Presidential timber, but
many voting Americans could see it. You lost in 2016 and you will lose the Presidency in
2020, almost certainly. If you lose the house too that will simply be the icing on the cake.
Democrats will then be relegated to the sidelines and will be able to do nothing but squall
impotently from the dark spaces they all inhabit. I await your lamenting and gnashing of
teeth after Nov.
The Democratic party may be done for a decade because of this. Their continued actions
have damaged themselves and strengthened Trump but their denial does not allow them to see
it.
Democrats are like the tranny males they claim to espouse. When they look in the mirror
the reflection they see is that of a beautiful girl. But in reality all they are is just a
bunch of dicks.
@Johnny
SmogginsAnd every single SJW, even the most stridently atheist, is animated by
Christian ideals about making the world a better place.
Bottom line – Whites are in the sorry state we're in because of both Jews and
Christians but Jews were, and are, motivated by a poisonous hatred of Whites. We'll have to
deal with dumb Christians and SJWs on our own, we don't need Jews with all their money, power
and hate helping them.
I don't actually believe this is the case and I'm not trying to be argumentative.
If Christianity is the underlying problem then European countries with greater declines in
Christianity should see less support for liberalism. Children raised in secular households
should be less like to be liberal.
This hasn't happened and in fact the opposite is true. Sweden is very secular and very
leftist. Children raised in secular homes are far more likely to be liberal. The data is
clear on this.
We aren't dealing with Christianity or some pseudo form. We are dealing with a new
egalitarian religion called liberalism. The leaders are secular are fully conscious of what
they are doing. If anything Christianity in the right form can provide a layer of
inoculation.
So no I don't think blaming Jews or Christians is valid or helpful.
@Corvinus
Hey. Some Democrat candidates got what they wanted. Old Joe Biden barely survived Iowa, which
was not unintended collateral damage, but rather very intended and targeted. I can imagine
Elizabeth Warren's fingerprints all over this one.
We will see in November exactly who was too clever by half.
@John
Johnson "This hasn't happened and in fact the opposite is true. Sweden is very secular
and very leftist" Sweden is not as 'leftist' as often portrayed. In the last election the
Social Democrats fell to their lowest vote share in over 100 years. They were reduced to only
100 seats in the Riksdag (less than a 1/3)& formed a minority coalition govt. with the
Greens & Commies comprising only 144 seats. The centrist Alliance coalition picked up 143
seats & the rising stars – the right-wing Sweden Democrats, rose to 62 seats. The
coalition was slightly revamped after an early vote of no-confidence but the Social Democrats
are waning & the centrist & right-wing Parties are gaining. The most recent polls in
the country show the Sweden Democrats actually running ahead of the Social Democrats now,
making it the most popular Party in the country at this time. Most of those "Johnson's"
aren't very leftist anymore. But this still doesn't detract from the fact that Christianity
is NOT the problem. After all, our greatest living pundit, Pat Buchanan, is Christian &
he's no raving, leftist loony.
Like a coup really matters when Trump has turned into either Jeb Bush or Lindsey Grahamnesty
without the lisp and the drawl. Trump has become orange Jebulus. He's not the Donald Trump I
voted for in 2016. The Potomoc fever bug finally bit him.
At Trump's State of the Zionist Union speech (SOTZU) he received raucous applause and
shouts of "four more years" from the Republican side of the chamber. Most of these people
used to oppose him but now that Trump has sold out to the deep state (if he ever really
opposed it in the first place), especially on foreign policy, they love him and have accepted
him as one of their own.
@SolontoCroesus
Not to worry, Pelosi got her revenge last night when she churlishly tore up her copy of
Trump's SOTU address right after he was done speaking. What a classless little tramp that
woman is.
Is it not true, though, that the three biggest Jewish plotters in Congress (Schiff,
Nadler, and Schumer) have been equally humiliated?
Hillary Clinton, Nany Pelosi and her likes have poisoned deaply the democratic party without
any chance of cure soon.
Revenge for their humiliation has been the engine behind the Muller trial and the impeachment
circus.
They failed dramatically and now the DNC is not only more humiliated but it has lost the
little credibility it still had.
Only an old fashioned democrat leader can bring back confidence in the democratic ideology
that has been lost by Hillary and Cie. It seems too late for this to happen and Trump will be
back . As it is expected that the economy in the US may enter into a recession in the second
term, why taking away from him the humiliation he will face?
@swampedSweden Democrats actually running ahead of the Social Democrats now, making it the most
popular Party in the country at this time. Most of those "Johnson's" aren't very leftist
anymore. But this still doesn't detract from the fact that Christianity is NOT the
problem.
They have around 20% of the vote which is significant but the majority still buys into
mainstream leftist BS.
After all, our greatest living pundit, Pat Buchanan, is Christian & he's no raving,
leftist loony.
Good point and quite ironic that we have someone here blaming Christians when PB is a
stalworth against the left. Some of the strongest anti-left parties in Europe are in Eastern
Europe where support for the church is strong. The belief that secularism undermines
liberalism simply doesn't match the data. If anything it seems that secular Whites double
down on liberalism because they don't have a religion.
It is Feb 5th and teh US Senate has absolve the President, thus ending 4yrs of endless
Conspiracies, coups and impeachments. Trump has emerge victorious and single handedly destroy
the DEMs party , this in spite of the Fake news establishment, the deepstate and people
within his own innercircle. Trump with the support of the American Deplorables have defeated
the DEM/LEFT/Antifa continues attacks. BUT it seems that the GOP does NOT understand, realize
the golden historical unprecendentes opportunity to REnake the party, rolled back the Great
BLUE wave that never was. The GOP is poised to recover the House, turn the Blue states RED
again. IF the GOP does NOT keep this momentum going, if they break their inner discipline, or
the GOP makes the ILL mistake to sabotage Trump the GOP will go back to playing second fiddle
to the DEMs and will probably lose their best chance to REmake, REimagine, REorganize,
REdefine REunite the GOP and the Conervative movement in America Trumpism is on the March..
@Crazy
Horse "It seems that you don't even have the decency to admit that the Impeachment was
nothing but a Deep State orchestrated circus or more accurately farce actually unbelievably
promoting the NeoNazi State of Ukraine as our "ally" who were fighting the evil Rooskies on
our behalf."
Why are you spreading Fake News?
"Why would it be in the interest of the American people to get involved in a proxy war
with Russia?"
I never directly nor indirectly made any comment about this situation. Pray tell, are you
a Russian troll?
"Talk about being low life sniffling scum they embrace John Bolton the epitome of Neocon
subversion as an "ally"."
Why not let him, the Bidens, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Guiliani, and Parnas have the opportunity
to speak before the Senate if it was the "perfect call"? What does Trump have to hide?
Furthermore, do you support any president digging up dirt on a political rival while in
office by way of a proxy?
Actually, democracy swung and missed. But there are over two dozen investigations taking
place relating to Trump and his associates, and more information will be coming about the
Ukraine fiasco.
"The Democrats simply can't accept that their annotated one (Hillary) was just not
Presidential timber, but many voting Americans could see it."
Actually, she won the popular vote. But I do agree that she was, along with Trump, not
"presidential timber".
"You lost in 2016 and you will lose the Presidency in 2020 "
I didn't run. Moreover, I'm an educated white married man who makes his own decisions
about politics, race, and culture. You?
What this impeachment hoax so rawly exposes is that the politicians who brought on the
impeachment and voted in favor of it (and that includes Romney) think very little, in fact,
nothing about what Joe Biden and his son did. They think it was perfectly OK. What that
should tell everyone is that they too would do (if they haven't already) the same thing given
the opportunity as Congressmen, Senators, a Vice President, or President. They would fill
their pockets and the pockets of their families given the same opportunity. People should
reflect on that next time these people run for office.
@Corvinus
Russian troll? My question is are you a moron? You don't have to answer because the question
is rhetorical.
Seems anyone who disagrees with dipshits like you must be "agents of Putin Inc". McCarthy
would be sooo proud of brain dead assholes like you and to answer your question. NO!
@Virgile
They lost whatever credibility they had by rigging the primary and accusing anyone that
disagreed with the Queen of the Damned that they must be a Russian Troll or Agent. Corvinus
perfectly epitomizes this idiocy.
@Corvinus
"Won" the popular vote is a consolation prize in a presidential election. Besides that's
questionable due to the fact she "won" 1) in states that used Soros owned Smartmatic Voting
Machines 2) reported votes that far exceeded the number eligible voters registered. For
instance LA County reported that 145% of eligible voters "voted" in the last general
election.
"includes Romney) think very little, in fact, nothing about what Joe Biden and his
son did."
Anastasia, it's not disputed that Romney has a least one close associate who worked with
Hunter, but actually in the Ukraine, at Burisma; but I don't believe that's Romney's angle
here.
I think Romney is setting up to run 3rd party for President. Of course the objective will
not be to become the next president: it will be to take out Trump, and make possible a
Bloomberg victory. I would guess Romney will hold off announcement as long as possible to
ensure maximum chaos. Doesn't even need to make all the state ballots to achieve
"victory".
It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise
of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and
are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what
they're doing.
I honestly can't see Sanders getting the nomination with all the corruption openly being
displayed. I would be pleasantly surprised if Sanders did manage to get it, but he still have
to deal with the ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC). The Electors have the final say. Yes, one can point
out that some States have laws forcing Electors to vote what the populace wants, but that is
being challenged in court. The debate on whether such laws are unconstitutional or not,
remains to be seen. It's too late now to deal with the EC for this election, but people need
to be more active in politics at the State level as that's where Electors are (s)elected.
IF Sanders is genuine then he should prepare to run as an independent just to get the EC
attention.
RR @ 14;
Everything in the U$A today, is driven by the unofficial Party of $, and it's reach
transcends both Dems & repubs. It's cadre is the majority of the D.C. "rule makers", so
we get what they want, not what "we the people" want or need.
They own the banks, MSM media, and even our voting systems.
IMO, to assume one party is to blame for conditions in the U$A is a bit naive.
Question is, can anything the masses do, change the system? Or is rank and file America
just along for the ride?
I'm assuming us peons will get what the party of $ wants this November also.
P.S. If any blame is given, it needs to go to the American public, because " you get the
kind of Gov. you deserve" through your inactions...
It's a lot like living, death is certain, but until that occurs, I'll move forward trying
to mitigate current paradigms.
As for being to the left of Clinton, so was Benito Mussolini. I don't see that as a
meaningful description.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 6 2020 21:38 utc | 76
Spinner for the new / coming fascist order Mr. Gruff?
Clinton and trump may be competing for the Title of who is the greatest example of
Mussolini's fascist doctrine, but Clinton isn't in the White House. Trump's posture at his
rallies, the essence of said rallies, the message delivered at said rallies, his subservience
to far right dictator ideology, all scream Mussolini wannabe working the disgruntled crowd
who need a Messiah to lead them to the next level of the American dream, that ain't gonna
happen.
America's rich love them the labor of po folk in foreign lands and trump is nothing more
than a Judas Goat.
Furthermore, first generation immigrants don't want to replicate their culture, they want
the American dream. Their grandchildren might want to "identify" as hispanic, etc., but not
their parents or grandparents. Identity politics only plays in the white middle classes.
1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of
sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in
2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.
The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support
the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie
down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will
Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just
say,
"Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?
I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the
impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff
because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren
first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based
on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her
family so much." Indeed, Hillary's intervention in the following days was very likely intended
to take attention away from Warren's attack on Sanders, as well as, of course, to once again
put HRC out there as the potential savior at the convention.
It seems to me that the lesson here is that, if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, no other
candidate (from among the frontrunners) is acceptable, especially because of the role they will
have played in taking down Bernie and his movement.
I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a
Trump/Sanders election:
i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very
strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the
powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of
power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump
did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be
up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much
harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort
toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this.
However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to
seriously address these power structures, and even beat them in some significant ways, then
something tremendous will have been accomplished -- "the harder they come, the harder they
fall," or at least I hope so. ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit
too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least
thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of
these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other
Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any
of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and
perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something
that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about
it.
That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things
that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back
militarism.
What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump
-- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can
only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.
A lot of blowback against my articles has been against my argument that getting these terms
and the discourse around them on the table is very important, a real breakthrough, and a
breakthrough that both clarifies the larger terms of things and disrupts the "smooth
functioning" (I take this from Marcuse) of the neoliberal-neoconservative compact around
economics and military intervention.
Okay, maybe I'm right about this importance, maybe I'm not -- that's an argument I've dealt
with extensively in my articles and that I'll try to deal with definitively in further writing
-- but certainly a very important part of not letting Sanders be taken down by the other
frontrunners (and HRC, and other nefarious forces, with Warren playing a special "feminist" and
Identity Politics role here -- a role that does nothing to help, and indeed does much to hurt,
ordinary working people of all colors, genders, etc.) will be to further sharpen the general
understanding of the importance of these themes.
Significantly, there is a third theme which has emerged since the unexpected election of
Donald Trump -- unexpected at least by the establishment and the nefarious powers (though they
were thinking of an "insurance policy"); on this theme, I don't know that Sanders can do much
-- working with the Democratic Party, he is too implicated in this issue, and he does not have
whatever "protection" Trump has here.
What I am referring to are those nefarious powers behind the establishment and the ruling
class, and that have taken on a life of their own -- I don't mind calling this the Deep State,
but one can just think about the "intelligence community" and especially the CIA.
Whatever -- the point is that Trump has had to call them out and expose them in ways that
they obviously do not like, and also his agenda of a world where the U.S. gets along
well-enough with China and Russia at least not to risk WWIII, or, perhaps more realistically,
not to tip the balance of things such that Russia goes completely over to a full alliance with
China, a "Eurasian Union," which both Putin and Xi have spoken about, is not to their
liking.
Whether Sanders would call out these nefarious factors if he were in a position to do so, I
don't know -- I don't have great confidence that he would -- but it is also the case that he is
not in a position to do so, these powers can easily dispose of Sanders in ways that they
haven't been able to, so far, with Trump.
If one does think these themes are important, especially the first two (with further
discussion reserved regarding the powers-behind-the-powers), then I wish that Trump-haters
would open their minds for a moment and think about what it apparently takes in our social
system to even begin to get these themes on the table.
In any case, regarding Sanders, the movement he is building will have to go even further
with the first two themes if Sanders is nominated, and at least go some distance in taking on
the third theme. This applies even more if Sanders were to be elected. (This is where you might
take a look at the 1988 mini-series, A Very British Coup -- except that how things go down in
the U.S. will not be so "British.") Here again, though, if Sanders is to build a movement that
can openly address these questions, this will be tremendous, a great thing.
So this is it in a nutshell: If Sanders were to be nominated, then there is the possibility,
which everyone ought to work to make a reality, that we could have an election based around the
questions, What can be done to improve the lives of ordinary working people?, and, What can be
done to curb militarism and end the endless interventions and wars?
Antonym ,
Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county,
Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved
this.
The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all
Establishments against her.
Fair dinkum ,
Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.
I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who
got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after
being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a
force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which
I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too
long.
Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always
comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking
the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following
the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.
Charlotte Russe ,
It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he
interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted
Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez
didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing
committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit
quite nicely in the Republican Party.
Bernie a FDR Democrat, is considered too radical by the wealthy who enjoy their Trumpian
tax cuts and phony baloney stock market profits. If Trump, was just a bit less crude and not
so overtly racist he'd be perfectly acceptable. Bernie, who thinks the working-poor are
entitled to a living wage, healthcare, a college education, and clean drinking water is
anathema to the affluent liberals who like everything just the way it is. They long for the
Obama days when two wars were quietly expanded to seven, when the Wall Street crooks got a
pass, and when health insurance lobbyists had their way with the federal government–the
CIA was absolutely ecstatic with Obama. Trump was a bit of a speed bump for the security
state, but nothing really threatening as he stuffed the pockets of the arms industry and the
surveillance state with billions of working-class tax dollars. The Orangeman is having a few
internecine battles with the intelligence agencies, but in the end they thoroughly had their
way with the buffoon.
Bernie on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He can't be as easily attacked. Of
course, the mainstream media news has all the usual Corbyn tricks in their bag, and Bernie
could fall to the wayside like Corbyn if he's incapable of unapologetically fighting back.
Bernie's working-class supporters want to see him give his attackers the one-two-punch and
knock them out before the DNC Convention.
If Bernie manages to win numerous primaries the threat won't come from Warren or Hillary
that's so 2016. The new insidious "Bernie enemy" is billionaire Bloomberg. Who is waiting in
the wings If Biden takes a deep dive, Daddy Warbucks will make a play to cause a brokered
convention. And that's when Perez and his Republican/Dems will takedown Bernie. Bernie's
followers MUST come out swinging and not capitulate like they did last time. They have to
force the issue, create a stir and threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third
Party. Young progressives have this one big shot at making a difference, and they can't allow
themselves to be sheepdogged into voting for another neoliberal who's
intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, if you don't move forward you're actually
moving backward into planetary ecocide.
Here's one from Whitney implying that they needn't worry because plans are in the works to
install King Cyrus II as the permanent ruler with the help of his Zionist friends in the
Department of Hebrew Security:
Even so it looks like Trump has decided to get rid of us noninterventionist and antiwar
naysayers by fully bringing in the Dispensationalist Armageddon rapture embracing nut jobs
who stand with the Talmudic genocidal racists in Israel who believe that Jesus Christ is
boiling for an eternity in excrement and that his mother Mary was a whore:
we have witnessed in the UK the defamation of Corbyn the ' Left Disrupter ' as he wanted
to throw back the normal state of political play.
He and the well meaning Labour Party was headed off at the pass.
We have to remember that the Ruling Class have to have fall back positions and that Biden
is better than Bernie as is Warren and so on.
It appears to me that the DNC also has its fallback positions too and Bernie will be
chopped by the Super Delegates once again on the altar of ' electabilty ' ( read any form of
Socialism – American or British is not acceptatble to the PTB ) and that is how it may
end.
The battle at the moment in the UK Labour Party is which leader will back up and support
extra Parliamentary action in resistance to this very right wing Tory government?
In the US the thing is the same if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.
Personally I would think that he would be a plus ( despite his foreign policy views ) but
remember that Trump was a maverick Republican yet I'm not sure that Sanders would veer over
to that position.
If he did then the " action " part of the steep learning curve would have to kick in to
defend him and more to the point his genuinely progressive policies.
In the UK now Corbyn as the personification of ' Socialist ' threat is no longer
doorstepped by the British media.
Instead the installation of a Leftish Centrist by the media ( i.e. a person that is -no
threat to the existing order ) is a requirement.
This is all under the guise of a " Strong Opposition " to the right wing government.
Warren – not Biden seems to be that kind of favourite for the Ruling Class should
Trump fall.
We had Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair – you in the US will get Warren.
I wish Bernie and his backers weel but I don't see it happening.
Maybe Tulsi Gabbard in another 4 years?
She and AOC are very good But this is not their time.
Not yet.
Richard Le Sarc ,
When I think of how Corbyn refused to fight back against ENTIRELY mendacious and filthy
vilification as an 'antisemite', I think it might be possible that the MOSSAD told him that
if he resisted he might end up, dead in his bath, like John Smith.
bevin ,
Where the world weary gather to tell us how they have been let down.
Bill nails it here:
" i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and
focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic
Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the
establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party
in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which
he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder ."
Anyone who believes that elections, as such, lead to great changes needs a keeper. And one
who can read the US Constitution aloud for preference.
But this is not to say that at a time like this-and there have been very few of them in US
history- when there is the possibility of a major candidate challenging some of the bases of
the ruling ideology-albeit by doing little more than running on a platform of refurbished
Progressivism- there is really no excuse for not insisting that the challenge be made and the
election played out.
Sanders is not just challenging the verities of neo-liberalism but, implicitly undermining
the political consensus that has supported the Warfare State since 1948.
The thing about Bernie is that he is authenticated by the enemies that he has enrolled
against him and the dramatic measures that they are taking against him. Among those enemies
are the Black Misleadership Class, and the various other faux progressives who are revealing
themselves to be last ditch defenders of the MIC, Israel- AIPAC is now 'all in' in Iowa and
New Hampshire- and the Insurance industry. It is an indication of the simplicity of Bernie's
political task that no section of Congress gives more support to the Healthcare scammers than
the representatives of the community most deprived by the current system. If he manages to
get through to the people and persuade them that he will fight for Free Healthcare for all
and other basic and long overdue social and economic reforms he can break the hold that the
political parties have over a system everyone understands is designed to make the rich-who
own both parties- richer and the great majority poorer. That has been the way that things
have been going in the USA for at least 45 years.
Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the
Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two
parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super
Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.
Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote
until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this
undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a
psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her
nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.
There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called
"Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the
primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC
which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a
"Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".
Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy
Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying
to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the
greater of the two evils.
Yeah right.
Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can
both go to hell. I've already made my choice:
He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more
Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American
Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political
spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left".
Greg Bacon ,
After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and
mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.
If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked
Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another
racket in 2021.
Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them
sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.
But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie
your ass off until you get elected at least.
Willem ,
Much magical thinking here.
If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?
I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.
And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?
Don't think so.
Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look
what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French
yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see
demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations
everywhere.
The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing
burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped
(and will be stopped).
I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have
voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction
that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for,
except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians
say
It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful
in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.
'Greta, bonnie Prince Charles and the pirate billionaires and trillionaires'- In another
post I queried how did Greta go to Davos? Silly me; Greta was invited the keynote speaker.
"Stop Climate change" was this year's theme: the Vision - 'stop the natural cycle of the
universe' -
Now she intends to Trademark 'How Dare You' and set up a Foundation Indeed, Greta found
her sugar daddies. Adults who encourage truancy.
my grandpa was a wise bloke and admonished "when politicians and do gooders are in the
same room, keep an eye on your money."
It was no accident that Davos, the promoter of globalization, is so strongly behind the
Climate Change agenda. Davos WEF has a board of appointed trustees. Among them is the early
backer of Greta Thunberg, climate multi-millionaire, Al Gore, chairman of the Climate
Reality Project. WEF Trustees also include former IMF head, now European Central Bank head
Christine Lagarde whose first words as ECB chief were that central banks had to make
climate change a priority. Another Davos trustee is outgoing Bank of England head Mark
Carney, who was just named Boris Johnson's climate change advisor and who warns that
pension funds that ignore climate change risk bankruptcy (sic).
The board also includes the influential founder of Carlyle Group, David M. Rubenstein.
It includes Feike Sybesma of the agribusiness giant, Unilever, who is also Chair of the
High Level Leadership Forum on Competitiveness and Carbon Pricing of the World Bank Group.
And perhaps the most interesting in terms of pushing the new green agenda is Larry Fink,
founder and CEO of the investment group BlackRock.[.]
TCFD and SASB Look Closely
As part of his claim to virtue on the new green investing, Fink states that BlackRock
was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). He
claims, "For evaluating and reporting climate-related risks, as well as the related
governance issues that are essential to managing them, the TCFD provides a valuable
framework."[.]
TCFD was created in 2015 by the Bank for International Settlements, chaired by fellow
Davos board member and Bank of England head Mark Carney. In 2016 the TCFD along with the
City of London Corporation and the UK Government created the Green Finance Initiative,
aiming to channel trillions of dollars to "green" investments. The central bankers of the
FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD. Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, it
includes in addition to BlackRock, JP MorganChase; Barclays Bank; HSBC; Swiss Re, the
world's second largest reinsurance; China's ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical,
mining giant BHP and David Blood of Al Gore's Generation Investment LLC. Note the crucial
role of the central banks here.[.]
of note: Mark Carney upon leaving his position of Governor Bank of England will serve as
global warming adviser to Boris Johnson. Who knew Carney was a scientist?
Pre-alert:
Tax on Excessive garbage output is coming to your town. You will be restricted to xxxKGs/LBS
annually. Your garbage will be weighed and at December 31st any excess above the permissible
will attract additional tax.
Anyone see the unintended consequences?
lizabeth Warren wrote an
article
outlining in general terms how she would bring America's current foreign wars to an end. Perhaps the most significant part of the
article is her commitment to respect Congress' constitutional role in matters of war:
We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary
role in deciding to engage militarily. The United States should not fight and cannot win wars without deep public support.
Successive administrations and Congresses have taken the easy way out by choosing military action without proper authorizations
or transparency with the American people. The failure to debate these military missions in public is one of the reasons
they have been allowed to continue without real prospect of success [bold mine-DL].
On my watch, that will end. I am committed to seeking congressional authorization if the use of force is required. Seeking
constrained authorizations with limited time frames will force the executive branch to be open with the American people and
Congress about our objectives, how the operation is progressing, how much it is costing, and whether it should continue.
Warren's commitment on this point is welcome, and it is what Americans should expect and demand from their presidential
candidates. It should be the bare minimum requirement for anyone seeking to be president, and any candidate who won't commit to
respecting the Constitution should never be allowed to have the powers of that office. The president is not permitted to launch
attacks and start wars alone, but Congress and the public have allowed several presidents to do just that without any consequences.
It is time to put a stop to illegal presidential wars, and it is also time to put a stop to open-ended authorizations of military
force. Warren's point about asking for "constrained authorizations with limited time frames" is important, and it is something that
we should insist on in any future debate over the use of force. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs are still on the books and have been abused
and stretched beyond recognition to apply to groups that didn't exist when they were passed so that the U.S. can fight wars in
countries that don't threaten our security. Those need to be repealed as soon as possible to eliminate the opening that they have
provided the executive to make war at will.
Michael Brendan Dougherty is
unimpressed with Warren's rhetoric:
But what has Warren offered to do differently, or better? She's made no notable break with the class of experts who run our
failing foreign policy. Unlike Bernie Sanders, and like Trump or Obama, she hasn't hired a foreign-policy staff committed to a
different vision. And so her promise to turn war powers back to Congress should be considered as empty as Obama's promise to do
the same. Her promise to bring troops home would turn out to be as meaningless as a Trump tweet saying the same.
We shouldn't discount Warren's statements so easily. When a candidate makes specific commitments about ending U.S. wars during a
campaign, that is different from making vague statements about having a "humble" foreign policy. Bush ran on a conventional hawkish
foreign policy platform, and there were also no ongoing wars for him to campaign against, so we can't say that he ever ran as a
"dove." Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and ran on ending the U.S. military presence there, and before his first term was
finished almost all U.S. troops were out of Iraq. It is important to remember that he did not campaign against the war in
Afghanistan, and instead argued in support of it. His subsequent decision to commit many more troops there was a mistake, but it was
entirely consistent with what he campaigned on. In other words, he withdrew from the country he promised to withdraw from, and
escalated in the country where he said the U.S. should be fighting. Trump didn't actually campaign on ending any wars, but he did
talk about "bombing the hell" out of ISIS, and after he was elected he escalated the war on ISIS. His anti-Iranian obsession was out
in the open from the start if anyone cared to pay attention to it. In short, what candidates commit to doing during a campaign does
matter and it usually gives you a good idea of what a candidate will do once elected.
If Warren and some of the other Democratic candidates are committing to ending U.S. wars, we shouldn't assume that they won't
follow through on those commitments because previous presidents proved to be the hawks that they admitted to being all along.
Presidential candidates often tell us exactly what they mean to do, but we have to be paying attention to everything they say and
not just one catchphrase that they said a few times. If voters want a more peaceful foreign policy, they should vote for candidates
that actually campaign against ongoing wars instead of rewarding the ones that promise and then deliver escalation. But just voting
for the candidates that promise an end to wars is not enough if Americans want Congress to start doing its job by reining in the
executive. If we don't want presidents to run amok on war powers, there have to be political consequences for the ones that have
done that and there needs to be steady pressure on Congress to take back their role in matters of war. Voters should select
genuinely antiwar candidates, but then they also have to hold those candidates accountable once they're in office.
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee have formerly requested that Attorney General William Barr declassify four footnotes
in Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's FISA abuse
investigation. The letter states that the classified footnotes contradict information in
Horowitz's report that appears to have misled the public.
U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the classified letter
Tuesday evening and questioned the contradiction between the footnotes and what was made public
by Horowitz's team regarding the bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
However, the Senator's did not disclose what section of the December FISA report contradicts
the footnotes in their findings.
The Senator's state in their letter to Barr that certain sections of Horowitz's report on
the FBI are misleading the public.
Part of the classified letter, which was obtained by SaraACarter.com states:
"We have reviewed the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to
the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and we are deeply concerned about certain
information that remains classified ," the letter states.
"Specifically, we are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report
are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information
redacted in four footnotes.
This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements
in a section of the report , but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate
evaluation of the entire investigation.
The American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes
and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation. "
Johnson and Grassley's office noted that "for maximum public transparency, the senators
wrote a separate unclassified cover letter to describe their request."
Full text of the unclassified letter to Barr below:
I wonder what kind of back room deals are going on right now that got the establishment
working so hard to make sure the people are distracted from?
The impeachment is a giant nothing burger considering democrats lack the votes and any
reasonable person knows that Barr was destined to return a giant nothing burger from the
beginning so there must be something important the establishment wants to keep hidden by
keeping these nothing burgers alive and in our faces.
Didn't NeoCon puppet Trump order Barr to declass the Russia hoax docs?? Then deep
state/CIA Barr and dirty corrupt DOJ turned everything around on Trump, and said Barr was
ordered to determine IF anything needed to be declassified, which means, it will NEVER
HAPPEN!!!
Trump had leverage over the domestic/global swamp when he held the thread of
declassification over their heads, but once he ordered Barr to do it, and Barr turned it
around on him, he lost all of his leverage/power. More here on leverage and
declassification:
.Horowitz discredited himself in an earlier report and Congress testimony when he said
"there was no bias in the FBI's efforts to surveil Trump"
He's a Democrat. Wanna know why some businesses fail? They let 'qualified' but sabotaging
people stay around.
Governments can fail too. Looks like Horowitz has proven once again he's not neutral. I
actually emailed the White House, I believe after he testifyied in that hearing, to get rid
of him. Barr is likewise useless in terms of protecting the government and citizens from the
deep state.
The US government is for the US government. The system protects the system! It does not
matter who it looks like is running it because the system is running the system and the
system is covering for everyone in the system that needs to be protected to protect the
system.
There is a huge difference between extremely bright students and medicate ones. Bright students are the future of the society and
need to be nurtures and helped in any way possible for the range of specialties that are important (STEM is one example)
There is difference between the degree in computer science and the degree in some obscure nationality studies (let's say Eastern
European studies; few people that are needed can be paid by intelligence agencies ;-) Obscure areas should be generally available only
to well to do students, who can pay for their education.
Like is the case with alcoholism, some student debt is the result of bad personal choices.
Notable quotes:
"... Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, ..."
"... "My daughter's getting out of school, I saved all my money, so she doesn't have any student debt. Am I going to get my money back?" ..."
"... So, we end up paying for people who didn't save any money, then those who did the right thing get screwed, ..."
"... "We did the right thing and we get screwed," ..."
"... "Look, we build a future going forward by making it better. By that same logic what would we have done? Not started Social Security because we didn't start it last week for you or last month for you," ..."
"... "We don't build an America by saddling our kids with debt. We build an America by saying we're going to open up those opportunities for kids to be able to get an education without getting crushed by student loan debt." ..."
"... Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 19, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) ..."
"... "I'll direct the Secretary of Education to use their authority to begin to compromise and modify federal student loans consistent with my plan to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for 95% of student loan borrowers (about 42 million people)," ..."
"... A scholarship system awarding free tuition to the top 5% of college applicants (NOT biased by race, gender, etc) who apply to the U.S.'s best STEM programs, hell yes! Free tuition for future Democrat voters, f^%k that! ..."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) defended her plan to pay off college loans after being confronted by a father in Iowa in an exchange
that went viral.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is confronted by a father who worked double shifts to pay for his daughters education and wants to
know if he will get his money back. pic.twitter.com/t2GGbAnG08
The father approached Warren, a leading Democratic presidential contender, after a campaign event in Grimes.
"My daughter's getting out of school, I saved all my money, so she doesn't have any student debt. Am I going to get my
money back?" the man asked Warren.
"Of course not," Warren replied.
" So, we end up paying for people who didn't save any money, then those who did the right thing get screwed, " the
father told her.
He then described a friend who makes more money but didn't save up while he worked double shifts to save up to pay for his daughter's
college.
The father became upset, accusing Warren of laughing.
"We did the right thing and we get screwed," he added before walking off.
In an appearance on "CBS This Morning" on Friday, Warren was asked about the exchange.
Last night, a father who saved for his daughter's college education approached
@SenWarren and challenged her proposed student
loan forgiveness plan. @TonyDokoupil asks the
senator for her response: pic.twitter.com/jLUXPqChC6
"Look, we build a future going forward by making it better. By that same logic what would we have done? Not started Social
Security because we didn't start it last week for you or last month for you," Warren said.
Pressed on whether she was saying "tough luck" to people like the father, she said "No." She then recounted how she got to go
to college despite coming from a poor family.
"There was a $50 a semester option for me. I was able to go to college and become a public school teacher because America had
invested in a $50 a semester option for me. Today that's not available," she said.
"We don't build an America by saddling our kids with debt. We build an America by saying we're going to open up those opportunities
for kids to be able to get an education without getting crushed by student loan debt."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 19, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
One of Warren's plans is to cancel student loans. According to
her website , on her first day as president
she would cancel student loan debt as well as give free tuition to public colleges and technical schools and ban for-profit colleges
from getting aid from the federal government.
"I'll direct the Secretary of Education to use their authority to begin to compromise and modify federal student loans
consistent with my plan to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for 95% of student loan borrowers (about 42 million people)," Warren
wrote.
"I'll also direct the Secretary of Education to use every existing authority available to rein in the for-profit college industry,
crack down on predatory student lending, and combat the racial disparities in our higher education system."
Sounds an awful lot like the dad above is right those that did the "right thing" are gonna get "screwed."
Warren you bitch, I paid back my student loans responsibly by working my *** off (140k) and now you want to give others a free
ride? I sure hope that I get a refund for all that money I paid back.
Obama did this kinds thing with housing. I got outbid by 100k on a house. The other bidder who got it didn't make his house
payments so Obama restructured his loan knocking off 100k from his loan and giving him a 1% interest rate on it. He again didn't
make his payments and got it restructured again but I didn't hear the terms of that one.
If student loan debt is such a crisis, force every university to use their precious endowment funds to underwrite those loans
AND let those loans get discharged in bankruptcy. Maybe then those schools would start to question whether having a dozen
"Diversity Deans" each being paid $100k+ salaries is really worth the expense (among other things).
A scholarship system awarding free tuition to the top 5% of college applicants (NOT biased by race, gender, etc) who apply
to the U.S.'s best STEM programs, hell yes! Free tuition for future Democrat voters, f^%k that!
The pissed off dad in this story has only one person to be pissed off at: himself, for being stupid. Understand something about
college degrees: 90% of them, including majors like accounting, are not worth the paper they are printed on. Anyone who works
double shifts to pay for anyone's college degree, even their own, is stupid. Look at why college costs so much: go to any state,
and you'll see that 70% or more of the highest paid state employees are employed by public colleges and universities. You need
to play these sons of bitches at their game, use their funny money to pay for the degree, and walk away. If you play the way these
sons of bitches tell you to play, you get what you deserve.
I used their funny money to get a degree that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on and walked away. I don't give a ****
if the sons of bitches grab my tax refund. Why? Because I have my withholdings set up so they get next to nothing in April. It
costs the sons of bitches more to print up the garnishment letter and send it to me than what they're stealing from me. Guess
what I use for an address? P.O. Box (can't serve a summons to a ghost).
If you're going to do what stupid, pissed off dad did, and work double shifts, you need to be trading out of all that funny
money you're being paid for those double shifts, and trading into personal economic leverage (gold first, then silver). Instead
of having bedrock to build multi-generational wealth, he has a daughter with a degree in pouring coffee, and nothing else to show
for it. He only has himself to blame for drinking the Kool Aid. I can grab overtime every Saturday at my job if I want it, and
every last penny of that OT is traded out of funny money and into gold ASAP.
Understand the US real estate market: the only reason it did not die five years ago was because we welcomed rich foreigners
to come in and buy real estate to protect their wealth. We've stopped doing that, we have an over-abundance of domestic sellers
and a severe shortage of domestic buyers. It's also where history says you need to be if you want to build multi-generational
wealth. Warren actually needs to go further than what she's proposing. Not only does she need to discharge 100% of those balances
by EO, she also needs to refund all those tax refunds stolen under false pretenses. Anything less, and we are guaranteed, for
the next 40 years, to have a real estate market and economy which resembles Japan since 1989.
Why do I buy gold? So I can play people like Warren at their game. I'll take whatever loan discharge she gives me, and have
lots of leverage in reserve to take advantage of what will be a once in a lifetime real estate fire sale.
Make those who want to be bailed out have to pay the bailout back by working every non-holiday Saturday (at the minimum wage
rate) for the government and citizens (e.g who need work done around the house, take care of the elderly - in the bathroom) until
the debt is paid back. AND let those who have not taken the debt relief supervise them - getting paid by the government at the
same rate, minimum wage. 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞
For a decent college it's between 35-70k a year.... Why? 300k a year library professors, if it weren't for tenure the problem
would largely he self correcting as rntrillments drop...
My how times have changed. My son was a college grad circa 1996. He did the JUCO thing for 1 1/2 years , worked a part time
job for the duration, and picked up an A S while making the President's list. I aid, out of pocket all educational expenses while
he lived at home and provided for a nice lifestyle while he was in school. As promised, he finished his education, out of state,
which I paid for all along the way. 2 more years, he graduated, on the Pres list, and picked up his B S. No student debt, in his
words, was one of the the greatest gifts. Today he is debt free, (so am I ), and he is a very happy , financially secure ( until
the world goes upside down) mature adult. Hey Lizzie, send me a check.
They are all ignoring the real problem...the Federal mandated system of the guaranteed student loan program. Anyone with a
pulse can get a guaranteed student loan, thus creating a massive rise in college admissions. The colleges are guaranteed the money
for these loans, while the lender (the US gov't) is not guaranteed to be paid back by the students receiving these loans,. this
created a fool proof, risk free ability for colleges and universities across the country to jack up their tuition costs at over
a 5:1 ratio of income growth over the last 25 years. The problem is the program itself, students need to earn their ability to
enroll in college through hard work and good grades. Currently, any moron with a high school diploma can go to college on a guaranteed
student loan program and the colleges are more than willing to take on any idiot that wants to go to school despite their aspirations,
work ethics, intelligence, achievements, etc. The universities have been given a blank check to expand their campuses, drastically
inflate the salaries and pensions of professors and administrators of these schools all at the expense of this guaranteed "free"
money from the government that only achieved an immense amount of the population going to overpriced schools in order to get a
diploma in useless pursuits like african american studies, philosophy, creative writing, music, criminal justice, arts, basket
weaving, etc.. The skyrocketing costs of colleges and student debt is the direct result of this miserably failed system of the
guaranteed student loan. The majority of which have no business going to higher education because they don't have the aptitude,
work ethic and intelligence necessary to actually receive a degree in anything that benefits the economy and themselves going
forward. 30 years ago the average state college admission was roughly $4k a year for a good state school, today it is roughly
$20k or far more. Meanwhile, the average income has gone up a meaningless amount. Get rid of the guaranteed student loan program
and make the colleges responsible for accepting the responsibility of the loans for their students. I guarantee enrollment will
decrease and costs will decline making it much more affordable for the truly responsible and aspiring student to achieve their
dreams of a degree without a $250k loan needed for completion nor the lifelong strain of debt on their future incomes. The colleges
are raping the system the same as all these shoestring companies take advantage of the medicaid system and give hovarounds and
walking canes, and hearing aids for free because the gov't reimburses them at wildly inflated prices under some federally passed
mandate. The system is the problem, eliminating the debt will only exacerbate it and cost taxpayers trillions more each and every
year as "free" college will now entice every moron with a heartbeat the ability to go to outrageously priced schools with no skin
in the game on the taxpayer's dime. Elizabeth Warren is an idiot....someone needs to have a sit down with her and discuss this
rationale in her luxurious, state of the art TeePee.
While you are correct corrupting academics with huge payoffs is how you secure their votes and the votes of most of the 'students'
for decades to come.
Any group or industry can be paid off and you might think of the system as a set of interlocking payoffs until you get out
to the margins and the fringes where the cash and benefits are a lot thinner.
Everyone who continues to pay taxes to these neo-Bolsheviks is going to get screwed. The only alternative is to stop funding
these criminals completely.
What a sorry presidential canditate! She flat out LIED about being native american to get FREE college. And now this. Where
has America gone????????? Socialism sems to be what most want nowadays. It has NEVER EVER worked anywhere in the world at any
time! If yoou think therwise, just name ONE countryn it has worked in ! What a lying bunch the democrats are..........................
So all if us have to pay for it. Why did I have to pay for University and College in the 1970's if I wanted to further my education
and now that I am older I have to foot the bill for the young people of today? Pay DOUBLE? (just to buy votes for traitors?)
I think NOT! Take your theft from the people, to buy votes of everyone from young people to illegal criminals to outright criminals
in prison to dead people and resign before we decide to arrest you.
Democrats, HANG IT UP! We are NOT paying for YOUR illegitimate votes.
Notice too how all their "we're going to wipe out your debt!" promises never seem to include the big "endowments" of these
fascist colleges that jacked up tuition 1000% over what it used to cost.
No, those creepy commie profs and their freaky administrators get to keep their big TAX FREE endowments AND their big salaries.
Big Gov by Sanders/Warren don't seem to think that's obscene.
You are absolutely correct. 45 years ago you could almost work part time and actually PAY your way through college. Today you
almost need a physicians salary to pay for these OVERPRICED sewers filled with leftist propaganda.
It's obvious that Warren doesn't teach economics or even math. They weren't smart enough when they took out the loans and they
are not good with paying their bills so move the goal posts to bail them out. Has anyone given the thought that maybe they shouldn't
have gone to college at all. Sounds like they will all work for the government anyways.
This blabbing about authoritarian Russia and China greatly diminishes the value of this
article. The author is Warren foreign policy advisor. Probably she should find a better
advisor.
Compare this blabbing with Putin stance about strengthening of the role of the UN.
Notable quotes:
"... Fourth, the new progressive foreign policy is highly skeptical of military interventions, and opposed to democracy promotion by force. This does not mean that progressives are unwilling or would be unable to use force when it is necessary. But after 17 years of war in the Middle East, they do not share the aggressive posture that has characterized the post-Cold War era. Some are skeptical because they think interventions cannot succeed. Others emphasize the potential for backlash and making the situation worse. Still others hold that stable, sustainable democracy cannot be imposed from abroad but must emerge organically. ..."
"... Fifth, the new progressive foreign policy seeks to reshape the military budget by both cutting the budget overall and reallocating military spending. This should not be surprising. The skepticism of intervention suggests military budgets do not need to be as big as they have been in an era when the goal was to be able to fight two regional wars simultaneously. The centrality of economics to a progressive foreign policy further explains this position; military spending should partly be reallocated to cyber and other technologies that are deeply integrated with the economy and likely to be crucial in future conflicts. ..."
end of history " and
America's " unipolar moment ." And
both camps have undergone a serious reckoning after the Afghanistan, Iraq, and forever wars, as
well as the global financial crisis calling into question neoliberal
economic policies -- namely, deregulation, liberalization, privatization, and austerity.
Prominent foreign policy advocates have quite publicly engaged in
soul-searching as they confronted these changes, and debates about the future of foreign
policy abound.
The emergence of a distinctively progressive approach to foreign policy is perhaps the most
interesting -- and most misunderstood -- development in these debates. In speeches and
articles, politicians like Sen.
Elizabeth Warren and Sen.
Bernie Sanders have outlined an approach to foreign policy that does not fall along the
traditional fault-lines of realist versus idealist or neoconservative versus liberal
internationalist (disclosure: I have been a longtime advisor to Sen. Warren). Their speeches
come alongside an
increasing number of
articles exploring the
contours of a
progressive foreign policy. Even those who might not consider themselves
progressive are
sounding similar themes .
From this body of work, it is now possible to sketch out the framework of a distinctively
progressive approach to foreign policy. While its advocates, like those in other foreign policy
camps, discuss a wide range of issues -- from climate change to reforming international
institutions -- at the moment, five themes mark this emerging approach as a specific framework
for foreign policy.
First, progressive foreign policy breaks the
silos between domestic and foreign policy and between international economic policy and
foreign policy. It places far greater emphasis on how foreign policy impacts the United States
at home -- and particularly on how foreign policy (including international economic policy) has
impacted the domestic economy. To be sure, there have always been analysts and commentators who
recognized these interrelationships. But progressive foreign policy places this at the center
of its analysis rather than seeing it as peripheral. The new progressive foreign policy takes
the substance of both domestic and international economic policies seriously, and its adherents
will not support economic policies on foreign policy grounds if they exacerbate economic
inequality at home. For example, the argument that trade deals must be ratified on national
security grounds even though they have problematic distributional consequences does not carry
much weight for progressives who believe that an equitable domestic economy is the foundation
of national power.
Second, progressive foreign policy holds that one of the important threats to American
democracy at home is nationalist
oligarchy (or, alternatively, authoritarian
capitalism ) abroad. Countries like Russia and China are not simply authoritarian
governments, and neither can their resurgence and assertion of power be interpreted as merely
great power competition. The reason is that their economic systems integrate economic and
political power. Crony/state capitalism is not a bug, it is the central feature. In a global
society, economic interrelationships
weaponize economic power into political power .
China, for example, already uses its economic power as leverage in political disputes with
other Asian countries. Its growing share of global GDP is one of the most consequential facts
of the 21st century. As a result of these dynamics, progressives are also highly skeptical of a
foreign policy based on the premise that the countries of the world will all become neoliberal
democracies. Instead, they take seriously the risks that come from economic integration with
nationalist oligarchies.
Third, the new progressive foreign policy values America's alliances and international
agreements, but not because it thinks that such alliances and rules can convert nationalist
oligarchies into liberal democracies. Rather, alliances should be based on
common values or common goals, and, going forward, they will be critical to balancing and
countering the challenges from nationalist oligarchies. Progressives are thus far more
skeptical of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia and far more interested in reinforcing
and deepening ties with allies like Japan -- and are concerned about the erosion of alliances
like NATO from within.
Not sure why anyone would waste their time reading the nitwit who proclaimed "The End of
History" to loud applause from the establishment pseudo-intellectuals. About as useful as
reading Thomas Friedman.
While I agree that the removal of Trump might be slightly beneficial (Pence-Pompeo duo initially will run scared), this Kabuki
theater with Schiff in a major role is outright silly.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a typical prosperity theology preacher -- a classic modern American snake oil salesman. And
with his baseless accusations and the fear to touch real issues , he is even worse than that -- he looks outright silly even for
the most brainwashed part of the USA electorate ;-)
As he supported the Iraq war, he has no right to occupy any elected office. He probably should be prosecuted as a war criminal.
Realistically Schiff should be viewed as yet another intelligence agency stooge, a neocon who is funded by military contractors
such as Northrop Grumman, which sells missiles to Ukraine.
The claim that Trump is influenced by Russia is a lie. His actions indicate that he is an agent of influence for Israel, not
so much for Russia. Several of his actions were more reckless and more hostile to Russia than the actions of the Obama administration.
Anyway, his policies toward Russia are not that different from Hillary's policies. Actually, Pompeo, in many ways, continues Hillary's
policies.
The claim that the withdrawal of military aid from Ukraine somehow influences the balance of power in the region was a State
department concocted scam from the very beginning. How sniper rifles and anti-tank missiles change the balance of power on the
border with the major nuclear power, who has probably second or third military in the world.? They do not.
They (especially sniper rifles) will definitely increase casualties of Ukrainian separatists (and will provoke Russian reaction
to compensate for this change of balance and thus increase casualties of the Ukrainian army provoking the escalation spiral ),
but that's about it. So more people will die in the conflict while Northrop Grumman rakes the profits.
They also increase the danger of the larger-scale conflict in the region, which is what the USA neocons badly wants to impose
really crushing sanctions on Russia. The danger of WWIII and the cost of support of the crumbling neoliberal empire with its outsize
military expenditures (which now is more difficult to compensate with loot) somehow escapes the US neocon calculations. But they
are completely detached from reality in any case.
I think Russia can cut Ukraine into Western and Eastern parts anytime with relative ease and not much resistance. Putin has
an opportunity to do this in 2014 (risking larger sanctions) as he could establish government in exile out of Yanukovich officials
and based on this restore the legitimate government in Eastern and southern region with the capital in Kharkiv, leaving Ukrainian
Taliban to rot in their own brand of far-right nationalism where the Ukraine identity is defined negatively via rabid Russophobia.
His calculation probably was that sanctions would slow down the Russia recovery from Western plunder during Yeltsin years and,
as such, it is not worth showing Western Ukrainian nationalists what level of support in Southern and Eastern regions that they
actually enjoy.
My impression is that they are passionately hated by over 50% of the population of this region. And viewed as an occupying
force, which is trying to colonize the space (which is a completely true assessment). They are viewed as American stooges, who
they are (the country is controlled from the USA embassy in any case).
And Putin's assessment might be wrong, as sanctions were imposed anyways, and now Ukraine does represent a threat to Russia
and, as such, is a huge source of instability in the region, which was the key idea of "Nulandgate" as the main task was weakening
Russia. In this sense, Euromaidan coup d'état was the major success of the Obama administration, which was a neocon controlled
administration from top to bottom.
Also unclear what Dems are trying to achieve. If Pelosi gambit, cynically speaking, was about repeating Mueller witch hunt
success in the 2018 election, that is typical wishful thinking. Mobilization of the base works both ways.
So what is the game plan for DemoRats (aka "neoliberal democrats" or "corporate democrats" -- the dominant Clinton faction
of the Democratic Party) is completely unclear.
I doubt that they will gain anything from impeachment Kabuki theater, where both sides are afraid to discuss real issues like
Douma false flag and other real Trump crimes.
Most Democratic candidates such as Warren, Biden, and Klobuchar will lose from this impeachment theater. Candidates who can
gain, such as Major Pete and Bloomberg does not matter that much.
Behind the façade of the impeachment spectacle – Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz
are now on Trump's legal team – is a ruling class consensus that trumps partisan
differences. As political economist Rob Urie perceptively observed
:
The American obsession with electoral politics is odd in that 'the people' have so little
say in electoral outcomes and that the outcomes only dance around the edges of most people's
lives. It isn't so much that the actions of elected leaders are inconsequential as that other
factors -- economic, historical, structural and institutional, do more to determine
'politics.'
In the highly contested 2016 presidential contest, nearly half the eligible US voters opted out, not
finding enough difference among the contenders to leave home. 2020 may be an opportunity; an
opening for an alternative to neoliberal austerity at home and imperial wars abroad lurching to
an increasingly oppressive national security state. The campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi
Gabbord and before them Occupy point to a popular insurgency. Mass protests of the dispossessed
are rocking
France , India ,
Colombia
, Chile , and
perhaps here soon.
The deep state clearly is running the show (with some people unexpected imput -- see Trump
;-)
Elections now serve mainly for the legitimizing of the deep state rule; election of a
particular individual can change little, although there is some space of change due to the power
of executive branch. If the individual stray too much form the elite "forign policy consensus" he
ether will be JFKed or Russiagated (with the Special Prosecutor as the fist act and impeachment
as the second act of the same Russiagate drama)
But a talented (or reckless) individual can speed up some process that are already under way.
For example, Trump managed to speed up the process of destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal
empire considerably. Especially by launching the trade war with China. He also managed to
discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36
Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it
that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of
murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive
policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the
growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are
easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him
whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose
name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to
pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially
change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able
to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming
into view...
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to
war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the
rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and
traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves
to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and
treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better
and independent instead.
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <-
Norway
Of course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are
upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some
actions.
But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the
nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires
the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage
takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was
nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority
regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy
vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.
Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the
situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after
Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window,
together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".
From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some
problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.
Elections now serve mainly the legitimizing of the deep state rule function; election of a
partuclar induvudual can change little, althouth there is some space of change due to the power
of executive branch.
For example, Trump managed to speed up the process od destruction of the USA-centered
neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by lauching the trade war with China. He also
managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush
II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36
Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it
that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of
murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive
policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the
growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are
easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him
whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose
name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to
pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially
change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able
to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming
into view...
Another unforced error. What a politically naive (or evil) twat, this Elithabeth Warren
is
"I can't think of more devastating news if you're running one of these campaigns for
president than the news that your candidate is going to be bound to a desk in Washington, day
after day, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses." ~Obama's former campaign manager David
Axelrod
Sanders and Warren have the most to lose from a Senate impeachment trial. Iowa is Feb 3 and
New Hampshire is Feb 11. As McConnell told reporters "A number of Democratic senators are running
for president. I'm sure they're gonna be excited to be here in their chairs not being able to say
anything during the pndency of this trial. So hopefully we'll work our way through it and finish
it in not too lengthy a process,"
Clinton trial ran from Jan. 7 until Feb. 12, approximately five weeks. So if McConnell is
shrewd, he will ensure that Sanders and Warren were absent from both Iowa is Feb 3 and Feb
11.
This, however, is an outright lie. If Democrats truly valued America over their own partisan
interests, they wouldn't have forced a hoax impeachment through government, despite the
overwhelming opposition against it. Moreover, if "country over party" mattered to Democrats,
then they wouldn't have commenced talks about impeachment since before the inception of Trump's
presidency.
A new year and new decade may be upon us, but this doesn't mean that Democrats are any less
terrified of seeing their impeachment sham die in the Senate.
As a matter of fact, 2020 Democrat and Sen. Elizabeth Warren spent New Year's Eve raging
against her Republican colleagues and making baseless accusations against Trump, per reports
from Washington Examiner.
Reviewing Warren's Tirade Against Senate Republicans The 2020 socialist's remarks about
Republican members of the Senate came during her New Year's Eve address in Boston,
Massachusetts. Warren lamented over the reality that Democrats will not be able to bully or
intimidate Republicans into voting for a partisan-driven, unfounded sham. This blows Warren's
far-left, unwell mind, so she opted to blast GOP senators as " fawning, spineless defenders" of
President Trump's supposed "crimes."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks in Boston: "[President Trump] has tried to squeeze foreign
governments to advance his own political fortunes. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress
have turned into fawning spineless defenders of his crimes." pic.twitter.com/sGyLqsA8C7
Shortly thereafter, Warren followed up with the lie that ramming the weakest and thinnest
impeachment through government "brought no joy" to House Democrats. This, of course, just isn't
accurate; House Rep. Rashida Tlaib posted a gleeful livestream prior to the "impeachment" where
she bragged about being "on [her] way to the United States House floor" in order to "impeach
President Trump."
Finally, Warren declared that conservative senators need to "choose truth over politics" or
else President Trump will attempt to "cheat his way" via the 2020 election.
Misplaced Outrage As per usual with Democrats, the outrage is misplaced and misguided. If
Warren is so eager for a trial, then she should be directed this animosity towards House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi who continues to hoard the impeachment articles.
f left-wing Congress members truly believed they had a solid case against the president,
they'd be more than eager for the Senate to receive the articles and begin conducting a trial;
instead, however, raging at President Trump and Senate Republicans is easier than acknowledge
the true reality here.
Democrats forced the weakest, thinnest, and fastest impeachment through the House. The
president did absolutely nothing wrong and will be acquitted either when the Senate holds a
trial or by default if Pelosi keeps hoarding the articles.
The first is that the U.S. is the ultimate law-based society, one whose structure derives
entirely from a single four-thousand-word document created in 1787. The second is that while
Americans think of the Constitution as the greatest plan of government known to man, it's
actually the opposite: a grotesque pre-modern relic that grows more unrepresentative and
unresponsive with each passing year. A pro-rural Electoral College that has overridden the
popular vote in two of the last five presidential elections; a lopsided Senate that allows the
majority in ten urban states to be outvoted four-to-one by the minority in the other forty;
lifetime Supreme Court justices who can veto any law at variance with an ancient constitution
that only they understand – it's a broken-down old rattletrap in need of a top-to-bottom
overhaul. Yet it's so thoroughly frozen that structural reform is all but unthinkable.
The third thing to keep in mind is that as the constitutional system grows more and more
undemocratic, the two-party system that grew out of it in the nineteenth century grows more
undemocratic as well. The result is a bipartisan race to the right. Sometimes, the Republicans
seem to be in the lead as Trump imprisons thousands of immigrants fleeing murderous conditions
in Central America that the U.S. war on drugs helped create. Other times it's the Democrats as
they beat the drums for imperialist war against Russia.
Take all these factors – xenophobia, mindless obeisance to ancient law, a president
imposed against the popular will, etc. – mix thoroughly, place in a super-hot oven due to
a growing imperial crisis, and impeachment is what pops out. The process itself is very old, a
by-product of fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman law. (Impeachment derives from the Old French
empeechier, meaning to ensnare or entrap.) The British abandoned it in the late
eighteenth century when Edmund Burke wasted seven years impeaching an Indian colonial governor
named Warren Hastings on grounds of corruption. (The House of Lords finally acquitted him in
1795). But then the Americans took it up and now, two centuries later, are immersed in the same
brainless exercise.
The results were all too evident in mid-December when one Democrat after another took to the
House floor to denounced Donald Trump for violating the ancient constitution by withholding
lethal military aid from the neo-Nazis of the Ukraine's Azov Battalion.
"We used to stand up to Putin and Russia – I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to,"
declared Adam Schiff, the Democratic point man on impeachment, his voice quivering with
emotion. The fight to defend the Ukraine is "about more than Ukraine. It's about us. It's about
our national security. Their fight is our fight. Their defense is our defense . And when the
President sacrifices our interests, our national security for his election, he is sacrificing
our country for his personal gain."
This was the Democratic line in a nutshell. In order to safeguard the ancient republic at
home, the U.S. must pay foreign satraps to defend its imperial interests abroad. Since no
patriotic American could possibly disagree, any and all problems must stem from meddling by the
evil dictator Vladimir Putin and his traitorous puppet in the Oval Office. Americans must
therefore fulfill the ancient law by impeaching him just as the "founding fathers" would have
wanted. Only then will peace and freedom return to the land of the free and the home of the
brave.
It's all quite ridiculous, but what's even more bonkers is that millions of Americans think
it's true. Trump is meanwhile in his element. Now that Democrats have voted to impeach him in
the House, he'd like nothing more than a lengthy trial in the Senate because (a) acquittal in
the upper house is a certainty and (b) it will allow the Republican majority to put the
torturers to the rack by subpoenaing everyone from Joe and Hunter Biden to Adam Schiff himself
and declaring them in contempt of Congress if they refuse to testify. Senator Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell has described an all-out Senate war as "mutual assured destruction," and he's
right since, once unleashed, the ancient constitutional machinery will grind everything to dust
in its path.
American politics will grow only more farcical. If Putin looms larger and larger on the
world stage; if "the moment has come," as the Times Literary Supplement recently announced , "for
even the most hardened skeptics to admit that he is one of the most successful world leaders of
our era"; if the U.S. at the same time staggers from one imperial disaster to another even
while descending into civil war – then it's not because the Russian leader is
particularly clever, but because the U.S. is locked in an ancient mindset that is increasingly
divorced from reality. It's lost in a constitutional labyrinth of its own making, and
impeachment is leading it deeper and deeper into the maze.
She is now trapped and has no space for maneuvering. She now needs to share the path to the
cliff with Pelosi gang to the very end. Not a good position to be in.
Analysis: The Massachusetts senator's forceful call to begin the process of removing Trump
set her apart from the crowded primary field.
While most fellow 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls ducked and dived to find safe ground
-- and party elders solemnly warned against over-reach -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren stepped boldly
out into the open late Friday and called on the House to begin an impeachment process against
President Donald Trump based on special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
The Massachusetts senator and 2020 Democratic presidential contender slammed Trump for
having "welcomed" the help of a "hostile" foreign government and having obstructed the probe
into an attack on an American election.
"To ignore a President's repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal
behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country," Warren tweeted. "The severity
of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political
considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate
impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States."
It was a rare moment in a crowded and unsettled primary: A seized opportunity for a
candidate to cut through the campaign trail cacophony and define the terms of a debate that
will rage throughout the contest.
CNN and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, with powerful establishment
support, combined to stage a provocation this week aimed at slowing down or derailing the
campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential
nomination.
Through CNN, the Massachusetts senator's camp first alleged that Sanders told her in
December 2018 a woman could not win a presidential election, an allegation Sanders strenuously
refuted. At the Democratic debate on Tuesday night, CNN's moderator acted as though the claim
was an indisputable reality, leading to a post-debate encounter between Warren and Sanders,
which the network just happened to record and circulate widely.
This is a political stink bomb, borrowed from the #MeToo playbook, typical of American
politics in its putrefaction. Unsubstantiated allegations are turned into "facts," these
"facts" become the basis for blackening reputations and damaging careers and shifting politics
continuously to the right. Anyone who denies the allegations is a "sexist" who refuses "to
believe women."
The Democratic establishment is fearful of Sanders, not so much for his
nationalist-reformist program and populist demagogy, but for what his confused but growing
support portends: the movement to the left by wide layers of the American population. The US
ruling elite seems convinced, like some wretched, self-deluded potentate of old, that if it can
simply stamp out the unpleasant "noise," the rising tide of disaffection will dissipate.
CNN's operation began Monday when it posted a "bombshell" article by M.J. Lee with the
headline, "Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren in private 2018 meeting that a woman can't win,
sources say."
The article animatedly begins, "The stakes were high when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren met at Warren's apartment in Washington, DC, one evening in December 2018." Among other
things, the CNN piece reported, the pair "discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump,
and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could
make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders
responded that he did not believe a woman could win."
Lee continues, "The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two
people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the
meeting." In reality, the story is based on the account of one individual with a
considerable interest in cutting into Sanders' support, i.e., Elizabeth Warren. As the New
York Times primly noted, "Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders were the only people in the
room."
The absurd CNN article goes on, "After publication of this story, Warren herself backed up
this account of the meeting, saying in part in a statement Monday, 'I thought a woman could
win; he disagreed.'" In other words, Warren "backed up" what could only have been her own
account insofar as she was the only person there besides Sanders!
After a pro forma insertion of Sanders' categorical denial that he ever made such a
statement, in which he reasonably observed, "Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course!
After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016," Lee plowed right
ahead as though his comments were not worth responding to. She carries on, "The conversation
also illustrates the skepticism among not only American voters but also senior Democratic
officials that the country is ready to elect a woman as president" and, further, "The
revelation that Sanders expressed skepticism that Warren could win the presidency because she
is a woman is particularly noteworthy now, given that Warren is the lone female candidate at
the top of the Democratic field."
This is one of the ways in which the sexual misconduct witch-hunt has poisoned American
politics, although by no means the only one. Warren's claims about a private encounter simply
"must be believed."
During the Democratic candidates' debate itself Tuesday night, moderator Abby Phillips
addressed Sanders in the following manner: "Let's now turn to an issue that's come up in the
last 48 hours [because Warren and CNN generated it]. Sen. Sanders, CNN reported yesterday that
-- and Sen. Sanders, Sen. Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you
did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that? " (emphasis
added). Sanders denied once again that he had said any such thing. Phillips persisted, "Sen.
Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you're saying that you never told Sen. Warren that a woman
could not win the election?" Sanders confirmed that. Insultingly, Phillips immediately turned
to Warren and continued, "Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman
could not win the election?" This was all clearly prepared ahead of time, a deliberate effort
to embarrass Sanders and portray him as a liar and a male chauvinist.
Following the debate, Warren had the audacity to confront the Vermont senator, refuse to
shake his hand and assert, "I think you called me a liar on national TV." When Sanders seemed
startled by her remark, she repeated it. CNN managed to capture the sound and preserve it for
widespread distribution.
The WSWS gives no support to Sanders, a phony "socialist" whose efforts are aimed at
channeling working-class anger at social inequality, poverty and war back into the big business
Democratic Party. He is only the latest in a long line of figures in American political history
devoted to maintaining the Democrats' stranglehold over popular opposition and blocking the
development of a broad-based socialist movement.
Nonetheless, the CNN-Warren "dirty tricks" operation is an obvious hatchet job and an attack
from the right. Accordingly, the New York Times and other major outlets have been
gloating and attempting to make something out of it since Tuesday night. The obvious purpose is
to "raise serious questions" about Sanders and dampen support for him, among women especially.
It should be recalled that in 2016 Sanders led Hillary Clinton among young women by 30
percentage points.
Michelle Cottle, a member of the Times editorial board (in "Why Questions on Women
Candidates Strike a Nerve," January 15), asserted that the issue raised by the Warren-Sanders
clash was "not about Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren. Not really. And Ms. Warren was right to try to
shift the focus to the bigger picture -- even if some critics will sneer that she's playing
'the gender card.'"
Cottle's "bigger picture," it turned out, primarily involved smearing Sanders. The present
controversy, she went on, "has resurfaced some of Mr. Sanders's past women troubles. His 2016
campaign faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment, pay inequities and other gender-based
mistreatment. Asked early last year if he knew about the complaints, Mr. Sanders's reaction was
both defensive and dismissive: 'I was a little bit busy running around the country'."
After Cottle attempted to convince her readers, on the basis of dubious numbers, that
Americans were perhaps too backward to elect a female president, she continued, again, taking
as good coin Warren's allegations, "This less-than-inspiring data -- along with from-the-trail
anecdotes about the gender-based voter anxiety that Ms. Warren and Ms. [Amy] Klobuchar have
been facing -- help explain why Mr. Sanders's alleged remarks struck such a nerve. Women
candidates and their supporters aren't simply outraged that he could be so wrong. They're
worried that he might be right." The remarks he denies making have nonetheless "outraged"
Cottle and others.
The Times more and more openly expresses fears about a possible Sanders'
nomination. Op-ed columnist David Leonhardt headlined his January 14 piece, "President Bernie
Sanders," and commented, "Sanders has a real shot of winning the Democratic nomination. Only a
couple of months after he suffered a mild heart attack, that counts as a surprise." Leonhardt
downplays Sanders' socialist credentials, observing that "while he [Sanders] would probably
fail to accomplish his grandest goals (again, like Medicare for all), he would also move the
country in a positive direction. He might even move it to closer to a center-left ideal than a
more moderate candidate like Biden would."
On Thursday, right-wing Times columnist David Brooks argued pathetically against
the existence of "class war" in "The Bernie Sanders Fallacy." He ridiculed what he described as
"Bernie Sanders's class-war Theyism: The billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit
themselves and impoverish everyone else." According to Brooks, Sanders is a Bolshevik who
believes that "Capitalism is a system of exploitation in which capitalist power completely
dominates worker power." Accusing Sanders of embracing such an ABC socialist proposition is all
nonsense, but it reveals something about what keeps pundits like Brooks up at night.
The Times is determined, as the WSWS has noted more than once, to exclude anything
from the 2020 election campaign that might arouse or encourage the outrage of workers and young
people. The past year of global mass protest has only deepened and strengthened that
determination.
The Times , CNN and other elements of the media and political establishment, and
behind them powerful financial-corporate interests, don't want Sanders and they don't
necessarily want Warren either, who engaged in certain loose talk about taxing the
billionaires, before retreating in fright. They want a campaign dominated by race, gender and
sexual orientation -- not class and not social inequality. The #MeToo-style attack on Sanders
reflects both the "style" and the right-wing concerns of these social layers.
"... I have no confidence in Elizabeth Warren "doing the right thing"; she might be susceptible to the pressure and to the ignominy attached to doing the disastrously wrong thing. ..."
"... *Donald Trump, for his part, is reportedly " privately obsessed " with Sanders, not, it seems, with Biden. ..."
"... From a recent episode of the Jimmy Dore Show, it's the cringe-worthy Warren "Selfie" Gimmick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5JWIiVMj6g If this doesn't scream "political novice," I don't know what will. ..."
" if she does anything less than help elect the last and only progressive with a chance,
she damages them both to Biden's benefit "
If Elizabeth Warren's candidacy becomes unviable, the pressure on her to combine her
delegates with those of Sanders -- from those supporting Bernie Sanders and those
legitimately concerned with Joe Biden's chances against Trump* -- will be enormous .
And, if , instead, Warren helps nominate Biden and Biden then goes on to lose to
Donald Trump -- as I'm all but certain he will -- it will be all too clear just who
played a pivotal role in helping to make that match-up even possible.
I have no confidence in Elizabeth Warren "doing the right thing"; she might be
susceptible to the pressure and to the ignominy attached to doing the disastrously wrong
thing.
*Donald Trump, for his part, is reportedly "
privately obsessed " with Sanders, not, it seems, with Biden.
In Sanders' case, his surge in the polls coincided with his emergence as the chief
apologist for the Iranian regime. We needed to point out that he would be dangerous as
president since he made clear he would appease terrorists and terror-sponsoring
nations.
If this is really representative of a line of attack that the Trump campaign plans to use
on him, that would be great. I can't imagine anything that would resonate less with voters.
But I was a bit surprised to see this in a Bernie fundraising mail:
The wise course would have been to stick with that nuclear agreement, enforce its
provisions, and use that diplomatic channel with Iran to address our other concerns with
Iran, including their support of terrorism.
What groups are they referring to when they say this? Hezbollah, which is part of
Parliament in Lebanon? Iraqi PMF that are loosely integrated with the Iraqi army?
Yep, Warren is a political novice, and she's extremely naive. That Massachusetts senate
seat was practically handed to her on a silver platter. She has no idea that she was played
in '16 and she's being played now.
From a recent episode of the Jimmy Dore Show, it's the cringe-worthy Warren "Selfie"
Gimmick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5JWIiVMj6g
If this doesn't scream "political novice," I don't know what will.
She endorced Hillary in 2016. That tells a lot about her... Now she backstabbed Bernie. What's next?
Notable quotes:
"... Warren has a track record of lying: lied about her dad being a janitor, hers kids going to public school, getting fired for being pregnant, and obviously the Native American heritage. ..."
"... My gut is she is going to endorse Joe Biden and prob got a tease of VP or some other role and all she had to do was kamikaze into Bernie with this. It's backfiring but at this rate and given she's too deep into it now when she drops out she'll prob back Biden as she hasn't shown the integrity to back a guy like Berni. ..."
"... She's toxic now. No one will want her has VP. Sanders supporters despise her, she comes from a small, Democratic state and she's loaded with baggage. She brings nothing to a ticket. She torpedoed any hopes or plans she might have had in that regard. ..."
"... Bernie is labeled as a socialist. Actually he is a real Roosevelt democrat. ..."
"... The most impressive thing I have witnessed about Bernie is that he can extemporaneously recall and explain exactly why he voted as he did on every piece of legislation that he has cast a vote on. in. his. life. It is a remarkable talent. ..."
"... The outcome of the upcoming Iowa Caucus is too hard to predict. All the candidates are very close. Sanders needs to turnout young and working class voters to win. ..."
"... My impression is her supporters are mostly older, mostly female, and mostly centrist. Many want to elect a female pres before they die. Prior to the she said event her supporters second choice were split fairly evenly between Bernie and Biden but the latest fracas is driving her most progressive supporters to Bernie. ..."
Warren has a track record of lying: lied about her dad being a janitor, hers kids going to
public school, getting fired for being pregnant, and obviously the Native American
heritage.
As pointed here on NC she's great at grandstanding when bank CEOs are in front of her and
doing nothing following that.
My gut is she is going to endorse Joe Biden and prob got a tease of VP or some other role
and all she had to do was kamikaze into Bernie with this. It's backfiring but at this rate
and given she's too deep into it now when she drops out she'll prob back Biden as she hasn't
shown the integrity to back a guy like Berni.
I don't see how she is anyone's VP. She is too old. You want someone under 60, better 50,
particularly for an old presidential candidate. Treasury Secretary is a more powerful
position. The big appeal of being VP is maybe it positions you later to be President but that
last worked out for Bush the Senior.
She's toxic now. No one will want her has VP. Sanders supporters despise her, she comes
from a small, Democratic state and she's loaded with baggage. She brings nothing to a ticket.
She torpedoed any hopes or plans she might have had in that regard.
I've watched Bernie for years. Even long before he decided to run for president. He is the
same today as he was then. Bernie isn't afraid to advocate for something , even though he
will get a lot of backlash. I also believe he is sincere in his convictions. If he says
something he believes in it.Something you can't say for the other candidates. Bernie is by
far my first choice.
After that it would be Warren. Bernie is labeled as a socialist.
Actually he is a real Roosevelt democrat. As a life long democrat, I can't support or vote
for a Wall Street candidate. Unlike one of the other commenters, I will never vote for Trump
but instead wold vote for a third party candidate. Unfortunate the DNC will do anything to
prevent Bernie from being candidate. Progressive democrats need to get out and support a
progressive or the nomination will again be stolen by a what I call a light republican.
What is great about Bernie is that he is so sure-footed. It was visible in the hot-mic
trap Warren set for him where she got nothing, it actually hurt her.
The most impressive thing I have witnessed about Bernie is that he can extemporaneously
recall and explain exactly why he voted as he did on every piece of legislation that he has
cast a vote on. in. his. life. It is a remarkable talent.
The outcome of the upcoming Iowa Caucus is too hard to predict. All the candidates are
very close. Sanders needs to turnout young and working class voters to win. By many reports,
Warren has an excellent ground game in IA and The NY Times endorsement has given a path for
her to pick up Klobuchar voters after round one of the caucus.
Biden is a mystery to me. How
the heck is he even running. Obama pleaded with him not to. That being said, it wouldn't
surprise me if he finishes in the top two. Buttigieg is the wild card. I think the
"electability" argument will hurt him as he can't win after NH.
According to a recent poll, Elizabeth Warren is one of the most unpopular senators with
voters in her own state as measured against approval rates of all other senators in their
states. I find this very surprising for someone with a national profile. What do voters in
Massachusetts not like about her?
As for me, I find it more and more difficult to trust Warren because she takes the bait
and yields to pressure during a primary when the pressure to back down, moderate, and abandon
once championed policy positions and principles is a great deal less than it is during the
general election. Warren has gone from Medicare4All to a public option to, in the recent
debate, tweaks to the ACA. Despite her roll-out of an ambitious $10 trillion Green New Deal
plan, Warren is now to the right of Chuck "Wall Street" Schumer as evidenced by her support
of NAFTA 2.0 which utterly fails to address climate change. WTF! Where will she be during a
general election?
And her political instincts are awful as recently demonstrated by her woke, badly executed
girl power attack against a candidate who has been a committed feminist for his entire
political career.
She also has horrible constituent service. I had an issue with a federal student loan a
few years ago (I believe it was the servicer depositing money but not crediting my account
and charging me interest and late fees). After getting nowhere with the company, I tried
calling her office, figuring that as this was one of her core issues, I would get some
response, either help or at least someone who would want to record what happened to her
actual constituent. I didn't hear back for about a month, by which time I had resolved the
issue – no fees or additional interest through multiple phone calls and emails.
In other words, Elizabeth Warren's constituent service is worse than Sallie Mae's.
The stupid Ponds cold cream lie is the worst. Unless she teed up the "how do you look so
young!" question , the corrected answer is to point out the nonsense of talking about a
candidates looks and addressing actual sexism.
Instead she has a goofball answer about only using Ponds cold cream which lead to Derm
pointing out her alleged method was not good advice and also pointing out that she appears to
have used botex and fillers, which I don't think people were talking about before then, in
public.
The most generous explanation is she was caught flat-footed and, once again, showed she
has terrible instincts.
If Bernie Sanders can get it through the thick noggin of the nation that he stands for and
will implement the principles, policies, and values of the New Deal–the attitude that
got us through the Great Depression and Wotld War II–he has every chance of being
elected the next President of the United States.
Trust me. By the time it comes around you won't care who gets sworn in as you will just be
glad that all the vicious, wretched skullduggery of this year's elections will finally be
over.
And hoping you get one day of rest before the vicious, wretched skullduggery of
undermining the desires of the American people gets started. Obviously Sanders will make the
Trump years look a cake walk. Anyone else (Democrat or Trump) we will see lots of 'working
for' and 'resistance' type memes while largely doing nothing of the sort, but a whole lot of
'bipartisan' passage of terrible things.
It sounds like Sanders, in the famous 2018 conversation, may have been trying to politely
encourage EW to not run in 2020. Her moment was 2016 and she declined to run then when a
Progressive candidate was needed. Her run in 2020 to some extent divides the Progressive
vote. EW interpreted, perhaps intentionally, Sanders' words to imply that he thinks "no woman
can win in 2020", and then weaponized them against him.
The very fact that she is running at all suggests to me that she is not at heart a
Progressive and in fact does not want a Progressive candidate to win. If she had run in 2016,
Sanders would not have run in order to not divide the Progressive vote. EW knew that Sanders
would run in 2020 and planned to run anyway. It is hard for me to not interpret this to be an
intentional bid for some of the Progressive vote, in order to hold Sanders down.
I agree. She decides to do things based on her own self-interest, and uses progressives as
pawns to work her way up in DC. My guess is that Warren chickened out in 2016 and didn't run
because maybe she didn't think she had a chance against the Clintons. When Warren saw how
well Sanders did against Clinton, how close he was at winning, I think only then she decided
that 2020 was a good chance for a progressive, or someone running as a progressive candidate,
to win the nomination.
She saw how Sanders had fired up loyal progressive support in the Democratic Party. She
chickened out back then when she could have endorsed Bernie in '16, but chose not to,
probably hoping not to burn bridges with Clinton in order to get a plum role in her
administration. Her non-endorsement in '16 worries me because it shows once again that Warren
makes decisions largely based on what is good for her career, not what she thinks is better
for the country (if she really is the progressive she claims to be).
Knowing that there was now a strong progressive base ready to vote for a candidate left of
Democratic candidates like Biden and Clinton, Warren saw her entry into having a good chance
at winning the presidency. Rather than thinking about the implications for Bernie and the
possibility of dividing left-wing voters, her desire to become president was more important.
Remember, this is exactly what Bernie did not do in 2016 when he urged Warren to run, and was
willing to step aside, if she had agreed to do so.
If I had been in Sanders position, I probably would have sat down and talked to Warren
about the serious implications of the both of them running in 2020. How he had hoped to build
on the momentum from his last campaign and the sexism that was used against Clinton in 2016.
Hey, if I had been Sanders, I probably would have told Warren not to run. Not because she's a
woman, but because it would have been obvious to Bernie that with Warren running alongside
him, they would both end up splitting the progressive vote.
What is happening now between the two of them should have been no surprise to either
Bernie or Warren. They are both popular among Democrats who identify as progressive or
left-of-center. Democrats will always find a way to shoot themselves in the foot. And I agree
that when it becomes evident that one of them cannot win, either Bernie or Warren must step
aside for the good of the country and fully back the other. There is no other option if
either of them truly wants the other to win the nomination rather than Biden. I'm hoping that
Warren will do so since it is becoming more clear that Sanders is the stronger progressive
and the stronger candidate who has a better chance at beating both Biden and Trump.
If sheepdog St. Bernard Sanders begins to look like the presumptive nominee, look for a
new candidate to throw her hat into the ring. Her name: Michelle Obama.
I'm so sick of that sheepdog meme (originated by, much as a respect BAR, by a GP activist
bitter, I would say, over many years of GP ineffectuality). The elites seem to be pretty
nervous about a sheepdog.
And now we have Sanders apologizing for an op-ed in the Guardian by Zephyr Teachout
accusing Biden of corruption.
The op-ed simply says what Sanders has said all along, the system is corrupted by big
donors. Then she explicitly states the obvious, which Sanders won't at this point say but
that Trump certainly will: Biden is a prime example of serving his donors' interests to the
detriment of most of the rest of us. Sanders subsequently apologizes for Teachout's baldly
true assertion, stating that he doesn't believe that Biden is corrupt.
I guess we're meant to draw a clear distinction between legalized and illegal corruption.
I don't know. They both look like ducks to me.
I have read that Sanders is the #2 choice of many Iowans who favor JB; it makes a lot of
sense for him to not "go negative" on JB in the run-up to the caucuses.
There will be time for plainer speaking. Sanders has been clear about his views on the
corrupting influence of corporate money in politics. JB is exhibit #1 within the D primary
field and there will be plenty of opportunity to note that.
I suspect that there is a great deal of "method" in what may look to us like "madness" in
the Senator's civility.
To put it another way, I doubt very much that Sanders believes that JB's legislative
agendas were not significantly influenced by the sources of his campaign funds. And I'm sure
that attention will be drawn to this at the right time.
One can charitably affirm that one believes that JB is not a consciously corrupt ,
pay-for-play, kind of person, while also affirming that of course he has been
influenced by the powerful interests that have funded his career, and that this has not
served the interests of the American people. All in due course.
The thing is Warren would make the right argument here: that it's the system that is
corrupted, and make it well. Too bad she has shown so completely that can't be trusted as a
person, because she often looks good on paper
I think Warren misses the key point that the reason why the system is corrupted is because
the players in it are corrupted. They can be bought and sold. That is why they have no
shame.
> The thing is Warren would make the right argument here: that it's the system that is
corrupted
That's not the right answer at all. The climate crisis, for example, is not caused by a
lack of transparency in the oil industry. It is caused by capital allocation decisions by the
billionaire class and their servicers in subaltern classes.
"The real game changer around here, though, might be Iowa State University's decision,
after years of pressure, to issue new student IDs, enabling 35,000 students to vote, even
under Iowa's restrictive new voter-ID law. That's a progressive victory, and in a different
media universe, it would be a story even juicier than a handshake." Iowa is not the
Twittersphere – Laura Flanders
Thanks for giving this the attention it needs, analysis of the primary has been too light
on estimation of delegate numbers and strategy.
Prior to Warren's apparent turn to some new direction, the setup for a 3way DNC with a
progressive "coalition" was not only conceivable, but actually expected from the polls.
We are on pace for Sanders+Warren's combined delegate total to exceed Biden by a healthy
amount (say 4:3) with all others falling below 15% state by state and getting few or no
delegates. Obviously subject to snowballing in either direction, but that's the polls now and
for most of the past year.
Warren's attack on Sanders, and NYT endorsement, say the national party doesn't expect any
such coalition. Therefore Warren has made her choice. That's that.
The path to winning the Dem primary is a little narrower for Sanders, and also for Biden,
since he seems to lack the confidence of his the top strata. The DNC screws a lot up but they
know how to read polls. I'm pretty sure that running Warren in the General is not their plan
A.
Voters in Iowa and the early states (incl. TX and CA) look like they will be deciding it
all this year. The tremendous enthusiasm of Sanders followers gives him, IMO, the best ground
game of the three. Will be an interesting 6 weeks.
I do not even trust Warren to hand any delegates she gets to Sanders at this point.
Because her campaign staff is so full of Clintonites and neoliberals, she might give them to
Biden instead.
She seems to have gone full establishment at this point.
> I do not even trust Warren to hand any delegates she gets to Sanders at this point.
Because her campaign staff is so full of Clintonites and neoliberals, she might give them to
Biden instead.
The youngish rehab therapist, a woman, said this morning that of the women running, she
likes Klobuchar. "If only her voice wasn't so screechy. And I'm saying this as a woman." She
was seriously disturbed by Clinton's attack on Sanders.
Several neighbors are leaning towards Yang.
My impression is her supporters are mostly older, mostly female, and mostly centrist. Many
want to elect a female pres before they die. Prior to the she said event her supporters
second choice were split fairly evenly between Bernie and Biden but the latest fracas is
driving her most progressive supporters to Bernie.
This means most of those remaining will probably migrate to Biden if when she drops out
even if she recommends Bernie. (If 1/3 of her supporters that had Bernie as their second
choice switch to Bernie, then 60% of her remaining supporters have Biden as their second
choice.)
2016 was different, Clinton already had the older females. But there was a period where
just a little support might have tipped the scale in what was a very tight race.
Anyway, I see going forward she will be mostly holding supporters whose second choice is
Biden even as she maybe doesn't reach the 15% barrier
and same with Amy. So I hope they both stay in at least until super tue.
And While I previously thought she was a reasonable choice for veep, I now realize she'd
be an awful choice. Maybe treasury if she does endorse which she will do if Bernie looks a
winner.
How can anyone be surprised at the lack of trustworthiness from a politician who chose to
endorse Clinton in 2016 rather than Bernie? Warren has been playing the DNC game for a long
time now, which ideologically is in line with her lifelong Republican stance before changing
to the more demographically favorable party when she was 47. She's not progressive now, and
never has been or will be.
Both campaigns are backing away from greater public conflict. Whether that holds true in the
long run is anyone's guess, but my guess is that it will. Still, the following is clear:
Warren has been damaged, perhaps permanently, in the eyes of many Sanders supporters who have
considered her a good, and perhaps equivalent, second choice. Her favorability has gone way
down in their eyes and may never recover.
Warren's charge of sexism has inflamed the existing anger of many Democratic and
liberal-leaning women and relit the fire that coursed through the Sanders-Clinton primary and
beyond.
>
Rightly or wrongly, Warren's polling numbers among voters have fallen, while Sanders' polling
has held steady or improved. It's yet to be seen if the incident alters long-term
fund-raising for either candidate, but it might. For his part, Sanders has seen a post-debate
surge in funding .
So far, in other words, most of the damage has been borne by Warren as a result of the
incident. She may recover, but this could also end her candidacy by accelerating a decline
that started with public reaction to her recent stand on Medicare For All. None of this is
certain to continue, but these are the trends.
... ... ...
But if Warren's candidacy becomes unviable, as it seems it might -- and if the goal of
both camps is truly to defeat Joe Biden -- it's incumbent on Warren to drop out and
endorse her "friend and ally" Bernie Sanders as soon as it's clear she can no longer win .
(The same is true if Sanders becomes unviable, though that seems much less likely.)
Ms. Warren can do whatever she wants, certainly. But if she does anything less than help
elect the last and only progressive with a chance, she damages them both to Biden's benefit,
and frankly, helps nominate Biden. She has the right to do that, but not to claim at the same
time that she's working to further the progressive movement.
Bottom line: the corporate press has gone all-in on Warren. She simply MUST be a whore, like Obama, or Hilary/Bill
Clinton. If Warren were a real progressive, the big money would never go for her like this.
I will vote for Bernie Sanders. But I will vote for Trump over Warren. Better the moron
and agent of chaos that you know, than the calculating vicious backstabber that you
don't.
She's got the Clinton's and now Obama folks behind her.
I doubt they are thrilled with her, but probably view as someone they can work with and
the other options are worse or too low in the poll numbers. I assume Buttigieg is fine with
them, but his numbers are stuck.
Personally I cannot consider voting for a drone murderer like Trump, who cozies up to the
Saudis and has tried to cut SS and Medicare. He's shown what he is, just as Warren has. We'll
never get M4A from either one of them.
If it's not Bernie I'm voting Green. I live in a blue state that almost went for Trump
last time – my vote potentially matters and will serve as a signal. Voting for the
lesser murderous corporatist scum is what got us into this mess. I'm over it. I will not vote
for evil.
In 2016 I might just have voted for Trump, as a middle finger to the Dem establishment
that crowned HRH HRC, since at that time he had not committed any war crimes. But now, no
way. One of my unshakeable principles is that I will not vote for a war criminal. Green ,
write-in, or leave the Pres slot blank. But I hope and pray (and I'm an atheist!) that it
doesn't come to this. We really don't have another 4 years to waste on this, the earth can't
wait.
It's very unfortunate that it has come to this, but I've always been uneasy about Warren.
This incident and her accusations against Bernie solidified my suspicions about her. Her
being a Republican until her late 40s, her lies about sending her child to public school, her
lies about her father being a janitor, her plagiarized cookbook recipes, and claiming to be
Native American. It's all so bizarre to me and for a while I had believed her to have a
personality disorder that caused compulsive lying. I wanted to feel good about my vote for
Warren, but now? If she wins the nomination I'll hold my nose and vote for her, but I don't
trust her to not sell out to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party. I also don't trust
her to endorse Bernie if she drops out before the convention. She didn't endorse him in '16,
so what makes progressives think she'll do so this time. It would not surprise me in the
least if she endorsed Biden or agrees to be his running mate.
Warren is not agreement-capable. Much as it pains me to say this, the Obama administration
was correct to hold her at arm's length.
Adding, that doesn't mean that Sanders can't negotiate with her, if that must be done (to
defeat Trump). But any such negotiations cannot proceed on a basis of trust.
The most generous interpretation i can come up with is that i's possible she told the
story to several of her clintonite staffers in confidence. Those staffers went to CNN and
forced her to stand by her story, even if she didn't want to go public, because she was
threatened with staffers calling her a liar.
She might have been mad at Bernie for not bailing her out.
This version, which i don't believe, but consider it possible (not plausible) would be
arguably as bad because her staffers got the upper hand and pushed her around.
The problem is the country has become so irrational and susceptible to soundbites and
twitter shame and etc. that you can't even say "electing a women president would be
difficult" which might be true, or it becomes like Hillary's deplorable remark, we all know
it's true some Trump supporters fit the description, but it gets taken way out of context and
exaggerated beyond all recognition.
She didn't even have to deny it. Should could have just been "That was a private
conversation, I will not go into what was said in private. Bernie is a good friend of mine,
who has supported women candidates on many occasions".
Is it any wonder that the nation's "liberal" cable news stations CNN and MSNBC can barely
contain their disdain for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and even (to a lesser degree)
for that of Elizabeth Warren while they promote the nauseating center-right candidacies of the
bewildered racist and corporatist Joe Biden, the sinister neoliberal corporate-militarist Pete
Butiggieg and even the marginal Wall Street "moderates" Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris? Next
time you click on these stations, keep a pen and paper handy to write down the names of the
corporations that pay for their broadcast content with big money commercial purchases.
I did that at various times of day on three separate occasions last week. Here are the
companies I found buying ads at CNN and MSDNC:
American Advisors Group (AAG), the top lender the American reverse mortgage industry (with
Tom Selleck telling seniors to trust him that reverse mortgages are not a rip off)
United Health Care, for-profit "managed health care company" with 300,000 employers and an
annual revenue of $226 billion, ranked sixth on the 2019 Fortune 500.
Menards, the nation's third largest home improvement chain, with revenue over $10 billion in
2017.
CHANITX, a drug to get off cigarettes ("slow Turkey") sold by the pharmaceutical firm
Pfizer, 65th on the Fortune 500.
Tom Steyer (billionaire for president)
Lincoln Financial, 187 th on the Fortune 500, an American holding company that
controls multiple insurance and investment management businesses.
Liberty Mutual, an insurance company with more than 50,000 employees in more than 900
locations and ranked 68 th on the Fortune 500 two years ago.
Allstate Insurance: 79 th on the Fortune 500, with more than 45,000
employees.
INFINITI Suburban Utility Vehicle (new price ranging from 37K to 60K), produced by Nissan,
the sixth largest auto-making corporation in the world.
RCN (annual revenue of $636 million) WiFi for business
Jaguar Elite luxury autos.
Porsche luxury autos, selling new models priced at $115,000, $145,000, and $163,00, and
$294,000.
Mercedes Benz luxury auto, including an SRL-Class model that starts at $498,000
Capital Group, one of the world's oldest and biggest investment management firms, with $1.87
trillion in assets under its control.
Otezla, a plaque psoriasis drug, developed by the New Jersey drug company Celgene and owned
by Amgene, a leading California-based biotechnology firm with total assets of $78 billion.
Trelegy, a CPD drug produced by the British company GSK, the world's seventh leading
pharmaceutical corporation, with the fourth largest capitalization of any company on the London
Stock Exchange.
HunterDouglass – elite windows made by a Dutch multinational corporation with more
than 23,000 employees and locations in more than 70 countries.
Humira – drug for Crohn's disease and other ailments, manufactured by Abbvie, with
28,000 global employees and total assets of $59 billion.
Primateme Mist – for breathing, produced by Amphastar Pharmaceuticals.
Glucerna – drug for diabetes, produced by Abbot Laboratories, an American medical
company with more than 100,00 employees and total assets of $67 billion.
Prevagen – a controversial drug for brain health produced by Quincy Bioscience
DISCOVER Credit Card, the third largest credit card brand in the U.S., with total assets of
$92 billion.
Fidelity Investments, an American multinational financial services corporation with more
than 50,000 employees and an operating income of $5.3 billion.
Cadillac XT-6 high-end SUV, starting at $53K, made by General Motors (no. 10 on the Fortune
500 for total revenue), which makes automobiles in 37 countries, employees 173,000 persons, and
has total assets $227 billion.
Comfort Inn, owned by Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world,
franchising 7,005 properties in 41 countries and territories.
Audible/Amazon – books on tape from the world's biggest mega-corporation Amazon,
ranked fifth on the Fortune 500, with 647,000 employees and total assets of $163 billion.
Ring Home Security, owned by Amazon
Coventry Health Insurance, no. 168 on the Fortune 500
SANDALS Resorts International, with 16 elite resort properties in the Caribbean.
Cigna Medicare Advantage, owned by the national health insurer Cigna, no. 229 on the Fortune
500
SoFi Finance, an online personal finance company that provides student loan refinancing,
mortgages and personal loans.
Ameriprise Finance, an investment services firm, no. 240 on F500.
It's not for nothing that bit Fortune 500 firms are represented in my anecdotal sponsor list
above. Last summer, SQAD MediaCosts reported that a 30-second commercial during CNN's
prime-time lineup (Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, and Don Lemon), cost between $7,000 and
$12,000. The price has certainly gone up significantly now that Trumpeachment is bringing in
new eyeballs.
The three most prominent and recurrent advertising streams appear (anecdotally) to come from
Big Pharma (the leading drug companies), insurance (health insurance above all), and finance
(investment services/wealth management). These giant concentrated corporate and industry
sectors are naturally opposed to the financial regulation and anti-trust policy that Senator
Warren says she wants to advance. Amazon can hardly be expected to back the big-tech break-up
that Warren advocates.
Big corporate lenders certainly have no interest in making college tuition free, a Sanders
promise that would slash a major profit source for finance capital.
The big health insurance firms are naturally opposed both to the Single Payer national
health insurance plan that Sanders puts at the top of his platform and to the milder version of
Medicare for All that Warren says she backs. Warren and especially Sanders pledge to remove the
parasitic, highly expensive profit motive from health insurance and to make publicly funded
quality and affordable health care a human right in the U.S. The corporate insurance mafia is
existentially opposed to such human decency.
Both of the "progressive Democratic candidates" (a description that fits Sanders far better
than it does Warren) loudly promise to slash drug costs, something Pfizer, Abbvie, Amgene,
Amphastar, and Abbot Labs can hardly be expected to relish.
None of the big companies buying advertising time on CNN and MSNBC have any interest in the
progressive taxation and restored union organizing and collective bargaining rights that
Sanders advocates.
The big financial services firms paying for media content on "liberal" cable news stations
primarily serve affluent clients, many if not most of whom are likely to oppose increased taxes
on the well off.
The resort, tourism, luxury car, and business travel firms that buy commercials on these
networks are hardly about to back policies leading to the real or potential reduction of
discretionary income enjoyed by upper middle class and rich people.
So, gosh, who do these corporate and financial interests favor in the 2020 presidential
election? Neoliberal Corporatists like Joe Biden, Pete Butiggieg, Kamala Harris, and Amy
Klobuchar, of course. Dutifully obedient to the preferences and commands of the nation's
unelected dictatorship of money, these insipid corporate Democrats loyally claim that Sanders
and Warren want to viciously "tax the middle class" to pay for supposedly unaffordable excesses
like Medicare for All and the existentially necessary Green New Deal.
In reality, Single Payer and giant green jobs programs and more that We the People need and
want are eminently affordable if the United States follows Sanders' counsel by adequately and
progressively taxing its absurdly wealthy over-class (the top tenth of the upper 1% than owns
more than 90% of U.S. wealth) and its giant, surplus-saturated corporations and financial
institutions. At the same time, as Warren keeps trying to explain, the cost savings for
ordinary Americans will be enormous with the profits system taken out of health insurance.
Sanders reminds voters that there's no way to calculate the cost savings of keeping livable
ecology alive for future generations. The climate catastrophe is a grave existential threat to
the whole species.
These are basic arguments of elementary social, environmental, and democratic decency that
the investors and managers behind and atop big corporations buying commercials on CNN and MSNBC
don't want heard. As a result, CNN and MSDNC "debate" moderators and talking heads persist in
purveying the, well, fake news, that Sanders doesn't know how to pay Single Payer, free public
college, and a Green New Deal.
It's not for nothing that CNN and MSNBC have promoted the hapless Biden over and above
Sanders and Warren – this notwithstanding the former Vice President's ever more obvious
and embarrassing inadequacy as a candidate.
It's not for nothing that MSNBC and CNN have habitually warned against the supposed
"socialist" menace posed by the highly popular Sanders (a New Deal progressive at leftmost)
while refusing to properly describe Trump's White House and his dedicated base as pro-fascists.
MSDNC has even get a weekly segment to the silver-spooned multi-millionaire advertising
executive Donny Deutsch after he said the following on the network last winter:
"I find Donald Trump reprehensible as a human being, but a socialist candidate is more
dangerous to this company, country, as far as the strength and well-being of the country,
than Donald Trump. I would vote for Donald Trump, a despicable human being I will be so
distraught to the point that that could even come out of my mouth, if we have a socialist
[Democratic presidential candidate or president] because that will take our country so down,
and we are not Denmark. I love Denmark, but that's not who we are. And if you love who we are
and all the great things that still have to have binders put on the side. Please step away
from the socialism."
It's not for nothing that the liberal cable networks go out of their way to deny Sanders
remotely appropriate broadcast time. Or that they habitually and absurdly frame Single Payer
health insurance not as the great civilizing social and human rights victory it would be (the
long-overdue cost-slashing de-commodification of health care coverage combined with the
provision of health care for all regardless of social status and class) but rather as a
dangerous and authoritarian assault on Americans' existing (and unmentionably inadequate and
over-expensive) health insurance.
Dare we mention that the lords of capital who pay for cable news salaries and content are
heavily invested in the fossil fuels and in the relentless economic growth that are pushing the
planet rapidly towards environmental tipping points that gravely endanger prospects for a
decent and organized human existence in coming decades?
It's not for nothing that the progressive measures advanced by Sanders and supported by most
Americans are regularly treated as "unrealistic," "irresponsible," "too radical," "too
idealistic," "impractical," and "too expensive."
It's for nothing that Sanders is commonly left out of the liberal cable networks' campaign
coverage and "horse race" discussions even as he enjoys the highest approval rating among all
the candidates in the running.
With their preferred centrist candidate Joe Biden having performed in a predictably poor and
buffoonish fashion (Biden was a terrible, gaffe-prone politician well before his brains started
coming out of his ears) falling back into something like a three-way tie with the liberal
Warren and the populist progressive Sanders, the liberal cable talking heads and debate
moderators have naturally tried to boost "moderate" neoliberal-corporatist "second" and "third
tier" Democratic presidential candidates like Butiggieg, Klobuchar and the surprisingly weak
Kamala Harris. It's not for nothing that these and other marginal corporate candidates (e.g.
Beto O'Rourke) get outsized attention on "liberal" cable stations regardless of their tiny
support bases. Even if they can't win, these small-time contenders take constant neoliberal
jabs at Sanders and even at the more clearly corporate-co-optable Warren (who proudly describes
herself as "capitalist in my bones").
Thanks to Harris's curiously weak showing, Biden's dotard-like absurdity, and the likely
non-viability of Butiggieg (the U.S. is not yet primed for two men and a baby in the White
House), the not-so liberal cable channels are now joining the New Yok Times and
Washington Post in gently floating the possibility of a dark-horse neoliberal Democratic
Party newcomer (Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry, Michelle Obama, Sherrod Brown, and maybe even
Hillary Clinton herself) to fill Joke Biden's Goldman-and Citigroup-approved shoes in the
coming primary and Caucus battles with "radical socialist" Bernie and (not-so) "left"
Warren.
So what if running an establishment Obama-Clinton-Citigroup-Council on Foreign Relations
Democrat in 2020 will de-mobilize much of the nation's progressive electoral base, helping the
malignant white nationalist monster Donald Trump get a second term?
As the old working-class slogan says, "money talks and bullshit walks."
"Follow the money" is the longstanding mantra in campaign finance research and criminal
prosecution. It should also apply to our understanding of the dominant media's political news
content. U.S. media managers are employed by giant corporations (MSNBC is a division of Comcast
NBC Universal, no. 71 on the Fortune 500 and CNN is owned by Turner Broadcasting, no, 68 on the
Fortune 500) that are naturally reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend
the wealthy capitalist interests that pay for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. As
Noam Chomsky has noted, large corporations are not only the major producers of the United
States' mass commercial media. They are also that media's top market, something that deepens
the captivity of nation's supposedly democratic and independent media to big capital:
"The reliance of a journal on advertisers shapes and controls and substantially determines
what is presented to the public the very idea of advertiser reliance radically distorts the
concept of free media. If you think about what the commercial media are, no matter what, they
are businesses. And a business produces something for a market. The producers in this case,
almost without exception, are major corporations. The market is other businesses –
advertisers. The product that is presented to the market is readers (or viewers), so these
are basically major corporations providing audiences to other businesses, and that
significantly shapes the nature of the institution."
At the same time, both U.S. corporate media managers and the advertisers who supply revenue
for their salaries are hesitant to produce content that might alienate affluent folks –
the people who hire pricey investment advisors, go to Caribbean resorts and buy Jaguars and
Mercedes Benzes and count for an ever-rising share of U.S. consumer purchases. It is those with
the most purchasing power who are naturally most targeted by advertisers.
Money talks, bullshit talks on "liberal" cable news, as in the legal and party and elections
systems and indeed across all of society.
Watch the wannabe fascist strongman Trump walk to a second term with no small help from a
"liberal" corporate media whose primary goal is serving corporate sponsors and its own bottom
line, not serving social justice, environmental sanity, and democracy – or even helping
Democrats win elections.
She made a blunder. That's for sure. but still Warren is a better candidate then Trump.
The shell game between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders has transmogrified. The brutal,
post-debate exchange between the duo has the progressive left fearing repeat business from '04:
it happened at just the wrong time, only weeks ahead of the first primaries.
sounds very much like it, in a kind of
ham-fisted, virtue-signaling way -- "Sometimes I fear the American people are still too bigoted
to vote for a woman," or something like that. Yet every Clinton staffer was muttering the same
thing under her breath at 3 a.m. on November 9, 2016.
What's more, Mrs. Warren never denied that Mr. Sanders only ran in the last election cycle
because she declined to do so. Nor can anyone forget how vigorously he campaigned for Mrs.
Clinton, even after she and the DNC rigged the primary against him. If Mrs. Warren and her
surrogates at CNN are claiming that Bernie meant that a person with two X chromosomes is
biologically incapable of serving as president, they're lying through their teeth.
This is how Liz treats her "friend" Bernie -- and when he denies that absurd smear, she
refuses to shake his hand and accuses him of calling her a liar on national television. Then,
of course, the #MeToo brigades line up to castigate him for having the temerity to defend
himself -- further evidence, of course, of his sexism. I mean, like, Bernie is, like,
literally Weinstein.
Then there's the "Latinx" thing, which is the absolute summit of progressive elites'
disconnect with ordinary Americans. In case you didn't know, Mrs. Warren has been roundly
panned for referring to Hispanics by this weird neologism, which was invented by her comrades
in the ivory tower as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina . The
thing is, Spanish is a gendered language. What's more, a poll by the left-wing market research
group Think Now found that just 2 percent of Hispanics call themselves "Latinx." (In fact, most
prefer the conventional "Hispanic," which is now verboten on the Left because it hearkens back
to Christopher Columbus's discovery of La Española .)
So here comes Professor Warren -- white as Wonder Bread, the mattress in her Cambridge
townhouse stuffed with 12 million big ones -- trying to rewrite the Spanish language because
she thinks it's sexist. How she's made it this far in the primary is absolutely mind-boggling.
She doesn't care about Hispanics, much less their culture. Like every employee of the modern
education system, she's only interested in processing American citizens into gluten-free offal
tubes of political correctness.
Of course, if one of her primary opponents or a cable news "Democratic strategist" (whatever
that is) dared to say as much, they'd be hung, drawn, and quartered. Partisan Democrats have
trained themselves not to think in such terms. That might not matter much if Mrs. Warren was
facing Mitt Romney or John McCain in the general. But she's not. If she wins the primary,
she'll be up against Donald Trump. And if you don't think he'll say all of this -- and a
whole lot more -- you should apply for a job at CNN.
... running against Mrs. Warren would be a walk in the park
Your imaginary Trump anti-Warren schtick might have worked in 2016, but boy does it come
off as unfunny and stale in 2020. He's done too much damage. Not funny anymore. I voted for
Trump. After all his betrayals, Warren could rip him to pieces just by standing next to him
without saying a word. Her WASP reserve and Okie roots might even seem refreshing after our
four-year long cesspool shower with this New York City creep.
Didn't vote for Trump, or Clinton for that matter, cast a protest Libertarian vote. In my
red state it hardly matters, but the electoral college is another story. But observed long
ago that indeed Warren is just what the author says, a too politically correct north east
liberal who would be demolished in the presidential election against Trump. Only Biden or
Klobuchar has a chance to unseat the orange man, or maybe better yet a Biden - Klobuchar
ticket.
I've sometimes voted red and sometimes blue, but a Trump Vs Biden contest might well make
me bored and disappointed enough to join you going libertarian.
If the Dems want to lose, Biden and Klobuchar would be a quick ticket to doing so. Warren
would get the job done not much slower, unless she pivoted away from social issues.
To quote Phyllis Schlafly's advice to conservatives and the GOP, what the Dems need is
"A choice, not an echo." Sanders is the closest the Dems have of offering the voters a real
choice, and is the best option to defeat Trump. The D establishment will still pull out all
the stops to try to block him, of course, because even they and their big donors would
prefer a second Trump term over a New Deal liberal with a socialist gloss, but they may not
succeed this time.
Bernie and Tulsi are the most honest and interesting of the Democratic field, even though
their politics generally aren't mine. Nonetheless, I wish them well, because they appear to
say what they actually think, as opposed to whatever their operatives have focus-group
tested.
Biden's corruption will come out in the general. We could write up articles of impeachment
now. After all, Biden, did actually bribe the Ukraine. He said so himself. On video.
I think Trump's unfortunately stronger now than he was in 2016. Clinton's attacks on him
were painting him as an apocalyptic candidate who would bring America crashing down. By
serving as president for 4 years with a mostly booming economy, Trump's proven them wrong.
The corporate media will continue their hysterical attacks on him though, and that will
boost his support. I think Hillary Clinton was more dislikeable back then than Warren is
now, but Warren is probably even more out of touch. The others might also lose, but she
really as a terrible candidate.
What damage has Trump done, as opposed to the damage the media/Dems/deepstate's RESPONSE to
Trump has done?
Trump has reduced illegal immigration with the expected subsequent increases in employment
and wages, saved taxpayer 1 TRILLION dollars by withdrawing from the Paris accord, killed 2
leading terrorists (finally showing Iran that we aren't their bakshi boys), cut taxes,
stood up for gun rights, reduced harmful governmental regulation, and appointed judges that
will follow the law instead of feelings and popular culture.
He is also exposing the deep underbelly of the corrupt government in Washington, especially
the coup organized between Obama, Hillary, the DNC, Brennan, Comey, Clapper and the
hyperpartisan acts of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, IRS and now the GAO (unless you believe that the
"non-partisan" GAO released their report which claimed Trump violated the law by holding up
Ukranian funds for a few months within the same fiscal year on the same day Nancy
forwarded the articles of impeachment by some amazing coincidence).
The problem isn't Trump. The problem is the liars opposing the existential threat Trump
poses to the elitists who despise America.
"For all my reservations about Mr. Trump -- his lagging commitment to
protectionism, his shafting of Amy Coney Barrett, his deportation of
Iraqi Christians, his burgeoning hawkishness, his total lack of
decorum -- he's infinitely preferable to anyone the Democrats could
nominate."
You gloss over a few dozen other failures, most of them bigger than anything you mention
here (immigration, infrastructure, more mass surveillance and privacy violations by govt
and corporations than even Obama).
You realize that the progress Trump has made on immigration is why unemployment is down and
wages are up, right?
Most Americans think that's a good thing.
Democrats, not so much.
I think I disliked the last thing I saw by Davis. Whatever. This one is better. Not perfect
-- some of it is out of touch -- but he makes a case. And, sad to say,
I concur with his prediction for the election, with or without Warren.
I'm starting to like her. I thought she handled herself well at the last debate.
"Presidential". It's been quite a while since we had a real president. Too long.
Forgive me, but Democratic voters put way too much store in presidents being Presidential.
And they spent way too much time talking about Bush's verbal gaffes and Trump's disgusting
personality to get Gore, Kerry or H. Clinton elected.
As the author wrote, it was invented by academics. One problem with the Democrat Party is
that it is teeming with Professor Kingsfield types who are as much connected with the rest
of the population as I am with aborigines.
Finally someone said what most people think. Love the imagined Trump comments to
Warren..."Relax. Put on a nice sweater, have a cup of tea, grade some papers." As i read
those I heard Trump's unique way of speech and was laughing out loud. BTW...Tulsi Gabbard
is such an attractive candidate...heard her interviewed on Tucker Carlson and I think could
present a real challenge to Trump if she ever rose up to face him in a debate. It's curious
someone like Warren shoots to the top, while she remains in the back of the line.
The media deliberately shut her down, just like they are shutting down Bernie. The DNC also
doesn't like her (possibly because she resigned as cochair and is critical of Hillary) and
seems to have chosen their debate criteria -which surveys they accept-in order to shut her
out. I liked her up until she objected to taking out Soleimani-a known terrorist in the
middle of a war zone planning attacks on US assets.
Sorry, Trump was spot on in this attack. Tulsi was completely wrong. However, she is
honest, experienced, knowledgeable and not psychotic, a refreshing change from the other
Dem Presidential candidates. If you haven't figured out yet that CNN is basically the media
arm of Warren's campaign, you haven't been paying attention. That is how Warren continues
to poll reasonably well.
These arguments amaze me. "Since your candidate is too school marmy, or elitist, or (insert
usual democrat insult here), you're giving the electorate no choice but to vote for the
most corrupt, openly racist, sexist, psychologically lying, dangerously mentally deranged
imbecile in the country".
Because rather than an educated person who maybe comes off as an elitist, we'd rather
have a disgusting deplorable who no sane parent would allow in the same room with their
daughter.
Lol, and yet writers like this don't even realize the insanity of what they're saying,
which is basically "that bagel is 2 days old, so I have choice but to eat this steaming
pile of dog crap instead".
"Because rather than an educated person who maybe comes off as an elitist, we'd rather have
a disgusting deplorable who no sane parent would allow in the same room with their
daughter."
No need for the ad hominem, you are overstating your case. Remember, Trump is "educated"
too. And a card-carrying member of the elite. Leave us not kid ourselves, they're all
"elites" of one stripe or another. It only matters which stripe we prefer, meaning of
course whether they are saying what we want to hear. Of all of the candidates, the only one
who does not come off as an "elite" is Tulsi Gabbard, an intelligent woman who is arguably
the most interesting of all the candidates--in part because of her active military service.
I'd even throw in Andrew Yang, a friendly, engaging person who didn't seem to have an ax to
grind. It matters not. Yang is out of the picture and Gabbard has as much of a crack at the
Democratic nomination in 2020 as Rand Paul had at the Republican nomination in
2016--essentially zero.
Lol trump is educated too? You've lose all credibility with such comical false
equivalencies.
Trump is an absolute imbecile who has failed up his entire life thanks to daddy's
endless fortune. If he we born Donald Smith he'd be pumping gas in Jersey, or in jail as a
low life con man.
While I find myself shocked to be found defending anything Trumpean, in all fairness, he is
a college grad-u-ate (shades of Lily Tomlin). The value, depth, or scope of his degree may
be in question, but he does possess a sheep-skin, and hence must be considered "educated".
If one wants to demean his "education" because of his personality, one must also demean a
rather broad segment of college grad-u-ates as well.
He graduated from Penn's Wharton School of Business, ergo he is educated. Because a person
doesn't hold the same political beliefs as another doesn't mean they can't be "educated."
Liz Warren may not hold the same political beliefs as I, but I cannot argue that she isn't
educated.
Lol wow, well I'd say it's hilarious that anyone can be so naive to actually think a
compete imbecile like trump, who so clearly has never read a book in his life, actually
earned his way into college; let alone actually studied and earned a degree.....but then I
remember this country is obviously filled with people this remarkable gullible and stupid,
as this walking SNL sketch is actually President.
I actually think you are spot on in your assessment of what Trump would have become if he
wasn't born to money, but you really are behaving like exactly that kind of Democratic
voter who gets more exorcised by Trump's personal faults than by his policy ones, the kind
of Democrats who couldn't get Al Gore, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton elected.
Really. You think someone that managed to become President of the United States with no
political or military experience would have failed at life if he hadn't had a wealthy
father. You really believe that. You don't think any of Trump's success and accomplishments
are due to his ambition, drive, energy, determination, executive skills, ruthlessness or
media savvy. It was all due to his having a rich father.
Fascinating.
Trump has had no success. He's failed at everything he's ever done. You obviously just know
nothing about his actual life, and believe the made up reality TV bullshit.
The only thing he's good at is playing a rich successful man on TV to really, really,
stupid, unread, unworldly, naive people....well that and giving racists white nationalists,
the billionaire owner class, sexists, bigots, and deplorables, a political home.
I think Trump is and would have been, sans his father's wealth, one hell of a con man. And
I hope to God that he would have ended up in jail for it rather than running a private
equity fund, but the latter would have been just as likely.
However, I should have made that distinction in my original comment. No, I do not think
that Trump would have ended up a gas station attendant.
It's very hard for me to understand how anyone could be so, shall we say sheltered, that
they couldn't see him coming a mile away and laugh their ass off.
He's so bad, so transparent with his obvious lies and self aggrandizing, so clearly
ignorant and unread and trying to fake it, he's literally like a cartoon's funny over the
top version of an idiot con man. I'll never understand how anyone could ever be fooled by
it.
In fact sometimes I think 90% of his base isn't fooled, they know he's a joke, but they
just don't care. He gives them the white nationalist hate and rhetoric they want, makes
"liberals cry", and that all they care about.
It's a lot easier for me to believe THAT then so many people can actually be so stupid
and gullible.
Say what? What policies? The trillion dollar hand out to the richest corporations in the
world, double the deficit? His mind blowing disastrous foreign policy decisions that have
done nothing but empowered Russia, Iran and North Korea while destabilizing western
alliances? The trade wars that have cost fairness and others billions (forcing taxpayers to
bail them out with tens of millions of dollars)? The xenophobia, separating and caging
children? Stoking violence and hate and anger among his white nationalist base? His attacks
on women reproductive rights? His attacks on all of our democratic institutions, from our
free press to our intelligence agencies and congressional oversights?
A pathologically lying racist sexist self serving criminal is enough to disqualify this
miscreant from being dog catcher, let alone president. But his policies are even worse.
You don't seem to know that the University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, or what
the Wharton School of Business actually is. Imbeciles do not graduate from the Wharton
School.
Lol, trump is an imbecile, that's not even debatable. What amazes the rest of the entire
civilized world outside of the batshit fringe 20% of Americans who make up the Republican
voting base is how anyone could possible be conned by such a cartoonish idiot wanna be con
man.
It's truly something sane people can't even begin to wrap their heads around.
The Dowager Countess (Downton Abbey, for the un-initiated) nailed her type. In referring to
her do-gooder cousin Mrs. Isobel Crawley, she said: "Some people run on greed, lust, even
love. She runs on indignation." That sums up Warren perfectly.
I'll take it one step further. I bought one of her books, on the 'two-income trap' and how
middle-class families go to the wall to get into good school districts for their children.
She and her co-author make some valid points, but the book is replete with cliches about
men abandoning their families and similar leftist tropes. If that's the best Harvard Law
Warren has to offer, she's not as sharp as she thinks she is, and a bully like Trump will
school her fast.
Evidently Mr Davis dislikes Warren because of her personal style - but all of Trump's
substantive (or even, substance...) issues are acceptable. How shallow of him.
I can't say the two of us exactly line up on everything. But, like Wow: "gluten-free offal
tubes of political correctness." Now that's funny! Wish I'd thought of it.
I liked Warren until this attempt to stab Bernie in the back plus that childish refusal to
shake his hand on national TV. I still don't dislike her, but that was embarrassing. She
definitely has character flaws.
But this piece goes over the top. It's Trumpian. Warren certainly has flaws but if you
are going to judge a politician by their character, in what universe would Trump come out
on top?
Better than Warren.
The problem with affirmative action is when you abuse it, as Warren did, you actually rob a
genuine minority from a genuine disadvantaged background of their chance.
Warren deliberately misrepresented herself as a Native American, solely for career
advancement, and then abandoned her fake identity once she got tenure at Harvard. There was
another woman who was an actual minority that had a teaching appointment at Harvard, but
Warren beat her out, using her false claims of minority heritage to overcome her
competition's actual minority status.
Trump competes on his own.
There what's funny about these arguments. They're basically saying, "your candidate has
some flaws, she's very school marmy, and thinks she knows everything."
"Therefore, OBVIOUSLY people have no choice but to instead vote for the raging imbecile,
the pathologically lying, corrupt to his core, racist, morally bankrupt, sexist imbecile
with the literal temperament of of an emotionally troubled 10 year old."
What unpleasant memories Mister Davis has elicited - - - i once had a schoolmarm like that.
(Shudder)
It is, however, disturbing that Davis has almost captured the style of Trumptweets. The
give-away is a shade more literacy and better grammar in Davis' offerings.
But what of the possibility, as suggested above, that Trump loses to Biden or (Generic
Democratic candidate)?
As I tell my liberal friends, the country survived eight years of Priapic Bill, eight
years of Dubya and Dubyaer, eight years of BHO, and after four years of Trump is yet
standing, however drunkenly.
I think, contra many alarmists, the Republic is much stronger than the average pundit or
combox warrior gives it credit.
And, who knows? Maybe the outrage pornography we get from Tweeting birdies will grow
stale and passe, and people will yearn for more civil discourse? (Not likely, but one never
knows.)
I refuse to use "Bay Stater" for the same reason I dislike being called "Mike": nicknames
are irritating, unless they're outlandish, like "Beanie" or "Boko" or "Buttigieg."
Massachusetts is a beautiful name -- slow and smooth, like the Merrimack.
"Massachusettsian" adds a little skip at the end, as the river crashes into the Atlantic at
Newburyport. It's the perfect demonym.
Speaking of, I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life in Massachusetts --
about 10 minutes outside Newburyport, where my great-great-something grandparents lived
when the Revolution broke out. I don't know how much further back the family tree goes in
Mass., but probably further than yours.
Good luck with that utter nonsense word, then. Bay Stater is not a nickname - it's the
longstanding term (and, for some reason, the Massachusetts General Court also blessed it
legislatively), from long before my folk lived in New England since the mid-19th century
(Connecticut and Massachusetts - hence my reference to Nutmeggers, as my parents made quite
clear to us that there were no such things as Connecticutters or Massachusetters or the
like and not to go around sounding like fools using the like.)
Of course, I'd like to recover the old usage of the Eastern States to refer to New
England. Right now, its sole prominent residue is the Big E in Springfield....
One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the
verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or -- we
don't need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am
telling you now which candidate to vote for.
Its chosen candidates are: Elizabeth Warren, the Republican-turned-progressive who for years posed as a Native American to game
America's system of affirmative action - and Amy Klobuchar, the midwestern senator from the great state of Minneapolis with a reputation
for being an unhinged dragon-lady boss.
That the NYT selected the two remaining women among the top tier of contenders is hardly a surprise: This is, after all, the same
newspaper that kicked off #MeToo by dropping the first expose about Harvey Weinstein's history of abusing, harassing and assaulting
women just days before the New Yorker followed up with the first piece from Ronan Farrow.
...After all, if the editors went ahead with their true No. 1 choice, Klobuchar, a candidate who has very little chance of actually
capturing the nomination, they would look foolish.
Warren is a much better candidate than Biden is in my view.
Warren seems to get into trouble sometimes for all kinds of reasons like most people do, but the problems are usually trivial,
more silly than dangerous. There is tendency in her to stick to her guns even when she does not know what she is doing.
When i run into something unexpected or something that seems to be something i don't understand, i usually backtrack and look
at the problem from some distance to see what happened and why before trying to correct or fix the problem, rather than just doing
something.
Its not a perfect plan, but it seems to work most of the time.
NYT remains a joke. Their endorsement is straight up virtue-signalling.
Here's some reality: Warren's latest antics have cemented her image as dishonest and high-strung. Knoblocker has no charisma
and remains practically unknown.
I've personally sat down and talked with Klobuchar. Not a lot of depth of intelligence in her, that's for sure, easily manipulated
by lobbyists. Warren, at least, knows what the problem is, although she might have swallowed the proverbial Democratic party "kool
aid".
Warren is the deep state establishment pick. If you must vote Dem, pick someone that isn't, or one the establishment seems
to work against. Better yet, vote Trump, safe bet on gun rights, freedoms.
"... Furthermore, if you don't agree with Sen. Warren's version of events, or if you mention her history of "embellishing," you are a sexist and a misogynist just like Sanders. So fall in line with the establishment narrative, quick. ..."
"... In a statement to CNN, Sanders said before the debate that's not what happened at all. ..."
"... "It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," said Sanders, chalking up the story to "staff who weren't in the room lying about what happened." ..."
"... Warren's staff knows she is prone to "embellish" things ..."
"... No wonder Sanders was complaining about liberals' obsession with identity politics . As an elderly, Jewish socialist, he might be an endangered species, but he's one minority group that intersectional politics has no use for. ..."
The media cannot forgive Bernie Sanders for refusing to "bend the knee" to Elizabeth Warren
regarding her recounting of a now infamous December 2018 meeting between the two, in which the
Vermont senator allegedly said a woman could not be elected president.
Furthermore, if you don't agree with Sen. Warren's version of events, or if you
mention her history of "embellishing," you are a sexist and a misogynist just like Sanders. So
fall in line with the establishment narrative, quick.
That is the clear takeaway after the media took off its fig leaf of journalistic
impartiality at the seventh Democrat presidential debate in Iowa Tuesday.
During the debate, CNN moderator Abby Phillips had this exchange:
Phillips: You're saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman couldn't win
the election?
Bernie: Correct.
Phillips: Senator Warren, what did you think when Sanders said a woman couldn't win the
election?
Warren: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with
Bernie.
This is "when did you stop beating your wife" level debate questioning from CNN. The
question is premised around an
anonymously-sourced story CNN reported Monday describing a meeting between Sanders and
Warren in December 2018, where the two agreed to a non-aggression pact of sorts. For the sake
of the progressive movement, they reportedly agreed they would not attack each other during the
campaign:
They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two
main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument
about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did
not believe a woman could win.
In a statement to CNN, Sanders said before the debate that's not what happened at
all.
"It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she
was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," said Sanders,
chalking up the story to "staff who weren't in the room lying about what happened."
"I thought a woman could win; he disagreed," said Warren in a statement.
Cue CNN's gladiatorial presidential debates.
Eager to strike all the right girl-power notes for the night, Phillips followed up by asking
Sen. Amy Klobuchar the substantive policy question, "what do you say to people who say that a
woman can't win this election?" and Warren earned cheers for a line about women successfully
winning elections.
"Look at the men on this stage," Warren said. "Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the
women: Amy (Klobuchar) and me."
After the debate, media commentators roundly declared Warren the winner, and pundits
attacked the very idea of questioning the veracity of Warren's account.
Here's CNN, just after the debate:
Chris Cillizza, CNN politics reporter: Sanders, look, a lot of it is personal
preference. I didn't think his answer vis-a-vis Elizabeth Warren and what was said in that
conversation was particularly good. He was largely dismissive. "Well, I didn't say it.
Everyone knows I didn't say it, we don't need to talk about it."
Jess McIntosh, CNN political commentator: And I think what Bernie forgot was that this
isn't a he-said-she-said story. This is a reported-out story that CNN was part of breaking.
So to have him just flat out say "no," I think, wasn't nearly enough to address that for the
women watching.
Joe Lockhart, CNN political commentator: And I can't imagine any woman watching last
night and saying, I believe Bernie. I think people believe Elizabeth.
Van Jones, CNN political commentator: This was Elizabeth Warren's night. She needed to
do something and there was a banana peel sitting out there for Bernie to step on when it came
to his comments about women. I think Bernie stepped on it and slid around. She knocked that
moment out of the park.
But isn't this story the literal definition of a he-said, she-said story?
The accusation may have appeared in a "reported-out story," but these are its sources:
"The description of that meeting [between Sanders and Warren in December 2018] is based
on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the
encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting."
Is it sexist to question why this story would come out on the eve of the debate -- after
months of the two candidates getting along as they had promised to do, when
Sanders pulls ahead of Warren in polling ?
In addition to Warren's tenuous relationship with the truth, there also happens to be video
from the 1980s where Sanders says a woman could be president:
1988, @BernieSanders , backing
Jackson:"The real issue is not whether you're black or white, whether you're a woman or a man
*in my view, a woman could be elected POTUS* The real issue is are you on the side of workers
& poor ppl, or are you on the side of big money &corporations?" pic.twitter.com/VHmfzvyJdy
-- Every nimble plane is a policy failure. (@KindAndUnblind) January
13, 2020
Yet, you wouldn't know any of that, listening to the coverage of the debate, where
commentators waxed poetic about Warren's "win" and how any attacks on her predilection for
lying were misogyny itself.
Over on Sirius XM POTUS channel Tuesday, an executive producer on Chris Cuomo's show (Chris
Cillizza filling in) said that the suggestion from Sanders surrogates that Warren's staff
knows she is prone to "embellish" things
is "a misogynistic thing to put out there like, 'oh well, look at the quaint housewife, she is
prone to embellishment.'"
The New York Times also embraced the questionable sexism premise, writing that in"a
conflict heavily focused on which candidate is telling the truth, Ms. Warren faces a real risk:
Several studies have
shown that voters punish women more harshly than men for real or perceived dishonesty If
voters conclude that Ms. Warren is lying, it is most likely to hurt her more than it will hurt
Mr. Sanders if voters conclude that he is lying."
Over at Vox:
The over-the-top language -- likening criticism of an opponent to aknife in the back-- was familiar. When powerful men have been accused of
sexual misconduct in recent years, they and othershave
often complainedthat they've been "killed" or that their "lives are over" The
situation between Warren and Sanders is very different from those that have arisen as part of
the Me Too movement. But the exaggerated language around a woman's decision to speak out is
strikingly similar.
This sort of language is an insult to all women who have had to deal with sexism and
misogyny, both in the workplace and in society, and this need to glom on to any aggrieved
group, no matter how ill-fitting, is getting really stale.
Meanwhile, former Hillary Clinton and Obama Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri
tweeted, "I just rewatched the footage from last night and found it odd that Sanders never says
'a woman could beat Trump.' His formulation is he believes a 'woman could be president.' It's
only when he speaks about his own abilities that he talks about what it takes to 'beat
Trump.'"
This is the old sexist standby: "I'd vote for a woman, just not that woman."
What is it that these people want, for Sanders to endorse his opponent, simply because she
is female? Isn't that the very definition of sexism? By virtue of the fact that Sanders is
still in this race, he obviously thinks he can do a better job as president than Warren. There
isn't going to be another presidential race against Trump, but Palmieri still essentially wants
Sanders to say, in a five-way race three weeks before the Iowa caucus, "Warren can beat Trump
in November."
The question here should be whether this is a person that we can trust, not whether the
candidate is male or female. Does this person have a history of being honest, or do they have a
history of lying?
No wonder Sanders was complaining about
liberals' obsession with identity politics . As an elderly, Jewish socialist, he might be
an endangered species, but he's one minority group that intersectional politics has no use
for.
What are you talking about? If you want to know what Sanders says on this issue, rad his
interview with the NYT which was conducted before this cynical hit job occurred. He says
many voters are misogynistic, but not that a woman can't win.
I think both were telling the truth in that Warren probably took it to mean a woman
can't win, but her campaign cynically released thi story over a year later because she was
slipping in tge pollls behind Bernie.
That's ridiculously generous of you, at least towards Warren. She knows perfectly well his
position on the possibility of a woman president, and women running for office generally.
she knows he campaigned vigorously for HRC after the nomination, and she knows that Sanders
knows that HRC took the popular vote by over 3 million votes, so he obviously knows that it
is highly possible for a woman to win the presidency. This is simply a bald-faced lie on
Warren's part, but she has gained nothing electorally for this desperate smear. Sanders not
only had a record fundraising day after this surfaced, but at least one poll has him up 2
points in Iowa, where he was already in the lead, with Warren stuck at 12%.
Six corporations own something like 90% of the media now.
And CNN is part of the corporate-media-complex.
So not too much of a surprise that they are going after Sanders.
The billionaires are worried he might win, so in a way, this is a good
sign.
The 24 hour news channels depend on Trump to bring in the outrage required to keep up their
viewing figures. So it makes sense that they should help give him a democrat opponent he
can't lose against, like Elizabeth Warren.
While it should be fairly obvious to most that Bernie Sanders political rivals are trying
everything they can to get ahead of him, it's also true that the DNC and the Main Stream
Media, are also trying to trash Bernie in an attempt to take him out as a candidate. The
DNC and the MSM did the same thing the last time he attempted to win the nomination, and it
appears they are doing so now.
The corporate MSM machine should be careful. Another candidate they trashed during the
last election cycle, and ever since, became the President. It seems some voters have tied
the corporate MSM together with the D.C. establishment, and voters that want an outsider to
lead them may just see the MSM's attempts to denigrate a candidate as a ringing endorsement
for the outsider.
As a side note, I find it humorous that the MSM attempts to diminish Bernie's supporters
as zealots and too extreme to be taken seriously... I thought that political candidates
actually worked to gain the support of enthusiastic and motivated supporters? Or, is that
just for the candidates that are acceptable to the Main Stream Media and the political
Parties?
Voted for Trump in great part because Hillary Clinton was such a liar. Now he turned out to
be an even bigger liar than she was. It sure would be nice to have a candidate who didn't
lie so much, but now I don't know whether that would be Sanders or Warren.
Strictly speaking, socialism was an abject failure which ended with the fall of the Iron
Curtain, There is an unfortunate tendency to conflate "socialism" with what is called the
"welfare state." The United States is a welfare state but can hardly be mistaken for a
socialist state.
I think I see it mostly the same way you do, but with semantic differences. I would argue
that communism - the totalitarian version of socialism - was the abject failure. Any first
world modern state is a blend of market-based economies and socialism. The question is
always which exchanges are best left to market forces and which are best managed from
above. And then, how much management to provide. I caution against seeing socialism vs
capitalism as some binary switch to flip.
And the fact is that many of these welfare states were implemented by self-declared
socialists, including many parties that were members of the Socialist, or Second,
International.
Unfortunately, many of these socialist and labor parties hopped on the neo-liberal train
in the 1980's, and are today deathly afraid of their own Bernie Sanders (see Corbyn,
Jeremy), and even more afraid of scaring off international finance and the German Central
Bank.
Point taken. Perhaps "radical socialism" would have been more accurate. Your description of
the modern state as a "blend" is spot-on. An economics professor I once had called ours a
"mixed economy", which was a phrase that has always stuck in my mind.
Social democratic and labor parties around the world turned neo-liberal in the 1980's,
including the Scandinavian ones. They've been helping to rip up the "social contract"
between Capital and Labor, and the social welfare state, ever since, as well as reversing
previous nationalizations and launching privatization. This phenomenon has included
Scandinavia, which is why the parties there are so sensitive to all this talk in the U.S.
about them being models of "socialism."
Fact is, all non-Marxist "socialist" countries are market based, and are in fact capitalist
at the economic base. When did any Scandinavian "socialist" country ever expropriate any
major corporations?
You might actually want to do a bit of research on that point. Going back 60, 70 or 80
years, there might be some nationalizations of railroads, utilities, energy companies and
other major industries not involved in the actual manufacturing of goods in Scandinavia.
Great Britain certainly saw such nationalizations, although revolutionary leftists
sometimes dismissed them as "lemon socialism" because the capitalist class was fobbing off
money-losing or capital-intensive sectors of the economy on the government, in order to
concentrate on more profitable enterprises.
She may, especially if Bernie Sanders falters, win the nomination in Milwaukee next
July.
But here's something you might consider:
Once upon a time, there was a liberal Democratic Senator from Massachusetts who won the Iowa
caucuses and New Hampshire primary easily, and then swept to the nomination.
His opponent was a largely unpopular Republican president who had deeply divided the
country. Democrats thought they could smell victory. On Election Day, their candidate did sweep
the northeast and the Pacific west. But except for a few states around Chicago, he lost
everything else -- and the presidential election.
His name was John Kerry, and that was 2004.
Once upon another time, there was a Democratic candidate from Massachusetts who made a
better-than-expected showing in Iowa, swept New Hampshire, and breezed to the nomination.
By summer, he was 17 points ahead in the polls, and the race looked about over. But then the
Republican spin doctors went to work on his record, and his campaign went into a tailspin. In
the end, he lost 40 states. His name was Michael Dukakis, and that was 1988.
Advertisement
Now, it is a new century, and one of the front-running candidates for the Democratic
nomination is Ms. Warren, another liberal senator from, yes, Massachusetts who is leading in
some polls in early key states. Every election is different, of course.
The political landscape isn't the same as it was in 1988 or even 2004. But it would be hard
to blame any Democrat who looks at this and asks themselves – haven't we seen this show
before?
Doesn't it have an unhappy ending?
This analysis could be faulty. No two campaigns are the same, and most people are still not
paying a lot of attention.
To be sure, nobody like Donald Trump has ever been in the White House, and given his
negative approval ratings and other obvious weaknesses, an economic downturn could possibly
doom his reelection no matter who the Democrats run.
David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, is no fan of Warren's
– but thinks she may win because by that time, the nation will realize they have to get
rid of Trump, no matter what.
Incidentally, he also thinks it would be the duty of any thinking American to support her if
she and Trump are the nominees.
But a New York Times /Siena College poll released Nov. 5 indicates that nominating
Elizabeth Warren could be the biggest gift the Democrats could give President Trump. Their
survey showed former Vice President Joe Biden beating Trump in virtually every swing state,
except for North Carolina.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont led the President narrowly in the three states that
decided the last election, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But Warren trailed in every
swing state except Arizona.
Polls are notoriously unreliable, especially this early in any election cycle, and a
Washington Post-ABC News poll the same day showed Warren with a 55 to 40 percent lead over
Trump.
But even that poll showed the more moderate Biden doing better. The New York Times survey
found that many voters just plain did not like Warren, some because they did not like her
"Medicare for all," health insurance plan; others because they disliked her personality or
speaking style.
Some said they felt like she was lecturing them; others, like Elysha Savarese, a 26-year-old
Floridian, said "I just don't feel like she's a genuine candidate. I find her body language to
be very off-putting. She's very cold basically a Hillary Clinton clone."
That may be unfair, and it is clear from Warren rallies that many women and men adore
her.
There are also a few older Democrats who note that John F. Kennedy was a Democratic senator
from Massachusetts, and he was elected. That is true – but it was also six decades
ago.
Kennedy, who was perceived as a middle-of-the-road moderate, could count on states like
Louisiana and Arkansas and Georgia that no Democrat – certainly not one on the left
– has much if any hope of winning today. Additionally, the playing field is
different.
Voting strength and electoral votes have shifted dramatically from the Northeast, which was
and is JFK and Warren's base, to the South and West. New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts
had a combined 93 electoral votes in 1960. They have a mere 60 today.
Florida, which President Kennedy, (like Hillary Clinton) narrowly lost, had 10 electoral
votes in 1960; it has 29 today. Geography has become less favorable to a Massachusetts
Democrat. The day after Paul Tsongas won the 1992 Democratic primary, the legendary Texas Gov.
Ann Richards, a often irreverent Democrat, dryly told a friend of mine, "So they want to give
us another liberal from Massachusetts, and this one has a lisp."
Democrats did not, however, nominate Tsongas, but instead chose Bill Clinton, the governor
of Arkansas who was perceived as a moderate. That fall, he won.
History does not always repeat itself. But it does, sometimes, provide signposts for the
future.
(Editor's Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
@psychedelicatessen #117
You are making a number of assumptions which I don't necessarily agree with.
1) That Sanders and Warren are on the same "side" and are viewed the same by the
"establishment". They clearly are not. Warren is the fallback should Sanders not be beaten by
Biden. Warren is not a real progressive.
2) Trump vs. Sanders - again, depends on which part of the deep state. It is an error to
assume the deep state is any more monolithic than anything else. The most credible breakdown
I've seen is that the "deep state" is really 3 parts: the corporates who are happy with
Trump, the intel agencies who are not, and the military which was unhappy originally but is
now ok since they've come out ahead of the intel agencies and still have representation at
the highest levels.
Looking at these same 3 with Sanders: the corporates would/are not happy. The intel agencies
are fine with Sanders and so is the military (F35, baby!). So it isn't clear at all the "deep
state" overall cares about/hates one more than the other - the constituent groups simply have
different goals.
3) Control over petro-dollar dominance. Frankly, I don't see how Trump or Sanders matters
there. The tactical plays are very clear: keep the Saudis happy so they won't accede to China
wanting to buy Saudi oil in RMB, because the Saudis don't have any other reason to stipulate
dollar payments any more.
4) Economic collapse: I am curious as to how you think this will happen. Specifically what is
the driver?
If it is de-dollarization - that is going to take decades, unless the US has a debt crisis
before then. And frankly, I don't see it coming soon because there is simply too much
international trade dollar cushion for the US debt accumulation to be a visible problem for
quite some time.
If it is domestic collapse not due to de-dollarization - what is the driver? The economy is
already no longer a major manufacturing, etc - with helicopter money going to the 1%. As much
as the neoliberals hate it, the reality is that the pain Trump inflicts via the trade war
ultimately is net positive for domestic production. It takes a while to make an impact, but
the trade war and the anti-China machinations have already caused Chinese manufacturers to
move production abroad - and to increase in-US production.
Plus there are ways to extend the runway: health care in particular. That's a big, deep and
very popular pot of gold which could be attacked, should Trump desire to do so. As far as I
can see, he doesn't have any particular fondness or historical partnerships with the health
care/pharma industry.
In 2016, HRC received $32.6M from health care (#1 overall) vs. Trump's $4.9M (#5
overall). source
Compare with defense: Trump and Clinton were about equal (tied for #1 but only $1M or
so).
Trump has also pushed through some laws which definitely aren't liked by the health care
folks, like the hospital bill transparency law.
"... Warren is that person you can never rely on–the one that has no defining characteristic other than self-elevation. Over the years, if it benefited her, she backed a few seemingly decent causes, but it was never about doing the right thing. It was all political expediency and shape shifting. She was a Republican during so many tumultuous years -- even during the Reagan era that propelled us towards what we are going through now hell, she was a Republican until her late 40s. But now she has reinvented herself as a populist, but won't even talk out against Biden, the man from Creditcardlandia. She's a promiscuous virgin, a carnivorous vegan. ..."
"... The treachery of Warren towards Sanders is most likely from some back room deal with Biden. ..."
To say Elizabeth Warren is a political opportunist is not giving
her enough credit. She has taken the struggles, as well as the identities of others (women,
school teachers, Native Americans, public school supporters, people who are able to tweet with
humor, actual humans) and has weaponized these categories until the meaning of it all is lost.
Her tweet about leaving your ghosting boyfriend and getting a dog despite your roommate's
objections should have placed her in the pandering hall of fame, and with that should have
included a one way trip to some kind of holding cell for the criminally trite.
Her obvious lies (she's not even good at them, shaking and being sketchy with a
tweaker-looking-body-vibe-thing when she tries to pull them off) -- well that bit regarding
Bernie Sanders has electrified her twitter feed with images of snakes and has even managed to
get #RefundWarren trending. At this rate, maybe she can pull in a negative donation for this
quarter. What an achievement. The first female candidate to pull that off! Grrrrl Power! Her
political instincts are as feeble as her lies -- to have her tell it, she was a selfless public
servant most of her career (more like a teacher long enough to mention it, and a corporate
lawyer as the subsequent defining profession). Her kids only went to public schools (umm no),
she is of native heritage (shouldn't she have helped a bit at Standing Rock with that
1/16600600606006 ancestry that she is so proud of?) . Oh yes, her father was a janitor (again,
what? No). She is but a champion for the veracity challenged. That's true at least.
Warren is that person you can never rely on–the one that has no defining
characteristic other than self-elevation. Over the years, if it benefited her, she backed a few
seemingly decent causes, but it was never about doing the right thing. It was all political
expediency and shape shifting. She was a Republican during so many tumultuous years -- even
during the Reagan era that propelled us towards what we are going through now hell, she was a
Republican until her late 40s. But now she has reinvented herself as a populist, but won't even
talk out against Biden, the man from Creditcardlandia. She's a promiscuous virgin, a
carnivorous vegan.
This current trend to take on the struggles of others as your own has been powerful of late.
Cops pretend to have coffee cups served to them with pig slurs and Warren puts forth that the
very individual who actually urged her to run for president in 2016, changed course and told
her women can't win (despite ample evidence that Sanders has a track record that is decidedly
feminist). I think she said Bernie offered her a cup of coffee in their meeting that had
written on it something like "Women can't win, you're a bitch, how's menopause treating you,
and also your hair is dry and brittle." (It was a Starbucks Trenta cup so he could go full on
misogynist because there was a lotta space to write on–thanks Starbucks, first a war on
Christmas, now a war on Women).
So I'd say this is weaponizing a status and taking the struggles of others to pretend they
are your own. Stolen valor, really.
For many of us Sanders is a compromise. The changes needed are massive, but he's the closest
thing we've got at this point. The hulking size of our nation and the lack of immediacy to
those in power over us lends a situation of creating an infantalized population. This is where
we are at now. There should be direct accountability and of course we have nothing of the sort.
I suspect far in the future, if humans are to survive in any manner, it will go back to some
sort of mutual aid, and direct accountability from those making life and death decisions over
others, in short, more of a tribal situation. But right now, in our lifetimes, we are tasked
with attempting to keep the planet below 150 degrees, to not bake our children before next
week.
We have utter nonsense pouring in from the Warren corporate shills and it is wasting our
precious time. The recent CNN debate should render that channel irrelevant at best, a direct
threat at the worst. Fox comes in with obvious bias, but the CNNs and MSNBCs slip in behaving
as if they are reasonable and neutral, assaulting those of us unlucky enough to have to watch
them as captives at dental offices. They most certainly help the Warrens and other corporate
shills by providing red herring distractions and pleas for incrementalism. This is akin to only
turning up your boiling water that you bath in a degree or two every 5 minutes rather than
trying to stop the boil. They care about immediate profits and in truth are terribly stupid.
Many of us have been raised to be polite and not utter this about others, especially those in
power. We look for reasons and conditions for their behavior and choices, but the stark fact is
that a lot of these people are ignorant as fuck and want to remain that way -- little or no
intellectual curiosity and full of base greed. And this will kill us all.
The treachery of Warren towards Sanders is most likely from some back room deal with Biden.
He probably told her that he needs help against Corn Pop and while sniffing her hair and
unwashed face, (I'm not being snarky without reason, she shared her beauty routine with the
media since that's so pressing in these days of turmoil) well Biden decided that she would be
the one to stroke his leg hairs in the oval office as VP.
They are the golden hairs of a golden
white man, he says. This is the way of Washington–lots of white men thinking their leg
hair is the best, but her instincts were shit to have taken a deal like this. No way in hell is
Biden going to win, even if the DNC does manage to prop him up as their candidate.
Trump will
have a field day with him (Biden of the reasonable Republican fable) and if they do debate, the
entire country might have a collective intracranial bleed from the batshittery that will be
spoken.
Trump will be there, all eyes dilated, snorting and speaking gibberish; Biden will be
there, all blood eyed and smarmy, talking about how poor kids can be smart too (the more you
know). I cry in a corner even considering such a spectacle. I'd rather see Topsy electrocuted
than watch that.
Anyway, it's not unlikely that Warren will get a challenger for her senate seat due to this
Judas move. The Bernie supporters will be generous with political donations if that individual
materializes, I'm sure. But I'm guessing she will try something again in terms of reinvention
and she will refer to herself as the politician formally known as Elizabeth Warren and try to
get a judge show on antennae tv. I won't watch it even if she hits the gavel and says to leave
the ghosting boyfriend and get a dog in the event of a sassy landlord tenant dispute brought
before her court.
I plan on ghosting Elizabeth Warren and her lying ass.
Warren is no "progressive," as her beating a retreat from Medicare for All demonstrates. She
now has shown herself to be a bald-faced liar as well as a political phony.
Warren is the Jussie Smollet of politics. I wonder if she claims Bernie attacked her while
wearing a red hat and screaming, "A woman can't win! This is MAGA country!"
It's hillarious that even after the shafting they got in 2016 by CNN there are still some
Bernie supporters who are finally catching on to what Trump supporters have been saying the
whole time, the MSM are a bunch of lying propagandists. I wonder who these people are who
think Bernie is going to fight against the Establishment when he can't even stand up for
himself against CNN, Warren, Hillary, the DNC,.... or anyone.
I'm with you, Me. I expected to see Bernie come out swinging after that exchange with Senator
Warren if he was to have any chance against Trump. Sucking it up for "the team" is loser
talk. Warren accused him of blatantly lying on national TV, and he's okay with that?
This manufactured 'controversy' has absolutely no relevance to electoral chances of
either, outside of the campus/media bubble - whose battle lines are already entrenched.
Then CNN turned to a story that it had reported on just prior to the debate, alleging that
Sanders had told Senator Elizabeth Warren that he did not believe a woman could be elected U.S.
president. The CNN moderator ignored Sanders' assertions that he had a public record going back
decades of stating that a woman could be elected president, that he had stayed out of the race
in 2015 until Warren decided not to run, and that in fact he had told Warren no such thing.
Then came this exchange: CNN: So Senator Sanders -- Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you're saying that
you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?
SANDERS: That is correct.
CNN: Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not
win the election? You don't have to know that you'd be better off with free
college and Medicare for All than with yet another war to recognize the bias here.
Many viewers recognized the slant. Many even began to notice the strange double standard in
never mentioning the cost of any of the wars, but pounding away on the misleading assertions
that healthcare and other human needs cost too much. Here's a question asked by CNN on
Tuesday:
" Vice President Biden, does Senator Sanders owe voters a price tag on his health care
plan? "
There was even time for this old stand-by bit of name-calling: " Senator Sanders, you
call yourself a Democratic Socialist. But more than two-thirds of voters say they are not
enthusiastic about voting for a socialist. Doesn't that put your chances of beating Donald
Trump at risk? "
Is Warren Warren the Jussie Smollet of politics. I wonder if she claims Bernie attacked her
while wearing a red hat and screaming, "A woman can't win! This is MAGA country!"
Being one of Liz' constituents and familiar with her career and her base (consisting of
people like me,) I think she faces so little consequence for her "embellishments" at least in
part because "we" (her base) inhabit an environment in which, with ease, we adjust facts and
perceptions to conform to whatever our self-serving narrative of the moment may be.
We know that Liz will say anything she imagines will be to her advantage and it's okay
with "us" that she does. In a way, she's our ideal candidate and media darling because she
reflects and affirms our plastic values.
The audio from the moment where Elizabeth Warren refused to shake Bernie Sanders' hand has
been released.
The #DemDebate
scuffle came after Warren accused Bernie Sanders of saying, a woman can't win, a claim that
contradicts his public comments over decades and one he denies. pic.twitter.com/yVTRkyCb2d
-- BERNforBernie2020RegisterToVote(@BernForBernie20) January
16, 2020
Yep that woman is full of it. You can decide what 'it' is.
Aaron Mate:
Joy Reid should invite this body language expert back, tell the story about the time when
a computer hacker inserted homophobic statements into her old blog posts, and ask the expert to
analyze whether she's lying.
More from Aaron.
Did this Orwell quote inspire you in the present to make the false claim that a computer
hacker wrote your homophobic posts in the past? https://t.co/HsMUGrJj9S
This campaign is owed an apology.
What are they going to do next, phrenology?
This is why no one trusts the media. These people are digging their own professional
graves.
People aren't buying what Joy is selling.
joy reid brings on a phrenologist to prove that liz warren's cheekbones make her native
and dna test was wrong
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) once told a fellow left-wing activist that the Democratic
Party was too "intellectually bankrupt" to allow the progressive movement to flourish within
it.
In a 1985 letter newly obtained by HuffPost in which Sanders debated running for governor,
he wrote: "Whether I run for governor or not is really not important. What would be a
tragedy, however, is for people with a radical vision to fall into the pathetic camp of the
intellectually bankrupt Democratic Party."
----
Sanders' three-paragraph missive was addressed to Marty Jezer, an author and progressive
activist in the state. Then-Mayor Sanders was writing in response to an August letter from
Jezer in which he apologized that a memo he wrote to Sanders had leaked to the press. While
the exact contents of the memo are unclear, Jezer's letter indicates that it encouraged
Sanders to run for Congress instead of challenging Kunin.
"1986 is the wrong time for such a race," Jezer, who died in 2005, wrote. "I hope you will
listen to the voices of the committed activists around the state. We sink or swim with this
together."
Sanders ultimately reached a different conclusion: He ran against Kunin as an independent.
But the decision was not without dissent. An editorial from the socialist magazine In These
Times criticized Sanders for dividing the left.
"In choosing to create a three-way race, Sanders is dividing the left and making more
likely the defeat of an incumbent liberal woman governor by a more conservative Republican,"
In These Times wrote. (At the time, Kunin was one of only two female governors in the
country.)
The editorial prompted Sanders to reply: "I believe that the real changes that are needed
in this country are not going to be brought about by working within the Democratic Party or
the Republican Party."
----
The Vermont senator's critiques of the Democratic Party are well documented, as CNN reported
last July. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he was adamant that a progressive movement could
not be built within the party and was highly critical of the moderate "New Democrats" who
argued that the party's progressivism in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s had alienated
voters.
"I think that nationally, the party has on issue after issue sold out so many times that
if you go before the people and say, 'Hey, I'm a Democrat,' you don't usually generate a lot
of enthusiasm," Sanders said in 1991 about the idea of a progressive trying to work within
the party.
Commenting on civil rights activist Jesse Jackson's Democratic presidential runs in the
1980s, Sanders said he did not agree with Jackson's decision to work "within the Democratic
Party." (Sanders endorsed Jackson's candidacy.) His skepticism of the party continued in
subsequent decades. In 2011, he said Democrats could be called "Republican-lite" for
considering cuts to Social Security and Medicare in order to lessen the deficit. And his
first presidential campaign in 2016 didn't shy away from blasting the party apparatus.
Sanders' willingness to criticize the Democratic Party speaks to the progressive bona
fides highlighted by his supporters. His campaign often relies on decades-old videos of
Sanders warning against the Iraq war, multinational trade deals and the climate crisis using
the same rhetoric he still uses today.
But the senator's view of the party -- and the role of progressive politics within it --
has evolved. He's since refined his critiques to focus on the "corporate wing of the
Democratic Party," which is composed of the same centrists, including organizations like
Third Way, that pushed the party to the right during the 1980s and '90s.
----
That hasn't been enough for many of his critics, who accuse him of only half-heartedly
campaigning for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 after dragging out the
primary, and question whether he would be willing to support down-ballot Democratic
candidates who don't share his progressive ideology.
I recently watched Jimmy's show where he played a clip of Rachel praising Bernie for
campaigning so hard for Her. Her wrote him a letter telling him thanks for working so hard to
get her elected.
Bernie did 37 rallies for her in 14 days. Hillary only did 8 for Obama. Let's talk about
this, Hillary! You worthless ^*#%^! - strife delivery
It turns out media sources might have leaked to one another about Warren-Sanders dispute
& that didn't come from @ewarren campaign. Anyone still
denying national media has hostility toward @BernieSanders campaign is
being purposely obtuse. No one hates progressives more than MSM.
Anyone who thinks impeachment will succeed needs to exit the Russiagate/DNC/CNN black
hole.
And while I do believe Sanders could beat Trump, I have little faith the Clinton controlled
DNC will allow that to happen.
Warren has showed her true colors
Biden is a less competent male HRC and the rest of the field ranges from billionaires to
Intel agency drones.
Sure, Trump could lose "if". What matters is the candidate, though and none of the
candidates besides Sanders can energize enough people to beat Trump.
@Daniel (13). You hit the nail on the head, brother. Trump bears responsibility for all of
the shit he has pulled, which includes hiring the worst possible people to advise him and run
his administration. Throwing blame on the jackasses around him only proves that he is the
biggest jackass of all.
And for the record, U.S. elections rarely turn on foreign policy issues. As Bill Clinton
(another jackass, though much smarter) famously said: "It's the economy, stupid."
"... "They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial," ..."
"... "Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that's the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it's a lot of fun to watch." ..."
"... Trump's theory isn't plucked entirely out of thin air. With the impeachment trial set to begin on Tuesday, Sanders will have to disrupt his campaign activity in Iowa and return to Washington DC to sit in the Senate, two weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Crucially for Sanders, the trial begins as he edges Biden out of the lead in the polls. ..."
"... Friday's tweet isn't the first time Trump has accused the Democrats of stacking the cards against Sanders. Last April, he suggested that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was "again working its magic in its quest to destroy Crazy Bernie Sanders for the more traditional, but not very bright, Sleepy Joe Biden." ..."
"... whether the impeachment trial is an intentional move to muscle Sanders out of contention or not, The Democratic Party looks in danger of repeating the mistakes that cost it the White House in 2016. ..."
The
impeachment trial against Donald Trump is not just a "witch hunt," but a ploy to "rig" the
Democratic nomination against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Joe Biden, the US president has
claimed. "They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time,
only even more obviously," Trump tweeted on Friday.
They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even
more obviously. They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator,
he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial. Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to
Sleepy...
"They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit
through the Impeachment Hoax Trial," he continued. "Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong
edge to Sleepy Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that's the way the
Democrats play the game. Anyway, it's a lot of fun to watch."
Trump's theory isn't plucked entirely out of thin air. With the impeachment trial set to
begin on Tuesday, Sanders will have to disrupt his campaign activity in Iowa and return to
Washington DC to sit in the Senate, two weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Crucially for
Sanders, the trial begins as he edges Biden out of the lead in the polls.
The caucuses are the first major contest in the presidential primary season, and eight out
of the last 12 caucus winners went on to win the Democratic party's nomination.
Sanders' fellow 2020 frontrunner Elizabeth Warren will also return to DC to hear the case
against Trump, while Biden, the former Vice President, will be free to stump for support with
impunity.
Trump has savaged the case against him from multiple angles, alternately calling it
"presidential harassment," a "partisan hoax," and a "witch hunt" led by
the "Do Nothing Democrats." Lately, however, the president has taken to stoking division
among his opponents, talking up "Crazy Bernie Sanders" surge in the polls and amplifying
a brewing feud between Sanders and Warren – two candidates representing the leftist,
progressive wing of the Democratic party.
Bernie Sander's volunteers are trashing Elizabeth "Pocahontus" Warren. Everybody knows her
campaign is dead and want her potential voters. Mini Mike B is also trying, but getting tiny
crowds which are all leaving fast. Elizabeth is very angry at Bernie. Do I see a feud
brewing?
Friday's tweet isn't the first time Trump has accused the Democrats of stacking the cards
against Sanders. Last April, he suggested that the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) was "again working its magic in its quest to destroy
Crazy Bernie Sanders for the more traditional, but not very bright, Sleepy Joe Biden."
The Democratic establishment is widely believed to have "rigged" the 2016 primaries
in favor of Hillary Clinton, with an email leak from within the DNC revealing the extent of the
bias
. Clinton was notified of debate questions in advance, her foundation was allowed to staff and
fund the DNC, and Sanders' campaign strategy was secretly passed to the Clinton camp.
The rest is history, and whether the impeachment trial is an intentional move to muscle
Sanders out of contention or not, The Democratic Party looks in danger of repeating the
mistakes that cost it the White House in 2016.
In this sense only Sanders, Warren and Tulsi are authentic democrats... Major Pete is
definitely a wolf in sheep clothing.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that fate. ..."
"... A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all. ..."
Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to
destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime
Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that
fate.
A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in
existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would
conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all.
The ClintoBama Pelosicrats have no standing on which to pretend to support some very
popular social programs and hope to be believed any longer. Maybe that is why they feel there
is no point in even pretending any more.
Bearing in mind the fact that the DemParty would prefer a Trump re-election over a Sanders
election, I don't think anyone will be giving Trump any heave ho. The only potential nominee to
even have a chance to defeat Trump would be Sanders. And if Sanders doesn't win on ballot
number one, Sanders will not be permitted the nomination by an evil Trumpogenic DemParty
elite.
Even if Sanders wins the nomination, the evil Trumpogenic Demparty leadership and the
millions of Jonestown Clintobamas in the field will conspire against Sanders every way they
feel they can get away with. The Clintobamas would prefer Trump Term Two over Sanders Term One.
They know it, and the rest of us need to admit it.
If Sanders is nominated, he will begin the election campaign with a permanent deficit of
10-30 million Clintobama voters who will Never! Ever! vote for Sanders. Sanders will have to
attract enough New Voters to drown out and wash away the 10-30 million Never Bernie
clintobamas.
Now that Warren has been exposed as the charlatan ( The Damned Debates ) many of
us knew she was all along, the media is all freaked out that her plan to attack Bernie
Sanders is backfiring and that she is losing support rather than gaining it.
It looks to many like she made a deal with the Wall St. crowd funding the DNC who support
Biden to attack Bernie for them in exchange for a VP spot.
They are obviously very worried about Biden though because the Trump-GOP attack on Biden
over Burisma is coming, and they know they have nothing to stop it. That is what the
impeachment is all about (
Impeachment For Dummies: or How progressives were conned into supporting Joe Biden for
President ), and what the recent claim of Russia hacking to harm Biden is all about. It
is all about trying to protect Biden from the upcoming Trump-GOP Burisma related attack on
Biden. So with Biden in trouble and Warren stumbling, expect Hillary to save the day?
LOL.
They are worried, but unless Bernie is far ahead when it matters then the superdelegates
will save them. But if they do that then they fear many people will go 3rd party next
election cycle, meaning the DNC has no chance to beat the GOP in the future if that
happens.
What will they do? Right now they are full on trying to threaten their way to keep their
new world order as it crumbles around them ( Pax
Americana: Between Iraq and A Hard Place ). Times they are a changin.
But what was actually good in Soleimani killing? He was an Iranian official and only the fact
that the USA is 300 pound gorilla save us from the war for this extra-judicial killing. Because
it was essentially a declaration of the war.
Is some weaker state tried the same the result would be complete devastation of both this
state and Iran in a protracted war. Israel hides in such cases over Uncle Sam (in other version
uncle Schmuel ;-) back so it essentially is allowed the same privileges in extrajudicial killings
as the USA, but that will last only as long as the USA dominance in world affairs. After that
bill with came due for Isreal and it will not be pretty.
Talking about centrists following strictly Trump's playbook, another good example is
Warren's take on Soleimani's killing.
If she believes that she has any chance of defeating Trump as a strong defender of the US
against terrorism, she must be drinking some new kind of kool-aid.
Fortunately, in this sense, Sanders is being much more clever than Warren. I see Sanders
as the only and last opportunity to avoid the worst.
Trump is such a douchebag. He claims there were no lives lost due to their "early warning system" -- no mention that the "early
warning system" was a phone call!
Now he's once again justifying assassination, etc.
there was no "better choice" between trump and clinton. i still think clinton represented a greater danger than trump of getting
into a war with russia, but they are both warmongers first class. for our next election, we may have a choice between ebola and
flesh eating bacteria, or brain cancer and leprosy. if the game is rigged there's no winning it playing by the game's "rules".
"... It all depends on what the penalties are. Confiscation of hidden assets would chill that behavior, strike one. Loss of the privilege to conduct business with federal and state entities would also chill such behavior, strike two. Finally, for persistent violations of the cap, loss of citizenship and expulsion form the country, three strikes and you are literally out, would be the ultimate penalty. ..."
"... The United States is actually both a federation (hardly unique by the way) and a representative democracy. Whether you call them members of Parliament or members of Congress, their representatives are elected by the people. ..."
Huge numbers of people who disagree with me and don't share my particular beliefs are not sociopaths, nothing would stop them
from running or holding office, and I've no problem with that.
Are you arguing that sociopaths have an inalienable right to hold office, even though they will inevitably use that office
to aggrandize themselves at the expense of everyone else, and could spark a general war just for their own enjoyment and to gather
yet more power to themselves?
How do people who don't share your beliefs get represented if you rig the system to exclude them? People unlike you are sociopaths?
It isn't even tempting. Your cost benefit study benefits you. The world is destabilized if your guys don't get in? No surprise.
Love this line: "the gig economy combined with record debt and astronomically high rent prices cancel out any potential economic
stability for millions of people."
The under-employment rate is also very informative. People working less hours or in lower positions than their investment in
education should have returned to them. They are working, but not enough to be able to independently sustain themselves, which
makes them insecure in variety of ways.
Do you think the interpreters might turn out to be agents, or perhaps even assassins, from other governments? Or maybe everybody
will be knocked out with fentanyl gas at dinner. In the dining room.
1. It all depends on what the penalties are. Confiscation of hidden assets would chill that behavior, strike one. Loss of the
privilege to conduct business with federal and state entities would also chill such behavior, strike two. Finally, for persistent
violations of the cap, loss of citizenship and expulsion form the country, three strikes and you are literally out, would be the
ultimate penalty.
The alternative, continuing to allow unlimited wealth accumulation will ultimately destroy democracy and end in a dictatorship
nearly impossible to remove without massive casualties. Is that preferable to trying to control the behavior of wealth addicts?
Make no mistake: billionaires are addicts, their uncontrollable addiction to more is an extreme form of hoarding dysfunction,
one that, like all uncontrolled addictions, has had disastrous consequences for everyone but them.
3. Fewer Representatives means you are concentrating power rather than dispersing it. More means smaller districts, which in
turn means more accountability, not less. As it stands now, Congresscritters can safely ignore the wishes of the public, because
when someone "represents" nearly a million citizens, it means they actually represent only themselves. If taken in conjunction
with item #2, more citizens would be invested in the political process and far more likely to pay attention.
4. The Hare test is a standard written exam that is difficult to cheat. Getting caught at cheating or attempting to cheat would
mark one automatically as a sociopath. The latest studies of brain structures show that sociopaths have physically different brains,
and those physical differences are detectable. Brain activity as shown by fMRI also clearly marks a sociopath from a normal, since
while they can fake emotional responses very well, their brain activity shows their true lack of response to emotionally charged
images, words, etc. Using a three-layer test, written>fMRI>genetic should be robust enough to correctly identify most. The stakes
are too huge to risk a set of sociopaths and their lackeys control of the machinery of government. The genetic test is the most
likely to give problematic results, but if the written is failed, the fMRI would then be done to confirm or reject the written
results, while the genetics would be a supplementary confirmation. Widespread genetic testing of politicians and would-bes would
undoubtedly advance research and understanding dramatically.
When you do even a casual cost-benefit study, the answer is clear: test them. Ask yourself: is the thwarting of an individual's
potential career in politics really that great a cost compared to preventing unknowingly electing a sociopath who could destabilize
the entire world?
Another big difference of course is a little thing called the law.
Are you under the impression the British don't have rule of law? Their elected representatives make their laws, not
their ceremonial royal family. Their royal family's job is to abide by the same laws as every other UK citizen, stay out of politics
and promote British tourism and gossip magazines.
The United States is actually a federal republic, not a democracy.
The United States is actually both a federation (hardly unique by the way) and a representative democracy. Whether you call
them members of Parliament or members of Congress, their representatives are elected by the people.
If we move the cheap manufacturing to the US, and wages are lower due to a depression, people will take the jobs, and the
job numbers will improve. And China will be toast.
We will never beat China at manufacturing cheap and efficient products using human labor. Robotic labor maybe, but that might
not happen for a decade or more at least--if they or another country doesn't beat us to retooling our factories.
Labor and manufacturing will never return in the US--unless we have another world war we win, in which all global production is
again concentrated in the US because the rest of the worlds factories are bombed to rubble. Besides, they have the most central
location for manufacturing in the world and a cheap source of endless labor.
What they don't have is innovation, tech and freedom to try products out on a free market. We are squandering those advantages
in the US when we cut education and limit college education to the masses.
Are Americans the most immoral people on earth? I don't think so. Do we have the strictest code of laws on earth? I don't think
so either. Yet we have the highest incarceration rate on earth. Higher than authoritarian countries like China & Russia.
This alone should tell you something is wrong with our system. Never mind the stats about differing average sentences depending
on race & wealth.
Doubt implies a reason behind the wrong, where uncertainty implies an unknowing trait--a mystery behind the wrong.
The right, what with all its fake news scams, deep state BS and witch hunt propaganda, is uncertainty at best, a mystery of sorts--it
provides us with a conspiracy that can neither be proved or unproven--an enigma.
Doubt, about if Russia meddled in the US election in collusion with the president or at the least his advisors, surely implies
something is wrong, especially in the face of criminal charges, doubt is inherent and well intentioned, but not always true and
can be proven false in the face of doubt.
At one time the US was agrarian and one could subsist via bartering. Consider reliance on for-profit healthcare, transportation
systems, debt, credit cards, landlords, grocery stores, and the lack of any ability to subsist without statewide and nationwide
infrastructure. Right now, people in the US already die prematurely if they can't afford healthcare. Many are homeless. And this
is when things are better than ever? What will happen here is what happened in Europe during WWII. People will suffer, and they
will be forced to adopt socialist practices (like the EU does today). People in Europe really did starve to death, and people
in India, Africa, and other countries are starving and dying today. China doles out food rations because they practice communism.
That's why they have cheap, efficient labor that serves to manufacture products for US consumers. Communism and socialism help
American corporations big time.
Citizens United is a First Amendment decision. Which part of the First Amendment do you want moot? What gives any government the
right to decide which assemblies of citizens have no free speech rights?
You are aware, I imagine, that the US can adjust its money supply to adapt to circumstances? We can feed ourselves. We have our
own power sources. We can improvise, adapt, and overcome. Prices go up and down. No big deal. Scaring people for political gain
doesn't have the clout it onvce did.
Too many virtue signalers seem to think that only the innocent are ever convicted.
The system is not crooked, but if you can set up a better one that doesn't bankrupt every community, have at it.
You really, really, really like screaming racist, don't you? And slide in a Godwin. Wow. The concept that black pastors would
be negatively impacted by financial attacks on their churches never ever occurred to you, did it? You get off on pretending to
care about people that you have no direct, routine connection to. How virtuous of you. Wouldn't deliberately harming black churches
make you the racist storm trooper?
Violence will break out when credit cards stop working. Can't even imagine what will happen if people are starving. No problem
in a socialistic country like Finland, but a big problem here. My guess is that Trump knows the economy is hanging by a thread,
so needs to create an alternate reason (trade wars). Or he figures he might as well have a trade war if it's all going to pieces
anyway. Of course China manufactures just about everything for the US. If we move the cheap manufacturing to the US, and wages
are lower due to a depression, people will take the jobs, and the job numbers will improve. And China will be toast.
Don't forget as the Trump trade war heats up and China decides to sell off US bonds en-masse (they own 1.17 trillion in US debt).
That's gonna put a hurt on the already low US dollar and could send inflation soaring. China could also devalue its currency and
increase the trade deficit. Combine those with all the things you've pointed out and you've got financial troubles the likes of
which no large government has ever dealt with in human history.
Starving people--China can handle in droves; not so much the US. We're talking nasty violence if that kinda stuff happens here.
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for
profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable,
unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection,
safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
Occupy Wall Street began due to income inequality when the worst effects of the Great Recession were being felt by the population.
Wealth inequality has only increased since then.
Right now, the population is held at bay because the media and politicians claim that the economy is so incredibly hot it's overheating.
But we know that's a lie. For one, the gig economy combined with record debt and astronomically high rent prices cancel out any
potential economic stability for millions of people. This year, 401(k) plans have returned almost nothing (or are going negative).
This was also the case in 2016. Savings accounts have returned almost nothing for the last decade (they should be providing approximately
5% interest).
The worker participation rate today is 3.2% below what it was in 2008 (during the Great Recession). The US population, meanwhile,
has increased by approximately 24,321,000. That's a 7.68% increase. The labor force has increased by 5% during this time (unemployment
rate was relatively similar, 5.6% vs 4%). From June 2008 to June 2018, the labor force increased by approximately 8 million. However,
if the worker participation rate was the same now as it was then, there would be approximately 8 million more people in the labor
force. If you add 8 million people to the current number of people who are counted as unemployed by the BLS, the unemployment
rate is approximately 9%. This is about as high as the unemployment rate got during the depths of the Great Recession, right when
Occupy Wall Street was born.
Now, OK, sure, the economy has REPLACED lost jobs, but it has not ADDED jobs for the last decade. The unemployment rate is false.
It should be at least 8%. There's many millions of Americans who do not have steady, gainful employment - or any employment -
and they are not counted.
The billionaires and their bought politicians are responsible for fixing this. They can fix it and should fix it. Otherwise, the
economy and their profits are going to fall off a giant cliff any day now. The next recession has basically already begun, but
it can still be alleviated. If things continue as they are, unemployment could be 16% by 2020, with the U6 measure approaching
or exceeding 25%. If stocks drop enough, people may starve to death.
Who supported Citizen's United? All cons and republicans
Who supports campaign finance reform and legislation that would make Cititzen's United moot? Democrats and progressives
Really tired of the false equivalencies. Republicans are now the polar opposite of Democrats in policy and principles. Vote Blue
this November and get rid of the republicans; every single one of them. It can be done if people get out and vote.
1. Anything is possible but I don't think this is practical. The rich can just cheat on the definition of ownership, pass it around
between family members, offshore it, sink it into their businesses in token ways, etc. When you try to take wealth (power) away
from the most powerful people in the country they will start devoting SERIOUS resources to getting around it.
3. I'm not saying we need fewer people doing congress's job in total. But we should be electing fewer of them, and letting
those fewer people do more hiring/delegating. The way things are now, most of the public only knows much about the president.
Everyone else is mostly just a vote for a party. But if the country only voted for 50 Congressmen in total - or even fewer - then
we would all have a more careful eye on them. We would know them better and see them more individually. They would have less pressure
to toe the party line all the time.
4. As long as there's a written test then it will get cheated. Right now the testing is rarely given and the specific consequences
don't determine powerful people's careers. Make it a widespread & important thing and people will learn to cheat it.
The genetic + fMRI research is interesting but the whole thing opens up serious cans of worms. We're talking about DQ'ing somebody
from an important career based partially on the results of a genetic screening for a character trait. That's a dangerous business
for our whole society to get into. Although I do realize the payoff for this specific instance would be very big.
1. Why do you think that? Using teams of forensic accountants and outlawing secret accounts would go a long way towards increasing
enforceability. But you are viewing it as a legal problem rather than a cultural problem. If an effective propaganda campaign
aimed on one level at the public and another level at the billionaires, it could work. Many billionaires are already committed
to returning their fortunes to the economy (mostly after they are dead, true). Convince a few and the rest will follow. Give them
the lure of claiming the title of the richest who ever were and some would be eager for that place in history.
Anything can be done if the will is there.
2. Income taxes are just a portion of the federal revenues, ~47%. Corporate taxes, parkland fees, excise taxes, ~18% taken
together and Social Security make up the rest. Revenues would increase as taxpayers topped off step amounts to keep control. The
beauty of it is that Congress would see very clearly where the nation's priorities were. Any politician trying to raise fines
so that they had more money under their control would soon find themselves out of office. Unpopular programs would
have to be financed out of the 18%, and that would likely make them increase corporate taxes. But most importantly, it would cut
the power of politicians and decrease the effectiveness of lobbyists.
3. Actually, we have too few, not too many. The work of governance suffers because there is too much to be done and too few
to do it. Spreading the workload and assigning responsibility areas would increase efficiency. Most importantly though, it would
break up the oligarchic duopoly that keeps a stranglehold on the nation's politics, and bring more third party candidates into
office giving Congress a more diverse culture by adding viewpoints based on other things than business interests.
4. Actually, advances in fMRI equipment and procedures, along with genetics and written testing can prove beyond a reasonable
doubt whether or not someone is a sociopath, do some research and you'l see it is true. False positives in any testing regime
are always an issue, but tens of millions of workers submit to drug tests to qualify for their jobs, and their jobs don't usually
run the risk of plunging the world into war, economic or environmental disasters. False positives are common in the workplace
and cost many thousands their jobs.
And there's an easy way to prove you aren't really a sociopath: be honest, don't lie, and genuinely care about people...things
sociopaths cannot do over time.
Seriously, it is a societal safety issue that demands to be done, protecting the few against false positives means opening
the floodgates for the many sociopaths who seek power over others.
Not just eliminate--alter and add to it, but since it takes 2/3 majority of the house and senate to amend the constitution--it's
not an easy feat--that's why there has only been 17 amendments altogether and two of them are there to cancel each other out!
You see, the beauty behind the National
Popular Vote Bill is that it's done on a state by state basis and will only work when the required 270 electoral votes are
gained with the bill--this means all voters would have their votes tallied in a presidential election and it eliminates swing
states with a winner takes all approach. The electoral college and state control of elections are preserved and every one is happy.
I feel like you've not read up on any of this even though I provide a link. 12 of these bills have been enacted into state law
already, comprising of 172 electoral votes and 3,112 legislative sponsors. That's more than halfway there.
To continue to say that changing the way we vote by altering the EC is a fantasy is in itself a fantasy because obviously it is
gaining traction across the country.
Which 'side' do you imagine I'm on Mike ? FYI.. Im not a member of any tribe especially regarding the republican or democrat parties...
you may have noticed that as part of the progress towards a globalized economy, 'Money' now has open borders...but the restrictions
of movement for people are growing as nationalism rises and wealth and the power it yields, becomes ever more concentrated in
fewer hands...this is a dangerous precedent and history repeats if lessons of the past are not learned.
I can well recall when humanity and the ability of the individual to attain freedom and liberty based upon the merit of the individual
was once celebrated.
What really irks me and causes me to voice my opinion on this forum, ( thank you Guardian for your continued efforts at informing
us all and especially for promoting participation) is how easily people are duped .. when 'others' can easily see that they are
being lied to. My parents fought for freedom and liberty against vicious tyranny in Europe and paid a HUGE price..by the time
the scales had tipped the balance towards fascism, it was far too late for anything other than all out war... the fact that they
survived the required sacrifice to pitch in to protect democracy, and the freedom and liberty which comes with it, still seems
miraculous..
Billionaires on the left should put some of that money into paying for and distributing subscriptions to newspapers and magazines
which live up to the standards of professional journalism. These papers should be made available, free, at high schools, colleges,
libraries, and commercial centers of loitering and "neighborly" discussions. May I suggest the NYT, WP, The Guardian, and The
Economist.
"What the country sorely needs is a new constitution."
No thanks! The Founders were quite a bit more intelligent than the current national 'brain trust' -- on the both sides
of the Aisle -- that would be charged with writing a new Constitution.
"... With ever deeper pockets, the rich can more easily afford to pull multiple levers of influence and many are doing exactly that ..."
"... First, the rich have gotten much richer in the last 10 or 15 years. In 2005, the Koch brothers had a combined net worth of around $9bn; now they're worth over $100bn. Mike Bloomberg has added $46bn to his fortune during this same period, while Jeff Bezos – who has been flexing his civic muscle as owner of the Washington Post and is said to be planning a big move into philanthropy – is worth 30 times more today than he was in 2005, a stunning $144bn. ..."
"... Robert Mercer is one example of an ambidextrous funder. The family foundation that he runs with his daughter Rebekah makes millions of dollars in grants to conservative policy groups every year, but Mercer was also among the top GOP campaign donors in 2016 and is also a top investor in Breitbart, the pro-Trump media site. The Mercers have been among the most powerful figures in politics in the past few years – influence that's only been possible because of Robert Mercer's success in the wildly lucrative hedge fund world. Being a star school teacher or nurse doesn't yield the same resources or clout. ..."
"... Bloomberg is another example of multi-faceted donor, on a much larger scale. In addition to investing hundreds of millions of dollars in his own political career, securing three terms as New York's mayor, he's used both charitable and political giving to push his agenda on such issues as climate change, guns and education. Now he's poised to become the biggest donor ever during a midterm election cycle. This enormous influence spending has amounted to just a tiny fraction of his net worth. ..."
"... Bloomberg's support for Democrats and causes like climate change underscores a third change in big money battles over America's future: the surge of new money from left-of-center donors. ..."
American elections are a battle of billionaires. We are merely spectatorsDavid Callahan Depending
on your politics, you may either cheer or fear the influence of top donors. In truth, we should
be troubled by it
Thu 5 Jul 2018 02.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 5 Jul 2018 02.01 EDT
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email 'Economic
inequality seems to be translating into civic disparities .' Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images Pull up a seat, this year's election is getting interesting.
In one corner, backing the Republican, are billionaire heavyweights like Sheldon Adelson and
the Koch brothers. In the other, wearing the blue trunks, are mega-donors such as Tom Steyer
and George Soros, as well as one of the richest Americans of all, Michael Bloomberg , who recently
confirmed that he'll spend at least $80m to flip the House of Representatives to the Democrats
– in a midterm election that will likely be the most expensive in history.
The rest of us, ordinary citizens without big bank accounts, will certainly play a role in
the outcome this November. We cast the votes, after all. But more and more, US politics –
along with civic life broadly – often feels like a spectator sport, as a growing array of
billionaire super citizens battle it out in the public square.
The outsized clout of the rich is hardly a new story, of course. But this influence game is
changing as the dollar signs get bigger and as the wealthy exert influence in more arenas using
a more sophisticated array of strategies. The day before news broke about Bloomberg's vast
election giving, for example, the Times reported on the successful efforts of a Koch-backed
501(c)(4) group to kill public transportation initiatives across the country.
That same week, the Walton Family Foundation – which has already helped bankroll a
quarter of all US charter schools – announced another $100m in education grants. Around
the same time, the billionaire activist Tom Steyer launched a new ad attacking Donald Trump
that featured audio of children crying in immigrant detention centers. The ad is part of
Steyer's unprecedented campaign pushing for Trump's impeachment; he's spent millions of dollars
on the effort, on top of some $200m he's made in
political contributions since 2014.
Depending on your politics, you may either cheer or fear the influence spending of specific
top donors. In truth, we should be troubled about all such spending. Thanks to several factors,
economic inequality seems to be translating into civic disparities at a faster pace and in ways
that touch more parts of US society.
With ever deeper pockets, the rich can more easily afford to pull multiple levers of
influence and many are doing exactly that
First, the rich have gotten much richer in the last 10 or 15 years. In 2005, the
Koch brothers
had a combined net worth of around $9bn; now they're worth over $100bn. Mike Bloomberg has
added $46bn to his fortune during this same period, while Jeff Bezos – who has been
flexing his civic muscle as owner of the Washington Post and is said to be planning a big move
into philanthropy – is worth 30 times more today than he was in 2005, a stunning
$144bn.
With ever deeper pockets, the rich can more easily afford to pull multiple levers of
influence and many are doing exactly that, which is a second thing that's changed about the
elite power game. Increasingly, top donors are simultaneously putting money into elections,
private foundations that press an ideological agenda, 501(c)(4) groups and media.
Robert Mercer is one example of an ambidextrous funder. The family foundation that he
runs with his daughter Rebekah makes millions of dollars in grants to conservative policy
groups every year, but Mercer was also among the top GOP campaign donors in 2016 and is also a
top investor in Breitbart, the pro-Trump media site. The Mercers have been among the most
powerful figures in politics in the past few years – influence that's only been possible
because of Robert Mercer's success in the wildly lucrative hedge fund world. Being a star
school teacher or nurse doesn't yield the same resources or clout.
Bloomberg is another example of multi-faceted donor, on a much larger scale. In addition
to investing hundreds of millions of dollars in his own political career, securing three terms
as New York's mayor, he's used both charitable and political giving to push his agenda on such
issues as climate change, guns and education. Now he's poised to become the biggest donor ever
during a midterm election cycle. This enormous influence spending has amounted to just a tiny
fraction of his net worth.
Bloomberg's support for Democrats and causes like climate change underscores a third
change in big money battles over America's future: the surge of new money from left-of-center
donors.
This shift dates back to George W Bush's presidency, when alarmed wealthy Democrats set out
to reverse conservative gains. Mixing philanthropic gifts with political donations and
501(c)(4) spending, they bankrolled the creation of Democracy Alliance, the Center for American
Progress, and other institutions. Since then, other billionaires have swung behind progressive
causes, including tech winners like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz – who gave $27m
to help defeat Trump in the 2016 election – and Steyer, who became an active mega-giver
after he retired from his hedge fund six years ago.
The new money flowing from wealthy left-of-center donors, especially in response to Trump's
rise, may look like a sign that American pluralism is alive and well in this second Gilded Age.
Yes, public life in increasingly drenched in cash, but aren't many viewpoints getting heard as
a more ideologically diverse upper class supports various causes and candidates?
Sometimes this is the case. On climate change, for example, progressive donors have helped
counter the longstading might of the fossil fuel industry. Economic issues have been another
story, though. Polls show that the wealthy are more conservative on such issues, which explains
why very little money even from left-of-center donors goes to support work that strongly
challenges inequality. Bloomberg's big give for Democrats this year is a case in point: he's
made it clear that he wants to support moderate candidates, not populists from the Bernie
Sanders wing of the party.
The Democratic party and progressive infrastructure is heavily dependent on patrons who've
thrived under America's current form of capitalism and aren't interested in major reforms to
that system, however much it fails ordinary workers. In 2016, Trump filled this vacuum with his
own brand of economic populism.
There's also been a lack of pluralism among wealthy donors in other areas. The Kochs are
having such a big impact on transportation policy because there are few counter-weights to
their money in that niche. Top donors can be especially influential in certain states and
localities, where there's not a diverse pool of givers. For example, the billionaire Eli Broad
has long wielded outsized influence in Los Angeles, especially on education.
There's no easy way to counter the rising power of these super citizens. Campaign finance
reform would help, but influence spending now extends far beyond elections, as philanthropy has
been weaponized for policy combat.
Ultimately, the best solution to the new civic inequality lies in stronger social movements
that convert Americans from spectators to activists. And one of the most reassuring trends of
recent years is we've seen a lot of such people power, including the Tea Party, Occupy, Black
Lives Matter and #MeToo.
Now we need more of the same, extending to more issues and more places – especially
the core challenge of economic inequality. Otherwise, it's hard to see how the United States
can escape from a new era of plutocracy.
David Callahan is the author of The Givers:
Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age. He is the founder and editor of Inside
Philanthropy
"... "When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson." ..."
"... Bill's frustration with what he referred to as "the rightward-drifting Democrats" ran deep. While his books often explored economic themes -- with particular brilliance in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) and Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987) -- he was at his finest when he wrote about the awful intersection of money and politics, in books such as Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy (1992). ..."
"... Bill believed Wall Street money was corrupting American politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Decades ago, during the Reagan interregnum, he warned that if the Democrats did not renew the robust commitment to economic justice that characterized FDR's tenure at its best, then surely right-wing populists would seize the opening. As always, whether he was writing for The Washington Post , Rolling Stone or The Nation (where he served as the ablest of all national affairs correspondents), Bill was right. ..."
"... The power arrangement resembles a shared monopoly, in which two companies have tacitly ceded territories to each other to avoid costly competition. ..."
"... Furthermore, the permanent hierarchy of both parties is dominated at the top by a network of pricey Washington lawyers and lobbyists who represent business interests and collaborate with one another on lobbying the government -- while pretending to be opponents. These inside players channel their corporate clients' money to the elected politicians. In effect, everyone is on the same side. ..."
I knew Bill as a quick-witted comrade in the press corps of too many campaigns to count, a generous mentor, an ideological compatriot,
and an occasional co-conspirator. He taught me to see politics not as the game that TV pundits discuss but as a high-stakes struggle
for power in which the Democrats foolishly, and then dangerously, yielded far too much ground to increasingly right-wing Republicans.
This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to the financial meltdown
of 2008,
I knew Bill as a quick-witted comrade in the press corps of too many campaigns to count, a generous mentor, an ideological compatriot,
and an occasional co-conspirator. He taught me to see politics not as the game that TV pundits discuss but as a high-stakes struggle
for power in which the Democrats foolishly, and then dangerously, yielded far too much ground to increasingly right-wing Republicans.
This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to the financial
meltdown of 2008, This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to
the financial meltdown of 2008, explaining after
the devastating Republican victories of 2010 , "When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use
government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end
of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson."
And, anticipating the rise of Donald Trump, he counseled that the void left by Democrats who pulled their punches would be filled
by Republicans who would not hesitate to practice the crudest divide-and-conquer politics. And, anticipating the rise of Donald Trump,
he counseled that the void left by Democrats who pulled their punches would be filled by Republicans who would not hesitate to practice
the crudest divide-and-conquer politics.
Bill's frustration with what he referred to as "the rightward-drifting Democrats" ran deep. While his books often explored economic
themes -- with particular brilliance in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) and Secrets
of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987) -- he was at his finest when he wrote about the awful intersection
of money and politics, in books such as Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy (1992).
Bill believed Wall Street money was corrupting American politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Decades
ago, during the Reagan interregnum, he warned that if the Democrats did not renew the robust commitment to economic justice that
characterized FDR's tenure at its best, then surely right-wing populists would seize the opening. As always, whether he was writing
for The Washington Post , Rolling Stone or The Nation (where he served as the ablest of all national affairs
correspondents), Bill was right.
More than 30 years ago, he recognized that "the two-party rivalry is not nearly as significant as it's made to appear" and
counseled that
The power arrangement resembles a shared monopoly, in which two companies have tacitly ceded territories to each other to avoid
costly competition.
Furthermore, the permanent hierarchy of both parties is dominated at the top by a network of pricey Washington lawyers and
lobbyists who represent business interests and collaborate with one another on lobbying the government -- while pretending to
be opponents. These inside players channel their corporate clients' money to the elected politicians. In effect, everyone is on
the same side.
The parties have begun to delineate themselves a bit more in recent years. But not sufficiently, as Bill explained in scorchingly
honest articles for The Nation . He spoke inconvenient truths about the roots of our current politics, especially when he
explained
that "the Democratic Party's crude betrayal of the working class was carried out by Bill Clinton and Al Gore when those 'New Democrats'
won power in 1992. The Clinton-Gore administration swiftly enacted NAFTA, with Republican votes, sealing the deal with Republican
policy-makers and selling out the remnants of organized labor." Bill recognized the necessity of understanding this history in order
to explain the rise of Trump and Trumpism.
Above all, Bill argued that for Democrats to seize the high ground, morally and electorally, they had to stop being a "managerial
party" and reacquaint themselves with the message FDR delivered during an epically successful 1936 reelection run. That was the year
when Roosevelt declared that
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism,
sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government
by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous
in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.
I don't know if Bill had that FDR speech memorized. But he carried its spirit in his heart and soul. And he taught the rest of
us to do the same. He appreciated the history, as all great journalists do. But there was a point to its recollection. He wanted
people to think about how a genuine two-party system might work in the 21st century.
The better part of two decades ago, Bill pointed to the way out when he wrote, for The Nation , on Republican scheming
to roll back the economic and social advances initiated by progressives during the 20th century. It was sound advice then. It is
sounder advice now, as a great wrestling for the soul of the Democratic Party plays out in the fight for the 2020 nomination to take
on Trump.
"Most elected Democrats, I think, now see their role as managerial rather than big reform, and fear that even talking about ideology
will stick them with the right's demon label: 'liberal,'" he suggested. But,
he continued,
If a new understanding of progressive purpose does get formed, one that connects to social reality and describes a more promising
future, the vision will not originate in Washington but among those who see realities up close and are struggling now to change
things on the ground. We are a very wealthy (and brutally powerful) nation, so why do people experience so much stress and confinement
in their lives, a sense of loss and failure? The answers, I suggest, will lead to a new formulation of what progressives want.
The first place to inquire is not the failures of government but the malformed power relationships of American capitalism --
the terms of employment that reduce many workers to powerless digits, the closely held decisions of finance capital that shape
our society, the waste and destruction embedded in our system of mass consumption and production. The goal is, like the right's,
to create greater self-fulfillment but as broadly as possible. Self-reliance and individualism can be made meaningful for all
only by first reviving the power of collective action.
My own conviction is that a lot of Americans are ready to take up these questions and many others. Some are actually old questions
-- issues of power that were not resolved in the great reform eras of the past. They await a new generation bold enough to ask
if our prosperous society is really as free and satisfied as it claims to be. When conscientious people find ideas and remedies
that resonate with the real experiences of Americans, then they will have their vision, and perhaps the true answer to the right
wing.
This was how Bill Greider told the people of the politics that must be. He wrote truthfully, boldly, consistently, without fear
or favor, and without the empty partisanships of these awkward times. He was our North Star.
Just a few years ago, CNN was praising Qassem #Soleimani for being
the driving force behind the defeat of ISIS. Today they call him a "terrorist" and expect
you to believe them.
On Sunday's broadcast of CNN's "State of the Union," 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned
if President Donald Trump's reasons for the Qasem Soleimani assassination was to distract from impeachment.
Warren said, "I think that the question that we ought to focus on is why now? Why not a month ago, and why not a month from now?
And the answer from the administration seems to be that they can't keep their story straight on this. They pointed in all different
directions. And you know, the last time that we watched them do this was the summer over Ukraine. As soon as people started asking
about the conversations between Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine and why aid had been held up to Ukraine, the administration
did the same thing. They pointed in all directions of what was going on. And of course, what emerged then is that this is Donald
Trump just trying to advance Donald Trump's own political agenda. Not the agenda of the United States of America. So what happens
right now? Next week, the president of the United States could be facing an impeachment trial in the Senate. We know that he is deeply
upset about that. I think that people are reasonably asking why this moment? Why does he pick now to take this highly inflammatory,
highly dangerous action that moves us closer to war? We have been at war for 20 years in the Middle East, and we need to stop the
war this the Middle East and not expand it."
Tapper asked, "Are you suggesting that President Trump pulled the trigger and had Qasem Soleimani killed as a distraction from
impeachment?"
Warren said, "Look, I think that people are reasonably asking about the timing and why it is that the administration seems to
have all kinds of different answers. In the first 48 hours after this attack, what did we hear? Well, we heard it was for an imminent
attack, and then we heard, no, no, it is to prevent any future attack, and then we heard that it is from the vice president himself
and no, it is related to 9/11, and then we heard from president reports of people in the intelligence community saying that the whole,
that the threat was overblown. You know, when the administration doesn't seem to have a coherent answer for taking a step like this.
They have taken a step that moves us closer to war, a step that puts everyone at risk, and step that puts the military at risk and
puts the diplomats in the region at risk. And we have already paid a huge price for this war. Thousands of American lives lost, and
a cost that we have paid domestically and around the world. At the same time, look at what it has done in the Middle East, millions
of people who have been killed, who have been injured, who have been displaced. So this is not a moment when the president should
be escalating tensions and moving us to war. The job of the president is to keep us safe, and that means move back from the edge."
Tapper pressed, "Do you believe that President Trump pulled the trigger on this operation as a way to distract from impeachment?
Is that what you think?"
Warren said, "I think it is a reasonable question to ask, particularly when the administration immediately after having taken
this decision offers a bunch of contradictory explanations for what is going on."
She continued, "I think it is the right question to ask. We will get more information as we go forward but look at the timing
on this. Look at what Donald Trump has said afterward and his administration. They have pointed in multiple directions. There is
a reason that he chose this moment, not a month ago and not a month from now, not a less aggressive and less dangerous response.
He had a whole range of responses that were presented to him. He didn't pick one of the other ones. He picked the most aggressive
and the one that moves us closer to war. So what does everybody talk about today? Are we going to war? Are we going to have another
five years, tens, ten years of war in the Middle East, and dragged in once again. Are we bringing another generation of young people
into war? That is every bit of the conversation right now. Donald Trump has taken an extraordinarily reckless step, and we have seen
it before, he is using foreign policy and uses whatever he can to advance the interests of Donald Trump."
"... Bruce E. Levine , a practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, writes and speaks about how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His most recent book is Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person's Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian―Strategies, Tools, and Models (AK Press, September, 2018). His Web site is brucelevine.net ..."
Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously "shit-life syndrome" -- and its resulting
misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.
My state of Ohio is home to many shit-life syndrome sufferers. In the 2016 presidential election ,
Hillary Clinton lost Ohio's 18 electoral votes to Trump. She got clobbered by over 400,000
votes (more than 8%). She lost 80 of Ohio's 88 counties. Trump won rural poorer counties,
several by whopping margins. Trump got the shit-life syndrome vote.
Will Hutton in his 2018 Guardian piece, "
The Bad News is We're Dying Early in Britain – and It's All Down to 'Shit-Life
Syndrome '" describes shit-life syndrome in both Britain and the United States: "Poor
working-age Americans of all races are locked in a cycle of poverty and neglect, amid wider
affluence. They are ill educated and ill trained. The jobs available are drudge work paying the
minimum wage, with minimal or no job security."
The Brookings Institution, in November 2019,
reported : "53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64 -- accounting for 44% of all
workers -- qualify as 'low-wage.' Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual
earnings are about $18,000."
For most of these low-wage workers, Hutton notes: "Finding meaning in life is close to
impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources. Yet turn
on the TV or visit a middle-class shopping mall and a very different and unattainable world
presents itself. Knowing that you are valueless, you resort to drugs, antidepressants and
booze. You eat junk food and watch your ill-treated body balloon. It is not just poverty, but
growing relative poverty in an era of rising inequality, with all its psychological
side-effects, that is the killer."
Shit-life syndrome is not another fictitious illness conjured up by the
psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex to sell psychotropic drugs. It is a reality
created by corporatist rulers and their lackey politicians -- pretending to care about their
minimum-wage-slave constituents, who are trying to survive on 99¢ boxed macaroni and
cheese prepared in carcinogenic water, courtesy of DuPont or some other such low-life
leviathan.
The Cincinnati Enquirer , in November 2019, ran the story: "
Suicide Rate Up 45% in Ohio in Last 11 Years, With a Sharper Spike among the Young ." In
Ohio between 2007 and 2018, the rate of suicide among people 10 to 24 has risen by 56%. The
Ohio Department of Health
reported that suicide is the leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 10‐14 and the
second leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 15‐34, with the suicide rate higher in
poorer, rural counties.
Overall in the United States, "Suicides have increased most sharply in rural communities,
where loss of farming and manufacturing jobs has led to economic declines over the past quarter
century," reports the American Psychological
Association. The U.S. suicide rate has risen 33% from 1999 through 2017 (from 10.5 to 14
suicides per 100,000 people).
In addition to an increasing rate of suicide, drug overdose
deaths rose in the United States from 16,849 in 1999 to 70,237 in 2017, more sharply
increasing in recent years . The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently
reported
that opioids -- mainly synthetic opioids -- were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017
(67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).
Among all states in 2017, Ohio had the second highest rate of drug overdose death (46.3 per
100,000). West Virginia had the highest rate (57.8 per 100,000).
The NPR story was about a study published in JAMA Network Open titled " Association of Chronic
Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016 ," lead authored by
physician James Goodwin. In counties with high rates of opioid use, Trump received 60% of the
vote; but Trump received only 39% of the vote in counties with low opioid use. Opioid use is
prevalent in poor rural counties, as Goodwin reports in his study: "Approximately two-thirds of
the association between opioid rates and presidential voting was explained by socioeconomic
variables."
Goodwin told NPR: "It very well may be that if you're in a county that is dissolving because
of opioids, you're looking around and you're seeing ruin. That can lead to a sense of despair .
. . . You want something different. You want radical change."
Shit-life syndrome sufferers are looking for immediate change, and are receptive to
unconventional politicians.
In 2016, Trump understood that being unconventional, including unconventional obnoxiousness,
can help ratings. So he began his campaign with unconventional serial humiliations of his
fellow Republican candidates to get the nomination; and since then, his unconventionality has
been limited only by his lack of creativity -- relying mostly on the Roy Cohn modeled "Punch
them harder than they punch you" for anyone who disagrees with him.
I talked to Trump voters in 2016, and many of them felt that Trump was not a nice person,
even a jerk, but their fantasy was that he was one of those rich guys with a big ego who needed
to be a hero. Progressives who merely mock this way of thinking rather than create a strategy
to deal with it are going to get four more years of Trump.
The Dems' problem in getting the shit-life syndrome vote in 2020 is that none of their
potential nominees for president are unconventional. In 2016, Bernie Sanders achieved some
degree of unconventionality. His young Sandernistas loved the idea of a curmudgeon
grandfather/eccentric uncle who boldly proclaimed in Brooklynese that he was a "socialist," and
his fans marveled that he was no loser, having in fact charmed Vermonters into electing him to
the U.S. Senate. Moreover, during the 2016 primaries, there were folks here in Ohio who
ultimately voted for Trump but who told me that they liked Bernie -- both Sanders and Trump
appeared unconventional to them.
While Bernie still has fans in 2020, he has done major damage to his "unconventionality
brand." By backing Hillary Clinton in 2016, he resembled every other cowardly politician. I
felt sorry for his Sandernistas, heartbroken after their hero Bernie -- who for most of his
political life had self-identified as an "independent" and a "socialist" -- became a compliant
team player for the corporatist Blue Team that he had spent a career claiming independence
from. If Bernie was terrified in 2016 of risking Ralph Nader's fate of ostracism for defying
the corporatist Blue Team, would he really risk assassination for defying the rich bastards who
own the United States?
So in 2020, this leaves realistic Dems with one strategy. While the Dems cannot provide a
candidate who can viscerally connect with shit-life syndrome sufferers, the Dems can show these
victims that they have been used and betrayed by Trump.
Here in Ohio in counties dominated by shit-life syndrome, the Dems would be wise
not to focus on their candidate but instead pour money into negative advertising,
shaming Trump for making promises that he knew he wouldn't deliver on: Hillary has not been
prosecuted; Mexico has paid for no wall; great manufacturing jobs are not going
to Ohioans ; and most importantly, in their communities, there are now even more suicides,
drug overdose deaths, and grieving families.
You would think a Hollywood Dem could viscerally communicate in 30 seconds: "You fantasized
that this braggart would be your hero, but you discovered he's just another rich asshole
politician out for himself." This strategy will not necessarily get Dems the shit-life syndrome
vote, but will increase the likelihood that these folks stay home on Election Day and not vote
for Trump.
The question is just how clueless are the Dems? Will they convince themselves that shit-life
syndrome sufferers give a shit about Trump's impeachment? Will they convince themselves that
Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg or Warren are so wonderful that shit-life syndrome sufferers will
take them and their campaign promises seriously? Then Trump probably wins again, thanks to both
shit-life syndrome and shit-Dems syndrome. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Bruce E. Levine
"If this succeeds, we'll be well on the path to dictatorship." This seems predicated on
the idea that 'whites' will only be able to hold onto power by Dictatorship. Population
trends suggest whites will still be the largest group [just under half] in 2055. A
considerable group given their, to borrow the phrase, 'privilege'. Add conservative Asian and
even Catholic Latino voters, is it that difficult to envisage a scenario where Republicans
sometimes achieve power without Dictatorship? They are already benefiting from the radical
left helping drive traditional working class white voters to the right [helped by
Republican/Fox etc hyperbole].
Radical left is either idiots, or stooges of intelligence agencies and always has been.
IMHO the idea that " whites" are or will be the force behind the move to the dictatorship is
completely naïve. Dictatorship is needed for financial oligarchy and it is the most
plausible path of development due to another factor -- the collapse of neoliberal ideology and
complete discrediting of neoliberal elite. At least in the USA.
Russiagate should be viewed as an attempt to stage a color revolution and remove the
President by the USA intelligence agencies (in close cooperation with the "Five eyes") -- a
prolog to the establishing of the dictatorship by financial oligarchy
I would view Russiagate is a kind of Beer Hall Putsch with intelligence agencies instead of
national-socialist party. A couple of conspirators might be jailed after Durham investigation
is finished (Hitler was jailed after the putsch), but the danger that CIA will seize the
political power remains. After all KGB was in this role in the USSR for along time. Is the USA
that different? I don't think so. There is no countervailing force: the number of people with
security clearance in the USA exceed five million. Those five million and not "whites" like
some completely naïve people propose is the critical mass needed for the dictatorship. https://news.yahoo.com/durham-surprises-even-allies-statement-202907008.html
The potential explosiveness of Durham's mission was further underscored by the disclosure
that he was examining the role of John O. Brennan, the former CIA director, in how the
intelligence community assessed Russia's 2016 election interference.
BTW "whites" are not a homogeneous group. There is especially abhorrent and dangerous
neoliberal strata of "whites" including members of financial oligarchy, the "professional
class" and "academia" (economics department are completely infected.) as well as MIC
prostitutes in MSM.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777 DiGenova: Comey And Brennan Were 'Coup
Leaders' by Tyler
Durden Wed, 01/01/2020 - 19:30 0 SHARES
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova told OANN 's John Hines that former FBI Director
James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan were "coup leaders" in an attempt to reverse
the outcome of the 2016 US election.
DiGenova says the Obama Justice Department was corrupted under Attorneys General Eric Holder
and Loretta Lynch, "with the authority and knowledge of then-president" Obama, and that a
'stupid and arrogant' Susan Rice was dumb enough to document his knowledge in a January 20th,
2017 email.
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book.
I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on
January 20th because that's exhibit A for Barack Obama - who knew all about this from start
to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of a massive number of Americans
violated so he could get Donald Trump." -Joe diGenova
Moreover, diGenova says that after "all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos
and Michael Flynn," anyone who couldn't see that the "corrupt investigative process of the FBI
and DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état" is an idiot.
"This was not hard. If you're a good prosecutor you look at the facts in the Trump case,
and the Page case, the Flynn case. There's only one conclusion you can come to; none of this
makes any sense. None of these people were evil. None of them. They were framed , and the
whole process was playing out, and you knew it on July 5th 2016, when James Comey announced -
usurping the functions of the Attorney General, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a
case against Hillary Clinton. That was ludicrous! She destroyed 30,000 emails that were under
subpoena. If you or I did that, we would be in prison today . She got a break because she was
Hillary Clinton, and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something
from her when she became president of the United States.
All of these people who watched that news conference and didn't think that it was a
disgrace for the FBI. And then subsequently, watched all this stuff involving Trump and Page
and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn - and couldn't see that the corrupt investigative process
of the FBI and the DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état . I mean you
have to be an idiot. Any first year assistant US attorney would look at all these facts and
say 'there's a coup underway. There's a conspiracy.'
But for those of us thought that, the Washington Post, the New York Times. We were
'conspiracy theorists.' You know what? Pretty damn good theory, it appears today.
" To what extent is the CIA involved in this? " asked Hines.
" Well there's no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire
counterintelligence investigation, " replied diGenova. "It was John Brennan who went to James
Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against
Trump. Brennan's at the heart of this. He went around the world. He enlisted the help of
foreign intelligence services. He's responsible for Joseph Mifsud and other people."
" People do not have even the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan
played in this . He is a monstrously important person, and I underscore monstrously important
person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency - it's equal to what James
Comey has done to the FBI. It's pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the
single worst FBI director in history, regardless of how Mr. Durham treats him."
Brennan was just the puppet. The real question is who the power brokers were behind the
scenes pulling strings and giving all the government officials cover. That's probably what
Durham is/needs to get to the bottom of. Hillary is untouchable until those guys get the book
thrown at them. My guess is the Queen is involved, probably the Vatican and Mossad as
well.
Full agreement with Joe DiGenova. In addition, I believe President Obama was an instigator
of this coup d'état. It could only happen in the intelligence field with his consent.
His whole persona is based on his willingness to calculate political gain and he had no
qualms or ethics. He was hailed as the first "black" President. His role in this coup was
made possible by all the people who thought black people were inferior and needed an
opportunity to get ahead. Depending upon how you look at that, that picture is in tatters.
Black folks are incredibly fortunate to have President Trump who will not blame black folks
for the travesties and destruction wrought by another black man. Would a died in the wool
radical like Hillary Clinton think that way?
The good men of the agencies should punish Comey and Brennan. They have "six ways 'til
Tuesday to get even." Why not teach them a lesson from the inside? Many MANY people in the
agency have been insulted by this and they deserve justice against Comey and Brennan.
Gotta give it to the OAN network. They're not dumb. If this actually DID pan out
(indictments and such, as a result of this investigative stuff, with no help whatsoever from
Barr, etc.), then OAN will be the lead network covering this.
Needless to say, it speaks VOLUMES upon VOLUMES, that Fox News isn't covering this (other
than Hannity).
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book."
Now... let's, for a moment, imagine this scene.
We've already had a Watergate in our history, involving the spying of one party on
another during a presidential campaign season.
These people know how that turned out.
Most of them are lawyers, and at least one is a supposed Constitutional
scholar and professor of Constitutional law.
That's Blo.
Does Rice really expect us to believe they didn't know Crossfire Hurricane was based on
Clinton Campaign-paid for ********?
Wouldn't a law professor president wanna know the basis, and the veracity of the
details, of such a risky operation before authorizing it?
Or are we to believe he merely accepted the assembled "assurances" in this meeting?
Were there presidential meetings about spying on Trump that occurred well before this
one?
"... "Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe, including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win." ..."
"... And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats (Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here in the United States and around the world." ..."
"... The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy." ..."
"... Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context, history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian" nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis. ..."
"... By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies allegedly don't fight wars against one another. ..."
"... George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad policy. ..."
"... Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a mistake. ..."
"... "Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now." ..."
You can hear echoes of progressive realism in the statements of leading progressive
lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna. They have put ending
America's support for the Saudi war on Yemen near the top of the progressive foreign policy
agenda. On the stump, Sanders now singles out the military-industrial complex and the runaway
defense budget for criticism. He promises, among other things, that "we will not continue to
spend $700 billion a year on the military." These are welcome developments. Yet since November
of 2016, something else has emerged alongside the antiwar component of progressive foreign
policy that is not so welcome. Let's call it neoprogressive internationalism, or
neoprogressivism for short.
Trump's administration brought with it the Russia scandal. To attack the president and his
administration, critics revived Cold War attitudes. This is now part of the neoprogressive
foreign policy critique. It places an "authoritarian axis" at its center. Now countries ruled
by authoritarians, nationalists, and kleptocrats can and must be checked by an American-led
crusade to make the world safe for progressive values. The problem with this neoprogressive
narrative of a world divided between an authoritarian axis and the liberal West is what it will
lead to: ever spiraling defense budgets, more foreign adventures, more Cold Wars -- and hot
ones too.
Unfortunately, Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have adopted elements of the
neoprogressive program. At a much remarked upon address at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, the site of Churchill's 1946 address, Sanders put forth a vision of a Manichean
world. Instead of a world divided by the "Iron Curtain" of Soviet Communism, Sanders sees a
world divided between right-wing authoritarians and the forces of progress embodied by American
and Western European progressive values.
"Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or
democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen
American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe,
including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to
win."
A year later, Sanders warned that the battle between the West and an "authoritarian axis"
which is "committed to tearing down a post-Second World War global order that they see as
limiting their access to power and wealth." Sanders calls this "a global struggle of enormous
consequence. Nothing less than the future of the -- economically, socially and environmentally
-- is at stake."
Sanders's focus on this authoritarian axis is one that is shared with his intraparty rivals
at the Center for American Progress (a think-tank long funded by some of the least progressive
regimes on the planet), which he has pointedly criticized for smearing progressive Democrats
like himself. CAP issued a report last September about "the threat presented by opportunist
authoritarian regimes" which "urgently requires a rapid response."
The preoccupation with the authoritarian menace is one Sanders and CAP share with prominent
progressive activists who warn about the creeping influence of what some have cynically hyped
as an "authoritarian Internationale."
Cold War Calling
Senator Warren spelled out her foreign policy vision in a speech at American University in
November 2018. Admirably, she criticized Saudi Arabia's savage war on Yemen, the defense
industry, and neoliberal free trade agreements that have beggared the American working and
middle classes.
"Foreign policy," Warren has said, "should not be run exclusively by the Pentagon." In the
second round of the Democratic primary debates, Warren also called for a nuclear "no first use"
policy.
And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be
one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats
(Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt
capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here
in the United States and around the world."
Warren also sees a rising tide of corrupt authoritarians "from Hungary to Turkey, from the
Philippines to Brazil," where "wealthy elites work together to grow the state's power while the
state works to grow the wealth of those who remain loyal to the leader."
The concern with the emerging authoritarian tide has become a central concern of progressive
writers and thinkers. "Today, around the world," write progressive foreign policy activists
Kate Kinzer and Stephen Miles, "growing authoritarianism and hate are fueled by oligarchies
preying on economic, gender, and racial inequality."
Daniel Nexon, a progressive scholar of international relations, believes that "progressives
must recognize that we are in a moment of fundamental crisis, featuring coordination among
right-wing movements throughout the West and with the Russian government as a sponsor and
supporter."
Likewise, The Nation 's Jeet Heer lays the blame for the rise of global
authoritarianism at the feet of Vladimir Putin, who "seems to be pushing for an international
alt-right, an informal alliance of right-wing parties held together by a shared
xenophobia."
Blithely waving away concerns over sparking a new and more dangerous Cold War between the
world's two nuclear superpowers, Heer advises that "the dovish left shouldn't let Cold War
nightmares prevent them [from] speaking out about it." He concludes: "Leftists have to be ready
to battle [Putinism] in all its forms, at home and abroad."
The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU
professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian
school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute
power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom
of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy."
Likewise, we are seeing the emergence of an "authoritarian school" which posits that the
internal political dynamics of regimes such as Putin's cause them, ineffably, to follow
revanchist, expansionist foreign policies.
Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global
movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context,
history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian"
nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis.
By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the
neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and
neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence
that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies
allegedly don't fight wars against one another.
Yet as Richard Sakwa, a British scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, writes, "it is often
assumed that Russia is critical of the West because of its authoritarian character, but it
cannot be taken for granted that a change of regime would automatically make the country align
with the West."
George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession
with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So
too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith
and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad
policy.
True, some of the economic trends voters in Europe and South America are reacting to are
global, but a diagnosis that links together the rise of Putin and Xi, the elections of Trump in
the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, and Kaczyński in Poland with the
right-wing insurgency movements of the Le Pens in France and Farage in the UK makes little
sense.
Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the
neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to
anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western
interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific
to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a
mistake.
Echoes of Neoconservatism
The progressive foreign policy organization Win Without War includes among its 10 foreign
policy goals "ending economic, racial and gender inequality around the world." The U.S.,
according to WWW, "must safeguard universal human rights to dignity, equality, migration and
refuge."
Is it a noble sentiment? Sure. But it's every bit as unrealistic as the crusade envisioned
by George W. Bush in his second inaugural address, in which he declared, "The survival of
liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best
hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
We know full well where appeals to "universal values" have taken us in the past. Such
appeals are not reliable guides for progressives if they seek to reverse the tide of unchecked
American intervention abroad. But maybe we should consider whether it's a policy of realism and
restraint that they actually seek. Some progressive thinkers are at least honest enough
to admit as much that it is not. Nexon admits that "abandoning the infrastructure of American
international influence because of its many minuses and abuses will hamstring progressives for
decades to come." In other words, America's hegemonic ambitions aren't in and of themselves
objectionable or self-defeating, as long as we achieve our kind of hegemony. Progressive
values crusades bear more than a passing resemblance to the neoconservative crusades to remake
the world in the American self-image.
"Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these
days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which
we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max
Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war
record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist
authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now."
Neoprogressivism, like neoconservatism, risks catering to the U.S. establishment's worst
impulses by playing on a belief in American exceptionalism to embark upon yet another global
crusade. This raises some questions, including whether a neoprogressive approach to the crises
in Ukraine, Syria, or Libya would be substantively different from the liberal interventionist
approach of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Does a neoprogressive foreign policy
organized around the concept of an "authoritarian axis" adequately address the concerns of
voters in the American heartland who disproportionately suffer from the consequences of our
wars and neoliberal economic policies? It was these voters, after all, who won the election for
Trump.
Donald Trump's failure to keep his campaign promise to bring the forever wars to a close
while fashioning a new foreign policy oriented around core U.S. national security interests
provides Democrats with an opportunity. By repeatedly intervening in Syria, keeping troops in
Afghanistan, kowtowing to the Israelis and Saudis, ratcheting up tensions with Venezuela, Iran,
Russia, and China, Trump has ceded the anti-interventionist ground he occupied when he ran for
office. He can no longer claim the mantle of restraint, a position that found support among
six-in-ten Americans in 2016.
Yet with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, for the most part the Democratic field is offering
voters a foreign policy that amounts to "Trump minus belligerence." A truly progressive foreign
policy must put questions of war and peace front and center. Addressing America's post 9/11
failures, military overextension, grotesquely bloated defense budget, and the ingrained
militarism of our political-media establishment are the proper concerns of a progressive U.S.
foreign policy.
But it is one that would place the welfare of our own citizens above all. As such, what is
urgently required is the long-delayed realization of a peace dividend. The post-Cold War peace
dividend that was envisioned in the early 1990s never materialized. Clinton's secretary of
defense Les Aspin strangled the peace dividend in its crib by keeping the U.S. military on a
footing that would allow it to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously. Unipolar
fantasies of "full spectrum dominance" would come later in the decade.
One might have reasonably expected an effort by the Obama administration to realize a
post-bin Laden peace dividend, but the forever wars dragged on and on. In a New Yorker profile
from earlier this year, Sanders asked the right question: "Do we really need to spend more than
the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids
can't afford to go to college?"
The answer is obvious. And yet, how likely is it that progressives will be able realize
their vision of a more just, more equal American society if we have to mobilize to face a
global authoritarian axis led by Russia and China?
FDR's Good Neighbor Policy
The unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade is well behind us now. As the world
becomes more and more multipolar, powers like China, Russia, Iran, India, and the U.S. will
find increasing occasion to clash. A peaceful multipolar world requires stability. And
stability requires balance.
In the absence of stability, none of the goods progressives see as desirable can take root.
This world order would put a premium on stability and security rather than any specific set of
values. An ethical, progressive foreign policy is one which understands that great powers have
security interests of their own. "Spheres of influence" are not 19th century anachronisms, but
essential to regional security: in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere.
It is a policy that would reject crusades to spread American values the world over. "The
greatest thing America can do for the rest of the world," George Kennan once observed, "is to
make a success of what it is doing here on this continent and to bring itself to a point where
its own internal life is one of harmony, stability and self-assurance."
Progressive realism doesn't call for global crusades that seek to conquer the hearts and
minds of others. It is not bound up in the hoary self-mythology of American Exceptionalism. It
is boring. It puts a premium on the value of human life. It foreswears doing harm so that good
may come. It is not a clarion call in the manner of John F. Kennedy who pledged to "to pay any
price, bear any burden." It does not lend itself to the cheap moralizing of celebrity
presidential speechwriters. In ordinary language, a summation of such a policy would go
something like: "we will bear a reasonable price as long as identifiable U.S. security
interests are at stake."
A policy that seeks to wind down the global war on terror, slash the defense budget, and
shrink our global footprint won't inspire. It will, however, save lives. Such a policy has its
roots in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address. "In the field of World policy,"
said Roosevelt, "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor
who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the
neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a
World of neighbors."
What came to be known as the "Good Neighbor" policy was further explicated by FDR's
Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the Montevideo Conference in 1933, when he stated that "No
country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." Historian
David C. Hendrickson sees this as an example of FDR's principles of "liberal pluralism," which
included "respect for the integrity and importance of other states" and "non-intervention in
the domestic affairs of neighboring states."
These ought to serve as the foundations on which to build a truly progressive foreign
policy. They represent a return to the best traditions of the Democratic Party and would likely
resonate with those very same blocs of voters that made up the New Deal coalition that the
neoliberal iteration of the Democratic Party has largely shunned but will sorely need in order
to unseat Trump. And yet, proponents of a neoprogressive foreign policy seem intent on running
away from a popular policy of realism and restraint on which Trump has failed to deliver.
James W. Carden is contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation and a
member of the Board of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.
"... Despite fond youthful memories of Bill Clinton/Kenneth Starr/Monica Lewinsky jokes on late-night television, my interest in the current impeachment saga can pretty much be summed up as follows: "Get back to me when they launch an impeachment inquiry over Yemen ." Watching the House vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump while barely stifling a yawn over the Afghanistan Papers does little to alter my skepticism about this constitutional crisis built for cable news. ..."
"... Progressive commentator Michael Tracey offered this apt summary of Washington's bizarre priorities: "This last week teaches us that temporarily freezing and then unfreezing future military aid to one of our many far-flung client states is [a] huge national emergency but the government systematically lying about every aspect of the longest war in U.S. history is a forgettable non-issue." ..."
Despite fond youthful memories of Bill Clinton/Kenneth Starr/Monica Lewinsky jokes on
late-night television, my interest in the current impeachment saga can pretty much be summed up
as follows: "Get back to me when they launch an impeachment inquiry over Yemen
." Watching the House vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump while barely
stifling a yawn over the
Afghanistan Papers does little to alter my skepticism about this constitutional crisis
built for cable news.
Progressive commentator Michael Tracey offered this apt summary of Washington's bizarre
priorities: "This last week teaches us that temporarily freezing and then unfreezing future
military aid to one of our many far-flung client states is [a] huge national emergency but the
government systematically lying about every aspect of the longest war in U.S. history is a
forgettable non-issue."
Nobody will be impeached for lying about Afghanistan. There will be no intelligence
community whistleblower setting in motion an impeachment inquiry over weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. In fact, the same Nancy Pelosi who ultimately caved to the Resistance shut
down antiwar Democrats who wanted such hearings into George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But here
John Bolton, an advocate
of preventive presidential war during this very administration, may finally get his wish of
being
greeted as a liberator .
Even as Representative Adam Schiff led the drive to impeach Trump, the California Democrat
voted for a defense bill that lavishes the executive branch with money without restraining
presidential war powers. But this seeming inconsistency is practically the point -- the entire
impeachment inquiry was wrapped in hawkish assumptions and rhetoric as liberal Democrats
unthinkingly stumbled into a Cold War 2.0 mindset that few of them this side of Hillary Clinton
would have willingly embraced absent
frequently overhyped Trump-Russia headlines dating back to the 2016 campaign.
No, Trump isn't Jesus Christ being handed
over by Pontius Pilate. His phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasn't "
perfect
" and neither side of this partisan morality tale has exactly covered itself in glory. Rudy
Giuliani's escapades seem particularly likely to end badly. One need not even necessarily
defend Trump's conduct to oppose an impeachment inquiry largely predicated on threat inflation.
Arm Ukraine, Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan testified, so they can "fight the Russians
there and we don't have to fight them here." She could have been starring in a Democratic
reboot of Red Dawn decades after the Soviet Union disintegrated.
There's no question Trump to some extent dangled a White House visit and congressionally
authorized aid to Ukraine before Kyiv in pursuit of the talking point that Joe Biden was under
investigation. The only matters in dispute are how determined the effort was, whether Trump's
motives were at least partially publicly spirited, the degree of the Bidens' shadiness, and why
the aid was ultimately disbursed (Byron York
makes the case that it wasn't necessarily because of the whistleblower).
House Democrats began with a presumption of corrupt intent on all counts and a definition of
foreign election interference elastic enough to include Trump utterances about WikiLeaks and
Hillary's deleted emails but not Ukraine's (smaller, less systematic and arguably less
effective than Russia's) 2016 influence
campaign . And while not all investigations are created equal -- if Hunter Biden's business
dealings are to be probed, it should not be as a favor to any president -- the impeachment
inquiry itself is an investigation of a political rival, who was also investigated during his
previous campaign .
If shortcuts were taken in the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, the origins of
Trump-Ukraine resemble a template for undermining any seriously antiwar or civil libertarian
president. Trump is not that president himself, of course -- his acquiescence to the Beltway
blob on lethal military aid is precisely what increased his leverage over Ukraine -- but some
plausible and even the
occasional Republican could be. Trump's mild rhetorical dissents on foreign policy are
clearly a factor in why he has reason to be suspicious of his own subordinates (it's also why
it is disingenuous to suggest that replacing Trump with Mike Pence is no different than
replacing Bill Clinton with ideologically identical Al Gore or that people who have worked for
Bush, Cheney or John McCain
would have no reason to oppose Trump).
Many Democrats sincerely believed they were impeaching Trump for the least of his crimes,
like Al Capone and tax evasion, and that Robert Mueller let him escape last time. They are also
making a case against Trump's ability to separate personal and national interests in a way that
speaks to his fitness for the office, with Ukraine merely being their specific example. But in
doing so, they are also ratifying a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has failed the
American people, and that's bigger than any one president.
W. James Antle III is the editor of The American Conservative.
Alligator Ed
on Wed, 12/25/2019 - 11:02pm After bravely contesting a nomination she knows she cannot
win, Tulsi Gabbard has and continues to exhibit a tenacious adherence to achievement of
purpose. What is that purpose? I believe it is evident if you only let your eyes see and your
ears hear. Listen to what she says. Looks at what she does.
What this does is obvious. However, please forgive me if I proceed to explain the meaning.
People see what apparently is her home milieu. I've been to Filipino homes for dinner as many
of my nurse friends were Filipino. Tulsi is so human. Despite Hindu belief, she is respectful
to the presence and perhaps the essence of Jesus, and does not sound pandering or
hypocritical.
Getting to know Tulsi at the beginning of her hoped-for (by me) political ascendancy. Get in
on almost the ground floor of what will become an extremely powerful force in future American
life.
Why? What's the hurry?
The more support and the earlier Tulsi receives it propel the campaign. That's what momentum
means: a self-generating growing strength.
One doesn't have to be a Tulsi supporter to hopefully receive some ideas which may not have
occurred to you. This essay does not concern any specific Gabbard policy. What I write here is
what I perceive of her character and thus her selected path. Mind-reading, perhaps. Arm-chair
speculation, possibly.
Tulsi has completed phase 2A in her career. The little that I know of her early life,
especially politically (such as how she voted in HI state legislature) limits a deep
understanding which such knowledge would provide. As the tree is bent, etc.
Phase 1A: youth, formative years, military
Phase 1B: state legislature
Phase 1C: Congress
Phase 2B and possibly subsequent: interim between Congress and Presidential campaigning with
realistic chance of victory.
We are in Phase 2B. Tulsi, as I wrote in another essay, is letting the tainted shroud of
Democrat corruption fall off her shoulders without any effort of her own. The Democrat party is
eating itself alive. It is all things to all people at once. That is a philosophy incapable of
satisfaction.
Omni Democraticorundum in tres partes est (pardon the reference to the opening of Caesar's
Gallic Wars, with liberal substitution by me).
The Dems trifurcate and the division will be neither pleasant nor reconcilable. Tribalism
will be reborn after Trump crushes whomever in 2020.
Tribe one: urban/techno/überkinden.
Tribe two: leftward bound to a place where no politician has ever ventured. Not socialism.
Not Communism. We could call it Fantasy Land, although I fear Disney owns that name.
Tribe three: progressive realists. By using such positive wording, you will correctly
suspect my bias as to which Tribe I belong to.
Once again, policy will not be discussed. Only strategy and reality. Can't have good
strategy without a good grasp of reality. This is why Establidems are bereft of thematic
variability. For the past 3.3 years, they have been singing from a hymn book containing but one
song. You know the title. Orange Man Bad. Yeah, that's it. If they don't like that
title, we establidems have another song for ya. It's called Orange Man Bad. Like that
one, huh? Wazzat, ya didn't like the song the first time. Hey, we thought the song would grown
on you.
Them Dems, noses up, can't see the sidewalk. Oops. Stepped in something there, huh? Oh, yeah
like the Impeachment.
But I digress: The latter part of Phase 2B is not clear. Tulsi will continue to accept small
donor contributions, even after not obtaining the nomination next year. Public appearances will
be important but should be low key with little press attention. Press attention is something
however that won't be available when most desirable. What else Tulsi will do may be to form a
nucleus of like-minded activists, thinkers, and other supporters to promote an agenda for a
more liberal, tolerant society.
If Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be subjected to
the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches. That includes an
examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked well for anyone,"
Pfeiffer said.
What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not
being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only two
things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.
. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about a
month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards
Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point memos,
have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape survivors. Of
course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it ain't
Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have pretty much
completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable? Not for me.
Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last go round absent a
Bernie miracle.
If Sanders' candidacy continues to be taken seriously, he will eventually be
subjected to the scrutiny that Warren and Biden have faced for prolonged stretches.
That includes an examination of his electability. "That conversation has never worked
well for anyone," Pfeiffer said.
What a bunch of hypocritical horseshit. Bernie not getting scrutiny? In 2016, when not
being derided for this, that or the other, Bernie was always scrutinized. There are only
two things voters have learned since the DNC 2016 convention:
1. Bernie had a heart attack
2. Bernie supported H. Rodent Clinton in the general election.
@Wally
She might back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a
neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not
campaign otherwise.
. . . and to the much noted "Bernie blackout" up until now this time around.
It's gotten to the point given the polls and the first primary in being held in about
a month where TPTB in conjunction with the MSM can no longer afford to turn a blind eye
towards Bernie. It's gonna get really nasty.
The most recent tropes on the twitters, probably in response to Brock talking point
memos, have been pushing Bernie as an anti-Semite and him purportedly triggering rape
survivors. Of course it's horsehit but it's the propagandistic method of the Big Lie.
I'm genuinely curious. How will you react if Tulsi endorses the Dem nominee and it
ain't Bernie? Bernie's endorsement of she-who-shall-not-be-named in 2016 seems to have
pretty much completely soured him to you. Endorsing Biden better? Or at least acceptable?
Not for me. Bernie doing so in 2016 I could understand and forgive. But this is my last
go round absent a Bernie miracle.
. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she never
and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy record
regarding domestic affairs.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might
back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a
neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not
campaign otherwise.
. . . to campaign in support of their candidacies.
Maybe Biden will accept her support. I've still never been able to figure why she
never and probably still won't take any shots at his warmongering and otherwise cruddy
record regarding domestic affairs.
@Alligator
Ed@Alligator
Ed be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would feel
comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone but
Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a Neutral
Party.
#2.1.1.1.1 She might
back Yang--who won't get nominated. But I hope she doesn't do anything more than a
neutral statement, somewhat to the effect that "We must defeat Donald Trump", then not
campaign otherwise.
@wokkamile
Her dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC
convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
#2.1.1.1.1.1
#2.1.1.1.1.1 be unfamiliar with the neutral position. Though I wonder if she would
feel comfortable dipping into that well again given how much grief she got the last
time.
Of course, if she again puts it in Neutral, and doesn't support the D nominee (anyone
but Bloomberg), she will be finished as a Dem pol. She might as well go off and start a
Neutral Party.
Don't forget that 15% state threshold for eligibility to be awarded delegates.
#2.1.1.1.1.1.2 Her
dismissal papers will be submitted to her after she is barred entry into the DNC
convention, regardless of how many delegates she may have won.
I will be surprised if Tulsi gets so much as one delegate.
More than a few knowledgeable people think he has a very good shot of winning California.
I am less optimistic about NYS but I think he will do well enough to get a good number of
delegates especially if he does well in the earlier primaries (NYS comes April 28).
I don't feel solidly about making any kind of predictions at this point but given the
nature of the Democratic Party, I don't see it as falling into oblivion anytime soon or in
our lifetimes.
As far as Bernie goes, I am not optimistic but I still have some hope. I still fervantly
believe that his candidacy is the best chance we will have in our lifetimes of bringing about
any substantial change -- and if he and his critical mass of supporters can't pull it off
this time around, we're all phluckled big time, even alligators, in terms of combating
climate change and putting a kabosh on endless wars. I wish you good future luck with Tulsi
though. I just don't see it. But I've been wrong on more than one occasion in my life.
"... The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop. ..."
"... The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State
Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence
personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance
of power in the lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence
background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently
clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq,
who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the
first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where,
as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone
warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare. Elissa Slotkin
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called
"Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan,
which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing
the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of
the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that,
with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features
a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served
as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national
security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent
Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence
agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
CNN's "State of the Union" program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination
as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a "career civil servant." However, the Jones
for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, "Gina entered the US Air
Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy" (the
last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).
According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as "senior advisor for trade enforcement,"
a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the
Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose
national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the
Trump administration.
divideand conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among
others, especially those less powerful, so that they cannot unite in opposition.
I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that
are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim
that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that
group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can
mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set
of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something
new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy
of soft neoliberals.
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been
important to politics. But neoliberalism's radical individualism has increasingly raised two
interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity
groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity.
Self-government requires uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared
future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the
political community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part
of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame
racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within
society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and
marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that
further undermines the preconditions for a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a
shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of
class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which
individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this
means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and
thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in
politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the
space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and
austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the
very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of
the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better than economic
policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the
war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal
democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that
swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic
State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are
dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a
peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands
dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds
of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those
motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as
humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment
have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go
together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening China to
trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought
Russia would become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were
wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was
desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They
were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with
them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political
strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things
became much more clear.
Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represent a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their
primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it
was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower
middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with Brexit) and that where
identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics
as the political strategy of the "soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the
suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism,
resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now
is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups, such as we can find in
corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of
medical professionals, etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most
problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because
the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they
can't be solved within this framework.
I don't think Warren is a stalking horse for neoliberalism or whatever, but her inability
to fight back against bad press (combined with her occasional baffling decisions to give
herself bad press) is a big mark against her candidacy. There will be bad press for either of
them.
Trump can be impeached as a war criminal just for his false flag Douma attack (along with
members of his administration). But Neoliberal Dems and frst of all Pelosi are war criminals too,
with Pelosi aiding and abetting war criminal Bush.
So this is a variation of the theme of Lavrentiy Beria most famous quote: "Show me a
man and I will find you a crime"
I think tose neolib Dems who supported impeachment disqualified themselves from the running.
That includes Warren, who proved to be a very weak, easily swayed politician. It is quote
probably that they increased (may be considerably) chances of Trump reelection, but pushing
independents who were ready to abandon him, back into Trump camp. Now Trump is able to present
himself as a victim of neoliberal Dems/neocons witch hunt.
The only real check left is impeachment. It is rarely invoked and (until very recently) has
atrophied as a credible threat. But that doesn't make it any less
indispensable.
The problem was exacerbated by the Clinton impeachment fiasco, which history has proved
foolhardy. (I supported it at the time, but I was a government lawyer then, not a public
commentator.) Republicans were sufficiently spooked by the experience that they seemed to
regard impeachment as obsolete. Faithless Execution countered that this was the wrong
lesson to take from the affair. Clinton's impeachment was a mistake because (a) his conduct,
though disgraceful and indicative of unfitness, did not implicate the core responsibilities of
the presidency; and more significantly, (b) the public, though appalled by the behavior,
strongly opposed Clinton's removal. The right lesson was that impeachment must be reserved for
grave misconduct that involves the president's essential Article II duties; and that because
impeachment is so deeply divisive, it should never be launched in the absence of a public
consensus that transcends partisan lines.
This is why, unlike many opponents of President Trump's impeachment, I have never questioned
the legitimacy of the Democratic-controlled House's investigations of misconduct allegations
against the president. I believe the House must act as a body (investigations should not be
partisan attacks under the guise of House inquiries), and it must respect the lawful and
essential privileges of the executive branch; but within those parameters, Congress has the
authority and responsibility to expose executive misconduct.
Moreover, while egregious misconduct will usually be easy to spot and grasp, that will not
always be the case. When members of Congress claim to see it, they should have a fair
opportunity to expose and explain it. To my mind, President Obama was the kind of chief
executive that the Framers feared, but this was not obvious because he was not committing
felonies. Instead, he was consciously undermining our constitutional order. He usurped the
right to dictate law rather than execute it. His extravagant theory of executive discretion to
"waive" the enforcement of laws he opposed flouted his basic constitutional duty to execute the
laws faithfully. He and his underlings willfully and serially deceived Congress and the public
on such major matters as Obamacare and the Benghazi massacre. They misled Congress on, and
obstructed its investigation of, the outrageous Fast and Furious "gun-walking" operation, in
connection with which a border patrol agent was murdered. With his Iran deal, the president
flouted the Constitution's treaty process and colluded with a hostile foreign power to withhold
information from Congress, in an arrangement that empowered (and paid cash ransom to) the
world's leading sponsor of anti-American terrorism.
My critics fairly noted that I opposed Obama politically, and therefore contended that I was
masquerading as a constitutional objection what was really a series of policy disputes. I don't
think that is right, though, for two reasons.
First, my impeachment argument was not that Obama was pursuing policies I deeply opposed. I
was very clear that elections have consequences, and the president had every right to press his
agenda. My objection was that he was imposing his agenda lawlessly, breaking the limitations
within which the Framers cabined executive power, precisely to prevent presidents from becoming
tyrants. If allowed to stand, Obama precedents would permanently alter our governing framework.
Impeachment is there to protect our governing framework.
Second, I argued that, my objections notwithstanding, Obama should not be impeached in the
absence of a public consensus for his removal. Yes, Republicans should try to build that case,
try to edify the public about why the president's actions threatened the Constitution and its
separation of powers. But they should not seek to file articles of impeachment simply because
they could -- i.e., because control of the House theoretically gave them the numbers to do it.
The House is not obliged to file impeachment articles just because there may be impeachable
conduct. Because impeachment is so divisive, the Framers feared that it could be triggered on
partisan rather than serious grounds. The two-thirds supermajority requirement for Senate
conviction guards against that: The House should not impeach unless there is a reasonable
possibility that the Senate would remove -- which, in Obama's case, there was not.
I also tried to focus on incentives. If impeachment were a credible threat, and Congress
began investigating and publicly exposing abuses, a sensible president would desist in the
misconduct, making it unnecessary to proceed with impeachment. On the other hand, a failed
impeachment effort would likely embolden a rogue president to continue abusing power. If your
real concern is executive lawlessness, then impeaching heedlessly and against public opinion
would be counterproductive.
I've taken the same tack with President Trump.
The objections to Trump are very different from those to Obama. He is breaking not laws but
norms of presidential behavior and decorum. For the most part, I object to this. There are lots
of things about our government that need disruption, but even disruptive presidents should be
mindful that they hold the office of Washington and Lincoln and aspire to their dignity, even
if their greatness is out of reach.
That said, impeachment is about serious abuse of the presidency's core powers, not behavior
that is intemperate or gauche. Critics must be mindful that the People, not the pundits, are
sovereign, and they elected Donald Trump well aware of his flaws. That he turns out to be as
president exactly what he appeared to be as a candidate is not a rationale for impeaching
him.
The president's misconduct on Ukraine is small potatoes. Democrats were right to expose it,
and we would be dealing with a more serious situation if the defense aid appropriated by
Congress had actually been denied, rather than inconsequentially delayed. If Democrats had
wanted to make a point about discouraging foreign interference in American politics
(notwithstanding their long record of encouraging it), that would have been fine. They could
have called for the president's censure, which would have put Republicans on the defensive.
Ukraine could have been incorporated as part of their 2020 campaign that Trump should be
defeated, despite a surging economy and relative peace.
Conducting an impeachment inquiry is one thing, but for the House to take the drastic step
of impeaching the president is abusive on this record. Yes, it was foolish of Trump to mention
the Bidens to President Zelensky and to seek Ukraine's help in investigating the Bidens. There
may well be corruption worth probing, but the president ought to leave that to researchers in
his campaign. If there is something that a government should be looking into, leave that to the
Justice Department, which can (and routinely does) seek foreign assistance when necessary. The
president, however, should have stayed out of it. Still, it is absurd to posit, as Democrats
do, that, by not staying out of it, the president threatened election integrity and U.S.
national security. Such outlandish arguments may make Ukraine more of a black eye for Democrats
than for the president.
But whoever ultimately bears the brunt of the impeachment push, I have to ask myself a hard
question: Is this the world I was asking for when I wrote a book contending that, for our
system to work as designed, impeachment has to be a credible threat? I don't think so . . . but
I do worry about it.
Back to the Clinton impeachment. I tried to make the point that that impeachment effort --
against public opinion, and based on misconduct that, while dreadful, was not central to the
presidency -- has contributed significantly to the poisonous politics we have today. Democrats
have been looking for payback ever since, and now they have it -- in a way that is very likely
to make impeachment more routine in the future.
I don't see how our constitutional system can work without a viable impeachment remedy. But
I may have been wrong to believe that we could be trusted to invoke the remedy responsibly. I
used to poke fun at pols who would rather hide under their desks than utter the dreaded I-word.
Turns out they knew something I didn't.
"Change we can believe in" the second series ? That's a real warning sign ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... A few weeks ago I read in this spot that while Clinton people hate Sanders and like Warren, Obama was pushing Buttigieg because Warren was such a pain in his ass. Seems he's finally given his signal. Hopefully it's the kiss of death for both Warren and Buttigieg. ..."
"... as the neoliberal corporate Democrats which she is aligning herself with are a sinking ship .. ..."
So, the fact that Obama is willing to put in a good word for Warren on behalf of the
wealthy elite should give you a clue as to which side Warren is really on. While many
non-political "normies" look upon the Obama years with rose-tinted glasses, I wonder if the
disillusionment that many people had in retrospect with Obama has sunk in to mainstream
political consciousness yet. If that is the case, an Obama endorsement might actually
backfire among progressives, seeing as how it has become evident that Obama was basically a
silver-tongued neoliberal in the same mold as Clinton and Pelosi.
I know that Warren is a political careerist at heart, but I was willing to give her the
benefit of the doubt when she first launched her 2020 presidential campaign. However, it has
become increasingly clear that she has hitched her wagon to the wrong horse as the neoliberal
corporate Democrats which she is aligning herself with are a sinking ship. I honestly do not
think that she would even be fit to be Sander's vice presidential pick at this point
considering how wide the political gulf between Warren and Sanders actually is. A better
choice would be Nina Turner as Sander's running mate, with Tulsi Gabbard as his Secretary of
State if he gets that far.
My guess is that this is why he's working behind the scenes, minimizing the chances of a
backfire on the left. Of course, how behind-the-scenes is it if it's reported by Politico?
Still.
I'm actually undecided on Warren. There was that story last week about her supposedly
pushing Hillary in 2016 to name decent people to her cabinet if elected. But then you have to
ask why that particular story surfaced at the particular time when Warren was sinking in the
polls.
If true, though, and if what the new Politico story says about her clashes with Obama are
true, maybe Warren isn't quite as objectionable as we tend to think. Then again, she came
right out last week (I believe) and said Medicare for All would be a matter of choice under
her plan, emphasizing that "choice" factor.
So I'm confused. But maybe that's what she, her campaign and various surrogates want at
this stage.
It starts with an ambitious goal: consistent with the objectives of the Green New Deal,
the Pentagon should achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and
infrastructure by 2030.
having the pentagon 'lead the fight' against climate change is akin to appointing prince
andrew as head of the global task force against pedophilia and child trafficking.
A few weeks ago I read in this spot that while Clinton people hate Sanders and like
Warren, Obama was pushing Buttigieg because Warren was such a pain in his ass. Seems he's
finally given his signal. Hopefully it's the kiss of death for both Warren and
Buttigieg.
A few weeks ago I read in this spot that while Clinton people hate Sanders and like
Warren, Obama was pushing Buttigieg because Warren was such a pain in his ass. Seems he's
finally given his signal. Hopefully it's the kiss of death for both Warren and
Buttigieg.
Buttigieg takes no votes from Sanders. While Warren does on the margins. I think Obama's
calculation is simple as that. She also has special appeal to the virtue signaling liberals
that are Obama's base.
as the neoliberal corporate Democrats which she is aligning herself with are a sinking
ship ..
Bingo. Trump's letter goes right to the heart of it. These clowns are completely exposed
and Obama hawking Warren to donors while the blob talks up a gay McKinsey/CIA Indiana Mayor
shows just how far they have fallen.
It would be impossible for Trump to re-energize his base in any other way. Pelosi acts as
covert agent for Trump re-election? Peloci calculation that she can repar "Mueller effect" of
2018 with this impeachment proved to be gross miscalculation.
Warren who stupidly and enthusiastically jumped into this bandwagon will be hurt. She is such
a weak politician that now it looks like she does not belong to the club. Still in comparison
with Trump she might well be an improvement as she has Trump-like economic program, which Trump
betrayed and neutered. And her foreign policy can't be worse then Trump foreign policy. It is
just impossible.
I am convinced that the Dems are not actually interested or focused on defeating Trump, or
they would adopt an effective strategy. The question I keep wrestling with is, what is the point
to the strategy that is so ineffective?
Notable quotes:
"... The fact that the impeachment is dead in the water, by Pelosi's own admission , is evident in Trump's being adamant that indeed it must be sent to the Senate – where he knows he'll be exonerated. But even if it doesn't go to the Senate, what we're left with still appears as a loss for Democrats. Both places are his briar patch. This makes all of this a win-win for team Trump. ..."
"... fake impeachment procedure ..."
"... For in a constitutional republic like the United States, what makes an impeachment possible is when the representatives and the voters are in communion over the matter. This would normally be reflected in a mid-term election, like say for example the mid-term Senatorial race in 2018 where Democrats failed to take control. Control of the Senate would reflect a change of sentiment in the republic, which in turn and not coincidentally, would be what makes for a successful impeachment. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi is evidently extraordinarily cynical. Her politics appears to be 'they deserve whatever they believe'. ..."
"... little else can explain the reasoning behind her claim that she will 'send the impeachment to the Senate' as soon as she 'has assurances and knows how the Senate will conduct the impeachment', except that it came from the same person who told the public regarding Obamacare that we have to 'We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.". ..."
"... "We have been attacked. We are at war. Imagine this movie script: A former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his motherland, plots a course for revenge – taking advantage of the chaos, he works his way up through the ranks of a post-soviet Russia and becomes president. ..."
"... He establishes an authoritarian regime, then he sets his sights on his sworn enemy – the United States. And like the KGB spy that he is, he secretly uses cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world. Using social media to spread propaganda and false information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their political processes, even their neighbors. And he wins." ..."
"... We'll say we impeached him, because we did, and we'll say he was impeached. We'll declare victory, and go home. This will make him unelectable because of the stigma of impeachment. ..."
And so it came to pass, that in the deep state's frenzy of
electoral desperation, the 'impeachment' card was played. The hammer has fallen. Nearly the
entirety of the legacy media news cycle has been dedicated to the details, and not really
pertinent details, but the sorts of details which presume the validity of the charges against
Trump in the first place. Yes, they all beg the question. What's forgotten here is that the use
of this process along clearly partisan lines, and more – towards clearly partisan aims
– is a very serious symptom of the larger undoing of any semblance of stability in the US
government.
The fact that the impeachment is dead in the water,
by Pelosi's own admission , is evident in Trump's being adamant that indeed it must be sent
to the Senate – where he knows he'll be exonerated. But even if it doesn't go to the
Senate, what we're left with still appears as a loss for Democrats. Both places are his briar
patch. This makes all of this a win-win for team Trump.
Only in a country that produces so much fake news at the official level, could there be a
fake impeachment procedure made purely for media consumption, with no real or tangible
possible victory in sight.
For in a constitutional republic like the United States, what makes an impeachment
possible is when the representatives and the voters are in communion over the matter. This
would normally be reflected in a mid-term election, like say for example the mid-term
Senatorial race in 2018 where Democrats failed to take control. Control of the Senate would
reflect a change of sentiment in the republic, which in turn and not coincidentally, would be
what makes for a successful impeachment.
Don't forget, this impeachment is fake
Nancy Pelosi is evidently extraordinarily cynical. Her politics appears to be 'they
deserve whatever they believe'. And her aim appears to be the one who makes them believe
things so that they deserve what she gives them. For little else can explain the reasoning
behind her claim that she will 'send the impeachment to the Senate' as soon as she 'has
assurances and knows how the Senate will conduct the impeachment', except that it came from the
same person who told the public regarding Obamacare that we have to 'We have to pass the bill
so that you can find out what is in it.".
In both cases, reality is turned on its head – for rather we will know how the Senate
intends to conduct its procedure as soon as it has the details, which substantively includes
the impeachment documents themselves, in front of them, and likewise, legislators ought to know
what's in a major piece of legislation before they vote either way on it. Pelosi's assault on
reason, however, isn't without an ever growing tide of resentment from within the progressive
base of the party itself.
We have quickly entered into a new era which increasingly resembles the broken political
processes which have struck many a country, but none in living memory a country like the US.
Now elected officials push judges to prosecute their political opponents, constitutional crises
are manufactured to pursue personal or political vendettas, death threats and rumors of coups
coming from media and celebrities being fed talking points by big and important players from
powerful institutions.
This 'impeachment' show really takes the cake, does it not? We will recall shortly after
Trump was elected, narrator for hire Morgan Freeman made a shocking public service
announcement. It was for all intents and purposes, a PSA notifying the public that a military
coup to remove Trump would be legitimate and in order. Speaking about this PSA, and recounting
what was said, would in any event read as an exaggeration, or some allegorical paraphrasing
made to prove a point. Jogging our memories then, Freeman spoke to tens of millions of viewers
on television and YouTube
saying :
"We have been attacked. We are at war. Imagine this movie script: A former KGB spy,
angry at the collapse of his motherland, plots a course for revenge – taking advantage of
the chaos, he works his way up through the ranks of a post-soviet Russia and becomes
president.
He establishes an authoritarian regime, then he sets his sights on his sworn enemy
– the United States. And like the KGB spy that he is, he secretly uses cyber warfare to
attack democracies around the world. Using social media to spread propaganda and false
information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their
political processes, even their neighbors. And he wins."
This really set the tone for the coming years, which have culminated in this manufactured
'impeachment' crisis, really befitting a banana republic.
It would be the height of dishonesty to approach this abuse of the impeachment procedure as
if until this moment, the US's own political culture and processes were in good shape. Now
isn't the time for the laundry list of eroded constitutional provisions, which go in a thousand
and one unique directions. The US political system is surely broken, but as is the case with
such large institutions several hundreds of years old, its meltdown appears to happen in slow
motion to us mere mortals. And so what we are seeing today is the next phase of this
break-down, and really ought to be understood as monumental in this sense. Once again revealed
is the poor judgment of the Democratic Party and their agents, tools, warlords, and
strategists, the same gang who sunk Hillary Clinton's campaign on the rocks of hubris.
Nancy Pelosi also has poor judgment, and these short-sighted and self-interested moves on
her part stand a strong chance of backfiring. Her role in this charade is duly noted. This
isn't said because of any disagreement over her aims, but rather that in purely objective terms
it just so happens that her aims and her actions are out of synch – that is unless she
wants to see Trump re-elected. Her aims are her aims, our intention is to connect these to
their probable results, without moral judgments.
The real problem for the Democrats, the DNC, and any hopes for the White House in 2020, is
that this all has the odor of a massive backfire, and something that Trump has been counting on
happening. When one's opponent knows what is probable, and when they have a track record for
preparing very well for such, it is only a question of what Trump's strategy is and
how this falls into it, not whether there is one.
Imagine being a fly on the wall of the meeting with Pelosi where it was decided to go
forward with impeachment in the House of Representatives, despite not having either sufficient
traction in the Senate or any way to control the process that the Senate uses.
It probably went like this: ' We'll say we impeached him, because we did, and we'll say
he was impeached. We'll declare victory, and go home. This will make him unelectable because of
the stigma of impeachment. '
Informed citizens are aware that whatever their views towards Trump, nothing he has done
reaches beyond the established precedent set by past presidents. Confused citizens on the other
hand, are believing the manufactured talking points thrown their way, and the idea that a US
president loosely reference a quid pro quo in trying to sort a corruption scandal in dealings
with the president of a foreign country, is some crazy, new, never-before-done and
highly-illegal thing. It is none of those things though.
Unfortunately, not needless to say, the entirety of the direct, physical evidence against
Trump solely consists of the now infamous transcript of the phone call which he had with
Ukrainian president Zelensky. The rest is hearsay, a conspiracy narrative, and entirely
circumstantial. As this author has noted in numerous pieces, Biden's entire candidacy rests
precisely upon his need to be a candidate so that any normal investigation into the wrongdoings
of himself or his son in Ukraine, suddenly become the targeted persecution of a political
opponent of Trump.
Other than this, it is evident that Biden stands little chance – the same polling
institutions which give him a double-digit lead were those which foretold a Clinton electoral
victory. Neither their methods nor those paying and publishing them, have substantively
changed. Biden's candidacy, like the impeachment, is essentially fake. The real contenders for
the party's base are Sanders and Gabbard.
The Democratic Party Activist Base Despises Pelosi as much as Clinton
The Democratic Party has two bases, one controlled by the DNC and the Clintons, and one
which consists of its energized rank-and-file activists who are clearer in their populism,
anti-establishment and ant-corporate agenda. Candidates like Gabbard and Sanders are closest to
them politically, though far from perfect fits. Their renegade status is confirmed by the
difficulties they have with visibility – they are the new silent majority of the party.
The DNC base, on the other hand, relies on Rachel Maddow, Wolf Blitzer, and the likes for their
default talking points, where they have free and pervasive access to legacy media. In the
context of increased censorship online, this is not insignificant.
Among the important reasons this 'impeachment' strategy will lose is that it will not
energize the second and larger base. Even though this more progressive and populist base is
also more motivated, they have faced – as has the so-called alt-light – an
extraordinarily high degree of censorship on social media. Despite all the censorship, the
Democrats' silent majority are rather well-informed people, highly motivated, and tend to be
vocal in their communities and places of work. Their ideas move organically and virally among
the populace.
This silent majority has a very good memory, and they know very well who Nancy Pelosi is,
and who she isn't.
The silent majority remembers that after years of the public backlash against Bush's war
crimes, crimes against humanity, destruction of remaining civil liberties with the Patriot Act,
torture, warrantless search – and the list goes on and on – Democrats managed to
retake the lower house in 2006. If there was a legitimate reason for an impeachment, it would
have been championed by Pelosi against Bush for going to war using false, falsified,
manufactured evidence about WMD in Iraq. At the time, Pelosi squashed the hopes of her own
electorate, reasoning that such moves would be divisive, that they would distract from the
Democrats' momentum to take the White House in '08, that Bush had recently (?) won his last
election, and so on. Of course these were real crimes, and the reasons not to prosecute may
have as much to do with Pelosi's own role in the war industry. Pelosi couldn't really push
against Bush over torture, etc. because she had been on an elite congressional committee
– the House Intelligence Committee – during the Bush years in office which starting in
2003 was dedicated to making sure that torture could and would become normalized and
entirely legal.
It seems Pelosi can't even go anywhere with this impeachment on Trump today, and therefore
doesn't even really plan to submit it to the Senate for the next stage .
The political stunt was pulled, a fireworks show consisting of one lonely rocket that sort of
fizzled off out of sight.
Trump emerges unscathed, and more to the point, we are closer to the election and his base
is even more energized. Pelosi spent the better part of three years inoculating the public
against any significance being attached to any impeachment procedure. Pelosi cried wolf so many
times, and Trump has made good on the opportunities handed to him to get his talking points in
order and to condition his base to receive and process the scandals in such and such way. This
wouldn't have been possible without Pelosi's help. Thanks in part to Pelosi and the DNC, Trump
appears primed for re-election.
Trump energizes his base, and the DNC suppresses and disappoints theirs. That's where the
election will be won or lost.
John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr.
Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed
on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former
F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.'s views of a notorious dossier of
assertions about Russia and Trump associates.
... ... ...
Mr. Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments,
including May
2017 testimony to Congress , about both the dossier and about any debate among the
intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia's interference, the people said.
... ... ..
"The president bore the burden of probably one of the greatest conspiracy theories --
baseless conspiracy theories -- in American political history," Mr. Barr told Fox News. He has
long expressed skepticism that the F.B.I. had enough information to begin its inquiry in 2016,
publicly criticizing an inspector general report released last week that affirmed that the
bureau did.
Mr. Barr has long been
interested in the conclusion about Mr. Putin ordering intervention on Mr. Trump's behalf,
perhaps the intelligence report's most explosive assertion. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. reported
high confidence in the conclusion, while the N.S.A., which conducts electronic surveillance,
had a moderate degree of confidence.
... ... ...
Critics of the intelligence assessment, like Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of
Utah, said the C.I.A.'s sourcing failed to justify the high level of confidence about Moscow's
intervention on behalf of Mr. Trump.
"I don't agree with the conclusion, particularly that it's such a high level of confidence,"
Mr. Stewart said, citing raw intelligence that he said he reviewed.
"I just think there should've been allowances made for some of the ambiguity in that and
especially for those who didn't also share in the conclusion that it was a high degree of
confidence," he added.
Mr. Durham's investigators also want to know more about the discussions that prompted
intelligence community leaders to include Mr. Steele's allegations in the
appendix of their assessment.
Mr. Brennan has repeatedly said, including in his 2017 congressional testimony, that the
C.I.A. did not rely on the dossier when it helped develop the assessment, and the former
director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has also testified before lawmakers that the
same was true for the intelligence agencies more broadly. But Mr. Trump's allies have long
asked pointed questions about the dossier, including how it was used in the intelligence
agency's assessment.
Some C.I.A. analysts and officials insisted that the dossier be left out of the assessment,
while some F.B.I. leaders wanted to include it and bristled at its relegation to the appendix.
Their disagreements were captured in the highly anticipated report released last week
by Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, examining aspects of the
F.B.I.'s Russia investigation.
Mr. Steele's information "was a topic of significant discussion within the F.B.I. and with
the other agencies participating in drafting" the declassified intelligence assessment about
Russia interference, Mr. Horowitz wrote. The F.B.I. shared Mr. Steele's information with the
team of officials from multiple agencies drafting the assessment.
Mr. Comey also briefed Mr. Brennan and other top Obama administration intelligence officials
including the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, and Mr. Clapper
about the bureau's efforts to assess the information in the dossier, Mr. Comey told the
inspector general. He said that analysts had found it to be "credible on its face."
... ... ...
Andrew G. McCabe, then the deputy director of the F.B.I., pushed back, according to the
inspector general report, accusing the intelligence chiefs of trying to minimize Mr. Steele's
information.
Ultimately the two sides compromised by placing Mr. Steele's material in the appendix. After
BuzzFeed News published the dossier in January 2017, days after the intelligence assessment
about Russia's election sabotage was released, Mr. Comey complained to Mr. Clapper about his
decision to publicly state that the intelligence community "has not made any judgment" about
the document's reliability.
Mr. Comey said that the F.B.I. had concluded that Mr. Steele was reliable, according to the
inspector general report. Mr. Clapper ignored Mr. Comey, the report said.
AG Barr Blasts Soros For Stoking Hatred Of Police by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/22/2019 - 21:00 0
SHARES
"They have started to win in a number of cities and they have, in my view, not given the
proper support to the police. "
That is the warning that Attorney General William Barr has for Americans, as he told
Fox News' Martha MacCallum in a recent interview that liberal billionaire George Soros has
been bankrolling radical prosecutor candidates in cities across the country .
"There's this recent development [where] George Soros has been coming in, in largely
Democratic primaries where there has not been much voter turnout and putting in a lot of
money to elect people who are not very supportive of law enforcement and don't view the
office as bringing to trial and prosecuting criminals but pursuing other social agendas, "
Barr told Martha MacCallum.
Specifically, Barr warned that if the trend continues, it will lead to more violent crime ,
ading that the process of electing these prosecutors will likely cause law enforcement officers
to consider whether the leadership in their municipality "has their back."
"They can either stop policing or they can move to a jurisdiction more hospitable," he
said.
"We could find ourselves in a position that communities that are not supporting the police
may not get the police protection they need."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UnnnpiYQODk
The Washington Post recently reported that while two Virginia prosecutorial candidates -
funded by Soros' Justice and Public Safety PAC - have never prosecuted a case in a state court,
they beat candidates with more than 60 years of experience between them .
Where is AOC in all this? She was the prime mover on impeachment, specifically impeachment
over a phone call rather than concentration camps and genocide.
And now with impeachment she gave Pelosi cover to sell the country out again.
I was wondering why many libreral centrists were expreasing admiration for her, a
socialist. Maybe they recognized something?
"Prime mover"? What planet are you from? They were Schiff, Nadler, and Pelosi. Did you
miss that Russiagate was in motion while AOC was still tending bar? AOC isn't even on any of
the key committees (Judiciary and Intel).
I shouldn't have said THE prime mover, but ONE OF the prime movers in the House in
actually pushing it over the line against Pelosi's opposition. It seems like the House Dem
consensus ever since Russiagate was just to tease their base with it and milk the suspense
for all it was worth, until AOC, among others, rallied the base.
There were other reps who pushed for impeachment, but AOC has one of the biggest platforms
and crucially, expanded popular support for impeachment outside the MSNBC crowd. So yes, a
key figure in the political/PR effort to move from conspiracy theories to actual
impeachment.
"AOC is one of the highest-profile members of Congress and she blasted Pelosi for
resisting impeachment since May."
Liz Warren is the one who made it a part of her campaign before anyone else. Rashida
Tlaib was the one who made t-shirt with her "impeach the mf'er" quote on it. A lot of them
were "blasting" Pelosi for dithering. AOC also "blasted" her for giving ICE more money and a
lot of their things .
Your central focus on AOC for the impeachment fiasco while ignoring her active role in
spotlighting so many other issues of importance which no one else speaks about is
interesting. Did you catch any of her speaking at the Sanders rally in LA today? Any other
"high profile" Dems pushing such important issues and campaigns?
Thanks for this comment. I don't trust *any of them* except Sanders, but AOC has been
making more good noises than bad, and to claim that it was she who's been driving Pelosi to
impeachment is quite a stretch. Poor, helpless/hapless Rep. Pelosi sure.
Pelosi has repeatedly stared down the progressives in the House. The overwhelming majority
of the freshmen reps are what used to be called Blue Dogs, as in corporate Dems. AOC making
noise on this issue would not move Pelosi any more than it has on other issues.
IMHO Pelosi didn't try to tamp down Russiagate, and that created expectations that
Something Big would happen. Plus she lives in the California/blue cities bubble.
What Dem donors think matters to her way more than what AOC tweets about. If anything,
Pelosi (secondarily, I sincerely doubt this would be a big issue in her calculus) would view
impeachment as a way to reduce the attention recently given to progressive issues like single
payer and student debt forgiveness.
"... My paranoid fear is that Pelosi or McConnell might try to time the proceedings so as to take Bernie and Warren off the campaign trail at a crucial moment, helping Biden. ..."
"... Amfortas the hippie , December 21, 2019 at 5:40 pm ..."
"... that, and sucking the air out of the room for the primaries. When's super tuesday, again? surely they can engineer it so that their "high drama" coincides. ..."
"... "let's talk about universal material benefits" " ok, Vlad trying to distract us from whats really important " ..."
"... Hepativore , December 21, 2019 at 6:49 pm ..."
"... Happy winter Solstice, everyone! ..."
"... Anyway, the funny thing is, that Biden himself has said that he only wants to be a one-term president. It makes me wonder if he knows that he has neither the energy or presence of mind to hold the office, and that he is merely doing so because of establishment pressure to stop Sanders at all costs. ..."
Please bone up on US procedure. It's not good to have you confuse readers.
The Senate can't do anything until the House passes a motion referring the impeachment to
the Senate. The House ALSO needs to designate managers as part of that process.
Michael
Tracey argued that it's only Senate rules that require that the House formally transmit
the impeachment verdict. The Constitution says that the Senate has to try an impeached
president, and the Constitution trumps the Senate's rules. Logically, then, the Senate could
just modify its rules to try the president.
But the whole delay is weird and impeachment has only been done twice before, so not a lot
of precedent.
My paranoid fear is that Pelosi or McConnell might try to time the proceedings so as
to take Bernie and Warren off the campaign trail at a crucial moment, helping Biden.
that, and sucking the air out of the room for the primaries. When's super tuesday,
again? surely they can engineer it so that their "high drama" coincides.
"let's talk about universal material benefits" " ok, Vlad trying to distract us from
whats really important "
Anyway, the funny thing is, that Biden himself has said that he only wants to be a
one-term president. It makes me wonder if he knows that he has neither the energy or presence
of mind to hold the office, and that he is merely doing so because of establishment pressure
to stop Sanders at all costs. Plus, if the Democrats get the brokered convention they
are after, he can bow out, satisfied that he helped the DNC protect the donor class from the
Sanders threat.
Mark Galli, its current editor (who is leaving the publication in two weeks)
takes on Trump directly -- a courageous move on his part, as his magazine has largely been
apolitical. "The facts in this instance are unambiguous: the president of the United States
attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of
the president's political opponents," Galli writes. He draws the obvious conclusion for
Christians: "That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is
profoundly immoral." Galli goes further, digging into the behavior of the man in the Oval
Office, noting that Trump "has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration." He gets
specific: "He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals." As if
that wasn't enough, Galli adds, "He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his
relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone -- with its
habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders -- is a near perfect example of a
human being who is morally lost and confused." Galli's warning to Christians is clear. "To the
many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we
might say this: remember who you are and whom you serve," Galli writes. "Consider how your
justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an
unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior
in the cause of political expediency. If we don't reverse course now, will anyone take anything
we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?" Galli also
acknowledged Friday in an interview on CNN's "New Day" that his stand is unlikely to shake
loose Trump's strong hold on this voter segment, a crucial portion of his political base.
Galli's move is even more admirable when you consider that he published his editorial even
knowing that, as he said in his interview, he's not optimistic that his editorial will alter
Trump's support among white evangelicals. It's not a stretch to say that white evangelicals put
Trump into office in 2016. About
80% of them voted for him. They did so because of the abortion issue, mostly. They wanted
pro-life judges throughout the justice system. But this was a devil's bargain, at best.
<img alt="Faith could bring us together. But too often it divides us"
src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/191121180252-20191121-fractured-states-religious-leaders-large-169.jpg">Faith
could bring us together. But too often it divides us Younger evangelicals, those under 45,
have been slowly but steadily
moving away from Trump during the past two years or so, unhappy about his example. A key
topic that has driven them away is immigration. Loving your neighbor as yourself has always
been a bedrock Christian value. And Trump's stance on immigrants (especially those of color)
has upset the younger generation of evangelicals, with two-thirds of them saying in surveys
that immigrants strengthen our country, bringing their work ethic and talents with them from
Mexico or Central America or Syria. Climate change is another issue that has caught the
imagination of younger evangelicals. "I can't love my neighbor if I'm not protecting the earth
that sustains them and defending their rights to clean water, clean air, and a stable climate,"
Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, a national organizer for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, told
Grist . Needless to say, Trump's contempt on this subject grates badly on these young
Christians. Perhaps naively, Americans have always looked to the presidency for exemplary moral
behavior, and when there are obvious personal or moral failures, as with Nixon and Clinton,
there is disappointment, even anger. But if you're a Christian -- and I lay claim to this for
myself -- you understand that it's human to fail at perfect behavior. There is always
forgiveness. And, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Humility is endless."
Humility lies at the heart of
Christian behavior. As does honesty. In these, Trump has set a terrible example, and he's now
been taken down for this by an important Christian voice. If only another 10 percent of
evangelicals take this seriously, and I suspect they will, Donald J. Trump's presidency is
destined for the ash heap of history.
Delaying the Senate trial erodes the Democrats' argument that impeachment was so urgent that
they could not wait for the courts to act on Trump's aggressive claims of privilege.
Seven Democratic presidential candidates who gathered on a debate stage in Los Angeles on
Thursday represent another argument for moving beyond impeachment.
... ... ...
Washington is fixated on the daily turns of the impeachment saga, but polls indicate that
most Americans are not. Business executive Andrew Yang pointed out that, even when the current
president is gone, the struggles of many people will remain, particularly in parts of the
country that helped elect Trump in 2016.
"We blasted away 4 million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Ohio, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri. I just left Iowa -- we blasted 40,000 manufacturing jobs
there," Yang said. "The more we act like Donald Trump is the cause of all our problems, the
more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what's going on in our communities and solve
those problems."
That is what voters are waiting to hear, and the sooner the better for Democrats.
Horowitz put the telescope to his blind eye, its an old deep state trick that Lord Nelson
used in an illegal war that the British mythologize about. IMO Horowitz is a whitewash man
and there most likely will be questions that Durham will be asking Priestap IF that is the
Giuliani plan. Wont hold my breath though. Trump seems to be acting MAD as hell but then so
do wrestlers in their fake as fake can be.
There is one glaring contradiction that I did not see
addressed in the Horowitz hearing. Priestap has
testified that he inherited
(page 14 of the pdf) operation crossfire hurricane. If
he inherited the investigation then how could he have
played any role in opening crossfire hurricane? Yet in
the FISA report, Horowitz's finding that there was no bias
in opening the investigation was almost exclusively based on finding
no bias in Priestap. I have not seen this contradiction addressed anywhere.
If anyone was watching The Horowitz hearing in the senate today it would be hard to conclude
that RussiaGate and Ukrainegate will not have serious consequences going forward.
The whole sordid, nasty conspiracy seems on the verge of being exposed, maybe as high as
Obama himself, although he is just a puppet himself, and indictments are sure to follow. I
don't see how anyone could think that this will not be catastrophic for the democratic
party.
"... By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives ..."
Posted on
December 18, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. What Black calls
the New Democrats have more recently been called Blue Dogs and even (gah) frontliners, but
whatever you want to call them, they are corporate stooges loyal to bad economic ideas, most
notably deficit hawkery and austerity.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, an associate
professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-founder of
Bank Whistleblowers United. Originally published at
New Economic Perspectives
On December 5, 2019, Lawrence O'Donnell made an impassioned attack on Pete Buttigieg on his
" The
Last Word " program on MSNBC. Buttigieg's statements criticizing the Democratic Party as
historically soft on deficits enraged O'Donnell. The context was Buttigieg's effort to signal
to New Hampshire voters that he was the most conservative Democratic candidate for the
presidential nomination. Nothing signals 'responsible' so well to 'New Democrats' and the media
as a candidate screaming 'deficits' in a crowded meeting room in a small New Hampshire
town.
O'Donnell correctly pointed out that Buttigieg's claims about Democrats and deficits are
'Republican lies.' The truth is that New Democrats have been the only group in America
dedicated to inflicting austerity on our Nation. Republicans only pretend to care about
deficits when Democrats have power. Buttigieg knows this, but his political interests in
portraying himself as a stalwart emerging leader of the New Democrats caused him to position
himself (falsely) as unique among New Democrats in his dedication to inflict austerity.
O'Donnell (largely) correctly pointed out that New Democrats had been fighting federal
deficits for Buttigieg's entire life. O'Donnell stressed the New Democrats actions in 1993,
when Buttigieg was eleven. O'Donnell lauded the New Democrats for pushing austerity even when
they knew doing so was likely to cause Democrats to lose elections.
O'Donnell's dominant message, measured by both length and passion, was the crippling price
the Democrats paid for the New Democrats' pushing for austerity in 1993. He made clear it was
not a "one-off" – Democrats paid that price again when President Obama, a self-described
New Democrat, pushed to inflict austerity on the Nation in 2010.
O'Donnell describes the New Democrats (Bill Clinton and Al Gore) as knowingly taking a
"grave political risk" in 1993 in voting in favor of austerity. The risk was that Democrats,
not simply New Democrats, would lose scores of seats – and control of the House and
Senate. O'Donnell stressed that no Republicans voted for the New Democrat's 1993 austerity
program. O'Donnell explained the initial political results of austerity. "The Democrats lost
the House because of that vote for the first time in 40 years." He then explained they also
lost the Senate.
O'Donnell repeatedly explained that the New Democrats knew that their decision to inflict
austerity on Americans would likely produce this political disaster – and "bravely" did
so because of their belief that inflicting austerity on Americans was essential. He noted that
he "watched with pride" this exercise of political suicide.
O'Donnell then cited President Obama's austerity efforts – during the weak recovery
from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). At a time when the need to provide stimulus, not inflict
austerity, was obvious, Obama embraced what again proved the politically suicidal option.
As fate would have it, the death of Paul Volcker days after O'Donnell's takedown of
Buttigieg extended O'Donnell's argument further back in time – to before Buttigieg's
birth. In 1979, President Carter (a Democrat) appointed Volcker to Chair the Federal Reserve.
Volcker soon unleashed powerful monetary austerity, raising interest rates to unprecedented
levels for the United States. Volcker's obituary stressed
the politically suicidal nature of inflicting austerity – and the Democrats' pride in
knowingly losing elections because of their embrace of it.
The harsh Fed policy no doubt contributed to Mr. Carter's re-election defeat at the hands
of Ronald Reagan; he had to campaign when interest rates were at their peak, and before the
inflation fever had begun to break. Mr. Carter, in his memoirs, would offer a typically
understated assessment: "Our trepidation about Volcker's appointment was later
justified."
***
"Paul was as stubborn as he was tall," Mr. Carter said in a statement on Monday morning,
"and although some of his policies as Fed chairman were politically costly, they were the
right thing to do.
O'Donnell's denunciation of Buttigieg for adopting dishonest Republican talking points about
Democrats and deficits did not discuss several essential points. The first two points emerge
from answering this question: what was the cost to the Nation – not the loss of
Democratic seats – of the New Democrats' intransigent insistence on inflicting austerity?
Shakespeare explained famously that "mercy" was "twice blest," because it blesses both the
giver and the receiver. The quality of austerity, however, is typically at least thrice damned.
It is not a "gentle rain from heaven," but a sandstorm from hell that batters the public and
punishes the politicians who unleash the whirlwind. It is at least thrice damned because it
causes three grave forms of harm on the public.
Inflicting austerity on the United States government has three likely consequences for the
public. It is likely to cause or extend a recession. It forces Democrats into an unending
series of "Sophie's choice[s]s." We cannot adopt any new program of consequence without budget
'scoring' – requiring new taxes or cutting other vital federal programs. Under austerity,
Democrats must shrink existing overall federal spending. By extending existing recessions or
leading to new ones, austerity causes economic harms that increase social and political
breakdowns that can lead to the election of fanatics and corrupt fake-populists. The political
parties that refuse to inflict austerity (at least when they are in power) will be the
political winners.
Republican fiscal policies combine "wedge" offerings to fire up the worst of their base and
massive tax breaks for the elites that fund their campaigns – leading to a recurrent
cycle in which the New Democrats champion policies that cause the public to identify Democrats
as the party most likely to raise taxes and cut vital federal programs. Republican political
power and 'wedge' legislation and policies cause enormous harm, particularly to the poor and
minorities. The larger the Republican deficits, the greater the New Democrats' urgency to
inflict austerity – and embrace political suicide. It is a self-reinforcing cycle
producing recurrent political disaster for Democrats.
O'Donnell does not address two other critical points. First, MSNBC's top commentators
endlessly warn Democrats that they must nominate the presidential candidate most likely to
defeat President Trump. MSNBC's commentators implore us not to focus on policy differences
among the candidates. Their message is relentless realpolitik, particularly, you should never
vote for the candidate whose policies you believe are far superior to the candidate the MSNBC
commentators think is most electable. MSNBC and the New Democrats claim they share the same
prime directive – Democratic Party electoral victories are the only imperative.
O'Donnell's anti-Buttigieg rant reveals the truth about MSNBC and the New Democrats' real
prime directive – inflicting austerity even when doing so is economically irrational and
politically suicidal is their sole imperative. The obvious questions, which O'Donnell never
asked or attempted to answer, are why he and his MSNBC colleagues push the false prime
directive (winning must be the sole paramount goal) as gospel while praising the New Democrats
for repeatedly causing the Democratic Party to commit political suicide through inflicting
austerity on our Nation. Logically, the only possible answer to that question is that O'Donnell
and the New Democrats must view inflicting austerity as being of transcendent importance. It
outweighs everything. Inflicting austerity is the New Democrats and MSNBC's sole prime
directive. They are not simply willing to lose so many contests that they lose control of the
presidency, the House, and the Senate – they are "proud" to do so when the reason for
those losses is 'we committed political suicide to fight to inflict austerity.' The related
questions are whether MSNBC and the New Democrats are actually blind to the contradiction
between the real and phony prime directives and why they think viewers and voters will be too
dumb to spot the obvious contradiction. Why do New Democrats and MSNBC insist on hiding their
real prime directive?
A related question arises from this bizarre prime directive to inflict austerity even when
it is politically suicidal. Why did New Democrats and MSNBC choose inflicting austerity as
their holy grail? What is it about inflicting austerity that makes New Democrats so "proud" to
cause the Democratic Party to commit political suicide and deliver control of the House,
Senate, and Presidency to the likes of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, and
Donald Trump? Preventing Bush's invasion of Iraq, global climate disruption, and Trump's
election would all make sense as overriding priorities. Those are things worthy of losing a
House seat or even the entire House.
Inflicting austerity typically harms America and our people. A federal budget deficit is not
bad. A federal budget surplus is not good. Clinton and Gore's budget surpluses were not good
for America. They were likely harmful, as recessions soon followed our prior budget surpluses
throughout our history. In each of the cases O'Donnell lauded, the New Democrats' insistence on
inflicting austerity did not simply prove politically suicidal for the Democratic Party –
austerity was a terrible economic policy that caused harm. How did inflicting austerity become
the overriding priority of New Democrats, swamping all other policies? In 1993, when Clinton
and Gore made O'Donnell "proud" by inflicting austerity, the inflation rate was three percent.
That rate of inflation was trivially higher than what the Fed would adopt as its inflation
target (2%) – the preferred rate of inflation. Even under neoclassical economic nostrums,
there was no need, much less a compelling need, to inflict austerity.
In 2010, when Obama first sought to inflict austerity on us, the rate of inflation was 2.3
percent and the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent. The economic illiteracy of his austerity
horrified even neoclassical economists. Fortunately, the Tea Party Republicans pushed so
aggressively in the "Grand Bargain" negotiations with Obama that the tentative deal he reached
with congressional Republicans collapsed. Otherwise, Obama's infliction of austerity would have
ended the already weak recovery, plunged the Nation back into a Great Recession, and caused him
and scores of congressional Democrats to lose their elections in 2012.
O'Donnell's presentation, implicitly, makes it clear that he thinks austerity is so
obviously desirable, and the budget deficits of a fully sovereign nation so obviously the
gravest conceivable threat that he need provide neither logic nor evidence to support the New
Democrat's politically suicidal and economically illiterate austerity prime directive.
O'Donnell's cheerleading for the austerity prime directive was never supported, but it has
become facially indefensible over the last quarter-century. Trump's tax reduction scheme for
the wealthiest was outrageous on multiple grounds, but O'Donnell can observe the present
unemployment and inflation rates. Unemployment is at 3.5% and the inflation rate for 2018 was
1.9% -- less than the Fed's target rate. Inflation is the only logical bugaboo about federal
budget deficits, so O'Donnell and Buttigieg's feverish fear that federal deficits are about to
cause a catastrophe is beyond bizarre. The bond markets confirm that there is no expectation of
material inflation.
The New Democrats remain transfixed by their 'virtue' and 'bravery' in losing control of all
three branches of government by insisting on inflicting economically illiterate and politically
suicidal austerity assaults on the voters – raising taxes and cutting vital services.
They refuse to act on the real emergencies we face such as global climate disruption based on
the economically illiterate fantasy that 'we cannot afford' to prevent the worsening
catastrophe. The 'New Democrats' and their media enablers demand that we nominate candidates
dedicated to enacting politically suicidal deficit hysteria policies and adopting tepid
anti-environment policies that are suicidal towards the lives of our children and
grandchildren. The most remarkable aspect of this insanity, however, is that the hucksters
pitch their embrace of their prime directive as defining the concept of "responsible." Indeed,
it is so obviously 'responsible' that O'Donnell and Buttigieg feel neither logic nor facts are
necessary to prove the virtues of austerity. They omit the fact that austerity proponents'
warnings and promises have repeatedly proved false and outright harmful as well as politically
suicidal.
Could it be that the New Democrats are not stupid or irrational at all but know what they
are doing and happily play their role in the permanent professional wrestling spectacle as
the hapless patsies who keep losing to the real tough guy? After all, they get paid
handsomely in any case.
Not only did President Carter appoint Volcker, but he also vetoed a bill to raise the
national debt ceiling. Thankfully Congress, run by a very different set of Democrats at the
time, over-rode his veto.
"Austerity" is basically the only policy Team Blue has undertaken without outside
pressure. As bad as it is, it's the one thing they can point to over the last 25 years as
something they did without mass mobilization or court cases embarrassing them into not being
totally heinous.
Then little Mayo Pete is trying to deny Team Blue their only accomplishment.
The Trump Card was and is a masterstroke of scripting live, non-stop, divisive, politically
paralytic distraction while the US oligarchy goes all-tard-in for private power.
Since the whole impeachment farce already has been a political loser for the idiot Democrats,
they'd have to be doubly stupid to double down on political stupidity by obstructing the
transmission to the Senate, when most Americans just want this crap to be over with.
Meanwhile the Senate Republicans, once they get the charges, would be stupid to do
anything but vote them down immediately. Otherwise they'll become complicit in the odious
circus and rightly incur their share of the political blame.
"... The NEW Democrats and the Return to Power ..."
"... Reading between the lines: many people think that government spending only helps "those" people (the poor/the politically connected businesses/the bureaucrats/the old/the young/the non-innovative). You yourself are always a virtuous wealth creator, because of course you are. ..."
MSNBC and the New Democrats claim they share the same prime directive – Democratic
Party electoral victories are the only imperative.
This is exactly the justification Al From gave for the program of the Democratic
Leadership Council (see The NEW Democrats and the Return to Power ). All those who
joined shared the same goal. They took control of the party in 1992, and still control it.
That's why I think Trump is going to be re-elected.
Reading between the lines: many people think that government spending only helps "those"
people (the poor/the politically connected businesses/the bureaucrats/the old/the young/the
non-innovative). You yourself are always a virtuous wealth creator, because of course you
are.
Even many former government employees now living on a government pension believe this.
And when austerity comes for something important to you, it is a mistake, not something
that makes you question austerity, since of course you are not one of "those" people.
It's prejudice/arrogance all the way down, and extremely hard to argue with since it goes
against people's self-image in many ways.
Reading between the lines: many people think that government spending only helps "those"
people (the poor/the politically connected businesses/the bureaucrats/the old/the young/the
non-innovative). You yourself are always a virtuous wealth creator, because of course you
are.
Even many former government employees now living on a government pension believe this.
And when austerity comes for something important to you, it is a mistake, not something
that makes you question austerity, since of course you are not one of "those" people.
It's prejudice/arrogance all the way down, and extremely hard to argue with since it goes
against people's self-image in many ways.
BREAKING BIG: John Durham Is Investigating Former CIA Director John Brennan's Role in 2016
Election Interference and His LIES TO CONGRESS! (Video)
The New York Times reported tonight that federal prosecutor John Durham is
investigating former CIA Director John Brennan's role in the 2016 election. Durham has called
for Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents.
I read in a couple of places today that the strategy of the Dems is to not forward the
impeachment to the Senate for an indeterminate amount of time......let the stew, the Senate
and Trump simmer a bit.....more kabuki for the masses while the public continues to be
screwed economically.
Thank you for that observation and I have seen that idea about the traps too.
I don't see the impeachment as being held up for too long as Durham will likely press on
hard with his prosecutions and may even go after Biden for wire fraud or some such very soon.
The minute Durham moves the demoncrazies will try to obstruct, They dont have much dry powder
right now but then they are good at imagining things so they might try and manifest more
powder. If speculation confirms that it is a kabuki hoax to kill their own leftish insurgency
then that too will emerge mighty soon.
I am unfamiliar with the USA system but if the Congress has made a clear resolution and
its next destination is normally the Senate then what is to stop the Senate Leader Mitch
McConnel from tabling the decision of the Congress for immediate vote. Does the impeachment
referral to the Senate actually have to be moved by the Minority Leader representing the
Democrats or is that just a polite convention?
Good to see Tulsi keep her distance from this turd just dropped the Congress.
"... "The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said in his Dec. 16 opinion ( pdf ). ..."
"... In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it late. ..."
"... Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation. ..."
"... Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something it could allege was false. ..."
"... Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers, Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview." ..."
"... Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI investigation of election meddling. ..."
"... Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what his first team of "counselors" advised. ..."
"... Flynn is as deep state as it gets. He would throw the book at any one of you. Make no mistake. Being a general is a political appointment. ..."
"... Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore. ..."
"... "Michael Flynn reportedly filed paperwork on Tuesday for the $530,000 worth of work he did last year that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/08/michael-flynn-admits-turkey-lobbying ..."
"... NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet. ..."
"... They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile. ..."
"... Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses. ..."
"... Oh how soon you forget that Flynn commited war crimes in Grenada. ..."
"... Then bring him up on those charges. In court those kinds of leaps are inaddmissable. ..."
"... Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year ..."
"... Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is sentencing him is PISSED. ..."
"... Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say you weren't warned. ..."
"... They threatened his son if he did not plead guilty. Of course, to you Dems the means justifies the end. He will be pardoned, and deservedly so. ..."
"... I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other criminals. ..."
A federal judge has denied requests by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to prompt the government to
give him information he deems exculpatory and to dismiss the case against him .
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the government in arguing that Flynn was
already given all the information to which he was entitled. The judge also dismissed Flynn's
allegations of government misconduct, noting that Flynn already pleaded guilty to his crime and
failed to raise his objections earlier when some of the issues he now complains about were
brought to his attention.
"The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of
innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said
in his Dec. 16 opinion (
pdf ).
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2017, to
one count of lying to the FBI. He's been expected to receive a light sentence, including no
prison time, after extensively cooperating with the government on multiple investigations.
In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the
government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it
late.
Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they
testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told
the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should
have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to
show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation.
Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place
and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something
it could allege was false.
Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers,
Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview."
Flynn was interviewed by two FBI agents, Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, two
days after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The prosecutors argued that the FBI had a "sufficient and appropriate basis" for the
interview because Flynn days earlier told members of the Trump campaign, including soon-to-be
Vice President Mike Pence, that he didn't discuss with the Russian ambassador the expulsion of
Russian diplomats in late December 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
Flynn later admitted in his statement of offense that he asked, via Russian Ambassador to
the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, for Russia to only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner and
not escalate the situation.
The FBI was at the time investigating whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian
2016 election meddling. No such coordination was established by the probe, which concluded more
than two years later under then-special counsel Robert Mueller.
Powell argued that whatever Flynn told Pence and others in the transition team was none of
the FBI's business.
"The Executive Branch has different reasons for saying different things publicly and
privately, and not everyone is told the details of every conversation,"
she said in a previous court filing .
"If the FBI is charged with investigating discrepancies in statements made by government
officials to the public, the entirety of its resources would be consumed in a week."
Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI
investigation of election meddling.
Sullivan, however, thought otherwise, using a broader description of the investigation. The bureau, he said, probed the "nature of any links between individuals associated with the
[Trump] Campaign and Russia" and what Flynn said was material to it. The description Sullivan used appears to omit the context of the probe, which focused
specifically on the Russian election meddling.
Powell was dealt a bad hand by Flynn's previous corrupt and incompetent attorneys. The
judge has an obligation to honor the new views of new counsel. He can't assume that Flynn had
been well advised by former counsel. There's no evidence or history of that. They sold him
out.
Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring
Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting
Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what
his first team of "counselors" advised.
He's so Deep State that Brennen and Clapper went to Soetoro to get him fired after the
election. Flynn was going to rat them out on the treasonous Iran deal. When Obama said no
because it was too close to the end of his presidency they then criminally framed Flynn.
Flynn was lied to. Flynn was a 30 year veteran and General. Flynn couldn't imagine his
country turning against him like this. None of us could. But with the cabal running our
country, it could and did happen. Now we have to stamp out the cockroaches before it's too
late.
Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without
disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore.
NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet.
This ***** judge will give him a mouse sentence to protect his own *** . We don't know the half of it . How close is the judge to Obama ? I think we are going to find out .
President Trump should step in now and Pardon Gen.Flynn and Roger Stone both trial were
fixed unethical and not based on fact and law. In Stones case a radical jury of Demon
Rat-Brains were assembled to hand down a guilty verdict.
They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing.
Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile.
Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses.
Those who violated the constitution and rule of law are media pundants and
undisturbed.
Orange dotard please divert some of your swamp creatures from destroying Iran, Venezuela
and Bolivia.
America needs the secret police smashed and held accountable for sedition and treason.
Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year
The minute they let Flynn off he talks and they sure as hell don't want that. They want to drag this out as long as possible and hope for a miracle (Trump gets beat
) or at least time enough for them to bugger off. FISA has known for years they were lied to by the FBI and now it has been confirmed . So why didn't they do anything then or now ? Were they in on it ? How do you draw any
other conclusion ?
Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead
guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is
sentencing him is PISSED.
Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner
you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in
bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn
inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say
you weren't warned.
I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other
criminals.
Flynn can ask to withdraw plea, but he's turned down that opportunity three times, so
judge might not allow it. Then everything Powell has been doing becomes relevant. Up to this point it's just a bunch
of noise, unfortunately.
So let me just be sure I understand this: he is being denied evidence that could prove
innocence on a trial related to a guilty plea, which was largely the result of persecution by
the FBI and we ALLOW this to happen in America? What has happened to this country?
"... But I think that from a practical standpoint, it's difficult to prosecute a serious case based almost solely on the idea that you claim to know what the other guy was thinking. ..."
President Trump explicitly stated in a private conversation with one of the Democrats'
witnesses that he wanted "no quid pro quo." But the mind-reading Democrats know
Trump meant the opposite ; Trump did want a quid pro quo.
Though Ukrainian experts say a holdup of U.S. aid would not have impacted their ability to
fight the Russians, since they manufacture their own lethal weapons (and sell a lot to other
countries), the Democrats can read minds: They say people
died because of the delay.
Each of the Democrats' witnesses also drew conclusions about President Trump, his supposedly
corrupt motivations and thought processes, that would require them to read minds. (Most of them
said they'd neither met nor spoken to Trump.)
Lastly, Democrats can read Joe Biden's mind, too. They know that when Biden insisted on the
firing of the prosecutor investigating his son's company, that his son didn't factor into the
decision.
Democrats could be correct on all counts.
But I think that from a practical standpoint, it's difficult to prosecute a serious case
based almost solely on the idea that you claim to know what the other guy was
thinking.
"... an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories". ..."
"... Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about. ..."
Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that
closely so that's just a general impression.
My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across
a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged
his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.
The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it.
So I clicked on the BBC article -
" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry
by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".
Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if
our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.
On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were
such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm
opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you
might happen to have dug up.
Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the
compliment and topple Her Majesty.
We will see... I am skeptical about idea that Brennan will be indicted.
But this article supports the idea that impeachment was a counterattack of Brannan faction of CIA and Clinton mafia against
Barr and Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... Former CIA officer and counter-intelligence expert Kevin Shipp says that former Obama Administration Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder gave a big Deep State panic signal when he wrote in an Op-Ed last week in the Washington Post trashing current AG William Barr and his top prosecutor John Durham ..."
"... We have to understand it was Eric Holder that Barack Obama used to target the heads of corporations that spoke out publicly about Barack Obama. We know Holder was held in 'Contempt of Congress.' He spied on AP reporters, ran guns to drug cartels and blacked out the information. He spied on over a hundred journalists, and on and on we go... ..."
"... when Holder comes out and puts out this bombshell in the Washington Post, which is another indication that indictments are coming. John Brennan, former Obama Administration CIA Director, is going to be at the top of the list. " ..."
"... during the entire Trump Presidency, the mainstream media (MSM) has operated as a propaganda arm of the Deep State and the Democrats ..."
"... Shipp says the hoax of Russia collusion and the impeachment sham of President Trump is distracting us from other very big problems such as the extreme debt the country and the world is facing . Shipp says, ..."
Former CIA officer and counter-intelligence expert Kevin Shipp says that former Obama
Administration Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder gave a big Deep State panic signal when he
wrote in an Op-Ed last week in the Washington Post trashing current AG William Barr and his top
prosecutor John Durham. Shipp explains,
"This is very significant. We all remember that Holder was Obama's right hand man. Eric
Holder was Barack Obama's enforcer. The fact that Holder comes out this quickly after the
Inspector General (IG) Horowitz Report comes out... and makes this veiled threat against
Durham's reputation. The fact that Eric Holder came out and made this statement is a clear
indication to me they are running scared.
We have to understand it was Eric Holder that Barack Obama used to target the heads of
corporations that spoke out publicly about Barack Obama. We know Holder was held in 'Contempt
of Congress.' He spied on AP reporters, ran guns to drug cartels and blacked out the
information. He spied on over a hundred journalists, and on and on we go...
They (Deep State) are convinced there are going to be indictments. Secondly, there is AG
Barr's outrage over (IG) Horowitz's report and what it did not do. He made statements that
there was spying and actions by government officials that need to be criminally looked into.
Barr's outrage over this shows me that there are going to be indictments, and that he is
taking this seriously. Again, when Holder comes out and puts out this bombshell in the
Washington Post, which is another indication that indictments are coming. John Brennan,
former Obama Administration CIA Director, is going to be at the top of the list. "
Shipp says during the entire Trump Presidency, the mainstream media (MSM) has operated as a
propaganda arm of the Deep State and the Democrats . Shipp contends,
"They put these stories out intentionally because they are creating their own story, and
that is what the propaganda mainstream media does. It creates its own story...
They want to frame their latest story that there really wasn't any spying on Trump. That's
what FISA warrants and applications are all about. They are all about spying ."
Shipp thinks this will be a big nail in the coffin of the MSM. Shipp says, "The mainstream
media will never come back from this..."
"...because finally, through shows like this and others, the real information is coming
out as to what the mainstream media has done . At the top of that list is the New York Times,
the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC...
What they did is they created the Russia collusion story as if it was reality, as if it
was real. That is part of the procedure in doing this. Then, they invented the evidence, and
that was the Steele Dossier. They portrayed this as evidence to create this false narrative.
Then they sent this story out to each outlet, and all repeat the same story over and over and
over again knowing the more they repeat it, the more people were going to believe it. Then,
the FBI leaked information to the mainstream media. The FBI took that information leaked to
the media and used their stories as evidence. Brennan leaked the dossier to the mainstream
media as part of this whole machine."
Shipp says the hoax of Russia collusion and the impeachment sham of President Trump is
distracting us from other very big problems such as the extreme debt the country and the world
is facing . Shipp says,
"Trump inherited a financial monster that was not his doing. When he was sworn into
office, it already existed. It is very serious, and I think now or very soon the U.S.
government will not be able to afford the interest on the national debt, much less paying off
the debt itself."
It is reported that central banks are buying record amounts of gold, and even Goldman Sachs
is telling its clients to buy the yellow metal. Shipp says,
" This is a solid indicator that we are headed for the financial rapids with Goldman Sachs
especially. Goldman Sachs is a global bank, and it's one of the main banks in the United
States. The fact that Sachs and others are building up gold reserves is a clear indication
that they expect a financial downturn, to put it mildly, that is coming. "
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp.
I kinda think that everyone is holding off to see if Trump gets re-elected.
If he does then there will be indictments, jail time, and a real cleaning of the
house.
The guys in the middle of this investigation depose the "liberal" old guard and offer
sacrifices to their own "conservative" god of filth. Same Mammon, just a different order of
worship.
If he doesn't get re-elected then the guys that are investigating this can just slink back
into the current slime and survive in some basic way.
I have seen this dynamic when companies merge as equals. Everybody is afraid to act
because the stakes are so high. It's a chess game played by ruthless cowards.
FOX 10 Phoenix
722K subscribers
The U.S. attorney who is conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe released a rare
statement Monday saying he disagrees with conclusions of the so-called FISA report -- after DOJ Inspector General Michael
Horowitz found in that review that the probe's launch largely complied with DOJ and FBI policies. "Based on the evidence
collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree
with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened," U.S. Attorney John Durham said in
a statement. Horowitz released his report Monday saying his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias
surrounding efforts to launch that 2016 probe and to seek a highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the early months of the investigation. Still, it
found that there were "significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised."
"I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the
report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff," Durham said. "However, our investigation is not limited to developing
information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information
from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S." As Horowitz has conducted his review of DOJ
actions during the Russia probe, Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, has also been conducting a wider inquiry into
alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential
election. Fox News reported in October that Durham's ongoing probe has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal
investigation. Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr ripped the FBI's "intrusive" investigation after the release of
Horowitz's review, saying it was launched based on the "thinnest of suspicions." "The Inspector General's report now makes
clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that,
in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken," Barr said in a statement. Barr expressed frustration that the
FBI continued investigating the Trump campaign, even as "exculpatory" information came to the light.
The history of
FBI and DOJ lying and legal abuse is much older than Trump. Read Sidney Powell's LICENSED TO LIE. Been going on since
at least the Enron prosecutions. And judges are just as much to blame.
Thank God for:
Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, and Louie Gohmert to represent our country in this mess to shed light
on whats been going on. Drain the swamp in Washington!
It's insane to say there were "17 material omissions, miss-representations (lies) and
errors" - but no evidence of bias. This is like accidentally shooting someone 17 times.
Corbyn's defeat was entirely due to the treachery of the engrained leadership of the Labour
Party.
While the membership is generally radical and socialist, 80% of the MPs, local
councillors, Union Officers and party officials were put there by the Blairites and are
almost impossible to remove from the offices in which they have enormous potential
influence.
Corbyn was in an almost impossible position but his mistake was, characteristically, to
assume a higher degree of good will and loyalty to the 'cause' than most MPs, careerists,
contemptuous of ordinary people and desperate for the approval-in a society which is famous
for its social snobbery- of the ruling Establishment.
It is significant that, whereas Johnson expelled dozens of MPs from the Tory party, Labour
expelled only one-Chris Williamson on the basis of an obviously idiotic charge of
antisemitism on his part.
Sometimes left wing winners have to be ready to fight to the death to secure the mandates
they are given and in doing so to damage the opposition. In this case the Blairites.
Sometimes betraying the working class and the poor takes the form of refusing to be
ruthless.
The irony is that Corbyn is by far the longest standing critic of the EU in British public
life, as the Blairites very quickly charged when the referendum on the EU (" a highly
democratic organisation" in Laguerre's astonishing judgement) was won by the 'wrong side'.
And in 2017 he campaigned on the promise to 'get Brexit done". It was only out of a refusal
to confront the Remainers, including most of his Shadow Cabinet, that the hybrid policy to
implement the Blairite Peoples Vote was adopted.
I imagine that the Remainers in the Labour Party and the Blairites of every sort will be
saddened by the public's renewed mandate for Brexit, but their dominant emotion will be
euphoria that the left was defeated, neo-liberalism still reins unchallenged and imperialism
maintained in British Foreign Policy.
If the Labour Party now sticks to its principles it will purge itself of its Fifth Columns
and use the breathing space before the next election to re-organise itself as a socialist
party.
To do this it needs firstly, to establish a newspaper, secondly to build a Youth wing,
thirdly to institute a national system of political education so that every member
understands what socialism is and takes a part in its construction. And fourthly that Labour
becomes the organising focus for both Unions organising the unorganised and social movements
defending tenants, the poor, disabled and vulnerable.
But this is all very unlikely, the party structure is biassed against democracy, it is
almost impossible to impose the will of the membership on the people who run the party. And
ought to be run out of it.
JC was crucified, by authority of the Empire, at the urging of the Israeli authorities in
Jerusalem and with the invaluable assistance of corrupt traitors among his own people
Clapper and Brennan will be shaking in their boots after watching Barr's interview: done in
"bad faith" = SEDITION !!!! Deep State operatives...ie, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Stork, Lisa,
McCabe, should be held accountable. Obama should probably be impeached.
The hard fact is, that the top of the FBI knew, in advance, that the "dossier" was just bs
invented by Russian liars, for money, to be used as political lies for kilary's campaign. It
Wasn't evidence and Comey knew far in advance of crossfire hurricane. I can't see less than 20
years in comey's future. That same includes barak, brennan and clapper, who were all informed,
willing accomplices in this crime.
10:30
Whoever in FBI that intentionally misled the court using the Steele dossier knowing that the
dossier was "total rubbish" as Barr states, needs to be inditing immediately. Why we are
continuing to investigate instead of inditimg while continuing to investigate. Until these people
are held accountable I don't think our country will begin to heal and media and others apologize
to the country for the damage they have done.
7:49 -
"Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance, and therefore couldn't be questioned
about classified matters." Well now, isn't that interesting. Haven't heard that one before.
In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News' Pete Williams
about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General's report on the Russia
investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.
I'm So glade we have a competent attorney General pushing back on the massive
disinformation narrative that comes from Giant News outlets of which are used to being
unchallenged, unchecked by today's "journalistic standards"
so this guy really asked Bahr"why not open an investigation even with little evidence?"
because is a violation of civil liberties to invade the privacy of law abiding citizens. You
need compelling evidence for something so huge
Horowitz should be instructed to edit or update his Report to discuss The Question of Bias
and Evidence of Bias. He has clearly misguided Americans with his choice of words and has
omitted important facts underpinning bias.
AG Barr is an outstanding role model, a man of integrity and wisdom, calm in a raging
political storm. I have full confidence he will make those who fabricated evidence and hid
exculpatory evidence finally face justice. AG Barr for President 2024!
Barr is a straight shooter and I love it. It sounds like we will get to the real truth
eventually through Durhams investigation I just hope it doesnt take another year to get to
the prosecutions.
So, I watched the interview... The video is called, "Full Interview: Barr Criticizes
Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation." Not once did I hear him criticize the
I.G.'s report. In fact, A.G. Barr clarified that the I.G.'s report was limited in scope
because of the limitations put on the I.G. He said that the report was appropriate.
It's scary to see how powerful the corruption of the Democratic Party has grown. It
represents a serious threat to all our personal freedom. The Democratic Party has to be
stopped.
Ok after watching this interview its quite clear that Barr and Durham is going after these
criminals and people are going to jail. Maybe there is hope for US yet becuase this dane
consider US atm a banana republic. Spying on political candidates? Forging documents? You FBI
behaving like Stalins secret police. Lets see what happen.
Amazing for the AG to go in deep into enemy territory at the heart of the opposition media
to lay out a case for the criminal activities that undermined our country prior to and after
the 2016 election. The deep state is trembling at the prospect of being held accountable
after all the facts are laid out to the american people that these activities cannot be
brushed aside or swept under the carpet if we are to continue as a country.
The corrupt media is trying to act like they have not been involved in this treasonous
scam since the beginning working directly with the treasonous cabal. The media has been lying
and pushing fake news for 3 years calling Trump a Russia agent and called him treasonous. I
knew the whole time that they were lying there was evidence from day one that this was all
lies and if I can see that from the public then they can definitely see that from the inside
they are purposefully lying.
I dare anyone on here to research Barr's History back to his involvement in the
assignation of JFK, the cover up, defending Nixon, Epstein, and many other illegal and
immoral activities. After reviewing the evidence, I walked away believing that Barr is trying
to cover up his tracks so he does do jail time. No need to reply. Either take my dare or not.
God Bless America and ALL her people, Stephan
The public are sick of waiting . I find myself skipping through a half hour news show in 5
minutes flat looking for arrests ,whereas before I was rivited to every minute of the half
hour show but it goes on and on and at the there is Nothiing .The Democrats are the masters ,
it's obvious . If they break the law they get off scott free . If you are republican wave bye
bye , you will be in jail for years . America is not the free and fair country it is all
cracked up to be . It is corrupted by the democrats who have peoiple in high places that
thwart real justice.
Mifsud approached George! Who was Mifsud working for (western asset) and why did he
approach George? He’s the one who offered George dirt on Hill. Then invited him to meet
the fake “niece”, of Putin, in England! What about this information? Someone set
George up to make this happen outside the US, because of EO 12333. It had to happen outside
the US so they could go to the fisa court!
I dont trust Christopher Wrey. He keeps slow-walking all the FBI documents and
declassifications. He also fights judicial watch and judges that rule in their favor and
continue not giving over what is ordered! This last judge was ready to hold him in contempt
for refusing to cooperate with court ordered documents.
Why did the FBI continue to investigate Trump after January when the case collapsed? To
try and find a way to impeach Trump. Remember the Washington Post headlined article right
after the inauguration "The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already
underway." The FBI "insurance" policy was essential!
Warren's awkward attempts to portray herself as a woman of color, even if a etsy weeny
tiny bit, always seemed strange to me, ignoring the resume nonsense. It makes sense with the
realization that Women of Color, have become a new politically privileged class, in spite of
some of them being not very oppressed.
Indian (subcontinent) women come from a tradition of a caste based society of wealth and
privilege. The most succesful ones intuitively home in on and game American race-based
identity politics in spite of their advantages, such as being one of the wealthiest religious
groups in the nation,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/
No Bernie style economic class based socialism for them, no way. It's maintain privilege,
Silicon Valley corporate caste based salaries, Republican reductionism, Hillary hopium and
yet, they proudly proclaim their affiliation with real women of color, on whose backs they
surf, like last generation's black cleaning women, the grandparents of which might have
actually been slaves.
3 examples: Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, Neera Tanden and Kamala Harris.
Women-of-color in general are not a privileged class. The not-very-poor women of color are
perhaps a newly privileged class.
The Goldman Sachs women-of-color have become a new privileged class, in line with the
tenets of Goldman Sachs Feminism. " The arc of history is long, and it bends towards rainbow
gender-fluid oligarchy."
As Dean Baker pointed out in his book Rigged, the neoliberal capitalism of America is
rigged to benefit the top 1%. After all, they were the architects. Most Americans appreciate
that. Nevertheless, the vast majority willingly wade into its rigged quicksand. All economies
are rigged in the sense that there is a structure to it all. Moreover, the architects of that
system will ensure there is something in it for themselves – rigged. Our school system
does not instruct Americans on how their own economic system works (is rigged), so most of us
become its victims rather than its beneficiaries.
Books by Liz Warren and her daughter offer remedial guidance on how to make the current US
economic system work for the average household. So, in a sense, Liz comes across as an
adherent to the system she is trying to help others master .
This seems to be a losing proposition for candidate Warren because most Americans want a
new system with new rigging; not a repaired system that has been screwing them for
generations.
Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed
without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia
over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the
Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives
from the U.S. media were utter
frauds .
Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power
– its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to
demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in
order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page
during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence,
and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don't consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in
order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal,
what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building
named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers
and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that's what
these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state
factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and
civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.
In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide
this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It's brimming with proof of
FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not
true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the
Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
A few days ago, veterans' group VoteVets endorsed Pete Buttigieg. It has previously supported
Tulsi Gabbard. Details:
New York Times, "Liberal Veterans' Group Endorses Pete Buttigieg in 2020 Race":
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-votevets-endorsement.html
"... Public choice economics has big influence and a bad name. It is a school of economic thought that has at different times been associated with scholars at the University of Rochester, Virginia Tech, and George Mason University. ..."
"... Samuelson, in his famous and influential textbooks, saw a clear role for government in regulating markets. Public choice scholars vehemently disagreed . For political and theoretical reasons, they instead saw government as a fountain of corruption. Public choice economists argued that government regulations were the product of special interest groups that had "captured" the power of the state, to cripple rivals and squeeze money from citizens and consumers. Regulations were not made in the public interest, but instead were designed to bilk ordinary citizens. ..."
"... The conventional story is that as Warren moved from the right to the left, she abandoned the public choice way of thinking about the world, in favor of a more traditional left-wing radicalism. A more accurate take might be that she didn't abandon public choice, but instead remained committed to its free-market ideals, while reversing some of its valences. ..."
"... A recent popular history book, which qualified as a finalist for the National Book Award, depicts public choice as a kind of stealth intellectual weapons program , developed by economist James Buchanan to provide Chilean President Augusto Pinochet with the justification for his dictatorial constitution, and the Koch brothers with the tools to dismantle American democracy. ..."
"... Warren's ideas have a close family resemblance to those of Olson, a celebrated public choice theorist. (Perhaps she has read him; perhaps she has just reached similar conclusions from similar starting points.) Olson, like other public choice scholars, worried about the power of interest groups. He famously developed a theory of collective action that shows how narrowly focused interest groups can dominate politics, because they can organize more cheaply and reap great benefits by setting rules and creating monopolies at the expense of the ordinary public. This means that government programs often actively harm the poor rather than helping them. ..."
"... Olson also castigated libertarian economists for their "monodiabolism" and "almost utopian lack of concern about other problems" so long as the government was chained down. He argued that the government was not the only source of economic power: Business special interests would corrupt markets even if the government did not help them. ..."
"... Warren shares far more intellectual DNA with Mancur Olson and his colleagues than with traditional socialism. However, there are important differences. Olson wrote his key work in the 1980s, before the globalization boom. His arguments for free trade depend on the assumption that open borders will disempower special interests. ..."
Elizabeth Warren's politics seem like a tangle of contradictions. She wants free markets,
but also wants to tax billionaires' capital. Her enemies on the right claim that
she is a socialist , but Warren
describes herself as "capitalist to my bones."
Warren's politics are so confusing because we have forgotten that a pro-capitalist left is
even possible. For a long time, political debate in the United States has been a fight between
conservatives and libertarians on the right, who favored the market, and socialists and
liberals on the left, who favored the government.
It has been clear since 2016 that the traditional coalition of the right was breaking up.
Conservatives such as U.S. President Donald Trump are no fans of open trade and free markets,
and even favor social protections so long as they benefit their white supporters. Now, the left
is changing too.
Warren is reviving a pro-market left that has been neglected for decades, by drawing on a
surprising resource: public choice economics. This economic theory is reviled by many on the
left, who have claimed that it is a Koch-funded intellectual conspiracy designed to destroy
democracy. Yet there is a left version of public choice economics too, associated with thinkers
such as the late Mancur Olson. Like Olson, Warren is not a socialist but a left-wing
capitalist, who wants to use public choice ideas to cleanse both markets and the state of their
corruption.
Public choice economics has big influence and a bad name. It is a school of
economic thought that has at different times been associated with scholars at the University of
Rochester, Virginia Tech, and George Mason University. Public choice came into being in fervent
opposition to the mainstream of economics, which was dominated by scholars such as Paul
Samuelson.
Samuelson, in his famous and influential textbooks, saw a clear role for government in
regulating markets. Public choice scholars vehemently disagreed . For
political and theoretical reasons, they instead saw government as a fountain of corruption.
Public choice economists argued that government regulations were the product of special
interest groups that had "captured" the power of the state, to cripple rivals and squeeze money
from citizens and consumers. Regulations were not made in the public interest, but instead were
designed to bilk ordinary citizens.
Perhaps the most influential version of public choice was known as law and economics. For
decades, conservative foundations supported seminars that taught judges and legal academics the
principles of public choice economics. Attendees were taught that harsh sentences would deter
future crime, that government regulation should be treated with profound skepticism, and that
antitrust enforcement had worse consequences than the monopolies it was supposed to correct. As
statistical research by Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, and Suresh Naidu has shown
, these seminars played a crucial role in shifting American courts to the right.
Warren was one of the young legal academics who attended
these seminars , and was largely convinced by the arguments. Her early work on bankruptcy
law started from public choice principles, and displayed a deep skepticism of intervention.
The conventional story is that as Warren moved from the right to the left, she abandoned the
public choice way of thinking about the world, in favor of a more traditional left-wing
radicalism. A more accurate take might be that she didn't abandon public choice, but instead
remained committed to its free-market ideals, while reversing some of its valences. Her work as
an academic was aimed at combating special interests, showing how the financial industry had
shaped bankruptcy reforms so that they boosted lenders' profits at borrowers' expense.
Notably, she applied public choice theory to explain some aspects of public choice, showing how
financial interests had funded scholarly centers which
provided a patina of genteel respectability to industry's preferred positions.
Now, Warren wants to to wash away the filth that has built up over decades to clog the
workings of American capitalism. Financial rules that have been designed by lobbyists need to
be torn up. Vast inequalities of wealth, which provide the rich with disproportionate political
and economic power, need to be reversed. Intellectual property rules, which make it so that
farmers no longer really own the seeds
they sow or the machinery they use to plant them, need to be abolished. For Warren, the problem
with modern American capitalism is that it is not nearly capitalist enough. It has been
captured by special interests, which are strangling competition.
It is hard to see how deeply Warren's program is rooted in
public choice ideas, because public choice has come to be the target of left-wing conspiracy theories. A recent popular
history book, which qualified as a finalist for the National Book Award, depicts public choice as a kind of
stealth intellectual weapons program , developed by economist James Buchanan to provide
Chilean President Augusto Pinochet with the justification for his dictatorial constitution, and
the Koch brothers with the tools to dismantle American democracy.
For sure, the mainstream of public choice is strongly libertarian, and the development of
the approach was funded by conservative individuals and foundations. What left-wing paranoia
overlooks is that there has always been a significant left-wing current of public choice, and
even a potent left-wing radicalism buried deep within public choice waiting to be uncovered.
The free-market ideal is a situation in which no actor has economic power over any other. As
many of Warren's proposals demonstrate, trying to achieve this ideal can animate a radical
program for reform.
Warren's ideas have a close family resemblance to those of Olson, a celebrated public choice
theorist. (Perhaps she has read him; perhaps she has just reached similar conclusions from
similar starting points.) Olson, like other public choice scholars, worried about the power of
interest groups. He famously developed a theory of collective action that shows how narrowly
focused interest groups can dominate politics, because they can organize more cheaply and reap
great benefits by setting rules and creating monopolies at the expense of the ordinary public.
This means that government programs often actively harm the poor rather than helping them.
However, Olson also castigated libertarian economists for their "monodiabolism" and "almost
utopian lack of concern about other problems" so long as the government was chained down. He
argued that the government was not the only source of economic power: Business special
interests would corrupt markets even if the government did not help them.
The result, according to Olson, was that societies, economies, and political systems became
increasingly encrusted with special-interest politics as the decades passed. Countries
benefited economically from great upheavals such as wars and social revolutions, which tore
interest groups from their privileged perches and sent them tumbling into the abyss.
Olson wanted to open up both politics and the economy to greater competition, equalizing
power relations as much as possible between the many and the few. He argued that under some
circumstances, powerful trade unions could benefit the economy. When unions and business groups
were sufficiently big that they represented a substantial percentage of workers or business as
a whole, they would be less likely to seek special benefits at the expense of the many, and
more likely to prioritize the good of the whole. Olson also believed strongly in the benefits
of open trade, not just because it led to standard economic efficiencies, but because it made
it harder for interest groups to capture government and markets. Northern European economies
such as Denmark, which combine powerful trade unions with a strong commitment to free markets,
represent Olsonian politics in action.
Warren shares far more intellectual DNA with Mancur Olson and his colleagues than with
traditional socialism. However, there are important differences. Olson wrote his key work in
the 1980s, before the globalization boom. His arguments for free trade depend on the assumption
that open borders will disempower special interests.
As economists such as Dani Rodrik and political scientists such as Susan Sell have shown,
this hasn't quite worked out as Olson expected. Free trade agreements have become a magnet for
special interest groups, who want to cement their preferences in international agreements that
are incredibly hard to reverse. The U.S. "fast track" approach to trade negotiations makes it
harder for Congress to demand change, but allows industry lobbyists to shape the
administration's negotiating stance. Investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms provide
business with a friendly forum where they can target government rules that hurt their economic
interests. All of this helps explain why Warren is skeptical of arguments for the general
benefits of free-trade agreements: they aren't nearly so general as economists claim.
Close attention to Warren's public choice influences reveals both her radicalism and its
limits. Like Olson, she is committed to the notion that making capitalism work for citizens
will require changes that border on the revolutionary. The sweeping proposals she makes for
changes to America's gross economic inequality, its economic relations with the rest of the
world, its approach to antitrust legislation, and its tolerance of sleazy relationships among
politicians, regulators, and industry are all aimed at creating a major upheaval. Where she
proposes major state action, as in her "Medicare for All" plans, it is to supplant market
institutions that aren't working, and are so embedded in interest group power dynamics that
they are incapable of reform.
Yet this is a distinctly capitalist variety of radicalism. Socialists will inevitably be
disappointed in the limits to her arguments. Warren's ideal is markets that work as they
should, in contrast to the socialist belief that some forms of power are inherent within
markets themselves. Not only Marxists, but economists such as Thomas Piketty, have suggested
that the market system is rigged in ways that will inevitably favor capital over the long run.
The fixes that Warren proposes will at most dampen down these tendencies rather than remove
them.
If Warren wins, she will not only disappoint socialists. Her proposals may end up being too
radical for Congress, but not nearly radical enough to tackle challenges such as climate
change, which will require a rapid and dramatic transformation of the global economy if
catastrophe is to be averted. Libertarians and mainstream public choice scholars will attack
her from a different vantage point, arguing that she is both too skeptical about existing
market structures and too trusting of the machineries of the state that she hopes to use to
remedy them. State efforts to reform markets can easily turn into protectionism.
What Warren offers, then, is neither a socialist or deep green alternative to capitalism,
nor a public choice justification for why regulators ought to leave it alone. The bet she is
making is that capitalism can solve the major problems that the United States faces, so long as
the government tackles inequality and defangs the special interests that have parasitized the
political and economic systems. Like all such bets, it is a risky one, but one that might
transform the U.S. model of capitalism if it succeeds.
Henry Farrell is a professor of
political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that
way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)
2) Being "managed" on behalf of various power centers. This can be liveable or can turn into
strip mining of your "resources".
Sadly, there is no algorithm that allows you to detect whether your are engaged or are
being engaged on behalf of others. That would be easy. But one should start with a minimal
state, hard money and the sons of the upper crust on the front lines and forbidden from
taking office in government.
That being said, this article is a bit meandering. Came for Bellingcat but was
confused.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel
journalist Chris Hedges.
@El Dato "1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily
stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)"
There are no revolutions by means of pitchforks in a democracy, everything is weakened by
compromise, false promises, infiltration, manipulation, etc. You cannot stay angry all the
time too, it is very bad for your health, it needs to be short and intense to be effective,
which is exactly what democracy prevents.
Democracy turns you into a petted animal.
Rudy Giuliani Can Barely Contain Himself Over His Ukraine Findings by Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 -
17:05 0 SHARES
Rudy Giuliani is grinning like the Cheshire cat. His standard smile.
For the past several weeks, the personal attorney to President Trump has been in Ukraine,
interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence to shed light on what the Bidens were up to
during the Obama years, and get to the bottom of claims that Kiev interfered in the 2016 US
election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He has enlisted the help of former Ukrainian diplomat,
Andriy Telizhenko, to gather information from politicians and ask them to participate in a
documentary series in partnership with One America News Network (OANN) - which will make the
case for investigating the Bidens as well as Burisma Holdings - the natural gas firm which
employed the son of a sitting US Vice President in a case which reeks of textbook
corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zi2UWTO2DyY
According to the
Journal , Giuliani will present findings from his self-described "secret assignment" in a
20-page report .
Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for
the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where
Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was
a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries . -
Wall Street Journal
( Note the Wall Street Journal's use of a straw man when they write: "The allegations of
Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community
that Russia was behind the election interference ."
Apparently the three journalists who collaborated on the article didn't get the memo that
two countries can meddle at the same time, nor did any of them read the January, 2017 Politico
article: Ukrainian
efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - which outlines how Ukrainian government officials
conspired with a DNC operative to hurt the Trump campaign during the 2016 election - a move
which led to the disruptive ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort).
Telizhenko, the former diplomat, tells the Journal that the plan for the series was
conceived during the impeachment hearings as a way for Giuliani to tell his side of the story.
The former Ukrainian diplomat flew to Washington on November 20 to film with Giuliani, while in
early December he accompanied America's Mayor on the Kiev trip - stopping in Budapest, Vienna
and Rome.
Rudy comes home
Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump
while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the
Wall Street Journal .
" What did you get? " Trump asked. " More than you can imagine ," answered the former New
York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a
then-federal prosecutor.
According to the 77-year-old Giuliani, Trump instructed him to brief Attorney General
William Barr and GOP lawmakers on his findings. Soon after, the president then told reporters
at the White House, " I hear he has found plenty ."
Rudy has been working on this project for a while. In late January, he conducted phone
interviews with former Ukrainian prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yiury Lutsenko. On the call
was George Boyle -
Giuliani's Chief Operating Officer and Director of Investigations. Boyle started as a NYPD beat
cop in 1987, and was promoted to detective - eventually joining the Special Victims Squad. In
short, the ever-grinning Giuliani has some serious professionals working on this.
" When he believes he's right, he loves taking on fights ," said longtime Giuliani friend,
Tony Carbonetti.
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That said, Giuliani's efforts have not gone off without a hitch. In October, two associates
- Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both of whom assisted with his Ukraine investigation, were
related in October on campaign-finance charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty, while
Giuliani denies wrongdoing and says they did not lobby him. Parnas, notably, was also on the
January call with Shokin and Lutsenko as a translator.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tc4nQD6eiW4
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs.
Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by
holding his phone over them . But on his recent trip, he said, "despite whatever else you can
say, I missed them." -
Wall Street Journal
Trump opponents insist Giuliani is conducting shadow foreign policy and orchestrated the
ouster of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch - who Ukraine's new president
Volodomyr Zelensky complained on a now-famous July 25 phone call accused of not recognizing his
authority.
In the impeachment hearings, witnesses accused Mr. Giuliani of conducting a shadow foreign
policy and orchestrating the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was described as
"problematic" and "disruptive" and, in testimony that cited former national security adviser
John Bolton, likened to a "hand grenade that's going to blow everybody up." Mr. Giuliani has
said he kept the State Department apprised of his efforts and that he was working at the
president's behest. -
Wall Street Journal
" Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career ," Giuliani
wrote in a text message while conducting his investigation overseas.
Never forget... Giuliani was up to his neck in the treasonous happenings on 9/11. For
that, he can NEVER be forgiven... no matter how much dirt he digs up in this inane Ukranian
circus.
Three j ournalists also wrote a WSJ piece October 22, '19; one author same as
December 13 piece. ( Identify a narrative?)
Excerpts:
" Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have repeatedly promoted an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine
was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee before the 2016 election, and
that a related computer server is now located there. That theory is sharply at odds with the
findings of a special counsel investigation and a 2017 U.S. intelligence community report
that found Russia was responsible for the hack and leak of Democratic emails as part of a
broader operation intended to aid Mr. Trump."... ...
... ... " Mr. Giuliani, who didn't respond to a request for comment, had for months
pressed for Ukraine to investigate issues related to the 2016 election as well as Mr. Biden,
a potential 2020 rival of Mr. Trump. As vice president under President Obama, Mr. Biden led
an anti-corruption drive in Ukraine at the same time as his son received $50,000 a month for
sitting on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, an arrangement Mr. Trump has called corrupt.
Mr. Biden and his son have denied any wrongdoing, and no evidence of wrongdoing has been
presented. "
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, the first AG in history to be held in both
criminal and civil contempt by Congress for failing to turn over ' Fast and
Furious ' documents, says that current Attorney General William Barr is "nakedly partisan"
and unfit for office.
In a Wednesday night op-ed in the
Washington Post , Holder - who previously described himself as President Obama's
'wing-man,' wrote that Barr is employing "the tactics of an unscrupulous criminal defense
lawyer" by vilifying critics of President Trump.
Holder slammed Barr's recent comments at a Federalist Society event, in which the AG
"delivered an ode to essentially unbridled executive power" by "dismissing the authority of the
legislative and judicial branches."
When, in the same speech, Barr accused "the other side" of "the systematic shredding of
norms and the undermining of the rule of law," he exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an
impartial law enforcement official. Even more troubling -- and telling -- was a later (and
little-noticed) section of his remarks, in which Barr made the outlandish suggestion that
Congress cannot entrust anyone but the president himself to execute the law. -Eric Holder
"It undermines the need for understanding between law enforcement and certain communities
and flies in the face of everything the Justice Department stands for," wrote Holder, adding "I
and many other Justice veterans were hopeful that he would serve as a responsible steward of
the department and a protector of the rule of law."
So - Eric Holder thinks Barr should be an "impartial law enforcement official," and not a
"partisan actor," yet described himself in a
2013 interview as President Obama's "wing-man."
In 2012, 'scandal-free' Obama claimed executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents
"gunwalking" operation sought by House investigators investigating the death of Border Patrol
agent Brian Terry at the hands of foreign nationals who used a weapon obtained through illegal
straw purchases orchestrated by Obama's ATF.
Holder blasted the contempt votes as "politically motivated" and "misguided."
As a result of his stupidity, Attorney General Eric Holder's actions killed US Boarder and
Mexican police . Holder should have been charged with homicide for the murders of the US
Boarder Gaurds.
Holder is another protection card to play, yesterday it was Bill Clinton. They are
reaching desperation, bottom of the barrel, and soon all will be naked and exposed. Easy to
lose sight of the damage to our nation wrought by this one party that puts it's survival and
needs above us all.
BOTH the AG and federal prosecutor Durham REJECT the findings. Durham has the ability to
conduct a criminal investigation that Horowitz did not. Given this, the IG found evidence to
criminally refer FBI officials and campaign spies.
Remember: the Durham probe became a CRIMINAL investigation as soon as he left Rome with
information on Mifsud. IG said he wasn't working for the FBI. Leaves only one other option:
CIA, and why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up. Bye bye, Brennan.
This is selective quotes from anti-Trump of neocon author. The general tone of the article is
completely different from presented quotes.
Notable quotes:
"... ..."This was an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow -- and a lot of people were in on it," Trump declared , while Barr insisted , in a more lawyerly fashion, "The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken." ..."
The report confirmed that the Russia investigation originated, as has been previously
reported, with the Trump campaign adviser
George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat about Russia possessing "dirt" on
Hillary Clinton, which the IG determined "was sufficient to predicate the investigation." The
widespread conservative belief that the investigation began because of the dubious claims in
the Steele dossier was false. "Steele's reports played no role" in the opening of the Russia
investigation, the report found, because FBI officials were not "aware of Steele's election
reporting until weeks later."
...The IG also "did not find any records" that Joseph Mifsud, the professor who told
Papadopoulos the Russians had obtained "dirt" on Clinton, was an FBI informant sent to entrap
him.
...Page "did not play a role in the decision to open" the Russia investigation, and that
Strzok was "was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those
matters."
...the IG did determine that the Page FISA application was "inaccurate, incomplete, or
unsupported by appropriate documentation," which misled the court as to the credibility of the
FBI's evidence when seeking authority to surveil Page.
..."This was an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow -- and a lot of
people were in on it,"
Trump declared , while Barr insisted , in a more lawyerly fashion, "The Inspector General's
report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential
campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps
taken."
Adam
Serwer is a staff writer atThe Atlantic, where he covers
politics.
In her usual succinct and clarifying manner, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel
took to Twitter overnight to summarize the farcical findings within the Horowitz Report (and
Barr and Durham's responses).
In
sixteen short tweets , Strassel destroyed the spin while elucidating the key findings of
the Horowitz report (emphasis ours):
Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to
note what a "low threshold" this is.
Durham's statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on
reasonableness.
The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle
on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said
dossier was as an "essential" part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court
Conversely, the report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his "memo" of Feb 2018.
That doc stated that "FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process" or "omit
material information."
Also claimed FBI didn't much rely on dossier.
In fact, IG report says dossier played "central and essential role" in getting FISA
warrants.
Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is
the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.
The Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the "dossier."
Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly
available times, places, title names. Ouch.
IG finds 17 separate problems with FISA court submissions, including FBI's overstatement of
Steele's credentials. Also the failure to provide court with exculpatory evidence and issues
with Steele's sources and additional info it got about Steele's credibility.
Every one of these "issues" is a story all on its own.
Example: The FBI had tapes of Page and Papadopoulos making statements that were
inconsistent with FBI's own collusion theories. They did not provide these to the FISA
court.
Another example: FBI later got info from professional contacts with Steele who said he
suffered from "lack of self awareness, poor judgement" and "pursued people" with "no
intelligence value." FBI also did not tell the court about these credibility concerns.
And this: FBI failed to tell Court that Page was approved as an "operational contact" for
another U.S. agency, and "candidly" reported his interactions with a Russian intel officer.
FBI instead used that Russian interaction against Page, with no exculpatory detail.
Overall, IG was so concerned by these "extensive compliance failures" that is has now
initiated additional "oversight" to assess how FBI in general complies with "policies that seek
to protect the civil liberties of U.S. persons."
The Report also expressed concerns about FBI's failure to present any of these issues to DOJ
higher ups; its ongoing contacts with Steele after he was fired for talking to media; and its
use of spies against the campaign without any DOJ input.
Remember Comey telling us it was no big deal who paid for dossier?
Turns out it was a big deal in FBI/DOJ, where one lawyer (Stuart Evans) expressed
"concerns" it had been funded by Clinton/DNC. Because of his "consistent inquiries" we go
that convoluted footnote.
IG also slaps FBI for using what was supposed to be a baseline briefing for the Trump
campaign of foreign intelligence threats as a surreptitious opportunity to investigate Flynn
.
Strassel's last point is perhaps the most important for those on the left claiming
"vindication"...
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When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't
find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump."
And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees.
Instead... He straightforwardly lays out facts.
Those facts produce a pattern of FBI playing the FISA Court--overstating some info,
omitting other info, cherrypicking details.
Americans can look at totality and make their own judgment as to "why" FBI behaved in such a
manner.
Finally, intriguing just how many people at the FBI don't remember anything about anything.
Highly convenient.
"... If Russia spending $100,000 on Facebook ads constitutes election interference, and Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is too - then Hillary Clinton takes the cake when it comes to influence campaigns designed to harm a political opponent. ..."
"... The article suggests that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page "has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials - including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president." ..."
"... Steele told us that in September [of 2016] her and Simpson gave an "off-the-record" briefing to a small number of journalists about his reporting, " reads page 165 of the FISA report, which says that Steele "acknowledged that Yahoo News was identified in one of the court filings in the foreign litigation as being present. " ..."
"... Put another way, Hillary Clinton paid Christopher Steele to feed information to the MSM in order to harm Donald Trump right before the 2016 election . Granted, there were intermediaries; the Clinton campaign paid law firm Perkins Coie, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Steele. And if asked, we're guessing Clinton would claim she had no idea this happened - which simply isn't plausible given the stakes. Whatever the case - the act of Simpson paying Steele to peddle fiction to the media for the purpose of harming Trump, by itself , constitutes blatant election meddling by every standard set by the left over the past three years. ..."
If Russia spending $100,000 on Facebook ads constitutes election interference, and Donald
Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is too - then Hillary Clinton takes the cake
when it comes to influence campaigns designed to harm a political opponent.
Contained within Monday's FISA report by the DOJ
Inspector General is the revelation that Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Clinton campaign to
produce the Steele dossier, " was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media. " (
P.
369 and elsewhere)
And when did Steele talk with the media - which got him
fired as an FBI source ? Perhaps most notably was Yahoo News journalist Michael Isikoff ,
who says he was invited by Fusion GPS to meet a
"secret source" at a Washington restaurant . That secret source was none other than
Christopher Steele , who fed Isikoff information from his now-discredited dossier - and which
appeared in a
September 23, 2016 article roughly six weeks before the election - which likely had orders
of magnitude greater visibility and impact coming from a widely-read, MSM source vs. $100,000
in Russian Facebook ads.
The article suggests that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page "has opened up private
communications with senior Russian officials - including talks about the possible lifting of
economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."
Steele told us that in September [of 2016] her and Simpson gave an "off-the-record" briefing
to a small number of journalists about his reporting, " reads page
165 of the FISA report, which says that Steele "acknowledged that Yahoo News was identified
in one of the court filings in the foreign litigation as being present. "
Put another way, Hillary Clinton paid Christopher Steele to feed information to the MSM in
order to harm Donald Trump right before the 2016 election . Granted, there were intermediaries;
the Clinton campaign paid law firm Perkins Coie, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Steele. And
if asked, we're guessing Clinton would claim she had no idea this happened - which simply isn't
plausible given the stakes. Whatever the case - the act of Simpson paying Steele to peddle
fiction to the media for the purpose of harming Trump, by itself , constitutes blatant election
meddling by every standard set by the left over the past three years.
We're sure Hillary can explain that if and when she jumps into the 2020 race.
" [T]hese irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions were not satisfactorily
explained, " said Barr in a lengthy interview with NBC , just one day after DOJ Inspector
General Michael Horowitz released the so-called FISA report.
"And I think that leaves open
the possibility to infer bad faith . I think it's premature now to reach a judgment on that,
but I think that further work has to be done and that's what Durham is doing," he added,
referring to US Attorney John Durham - who Barr hand picked to lead a concurrent investigation
into the 2016 US election.
Barr described Durham's role as "Looking at the issue of how it got started. He's looking at
whether or not the narrative of Trump being involved in the Russian interference actually
preceded July, and was it in fact what precipitated the trigger for the investigation."
"He's also looking at the conduct of the investigation," added Barr - who then said that he
instructed Durham to look just as carefully into the "post-election period."
"I did that because of some of the stuff that Horowitz has uncovered, which to me is
inexplicable. Their case collapsed after the election, and they never told the court, and
they kept on getting renewals on these applications. There was documents falsified in order
to get these renewals . There was all kinds of withholding of information from the court. And
the question really is 'what was the agenda after the election that kept them pressing ahead,
after their case collapsed?' This is the president of the Untied States!"
https://www.youtube.com/embed/sNhEYGLLS4U
Barr, who has characterized the FBI's actions during Trump-Russia investigation as spying ,
slammed the Obama DOJ and the press for the Russiagate narrative that President Trump and his
campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.
The potential timing of the Durham Report release and announcements of indictments for
Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch and the rest of the traitors must horrify the demoncrats!
What do they have in common? So here's the deal - I am a dumb goyim that works in banking
and finance, which is about 50%+ dominated by the Chosenites.
They also rule politics and the Media, despite being 2% of the country.
What do you need to know? They lie. Repeatedly and boldly. Don't freak out, just
understand that culture does not believe in an afterlife where they are judged, so they lie
and steal everything in sight. That's this whole impeachment - crazy lies by sociopaths that
aren't afraid to lie.
If you know that going in, you can always protect yourself and even be decent business
allies (but not too close). That's where Trump has gone all wrong. His daughter even married
one of these goofballs who frankly is probably leaking all of the embarrassing stuff. Plan
accordingly.
Best part of the Barr interview..."The greatest charge is having an incumbent government
use the apparatus of the state to spy on political opponents and influence the outcome of the
election. This is the first time I am aware that the incumbent administration spied on a
presidential candidate."
You are exactly correct. The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and
FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz
was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as
"Crossfire Hurricane". So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect
to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?
Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are
known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on
the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was
assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative
Treehouse
"The report concludes that despite nearly everybody investigating President Trump hating
him - and that evidence was fabricated by at least one FBI attorney, and that they
misrepresented Christopher Steele's credentials, none of their bias 'tainted' the
investigation , and the underlying process was sound."
Who investigating major criminal acts actually likes the perp? It was such a juvenile
argument from day 1.
I bet the truth is stretched a bit in just about every subpoena issued, not just FISA
ones. It is the nature of things, since you are trying to obtain evidence of crimes that are
currently unproven but suspected. As such all subpoena's are issued based on the perception
of guilt and not any actual proof of that guilt. This was a non-starter from the
beginning.
Steele said he had visited Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and had been "friendly" with her
for "some years". He described their relationship as "personal". The former British
government spy had even given her a "family tartan from Scotland" as a present, the report
quoted him as saying.
It all comes down to the Barr/Durham investigation and indictments that follow.
Will they indict the top dogs (Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, Rosenstein, Obama,
Strokz, Page, Ohr, McCabe, Yates, Priestap, etc.) and make the long-needed changes to Fed
Gov't or indict just a bunch of low-level "Fall Guys" in the alphabet agencies to try to make
the public release some steam and then drop it all like a hot potato and keep the Deep State
intact.???
If REAL justice isn't served up at that point gov't as we know it will collapse as America
descends into anarchy and lawlessness.
The political class and mainstream media needs to be purged and the U.S. Constitution
fully restored.
As I stated not that long ago. You cannot have a corrupt FBI without a corrupt DOJ. And
you cannot have a corrupt agency without a corrupt IG. Period. Remember the IRS IG clearing
Lois Lerner? Hmmm?
The only crimes committed were by the Trump campaign and administration. Try to pay
attention. Do you need a list of Trump associates who are either in jail or have been
convicted and are on their way to jail?
Meanwhile, Hillary's laughing it up with Howard Stern.
Wow, even fake news NBC is pooping themselves over FISA mishandling. I predict whiplash
with how fast the fake news, drive-by media throws Comey, Clapper and Brennan under the bus
to protect Hillary and Obongo.
"... there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized ..."
"... This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences, like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day. ..."
"... Another rapidly creeping Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become common coin ..."
"... increasingly they have that "enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch. ..."
There is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly
Sovietized, writes Weir .
This is becoming quite the meme. Upon reflection, I do think there is something in it. Not
this idiotic suggestion that Repubicans have somehow morphed into borscht-swilling,
shapka-wearing, Putin-loving Russkies. Indeed, there are hardly any actual Russians like that.
But there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized. Of course it's two separate camps, not a monolith, and the Democrats are at least
as guilty as Republicans.
This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences,
like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day.
Russians scoff at the idea that Putin is able to get his own man elected president of the US
when he can't even fix the governor in Irkutsk. But the author of this piece implies that Putin
is somehow pulling the strings, not only of Trump but all Republicans?
Another rapidly creeping
Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential
struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become
common coin. And they are not just deployed as simple insults: increasingly they have that
"enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in
political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch.
Also, it looks like big part of the media have become almost Pravda-like, making ideological
mission their main priority. I spend some of my down-time perusing shows from Fox News and
MSNBC, which an alien from outer space would think were the propaganda organs of two different,
mutually-hostile states -- but both very Soviet-like.
... ... ...
THEATLANTIC.COM
The Russification of the Republican Party
GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president's embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/12/impeachment-republican-party-russia/603088/?fbclid=IwAR1EC0-CDBEx-3SMS1lJTMT2m0xVjfaguZehK4BIeZ5Bov41Ds1XFi_Cbkg
"... "I'm opposed to conditioning the aid, and I would fight it no matter what," Engel told Al-Monitor. "The Democratic Party has traditionally been a pro-Israel party, and I see no reason for that to change now. If there are people who are Democrats who don't feel that way, then I don't think they should be elected president of the United States." ..."
"... Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the most vocal proponent of conditioning Israeli military aid in the presidential race -- going even further left than J Street and all his primary opponents. At J Street's conference in October he said that some of the $3.8 billion in annual assistance "should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza." ..."
"... J Street has set any formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank as its red line for placing conditions on Israeli military aid. But it also supports the $38 billion memorandum of understanding. ..."
"... Shortly after the vote, Sanders campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., as well as Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked colleagues to sign a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to clarify whether Israel has used US military equipment while demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank. ..."
"... The letter, seen by Al-Monitor, notes that the Arms Export Control Act "narrowly conditions the use of transferred US-origin defense articles" and requires the president to inform Congress if the equipment is used for unauthorized purposes ..."
The Jews try to run US policy ..but lately the Dem base (and part of the party) has become
more pro Palestine.
Democratic (Jewish) lawmakers reckon with 2020 rhetoric on Israel aid
December 6, 2019
Presidential candidates who want to place conditions on Israeli military aid have prompted
pro-Israel House Democrats to go on the offensive.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
It's becoming harder and harder for pro-Israel Democrats on
Capitol Hill to ignore the increasingly critical voices of the US ally within their party and
the presidential race.
House Democratic leaders -- who happen to be some of the staunchest Israel supporters on
Capitol Hill -- this week added language supportive of the annual $3.8 billion military aid
package to Israel to a symbolic resolution that endorses a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The stalled resolution passed 226-188, largely along party lines, today. But pro-Israel
Democrats only came on board after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel,
D-N.Y., added their new language to the bill. The new provision is a response to the fact
that several presidential candidates have come out of the woodwork in recent months with
calls to place conditions on the largest recipient of US military aid.
"I'm opposed to conditioning the aid, and I would fight it no matter what," Engel
told Al-Monitor. "The Democratic Party has traditionally been a pro-Israel party, and I see
no reason for that to change now. If there are people who are Democrats who don't feel that
way, then I don't think they should be elected president of the United
States."
When Engel's committee first advanced the resolution in July, Democratic leaders opted not
to put it on the floor, even as they passed another nonbinding resolution condemning the
pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions movement 398-17, which was backed by the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
That changed last month after the Trump administration repealed a decades-old legal
opinion maintaining that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international
law.
"There are those on the far-left side of the Democratic Party -- and some of the
presidential candidates -- who are pushing for new conditions on aid, especially in their
interactions with Gaza, which is run by Hamas -- a terrorist organization," Gottheimer told
Al-Monitor.
An October poll from the liberal Center for American Progress found that 56% of
American voters, including 71% of Democrats, oppose "unconditional financial and military
assistance to Israel if the Israeli government continues to violate American policy on
settlement expansion or West Bank annexation."
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the most vocal proponent of conditioning Israeli
military aid in the presidential race -- going even further left than J Street and
all his primary opponents. At J Street's conference in October he said that some of the $3.8
billion in annual assistance "should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza."
J Street has set any formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank as its red line for
placing conditions on Israeli military aid. But it also supports the $38 billion memorandum
of understanding.
Presidential hopefuls Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South
Bend, Indiana, have jumped on board with J Street's position. However, the current
front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, has flatly ruled out conditioning the aid.
Notably, J Street did not oppose the effort to amend the Lowenthal resolution with the
military aid language. That said, progressive Democrats do not necessarily view that
provision as incompatible with calls to attach strings to that assistance. Congressional
Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., called the Engel language
"meaningless."
"It's just restating what current practice or current law is," Pocan told Al-Monitor. "We
don't really see it as affecting the bill one way or the other. At any time if we feel like
we're better off putting conditions on money and holding back money, Congress could always do
that with any country through the normal process."
Shortly after the vote, Sanders campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., as well as
Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked colleagues to sign a letter to
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to clarify whether Israel has used US military
equipment while demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
The letter, seen by Al-Monitor, notes that the Arms Export Control Act "narrowly
conditions the use of transferred US-origin defense articles" and requires the president to
inform Congress if the equipment is used for unauthorized purposes
Calling Trump 'Putin's boy' brings up coup tactics used by Birchers when Truman fired
MacArthur!
Brookings tools (Mr. Vindman (I have silver leaves Vindman does not fit) , Fiona Hill,
Holmes eavesdropping....) pleading to Schiff that Trump ain't their kind of 'Murekan empire
builder.
Making up "charges", hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the
constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'.
All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over.
"...Making up 'charges', hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the
constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'.
All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over."
[Funny (NOT) that they say the same thing about Trump. Your adversaries and yourself would
all make better lampshades or bars of soap than you do citizens.
Democracy has never been more than an illusion, sometimes just an allusion, particularly
though in modern republican times. Leaders have all too rarely been patriotic aside from
maybe George Washington, who largely despised the representative government that he had made.
TJ did not exactly fall in love with the US Congress either. In these times the political
class and their pet sycophants are more idiotic than patriotic.]
One bone: the coup #resistance despises the "office of the president" more than they (swamp
trolls like Schiff's tool Vindman) disdain deplorables and the US constitution.
It is a constitutional thingie in my view going back to the Henry Luce media and
Birchers/McCarthy (the ragings over "who lost Chiang's fiefdom in China?") going after anyone
who they described wrongfully in most cases as "subversives".
I believe that Washington was like Ike as to taking up the executive office.
"Eric Foner" in an effort to unearth this buried history
Calls Congressional Reconstruction
A second founding of the Republic
Reconstruction like the New Deal
Ended by producing its opposite
[ Please be careful in spelling names, and set down where the specific reference is. This
will be important, if a reference is set down. Also, further explanation when possible would
be helpful. ]
Could Tax Increases Speed Up the Economy?
Democrats Say Yes https://nyti.ms/2RlDbJx
NYT - Jim Tankersley - December 5
WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Warren is leading a liberal rebellion against a long-held economic
view that large tax increases slow economic growth, trying to upend Democratic policymaking
in the way supply-side conservatives changed Republican orthodoxy four decades ago.
(Warren Would Take Billionaires Down
a Few Billion Pegs https://nyti.ms/2CtMPRN
NYT - November 10)
Generations of economists, across much of the ideological spectrum, have long held that
higher taxes reduce investment, slowing economic growth. That drag, the consensus held, would
offset the benefits to growth from increased government spending in areas like education.
Ms. Warren and other leading Democrats say the opposite. The senator from Massachusetts,
who is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, contends that her
plans to tax the rich and spend the revenue to lift the poor and the middle class would
accelerate economic growth, not impede it. Other Democratic candidates are making similar
claims about their tax-and-spend proposals. Some liberal economists go further and say that
simply taxing the rich would help growth no matter what the government did with the
money.
Democrats in the past, including the party's 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, have argued
that a more modest combination of tax increases and spending programs would expand the
economy. But no Democratic nominee before Ms. Warren had ever proposed so many new taxes and
spending programs, and leaned so heavily into the argument that they would be, in economist
parlance, pro-growth.
That argument tries to reframe a classic debate about the economic "pie" in the United
States by suggesting there is no trade-off between increasing the size of the pie and
dividing the slices more equitably among all Americans.
Ms. Warren has proposed nearly $3 trillion a year in new taxes on businesses and
high-earners, largely focused on billionaires but sometimes hitting Americans who earn
$250,000 and above per year. The taxes would fund wide-reaching new government spending on
health care, education, and family benefits like universal child care and paid parental
leave.
Last month, Ms. Warren wrote on Twitter that education, child care and student loan relief
programs funded by her tax on wealthy Americans would "grow the economy." In a separate post,
she said student debt relief would "supercharge" growth.
The last batch of economists to disrupt a political party's consensus position were
conservative -- the so-called supply-siders who built influence in the late 1970s and gained
power in the Reagan administration. Previous Republican presidents had focused on keeping the
budget deficit low, which constrained their ability to cut taxes if they did not also cut
government spending. Supply-siders contended that well-targeted tax cuts could generate big
economic growth even without spending cuts. ...
Ms. Warren is making the case that the economy could benefit if money is redistributed from
the rich and corporations to uses that she and other liberals say would be more productive.
Their argument combines hard data showing that high levels of inequality and wealth
concentration weigh down economic growth with a belief that well-targeted government spending
can encourage more Americans to work, invest and build skills that would make them more
productive.
They also cite evidence that transferring money to poor and middle-class individuals would
increase consumer spending because they spend a larger share of their incomes than wealthy
Americans, who tend to save and invest.
"The economy has changed, our understanding of it has changed, and we understand the
constricting effects of inequality" on growth, said Heather Boushey, the president of the
Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank focused on inequality.
Inequality has widened significantly in America over the last several decades. The
Congressional Budget Office estimates that the incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans more
than tripled from 1979 to 2016, before taxes and government transfer payments are taken into
account. For the middle class, incomes grew 33 percent. More than a decade after the
recession, wage growth for the middle class continues to run well behind previous times of
economic expansion, like the late 1990s.
Research by the economist Emmanuel Saez and colleagues shows that the last time such a
small sliver of Americans controlled such a large share of the nation's income and wealth was
in the late 1920s, just before a stock market crash set off the Great Depression. World Bank
researchers have warned that high levels of inequality are stifling growth in South Africa,
which has the globe's worst measured inequality.
"We have an economy that isn't delivering like it used to," said Ms. Boushey, who advised
Hillary Clinton's 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. "That's leading people to say let's
re-examine the evidence."
The contention that tax and spending increases can lift economic growth is not the only
challenge to traditional orthodoxy brewing in liberal economic circles. Some Democrats have
also embraced modern monetary theory, which reframes classic thinking that discourages large
budget deficits as a drag on growth. Its supporters, including Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez of New York and the economist Stephanie Kelton, an adviser to Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, argue that the United States government should be spending much more on
programs to fight inequality, like a federal job guarantee, without imposing new taxes.
Some of the inequality-focused economists say they are hoping to build new economic models
to predict the effects of their policies, though they acknowledge few of those models exist
yet. Instead, they rely on evidence about the likely effects of individual programs, added
together.
Many economists who study tax policy contend that Ms. Warren's plans -- and other large
tax-and-spend proposals from Democratic candidates this year -- would hurt the economy, just
as classic economic models suggest.
"Some elements of the large increase in government spending on health and education
proposed by Senator Warren would promote economic growth" through channels like improved
education, said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, who has written some of the most influential research in the profession on the
relationship between tax rates and growth.
But, he said, "I am very skeptical that these growth effects would offset the negative
effects on growth of the higher taxes, particularly given that the spending increases are not
specifically targeted toward enhancing growth."
Ms. Warren disagrees. In the latest Democratic debate, she said the spending programs
funded by her wealth tax would be "transformative" for workers. Those plans would raise
wages, make college tuition-free and relieve graduates of student debt, she said, adding, "We
can invest in an entire generation's future."
An emerging group of liberal economists say taxes on high-earners could spur growth even
if the government did nothing with the revenue because the concentration of income and wealth
is dampening consumer spending.
"We are experiencing a revolution right now in macroeconomics, particularly in the policy
space," said Mark Paul, an economist who is a fellow at the liberal Roosevelt Institute in
Washington. "We can think of a wealth tax as welfare-enhancing, in and of itself, simply by
constraining the power of the very wealthy" to influence public policy and distort markets to
their advantage.
Taken together, Ms. Warren's proposals would transform the role of federal taxation. If
every tax increase she has proposed in the campaign passed and raised as much revenue as her
advisers predict -- a contingency hotly debated among even liberal economists -- total
federal tax revenue would grow more than 50 percent.
The United States would leap from one of the lowest-taxed rich nations to one of the
highest. It would collect more taxes as a share of the economy than Norway, and only slightly
less than Italy.
Mr. Sanders's plan envisions a similarly large increase in tax levels. Former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s proposals are much smaller in scale: He would raise taxes on
the wealthy and corporations by $3.4 trillion over a decade, in order to fund increased
spending on health care, higher education, infrastructure and carbon emissions reduction.
If Ms. Warren's tax program is enacted, said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at Berkeley who
is an architect of her wealth tax proposal, "in my view, the most likely effect is a small
positive effect on growth, depending on how the revenues are used."
Another economist who has worked with the Warren campaign to analyze its proposals, Mark
Zandi of Moody's, said he would expect her plans to be "largely a wash on long-term economic
growth."
Researchers at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College projected this summer that Ms.
Warren's wealth tax and spending policies would generate a 1.7 percent increase in the size
of the economy. A preliminary study of a wealth tax like Ms. Warren's proposal, by the Penn
Wharton Budget Model, found that it would reduce the size of the economy by a similar 1.7
percent. The model uses the sort of classic methodology that liberals are now rebelling
against and did not evaluate Ms. Warren's spending proposals.
Historical experience offers few parallels for assessing the economic effects of a
taxation-and-spending program on the scale of Ms. Warren's ambitions. A 2002 study of wealth
taxes in rich countries found that those taxes, most of which have since been abandoned,
reduced economic growth slightly on an annual basis.
Conservative economists roundly disagree that large tax increases can spur faster growth,
even those who say government spending on paid leave and child care may get more Americans
into the labor force. They say a wealth tax on the scale of Ms. Warren's proposal would
greatly reduce savings and investment by the rich.
"What a wealth tax does is, it directly taxes savings," said Aparna Mathur, an economist
at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who favors a narrow paid leave program and
whose research finds benefits from reducing tax rates on business and investment. "If you're
taxing savings, you're implicitly taxing investment. So how can that possibly be
pro-growth?"
The supply-side economists' plans were similarly denounced -- George Bush called them
"voodoo economic policies" while running for president in 1980 -- but in time dominated
Republican proposals.
Some members of the new liberal revolt against tax orthodoxy welcome the comparison to the
supply-side uprising.
"While I think that the supply-siders were wrong, and were always wrong, they were
reacting to very real economic problems in the 1970s," said Michael Linden, the executive
director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal policy and advocacy group. "There was
something really wrong with the economy at the time. I think there is now."
Said it before and I'll say it again, Warren's personal ambition is often what
manifests her poor political instincts. Why did she claim Native American Heritage? Why did
she endorse HRC in 2016? Why did she ambiguously support, then unambiguously back away from,
M4A?
This trend leads me to suspect that she will not easily back out of the race, and
cannot be trusted finally to endorse Sanders in 2020 any more than she could be in 2016. I
suspect, in any case, that many of her voters would not default to Sanders but to Buttigieg
in any case. They seem to be mostly white professionals between 30-60yrs old who make
$120,000/year.
Wow, Sanders has really been pulling ahead of Warren if the polls over the past few days
are to be believed. I am hoping that this trend continues. Warren's overly-complicated
healthcare proposal which she decided to backpedal on at the last moment seems like it has
really cost her.
I kind of wonder at this point why Warren decided to run for president in the first place.
She seems like the type of person who would rather follow than lead, and would be ill-suited
to be president as she would be forced to take a position on something. Warren would have
been better served to be clear about what her actual positions are instead of trying to have
it both ways. Her constant mind-changing and backpedaling in response to whomever has the
political upper-hand at the moment has angered both the DNC establishment as well as the
progressive left.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it in a letter to "Mr FJ Hooker" as he was contemplating a push
across the Rappahannock in the wake of Lee's move westward in June 1863,
"like a bull stuck across a fence that cannot gore to the front or kick to the rear"
I think it was you, Lambert, who drew my attention to "Rich and Tracey's Civil War
podcast", and I am grateful.
I think Warren is running for treasury secretary in a Biden administration. The theory
being that that will be her reward for stopping Sanders. Everybody has an angle. Except
Bernie. Can someone show me his angle?
It has long required the support of the wealthy -- and a certain level of personal wealth --
to run for president of the United States. In 2016, billions of
dollars were raised by Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. But the
rich control much
of this cash flow . In 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the
top .01 percent of all income earners in the United States accounted for 29 percent of all
political committee fundraising.
There are many reasons why this is a dangerous thing. But a big one is accountability.
Does anyone know how the delegates are allocated based on the 15% threshold?
For example, today's CA poll has Sanders at leading with 24% and Warren the only other
candidate above 15% (at 22%).
My preliminary search says if you get x% of the vote, you get x number of delegates .
So what happens to the 56% of delegates that correspond to votes for people other than
Sanders and Warren? Or do Sanders and Warren split them somehow?
"Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: report" [
The Hill ].
"People familiar with the matter told The Post that Barr said he does not agree with the
report's finding that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the
Trump campaign in July 2016.
The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is
expected to be made public in a week. But a draft is being discussed behind the scenes, and
the attorney general reportedly is not persuaded that the FBI investigation was
justified.
The draft report is now being finalized and shown to the witnesses and offices
investigated by Horowitz.
People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Barr believes information from
other agencies such as the CIA could change Horowitz's finding that the investigation was
warranted."
Clinton curse sill is hanging over Democratic Party candidates like Damocles sword. 25 year
of betrayal of their core constituency and their alliance with Wall Street has consequences,
which they now feel. Obama now is openly despised by Democratic voters as the person who betrayed
his electorate and then enriched himself in classing "revolving door" corruption scheme. The
phrase "change is can believe in" became a curse. Bill Clinton is mired in Epstein scandal. You
can't get worse cheerleaders for the party and it does not have anybody else.
Notable quotes:
"... Obama was directly addressing Silicon Valley's wealthiest Democratic donors, telling them to "chill" in their debate over the party's candidates, and seeking to ease the tensions among tech billionaires who have broken into separate camps backing Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and -- most surprisingly -- Elizabeth Warren ..."
"... Gallup released a poll last week that had some troubling news for Democrats, as only 66% of the party faithful said they're enthusiastic about the upcoming election. ..."
While there are still 15 candidates running for the Democratic nomination (after the
withdrawal of Kamala Harris earlier today), only four are polling in double digits, with most
either at 1% or 0%. But Obama said whoever gets the nod should get the vote.
"There will be differences" between the candidates, Obama said, "but I want us to make sure
that we keep in mind that, relative to the ultimate goal, which is to defeat a president and a
party that has taken a sharp turn away from a lot of the core traditions and values and
institutional commitments that built this country," those differences are "relatively
minor."
"The field will narrow and there's going to be one person, and if that is not your perfect
candidate and there are certain aspects of what they say that you don't agree with and you
don't find them completely inspiring the way you'd like, I don't care," he said. "Because the
choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent in this
race."
Obama was directly addressing Silicon Valley's wealthiest Democratic donors, telling
them to "chill" in their debate over the party's candidates, and seeking to ease the tensions
among tech billionaires who have broken into separate camps backing Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden,
and -- most surprisingly -- Elizabeth Warren , according to recode.
Obama may have his job cut out for him: with many Democratic voters confused or merely bored
silly by the current roster of candidates, two newcomers, Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval
Patrick and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entered the race adding further to
the confusion. Last month, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, drew fewer than
100 people to a South Carolina "Environmental Justice" forum. And she's a frontrunner!
Meanwhile, Gallup released a poll last week that had some troubling news for Democrats,
as only 66% of the party faithful said they're enthusiastic about the upcoming election.
And while for Republicans the number is 65%, "this differed from the typical pattern Gallup has
seen over the years, whereby those who identify with the political party of the incumbent
president have been less enthusiastic about voting than members of the opposing party," Gallup
wrote.
Ironically, Obama isn't alone in saying Democrats need to hold their nose when they vote for
the eventual nominee. Joe Biden's wife, Jill, said in August that her husband might not be the
best candidate, but told voters "maybe you have to swallow a little bit" and vote for him
anyway.
"Your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care, than Joe is," Jill Biden said
on MSNBC, "but you've got to look at who's going to win this election, and maybe you have to
swallow a little bit and say, 'OK, I personally like so-and-so better,' but your bottom line
has to be that we have to beat Trump."
During a campaign stop in New Hampshire, she repeated the point. "I know that not all of you
are committed to my husband, and I respect that. But I want you to think about your candidate,
his or her electability, and who's going to win this race. So I think if your goal -- I know my
goal -- is to beat Donald Trump, we have to have someone who can beat him," she said.
There is new evidence that U.S. Attorney John Durham is
getting to the root of criminal abuses by senior U.S. law enforcement and intelligence
officials in their conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign, transition and presidency. Mr.
Durham's mandate from Attorney General William Barr -- to uncover the seditious plot behind the
Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the
Constitution since the nation's founding.
Mr. Durham's
apparent interest in FBI source Stefan Halper and the contract vehicles available to the
Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessments, for whom Halper worked, is an important
clue.
Likewise, Mr. Durham's travel to Italy for talks with the Italian government and their
intelligence service points to another
possible clue concerning the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.
For the purposes of the manufactured Trump-Russia hoax, one need only remember the
associations of Halper with Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page -- and Joseph Mifsud with
George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy junior advisor -- to the Trump campaign.
The intelligence agencies of the federal government are prohibited from targeting American
organizations in the United States. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 states:
Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States . No one acting on
behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any
organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community
without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization,
except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and
approved by the Attorney General. Such participation shall be authorized only if it is
essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such
participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the
organization or its members except in cases where:
(a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful
investigation; or
(b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States
persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.
This prohibition on running penetration operations against domestic political organizations
is a legal and political "hangover" from the 1960s civil disturbances that saw (among a host of
other covert action programs) US Army Counterintelligence agents
working undercover against the militant Leftists organizations such as Students for a
Democratic Society. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the "Church Committee," was empaneled in
1975 under the leadership of Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) to review and make recommendations on
intelligence operations. The Church Committee was controversial. Critics claimed the committee
exposed the "crown jewels" of U.S. intelligence and hobbled our ability to conduct legitimate
collection activities. Today's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Court were inspired by
the final
reports of the Church Committee.
The seditious coup plotters working against Trump knew the legal prohibitions on what they
planned to do. How to target Trump & Co. in a "legal" manner? Was it possible, or more
importantly, desirable, to have a legal finding from Attorney General Loretta Lynch justifying
their plan to frame-up Trump & Co.? That would authorize their operation -- but would Lynch
support it? Could Lynch be counted on? Did they want a piece of paper like that floating around
Washington D.C.? No, there had to be a better way to pull off the coup.
The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political
party's candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign
counterintelligence (FCI) "threat" that could then be "imported" back into the United States.
Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if
they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving
FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as "lures"
(intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.
We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to
her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, "You get all our oconus lures
approved? ;)."
To inoculate themselves from further charges of misconduct and criminality, the FBI's
mutually agreed upon lie is that their investigation of Trump/Russia began on July 31, 2016
with the improbable name "Crossfire Hurricane." That coincides nicely with their manufactured
FCI "event," allowing the full-bore sabotage of all things and persons "Trump." The coup
plotters used a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge as the opportunity for Carter
Page to meet and develop a friendship with Stefan Halper. This is roughly the same time period
that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer reported the supposedly drunken ramblings of George
Papadopoulos concerning the Russians having Hillary's emails to the FBI. Papadopoulos had
already serendipitously met the mysterious Joseph Mifsud in Rome during the second week of
March 2016. Learning that Papadopoulos would be joining the Trump campaign, Mifsud let
Papadopoulos know that he had many important connections with Russian government officials.
In July 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was questioned closely by Rep. Jim Jordan
(R-OH) concerning the persons and sequence of events detailed above.
The summation of Mueller's testimony was, "Well, I can't get into it."
The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on
book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC. A bright note in the so far
grim saga is that one of the collateral casualties has filed a civil lawsuit in the Eastern
District of Virginia against Stefan Halper and MSNBC for defamation, conspiracy and tortious
interference. It's the closest thing we've seen to justice to date. The
complaint makes remarkable and insightful reading.
It is now time for Mr. Durham to "get into it," in a manner Mr. Mueller was either unwilling
or unable to do. Time is of the utmost importance. The American public needs to see action.
Indictments and trials are the only antidote for the poison of treasonous sedition.
* * *
Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer.
Since Junior, we've had 911, and TARP. Obama put the globalist **** storm on overdrive.
Libya is slave trading. 16th. Century ****. He put Nazis in charge of Ukraine. So much other
****. I'm not wasting my breath. See what is in front of you. Democrats are ******* liars.
Republicans are Democrats in name only. There a few who aren't that. 80 to 90% of Washington
is not your friend.
With a half-dozen immunities given out like candy, smashed hard-drives, deleted emails,
and a gaggle of hostile dem-attorneys and countless dem-FBI agents to finishing off
destroying, sweeping under the rug, and otherwise covering-up the remainder stray evidence -
during the dems unsuccessful tax-payer-financed "fishing expedition" - Good Luck!
Joe's already been kind enough to have video-taped his criminal extortion admission. Just
get the rest of the evidence and indict Quid-Pro-Joe and Billion-Dollar-Hunter and this
$hiff-show ends - immediately - then its not digging dirt - its Trumps sworn oath and
responsibility.
PS: Tax paying republican American citizens want their grafted money back.
Horowitz is deep state, from what has leaked about "report", from (((NYC))) and appointed
by WJC I believe. If Barr is the same, e.g. Epstein died from over exposure to coincidences,
no justice is coming.
The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA
surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz was never investigating the
predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as "Crossfire Hurricane". So how
exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz
was never reviewing?
Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are
known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on
the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was
assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative
Treehouse
If there are no indictments against the following, then we have to decide as WE THE PEOPLE
what course of action we need to take to correct this situation.
Why?
If the perpetrators of treason do not face consequences, then we have no rule of law at
all.
That is a situation which IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
Here is my list of those I believe CLEARLY COMMITTED TREASON:
American tech companies are
getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies
Co., but it may be too late: It is now building smartphones without U.S. chips.
Huawei's latest phone,
which it unveiled in September -- the Mate 30 with a curved display and wide-angle
cameras that competes with Apple
Inc.'s iPhone 11 -- contained no U.S. parts, according to an analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese
technology lab that took the device apart to inspect its insides.
In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with
Beijing escalated. That move stopped companies like Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. from exporting chips to the company, though
some shipments of parts resumed over the summer after companies determined they weren't
affected by the ban.
Meanwhile, Huawei has made significant strides in shedding its dependence on parts from
U.S. companies. (At issue are chips from U.S.-based companies, not those necessarily made in
America; many U.S. chip companies make their semiconductors abroad.)
Huawei long relied on suppliers like Qorvo Inc., the North Carolina maker of chips that are used
to connect smartphones with cell towers, and Skyworks Solutions Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based company that
makes similar chips. It also used parts from Broadcom Inc., the San Jose-based maker of Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi chips, and Cirrus Logic Inc.,
an Austin, Texas-based company that makes chips for producing sound.
Yet Another Trump Trade Win
Trump cut off supplies so China looked elsewhere.
Trump changed his mind.
This is what constitutes a win.
"When Huawei came out with this high-end phone -- and this is its flagship -- with no U.S.
content, that made a pretty big statement," said Christopher Rolland, a semiconductor analyst
at Susquehanna International Group.
Huawei executives told Rolland that the company was moving away from American parts, but it
was still surprising how quickly it happened.
This was likely going to happen anyway, but Trump escalated the speed at which it
happened.
The trade war is the first act in the much larger game of hegemony.
Both sides are disentangling.
Apple finished their Indian plant.
Huawei went ex-US (but almost certainly not US IP)
Europe is already muttering about human rights in Hong Kong and Xiangjang.
We're nearly ready for act 2. That's when Europe joins in on squeezing trade, and the rest
of the democratic world and a few others is bullied and bribed to follow.
Do you know why Russia still sells rocket engines to US after being hit US sanctions?
Don't tell me they need US dollar.
Do you know that China is facing US embargo under the pretext of national security from
1949 until now and things allowed to export to China mostly agriculture produce, gas and oil?
This is the reason they develop their own technologies which the media told me stolen from
the US even that the US doesn't have like 5G, quantum satellite, hypersonic weapons just to
name a few.
russia needs to stop selling those engines to merica and cut them out of space... what a
dumb move... russia always trying to be friends with evil merica
Plainly, China will never buy the same amount of soybeans or chips than before as Russia
will never accumulate US dollars in its Reserve. They have discovered than US is not a
reliable partner.
Those that think that China is only about ripping off US technology are going to be
surprised. Sure that was once China's main method as it was for the early USA to rip off
British textile secrets. Trump trying to take down China's biggest technology company has
been a real wake up call for them. Now, they will own all of the content and will dominate in
Asian markets, the middle east, etc. They already did it in solar panels and much else. They
have a plan. They build infrastructure, we let it ours decay. They invest in education, we
leave out students in debt up to their eyeballs and then give them Starbucks jobs. They have
high speed trains everywhere, we have Amtrak. They are looking outward, we are looking
inward. America first, rah rah. This will end badly - for the USA.
no average american benefits from international trade unless the product is unattainable
state side. if we can grow it, we should. if we can make it, we should. excess can be sold
outside the nation but since everything has been weaponized, we are the ones caught in the
middle who suffer.
tariffs are good and we should use them to protect our industries. the problem is that our
industry was destroyed before implementing tarrifs.. that part doesn't make sense and all of
our major corporations have sold out anyways, further screwing john q public because lets be
real, companies are out for profit and shareholder return, not protecting employees and
consumers. so they could care less where its being made / sold as long as they see their
bottom line increase, no worries.
problem is big business doesn't want to pay it. it has always been that way. when the
money system was put in place, business owners didn't like the idea of increased competition
(less slaves and more company owners) and therefore they were given the ability to claim you
for tax purposes, hence why anytime you take a job they want your SS#. investment in the past
happened because of things that were to come in the future. the future in america from her
current vantage is trans/post humanism with the idea of automation, human/machine integration
and that leaves little room or interest in building $100m slave factories for working class
people to grind away in
chips have been made consistently in Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea for the better part of
almost 25 years, not real sure how any of what you said is relative to current events. just
syncrhonicity and morons like you saying dumb ****.
Wow, the article is really insulting to the Chinese. Like building a smart phone for them
was like landing on the moon or something. They steal everything from everyone anyways, so
who cares what they build.......
This is why they are trying to ban Chinese hardware... not because they fear they are
spying on us but because their govt mandated backdoors aren't installed on Chinese hardware.
The US govt wants to ban their use because they can't spy on them... That is the real
reason.
US is losing the technology race against China. In the first phase China copied the tech,
now it is on par, and in five to ten years the murican chip manufacturers are out of
business.
The point is this: the muricans are lazy bastards, most of the brain power is imported.
They lived too long off the dollar reserve currency status, soon enough nobody will
interested in that toilet paper anymore.
Two years ago, Donald *** Trumptard on behalf of his handler, the US War State/Dark
State/Deep State , launched a world wide war against the Chinky company, Huawei, in order, to
kill it.
But that failed spectacularly. Not only is Huawei not dead, but its revenue actually grown
24% in 2019.
Now, its smart phones, and 5G cell tower equipments are totally free of US components.
WHY IS THE US DARK STATE SO TERRIFIED OF HUAWEI'S 5G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY?
The US Dark State/War State/Deep State, that is the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/MIC/MSM . . . etc has
forced every western tech companies to install backdoors and malwares on their equipments,
except Huawei. They have tried to force Huawei to install those NSA backdoors and malwares,
in 2014, but the company categorically refused.
"The real issue is that nothing has changed since a 2014 report from The Register that
Huawei categorically refuses to install NSA backdoors into their hardware to allow unfettered
intelligence access to the data that crosses their networks.
All our emails, text messages, phone calls, internet searches, web browsing, library
records, . . . etc, are recorded and stored by NSA/CIA's vast servers farms.
Now, Huawei is not only the leading 5G wireless provider, but it is the only one, so far.
The other companies like Nokia and Ericsson are far behind.
5G is going to completely replace 4G and 3G. It is about 200 times faster than 4GLTE, in
download speed.
What this means is that if the world adopts the Huawei equipments and standards, it will
threaten to UNDO the US Dark State's vast global surveillance network.
This is what terrifies the US Dark State. Their vast Global Surveillance Network is the
basis of its power, and tools to enslave mankind.
There is a very good reason, why the American Founding Fathers , enacted every measures,
to protect our rights and privacy, so that we will not be controlled and enslaved by the
tyranny of totalitarian government, which is already upon us, in the form of US Dark
State/War State .
The US Dark State/Deep State/War State does not represent America. It is Un-American. It
is not the American Republic founded by our Founding Fathers, and enshrined in the US
Constitution.
Maybe so, Asoka. I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some
purport the family carrying that lineage is named Li.
The U.S. is slowly but surely being isolated for The Great Fall...when we lose world
currency status. The Banking Cartel will evidently make huge money and gain enormous power
once the U.S. collapses. China already has the massive surveillance state, lack of privacy,
institutionalized social scoring, and workers' living cubes located on factory premises...so
the Rothshilds are in love. Sigh. So much control!! So much degradation!!! They're in
love!!!
"I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some purport the family
carrying that lineage is named Li."
They are trying hard to infiltrate China. But the Chinese banks and financial service
firms are State Owned . They are hard penetrate. That is why they are using Donald *** Trump
to launch the Mother of All Great Trade War , to force the Chinese to open up their financial
sector for infiltration and plundering.
Plus, Chinese and westerner looks distinctively different. And so, they are trying the
inter-marriage trick with the rich and powerful Chinese families.
"... "The next president will, for example, have to deal with the enormous loss of U.S. credibility during the past three years, which has stemmedin large part from Trump's reneging on or withdrawing from agreements such as the Paris accord on climate change, arms control accords withRussia, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which restricted Iran's nuclear program." ..."
"... What is the PURPOSE of US Foreign Policy? To protect the US homeland and US interests abroad (freedom of navigation, freedom of commerce and trade, and the protection of US citizens travelling abroad to name a few). ..."
"... Unfortunately, US Policy really refers to US interventionism across the globe. Covert activities are presumably necessary to protect US interests so as to thwart the covert activities of our enemies. In practice, what the US really does is protect the interests of friendly countries and US-based multi-national corporations...and the whole thing is smoke and mirrors (hidden from the American people). Thus, we really have NO IDEA what US Foreign Policy is, or what we are doing behind the scenes. That's on both Democrats and Republicans. ..."
This is still a race for a party nomination, and it is well known how political battles at this stage typically focus narrowly
on what are perceived to be the parochial concerns of the party's base and take on a different character in the general election.
But positions taken now can impose constraints later on. Moreover, Democratic primary voters ought to be learning about what difference
the various contenders would make in executing the powers of the presidency, not just in who has the most attractive ideas about
policies that cannot be imposed by fiat.
Foreign policy is where more attention and debate are most required, and not just because foreign policy nearly always gets inadequate
attention in political campaigns. It also is where a president has the most power to make a difference even without getting Congress
to go along with the president's program. This fact is reflected in how many presidents late in their presidencies, especially in
second terms, have turned more of their attention to foreign relations as an area where they can make a difference after experiencing
frustration in trying to get their domestic programs through Congress.
Many issues in foreign policy could profitably be discussed more than they are now, but priority should be given to those subjects
on which Trump has caused the most damage. Candidates should explain how they intend to repair that damage, not just what their policies
would be if they somehow could be written on a clean slate. The slate on which the next administration's foreign policy will be written
starts out very dirty. Coming after Trump will be a major, task-defining fact about the next administration's foreign policy challenges.
The heavy damage to U.S. relations with the European allies represents another especially dirty part of the slate that the next
administration will have to tend to. Brexit will be an added complication in addressing this problem and in a sense is another part
of Trump's legacy given the way he has cheered on the Brexiteers,
contrary to U.S. interests.
Issues examined by the current impeachment proceeding represent more damage-repair needs. Ukraine is a large and important country
and constructing a U.S. policy that adequately reflects Ukraine's delicate situation between East and West would be a challenge in
any event. Now it has been made more difficult by Trump and Rudy Giuliani's
setting back of Ukraine's efforts to stamp out corruption and subordinating an aid relationship to dirt-digging for domestic
political reasons. What are the Democratic candidates' specific ideas for repairing this damage, and for fitting the repairs into
a sensible policy toward not just Ukraine but also Russia?
To emphasize these foreign policy challenges is not to diminish the amount of Trump-inflicted damage that extends to domestic
matters as well, and the need for the next administration to repair that damage as well. Perhaps the greatest over-arching damage,
spanning both the domestic and foreign sides, is that the nation seems to have become inured to wrongdoing because of the sheer volume
of it, with attention to each offense quickly fading as it is succeeded by a new offense or attention-hogging presidential outburst.
What will the next president do to restore a sense of national outrage over wrongdoing whenever it occurs, be it blatant self-dealing,
corruption of U.S. foreign relations, or something else?
Such problems may not have as much resonance in Iowa caucuses as the cost of health care, but they have a lot more to do with
who will make the best president.
Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and Nonresident
Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing editor to The National Interest, where he writes
a blog.
"The next president will, for example, have to deal with the enormous loss of U.S. credibility during the past three years,
which has stemmedin large part from Trump's reneging on or withdrawing from agreements such as the Paris accord on climate change,
arms control accords withRussia, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which restricted Iran's nuclear program."
What a load of hooey this article is. U.S. credibility with whom? Failed Merkel? Failed Macron?...
Failure of the past three years but no mention of the failures of Obama? Sending an aging hippie James Taylor to console islamic terrorist victims in Paris apparently counts as a major foreign policy
success and that mean Trump refuses to perpetuate. And then there's the cross the red line in Syria and we'll do nothing.
Or maybe ship weapons secretly to Islamic terrorists calling them freedom fighters and surprise surprise, the weapons from
Obama are used to murder American diplomats in Benghazi. Then cover that up by blaming it on a video from a guy in Los Angeles
and sending out a team to blatantly lie about the event.
Now there's real foreign policy you can depend on - from the Democrats.
What is the PURPOSE of US Foreign Policy? To protect the US homeland and US interests abroad (freedom of navigation, freedom
of commerce and trade, and the protection of US citizens travelling abroad to name a few).
Unfortunately, US Policy really refers
to US interventionism across the globe. Covert activities are presumably necessary to protect US interests so as to thwart the
covert activities of our enemies. In practice, what the US really does is protect the interests of friendly countries and US-based
multi-national corporations...and the whole thing is smoke and mirrors (hidden from the American people). Thus, we really have
NO IDEA what US Foreign Policy is, or what we are doing behind the scenes. That's on both Democrats and Republicans.
Warren's New Proposal for Prescription Drugs Is Flying Under the Radar
By Dean Baker
Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren put out a set of steps that she would put
forward as president as part of a transition to Medicare for All. The items that got the most
attention were including everyone over age 50 and under age 18 in Medicare, and providing
people of all ages with the option to buy into the program. This buy-in would include large
subsidies, and people with incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level would be
able to enter the Medicare program at no cost.
These measures would be enormous steps toward Medicare for All, bringing tens of millions
of people into the program, including most of those (people over age 50) with serious medical
issues. It would certainly be more than halfway to a universal Medicare program.
While these measures captured most of the attention given to Warren's transition plan,
another part of the plan is probably at least as important. Warren proposed to use the
government's authority to compel the licensing of drug patents so that multiple companies can
produce a patented drug.
The government can do this both because it has general authority to compel licensing of
patents (with reasonable compensation) and because it has explicit authority under the 1980
Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of any drug developed in part with government-funded
research. The overwhelming majority of drugs required some amount of government-supported
research in their development.
These measures are noteworthy because they can be done on the president's own authority.
While the pharmaceutical industry will surely contest a president's use of the government's
authority to weaken their patent rights, those actions would not require congressional
approval.
The other reason that these steps would be so important is that there is a huge amount of
money involved. The United States is projected to spend over $6.6 trillion on prescription
drugs over the next decade, more than 2.5 percent of GDP.
The government has explicit authority under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of
any drug developed in part with government-funded research.
This is an enormous amount of money. We spend more than twice as much per person on drugs
as people in other wealthy countries.
This is not an accident. The grant of a patent monopoly allows drug companies to charge as
much as they want for drugs that are necessary for people's health or even their life.
While other countries also grant patent monopolies, they limit the ability of drug
companies to exploit these monopolies with negotiations or price controls. This is why prices
in these countries are so much lower than in the United States.
But even these negotiated prices are far above what drug prices would be in a free market.
The price of drugs in a free market, without patent monopolies or related protections, will
typically be less than 10 percent of the U.S. price and in some cases, less than 1
percent.
This is because drugs are almost invariably cheap to manufacture and distribute. They are
expensive because government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive.
The rationale for patent monopolies is to give companies an incentive to research and
develop drugs. This process is expensive, and if newly developed drugs were sold in a free
market, companies would not be able to recover these expenses.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren
proposes an increase in public funding for research.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren
proposes an increase in public funding for research. This would be an important move toward
an increased reliance on publicly funded biomedical research.
There are enormous advantages to publicly funded research over patent monopoly-supported
research. First, the government is funding the research. It can require that all results be
fully public as soon as possible so that all researchers can quickly benefit from them.
By contrast, under the patent system, drug companies have an incentive to keep results
secret. They have no desire to share results that could benefit competitors.
Public funding would also radically reduce the incentive to develop copycat drugs. Under
the current system, drug companies will often devote substantial sums to developing drugs
that are intended to duplicate the function of drugs already on the market. While there is
generally an advantage to having more options to treat a specific condition, most often,
research dollars would be better spent trying to develop drugs for conditions where no
effective treatment currently exists.
Ending patent monopoly pricing would also take away the incentive for drug companies to
conceal evidence that their drugs may not be as safe or effective as claimed. Patent
monopolies give drug companies an incentive to push their drugs as widely as possible.
The opioid crisis provides a dramatic example of the dangers of this system. Opioid
manufacturers would not have had the same incentive to push their drugs, concealing evidence
of their addictive properties, if they were not making huge profits on them.
In short, Senator Warren's plans on drugs are a really huge deal. How far and how quickly
she will be able to get to Medicare for All will depend on what she can get through Congress.
But her proposal for prescription drugs is something she would be able to do if elected
president, and it would make an enormous difference in both the cost and the quality of our
health care.
"... However, Morris contends that Clinton believes that she has to "wait until Biden drops out because he's obviously next in line for it, and if he goes away, there's an opening for her." According to Morris' scenario, Clinton would become the moderate candidate opposed to the leading progressive, Elizabeth Warren. ..."
In November, Barack Obama, who had avoided commenting on the Democratic presidential
primary, came out forcefully in opposition to the extreme positions taken by some leading
progressive contenders, positions that could cause the Democrats to be beaten by Trump in the
2020 election. Obama was a very popular president among Democrats, and what he has to say
carries considerable weight with them. While this may not be his intent, Obama's position could
open the field for Hillary Clinton to enter the fray and quite possibly become the Democrats'
nominee, given the lackluster performance of leading "moderate" Joe Biden, whose weaknesses
have been brought out by the mainstream media, despite their animosity toward Trump.
Now many in the Democratic Party leadership, as well as wealthy Democratic donors, have been
concerned for some time about the radical nature of some of the economic policies advocated by
the leading progressive Democratic contenders. They fear that instead of the 2020 election
revolving around Trump with his low approval ratings, and very likely his impeachment, which
would seem to be a slam-dunk victory for Democrats, it would focus on those radical economic
proposals. Many voters are skeptical about how free college for all, free health care for all,
high-paying jobs in "green energy" -- after greatly reducing the use of fossil fuels, free
childcare for all, just to name some of the "free" things that have been promised, would really
work. Instead of raising taxes on the middle class, most of these free things would purportedly
be paid for by the super-wealthy, which would exclude mere millionaires such as Bernie Sanders
(estimated wealth $2 million) and Elizabeth Warren (estimated wealth $12 million) who are the
leading progressive contenders.
Obama began stressing his concern about the danger of radicalism in an October speech at the
Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. And he did this not by dealing with presidential candidates
but with youth who think they can immediately change society. "This
idea of purity and you're never compromised, and you're always politically woke and all
that stuff, you should get over that quickly," Obama lectured. "The world is messy. There are
ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws."
It was at a gathering of Democratic donors in Washington, D.C., in November that Obama
cautioned Democratic candidates not to go too far to the left since that would antagonize many
voters who would otherwise support the Democratic candidate. "Even as we push the envelope and
we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in
reality ," Obama asserted. "The average American doesn't think we have to completely tear
down the system and remake it." Although Obama did not specify particular Democratic
candidates, his warning was widely interpreted as being directed at Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders.
Currently, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, according to national polls,
is Joe Biden, who is considered a moderate. But Biden has a number of problems. He continues to
make gaffes while speaking, and during his long career in the Senate took positions that are
antithetical to the Democratic Party of today. Moreover, he lacks the charisma to attract large
crowds to his events. Thus, it is questionable that he has the capability to attract large
numbers of Democratic voters to the polls in November 2020.
According to Politico Magazine , Obama was recently discussing election tactics with
an unnamed current candidate and "pointed out that during his own 2008 campaign, he had an
intimate bond with the electorate" and he is quoted as adding, "And you know who really
doesn't have it ? Joe Biden."
Biden's appeal already seems to be waning. For example, in November, a Marquette Law School
poll, which is considered the gold-standard survey in swing state Wisconsin, which the
Democrats need to win the 2020 election, shows
Trump leading Biden 47 percent to 44 percent. In October, Trump had trailed Biden by 6
points (44 percent to 50 percent), and in August, Trump trailed Biden by 9 points (42 percent
to 51 percent). In short, Biden is losing support. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by a slender
margin of 0.77 percent, with 47.22 percent of the total votes over the 46.45 percent for
Hillary Clinton.
Another problem Biden faces is the corrupt activities of his son Hunter and brother James,
who have taken advantage of their connection with him. The mainstream media has so far largely
kept this mostly under wraps, but this tactic won't be successful as the election approaches.
In fact, the progressive Democrats such as Bernie Sanders are likely to bring this up in a
desperate effort to be nominated. And already these issues are being mentioned by the
alternative media. For instance, there is an article in the non-partisan, anti-government
Intercept
titled, "Joe Biden's Family Has Been Cashing in on His Career for Decades. Democrats Need to
Acknowledge That," and comparable articles in the conservative Washington Examiner such
as, "Hunter Biden-linked company r
eceived $130M in special federal loans while Joe Biden was vice president," and "Hunter
Biden has
99 problems , and Burisma is only one."
David Axelrod, Democratic strategist and longtime aide to Barack Obama, said concerns about
Biden's electability clearly influenced multi-billionaire (estimated $53 billion) and
former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's entrance into the contest for the Democratic
nominee for president. "There's no question that Bloomberg's calculus was that Biden was
occupying a space, and the fact that he's getting in is a clear indication that he's not
convinced Biden has the wherewithal to carry that torch," Axelrod said. "So yeah, I don't think
this is a positive development for Joe Biden."
Similarly, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon contended that "centrist Democrats and wealthy
donors have
lost confidence in Biden's ability to stop Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders from winning
the nomination." Bannon added that with Bloomberg entering the Democratic presidential race,
"Biden's fundraising will get even shakier than it already is. There's only room for one
moderate in this race and Bloomberg threatens Biden's status as the centrist
standard-bearer."
Bloomberg's "stop and frisk"
policy as mayor , which largely targeted blacks and Hispanics, should make it virtually
impossible that he could be the Democratic nominee, despite his recent apology. Unless he has
become senile in his late 70s, Bloomberg should well understand this since he did not make his
billions by being stupid. It could be that he intends to serve as a stalking horse to draw
Hillary Clinton into the contest by showing the weakness of Biden. Then like Superwoman,
Hillary can enter the fray, appearing not to act for her own sake but to save the country from
a likely second term for President Trump.
Similarly, Mark Penn, who was chief strategist for Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 presidential
campaign, said Bloomberg's entrance
could cause Clinton to consider to run and decide there's "still a political logic there for
her."
As Biden's support slips away, Clinton's should rise. Clinton has been recently promoting a
book she co-wrote with her daughter, Chelsea, in Britain. In an interview with BBC Radio 5
Live , Clinton said "many, many, many people" are
pressuring her to jump into the 2020 presidential race and that she thinks about this "all
the time." Clinton told the host that she is under "enormous pressure" but said it is not in
her plans, though she cryptically added that she would "never say never."
Dick Morris, who was once a close confidant of the Clintons during Bill Clinton's time as
Arkansas governor and U.S. president recently said in a radio interview that Hillary Clinton
likely wants to run for the presidency in 2020. "My feeling is that
she wants to ," Morris said. "She feels entitled to do it. She feels compelled to do it.
She feels that God put her on the Earth to do it. But she's hesitant because she realizes the
timing is bad."
However, Morris contends that Clinton believes that she has to "wait until Biden drops out
because he's obviously next in line for it, and if he goes away, there's an opening for her."
According to Morris' scenario, Clinton would become the moderate candidate opposed to the
leading progressive, Elizabeth Warren.
Morris has not been in touch with the Clintons for many years, and has become strongly
critical of them, so his claim might be questionable. Nonetheless, his portrayal of Hillary's
current thinking seems quite reasonable.
A Fox News poll included Clinton along with the active Democratic candidates in a
hypothetical election with Trump, and Hillary came out ahead of him by two percentage
points. While some actual candidates did somewhat better than Hillary, she did quite well for
someone who is not currently running for office.
Furthermore, a Harris Harvard poll in late October asked the question, "Suppose Hillary
Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, and John Kerry decides [sic] to enter the race, who would you
support as a candidate for President?" Joe Biden received the support of 19 percent of Democrat
respondents while Clinton was a
close second with 18 percent. Elizabeth Warren came in third at 13 percent, John Kerry was
at 8 percent, and Bloomberg was at 6. Again, Clinton does quite well for someone who is not
actually running for president.
One might think that if references to family members' corruption damaged Biden, then Clinton
would be subject to worse damage in that area, since she and her husband Bill were connected
with far more corrupt activities -- Whitewater, Travelgate, the Lewinsky affair, the Paula
Jones affair, t the death of Vince Foster, the Clinton Foundation, her private server, and so
on. But these issues are already known and are presumably already taken into account by the
voters, whereas the Biden family's corrupt activities are so far largely unknown.
It should be pointed out that Clinton has a number of positives as a presidential candidate.
Although losing in the Electoral College in 2016, Clinton had garnered 3 million more votes
more than Trump. The election was decided by a total of 80,000 votes in three states. It is
highly unlikely that such a fluke could be duplicated.
Clinton's staff had been overconfident assuming victory, which was based on their polling of
various states, and as a result began to focus on competing in states well beyond those Clinton
needed for victory.
Moreover, one key event outside the control of Clinton's staff was FBI Director James
Comey's investigation of Clinton's use of a personal email server during her tenure as
secretary of state. Most crucial were his July 2016 public statement terminating the
investigation, with a lengthy comment about what Clinton did wrong, and his October 28
reopening the inquiry into newly discovered emails and then closing it two days before the
election, stating that the emails had not provided any new information. The October 28 letter,
however, probably played a key role in the outcome of the election. As statistician Nate Silver
maintains: "Hillary Clinton would probably be president
if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which
said the FBI had 'learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the
investigation into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended
the news cycle and soon halved Clinton's lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the
Electoral College.'"
[Silver's organization FiveThirtyEight had projected a much higher chance (29
percent) of Donald Trump winning the presidency than most other pollsters]
Clinton has also helped to convince many Democrats and members of the mainstream media that
the 2016 election was stolen from her by Russian agents If this were really true – which
is very doubtful – then Hillary should be the Democrats' candidate for 2020 since Russian
intervention should not be as successful as it allegedly was in 2016.
In endorsing Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, Obama stated. "I don't think that
there's ever been someone
so qualified to hold this office." He has yet to make such an endorsement for Biden and
privately, as mentioned earlier, said he is a poor choice for a nominee. He might ultimately
endorse Biden, but he certainly would not renege on what he said four years ago about Clinton
if she became the Democrats' standard-bearer.
Should Clinton opt to run, she would have no trouble raising money since she set a record in
2016 of $1.4 billion
and wealthy donors want a moderate to be the Democratic nominee. It would seem likely that she
would enter the contest if Biden has serious trouble. She would miss some state primaries since
it would be too late to register in them but given the crowded field of candidates, there is a
likelihood that there will be a brokered convention, that is, the convention will go past the
first ballot. Since the superdelegates would be allowed to vote in all rounds after the first,
they could determine the winner, which would probably mean the selection of a candidate who
would be seen to have the greatest chance of winning, and that would likely be Hillary Clinton,
if she has entered the fray.
I discussed the merits of Pete Buttigieg in a previous article in
Unz Review, and what I write here might seem to conflict with that. However, while Buttigieg is
doing quite well
in the polls, he still does not get much support
from blacks and Latinos, which is essential to become the Democrats nominee for president.
Buttigieg could, however, be nominated for vice president or, more likely, given an important
cabinet position since the vice-presidential slot would probably be reserved for a black or
Latino if a white person were picked as the presidential nominee, which currently seems
likely.
But because of Buttigieg's relatively hardline foreign policy
, which largely meshes with that of Clinton's, and his wide knowledge and language ability,
Buttigieg would fit well in the all-important position of secretary of state in a Clinton
administration. Moreover, Buttigieg, whose tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will end in
January 2020, would almost certainly be willing to take such a position, which could serve as a
jumping-off point for the presidency in the future.
Just as Barr noted Mueller's more equivocal finding on obstruction of justice, the
Times acknowledges a "mixed bag of conclusions" that is "likely to give new ammunition
to both Mr. Trump's defenders and critics in the long-running partisan fight over the Russia
investigation."
Specifically: "Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. was careless and
unprofessional in pursuing the Page wiretap, and he referred his findings in one instance to
prosecutors for potential criminal charges over the
alteration of a document in 2017 by a front-line lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 37, in
connection with the wiretap application."
"The F.B.I. did cite the dossier to some extent to apply for the wiretap on Mr. Page," the Times reports elsewhere. "The inspector general will fault the F.B.I. for failing to
tell the judges who approved the wiretap applications about potential problems with the
dossier, the people familiar with the draft report said. F.B.I. agents have interviewed some of
Mr. Steele's sources and found that their
information
differed somewhat from his dossier."
Oh.
Like the Mueller report, this falls well short of the maximalist conspiracy claims in
circulation. Partisans were unrealistic to expect such unambiguous findings from Mueller or
Horowitz, which is why Democrats are writing their own uncomplicated narrative in the
Trump-Ukraine impeachment proceedings.
But if there was reason to be concerned about
Trump-Russia contacts during the campaign, the investigators and corners they may have cut in
probing the matter are not altogether unproblematic either -- and the full report could shed
more light on how.
WSJ columnist today raises an old obscure issue today about the Clinton emails and Comey's
calculated exoneration of Clinton's culpability.
This story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between
Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Comey
claimed when confronted with this memo, Lynch merely smiled like the Cheshire cat and nothing
more was done.
This memo was later discredited as an alleged planted Russian hoax. Yet the memo story is
again put in lead position on the opinion pages of the WSJ this very morning. Why was that?
Not clear, but does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be
part of the upcoming Horowitz report?
(WSJ: 11/27/19 - Holman Jenkins, Jr. - "Who will turn over the 2016 rocks")
"... According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... In addition, however, a court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls" to The Washington Post. ..."
"... The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA. Moreover, according to the court filing, the tasks assigned to "known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI" Halper "seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent)." ..."
"... The filing notes that Flynn's defense team has requested phone records for then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , likewise in order to confirm contacts with Ignatius. The filing singles out records for Jan. 10, 2017, when, according to the filing, "Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn.'" ..."
"... The Pentagon's current inspector general has already found that Baker's office "did not maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA personnel had with Professor Halper." As a result, according to the inspector general, ONA staff "could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations." ..."
"... Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in November 2017 started an investigation into charges that Baker retaliated against a whistleblower who red-flagged "rigged" contracts, including Halper's. Another $11 million in contracts under scrutiny went to the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), which is run by a schoolmate of Chelsea Clinton, whom she has referred to as her "best friend." ..."
"... The House Judiciary and Oversight committees -- which interviewed almost two dozen witnesses -- concluded in December 2018 that the Obama Justice Department treated Trump and Clinton unequally, affording Clinton and her associates extraordinary accommodations, while potentially abusing surveillance powers to investigate Trump's associates. ..."
The
Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office
reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of
the Trump -- Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent
court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The connection hasn't been previously reported.
According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John
Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded
about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key
role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and
George Papadopoulos.
In addition, however, a
court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person
who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls" to The Washington Post.
Specifically, the filing states, "ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post
Reporter David Ignatius."
The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA. Moreover, according to the
court filing, the tasks assigned to "known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI" Halper "seem to
have included slandering Mr. Flynn with
accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian
descent)."
Baker didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The filing notes that Flynn's defense team has requested phone records for
then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , likewise in order to confirm
contacts with Ignatius. The filing singles out records for Jan. 10, 2017, when, according to
the filing, "Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on
Flynn.'"
Clapper didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The Pentagon's current inspector general has already found that Baker's office "did not
maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA
personnel had with Professor Halper." As a result, according to the inspector general, ONA
staff "could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his
work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."
Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in November 2017 started an
investigation into charges that Baker retaliated against a whistleblower who red-flagged
"rigged" contracts, including Halper's. Another
$11 million in contracts under scrutiny went to the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), which
is run by a schoolmate
of Chelsea Clinton, whom she has referred to as her "best friend."
According to the whistleblower's attorney, "Baker's interest was his awareness of the
LTSG-Clinton connection; his presumptive desire to exploit that to his advantage in the event
of a Clinton election win; and the fact that contractors like LTSG served as a lucrative
landing pad for ONA retirees."
The attorney charged that Baker's claims about the whistleblower were "demonstrably false,"
calling Baker "partisan and highly vindictive."
At the time, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, called
Baker "a shallow and manipulative character that should have gone with the change in
administration." Perle further charged that the whistleblower "clearly was the target, for
political reasons, of an effort to push him out of government," saying "he's a Trump loyalist,
and it was launched and sustained by an Obama holdover."
That inquiry is being carried out by the inspector general's Investigations of Senior
Officials Directorate.
Raising additional questions, a 2016 report further revealed
that the ONA had failed to produce the top-secret net assessments the office was established to
conduct for more than 10 years, even with a yearly budget approaching $20 million.
Baker was named
as ONA director on May 14, 2015, during the Obama administration. A contemporaneous report
called his appointment "part of a wave of new Pentagon personnel moves in recent days,
senior-level officials who will outlast President Obama's final term in office." Baker
replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed "Yoda" for his "wizened appearance, fanatical
following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature." Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in
selecting Baker, "passed over several of Marshall's acolytes who were in the running for the
position."
The House Judiciary and Oversight committees -- which interviewed almost two dozen
witnesses --
concluded in December 2018 that the Obama Justice Department treated Trump and Clinton
unequally, affording Clinton and her associates extraordinary accommodations, while potentially
abusing surveillance powers to investigate Trump's associates.
Jacqueline Deal, president of LTSG, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times: "My colleagues and
I began performing work in support of the Office of Net Assessment during the George W. Bush
administration, over a decade before the office's current director was appointed. None of the
awards received by LTSG from the Department of Defense resulted directly or indirectly from the
actions or influence of Secretary [Hillary] Clinton. Any statement or implication otherwise is
false."
Baker
replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed “Yoda” for his “wizened
appearance, fanatical following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature.” Obama
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in selecting Baker, “passed over several of
Marshall’s acolytes who were in the running for the position.”
Holy ****...The replacement head of the Highlands Group..he may as well be that white
bearded guy in the matrix.. Hes the director of the MIC CIA NSA. ..the whole ball of
wax..puts it all together...only he is not Yoda like before him..like putting a restaurant
fast food manager in charge of the manhattan project. I know those acolytes must be really
pissed..and probably a potential source of leaks.
Investigations my eye! This has been going on since Moby **** was a minnow.
McCabe has been out there making money while under criminal referral.. That investigation
is DONE and still nothing happens.
The public information available on at least 50 of these double dealers is enough to send
them all up the river as of a few YEARS ago...but we have to have more
investigations...that's so they can figure out how to cover it all up.
Fire these creeps. Hire Sidney Powell.. They'll be swinging inside of six months.
"... and now Obama weighs in to warn against the real danger to the democrats, Bernie Sanders. that's who they have to beat, and Gabbard. They don't give much of a damn about beating Trump. ..."
"... This pretty much confirms my and many others here hypothesis that the Dems are fighting a "war on two fronts": one against Trump nationalist capitalism and the other against the "democratic socialists" who have been flocking to their party machine since 2014. ..."
"... Clearly, the goal is to prevent the US Polity from clawing back power from the 10% and enacting policies to their benefit. Meanwhile, a new form of Transnational Nationalism continues to take shape that will soon present a serious threat to the Financialized Globalizers and their Cult of Debt. Too many seem to laugh off the entire situation by dismissing it as Kabuki Theatre, which I see as self-serving and shortsighted since there're several very real crises we're in up to our collective armpits. ..."
"... A full blown impeachment trial that exposes the entire Russia-gate/Ukraine-gate/Whatever-gate sham is what this country needs. ..."
"... Bet the MSM sells Ukrainegate this way: Trump is guilty in Ukrainegate and should be impeached, but Democrats are moving on to focus on the election. And besides, Dems will tell us, the dastardly Republicans in the Senate will corruptly block Trump's impeachment. ..."
"... That is what they call a "trial balloon." If there isn't too much of a freakout among the true-believer base, and I don't think there is, it'll be an option they will at least take seriously. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to bet on rational thinking at this point. Anyway I agree it's the best move for congressional Democrats. ..."
"... I am liking all the commenters here that understand that there is only one empire party with two mythical faces. I think this kabuki is necessary if you don't have a major WAR to keep the masses focused on or otherwise distracted from the underlying R2P which I translate to Rape2Protect. ..."
"... If this show should teach people in the US anything (again), it is how both US parties descend like vultures onto countries where they manage to take over the government. Five billion poured into Ukraine with the requisite murder and mayhem, and who knows how many billions come pouring back out. It's a real jackpot for those in the right positions to scoop it into their pockets. ..."
"... The average people in the US don't even have a genuine safety net. Important for all those productive resources to go to pedophile islands and sinecures for coke head sons of politicians, obviously. ..."
"... The GOP is the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party the rich pay to keep the left at bay when the Republicans lose. ..."
"... the deck is stacked even more against independents than it is against actual mildly leftist candidates who run as democrats. there are a substantial number of people who think the only way to change the country is to take over the democratic party. frankly, that isn't going to happen, and nobody is going to win as an independent candidate with all the procedural rules making it so hard to even get on the ballot, while the state government, which is invariably controlled by one of the two parties, throws every roadblock, legal and illegal, in the way. my gut feeling is things are going to have to get quite a bit worse before the citizenry starts to explode, and there's no telling how that process will work out, and no way to control it once it reaches critical mass. ..."
"... the Democrats won't want to censure Trump for matters in which they themselves are equally complicit, as has been discussed here. ..."
"... "The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a "democracy." ..."
"... Trump is up against an entrenched powerful bureaucracy and people who buy ink by the 55 gallon barrel. The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi. The rank and file Democrats are tired of the elite political class ..."
"... The real Trump move would be to hit the twitter right before the house impeachment vote and announce that he has instructed the House Republicans to vote for impeachment. ..."
"... He could lay out his story about how the American People never got to hear the full story because of house dems, and how the Senate would fully investigate the 2016 election, Russiagate, Ukraine, and whatever else they want. Maybe even make Hillary testify. Heads would explode and his base would love it. ..."
"... To the people here clamoring for Bernie Sanders to go independent: The American electoral system is very unique. The two parties -- GOP and Dems -- are much more than mere political parties: they are the American electoral machine itself. It is impossible to win the presidency without being the candidate of one of the two, that's why Trump also didn't go as an independent either. ..."
"An impeachment trial in the Senate would be a disaster for the Democrats.
I can not see why the Democrats would want to fall into such a trap. House leader Nancy
Pelosi is experienced enough to not let that happen."
The real reason in my opinion that Pelosi went along with impeachment was that she saw
Bernies message getting through, and even though the DNC pushed all the conserva-dem
candidates they could into the race, Bernie is still doing well and gaining. An impeachment
trial would require Bernie to attend the hearings rather that campaigning. Also Wall Streets
best friend Obama has just stated that Bernie is not a Democrat and that would require Obama
to get on the speaking circuit to campaign against him - you know for the sake of the
corporations - and those 500k speaking thank you gigs. They would rather elect Trump than
Bernie - that is why I think Pelosi would go along with an impeachment trial in the Senate -
Bernie is the greater threat.
The idea to censure Trump and move on has been aired since mid 2017. The latest was
Forbes.com billwhalen 26 September 2019
Link
I ordered a truckload of pop corn to snack on during the trial in the Senate. Just imagine
Joe Biden under cross examination as he flips 'n flops! "Was that me in the Video, I can't
recall."
With interest (even among Democrats) in the impeachment process sliding, the House
Judiciary Committee is set to take over the impeachment probe of President Trump next week,
scheduling a Dec. 4 hearing.
As The Hill reports, behind Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the committee
will hear from legal scholars as Democrats weigh whether the evidence turned up in their
weeks-long impeachment inquiry warrants the drafting of articles aimed at removing the
president from office.
The hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday, will focus on the definition of an
impeachable offense and the formal application of the impeachment process. The panel
will invite White House lawyers to attend and participate.
Ahead of the hearing, Nadler wrote to Trump requesting his participation - or
that of White House counsel - as part of ensuring "a fair and informative process."[.]
Trump will take a page from the other president who campaigned on the "do nothing
congress"
and now Obama weighs in to warn against the real danger to the democrats, Bernie Sanders.
that's who they have to beat, and Gabbard. They don't give much of a damn about beating
Trump.
b, there seems to be a critical flaw in your analysis--you seem to base it on a premise that
the goal of the Democratic establishment is to win elections/gain power/govern. It's not,
it's to ensure the continuing enrichment of themselves and their oligarch peers, financial
industry, military, pharma, etc.
The question people like Pelosi (worth $100 million or so btw along with her husband whose
business she enriches via her position) are pondering isn't "Will doing x, y, z help Trump
win?" It's "Will doing x, y, z ensure Bernie Sanders doesn't win?"
This pretty much confirms my and many others here hypothesis that the Dems are
fighting a "war on two fronts": one against Trump nationalist capitalism and the other
against the "democratic socialists" who have been flocking to their party machine since
2014.
Of all the things that the Democrats could impeach President Trump over, the one thing they
seized upon was the issue that had the most potential to blow back on them and destroy Joe
Biden's chances of reaching the White House. Whoever had that brilliant idea and put it as
the long straw in a cylindrical prawn-chip can along with all the other straws for pulling
out, sure didn't think of all the consequences that could have arisen. That speaks for the
depth (or lack thereof) of the thinking among senior Democrats and their worker bee analysts,
along with a narrow-minded outlook, sheer hatred of a political outsider and a fanatical zeal
to match that hatred and outlook.
The folks who hatched that particular impeachment plan and pitched it to Nancy Pelosi must
have been the same idiots in the DNC who dreamt up the Russiagate scandal and also pursued
Paul Manafort to get him off DJT's election campaign team. Dmitri Alperovich / Crowdstrike,
Alexandra Chalupa: we're looking at you.
Impeachment takes Sanders out of the campaign and that opens things up for the
CIA/establishment's "Identity Politics Candidate #3" , Mayor Butt-gig.
That said, since "Everyone who doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable
misogynist!" didn't work as expected, I wonder what makes them think "Everyone who
doesn't vote for our candidate is a deplorable homophobe!" will work any better?
Lots of agreement here with the overall situation becoming clearer with Bloomberg's entrance
and the outing of Obama's plans. I just finished writing my response to Putin's speech before the annual
United Russia Party Congress on the Open Thread and suggest barflies take 10 minutes to
read it and compare what he espouses a political party's deeds & goals ought to be versus
those of the West and its vassals.
Clearly, the goal is to prevent the US Polity from clawing back power from the 10% and
enacting policies to their benefit. Meanwhile, a new form of Transnational Nationalism
continues to take shape that will soon present a serious threat to the Financialized
Globalizers and their Cult of Debt. Too many seem to laugh off the entire situation by
dismissing it as Kabuki Theatre, which I see as self-serving and shortsighted since there're
several very real crises we're in up to our collective armpits.
A full blown impeachment trial that exposes the entire
Russia-gate/Ukraine-gate/Whatever-gate sham is what this country needs.
Obviously, a sufficient number of secure Republican representatives are needed to vote in
favor of impeachment to allow this circus to continue to its bizarrely entertaining,
Democratic Party destroying end.
The MSM will declare Trump guilty - that is, he has earned impeachment for Ukrainegate.
There are Democrats still under the illusion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the
election. Dems tell us that Trump *obstructed* the Mueller investigation thus Trump could not
be nailed, nonetheless Trump is guilty of collusion until proven innocent.
Back to Ukrainegate. Bet the MSM sells Ukrainegate this way: Trump is guilty in
Ukrainegate and should be impeached, but Democrats are moving on to focus on the election.
And besides, Dems will tell us, the dastardly Republicans in the Senate will corruptly block
Trump's impeachment.
Tulsi
Gabbard Tweet not specifically about impeachment but begs numerous questions:
"My personal commitment is to always treat you and all Americans with respect. Working
side-by-side, we can defeat the divisiveness of Donald Trump, and usher in a 21st century of
peace, human dignity, & true equality. Working side by side, we can make Dr. King's dream
our reality ." [My Emphasis]
Questions: Is Trump divisive, or is it the D-Party and Current Oligarchy that make him so;
and which is more important to defeat? Which party "usher[ed] in the 21st century" with
several wars and abetted the next two? How did Obama, Slick Willie or his wife advance "human
dignity & true equality"? How does her last sentence differ from "Hope you can believe
in"? Hasn't her D-Party worked tirelessly for decades to circumvent the goals she espouses?
Wouldn't Gabbard have a better chance running as an Enlightened Republican than as a Renegade
Democrat if her goal's to defeat Trump?
American Democracy is political professional wrestling, Kabuki Theater, and mediocre Reality
TV all rolled into. by: AK74 @ 4 <= binary divide <=conducted by the USA, is not about
America, Americans or making America great again, its about the welfare of [the few<=
which most Americans would not call fellow Americans].
Sasha.@ 23 I don't understand where you are coming from.. thank Korlof1 @18 for posting
that Putin talk alert. excerpts from the talk.. => The priority [of United Russia has
been] the protection of the people's interests, the interests of [the] Motherland, and
..responsible [approach] to ..country, its security, stability and people's lives in the
long-term perspective.
The party.. offered a unifying agenda based on freedom and well being, patriotism,
..traditional values, a strong civil society and a strong state. The key issue in the party's
work .being together with the people, Karlof1@18 <=this talk suggest change in Russian
leadership that are not congruent with your [Sasha] comment @23. I hope you will make more
clear what you spent sometime writing ( and for that effort I thank you) but it is not yet
clear what you mean.. .
Re: Brenda Lawrence talking about censure rather than impeachment:
That is what they call a "trial balloon." If there isn't too much of a freakout among
the true-believer base, and I don't think there is, it'll be an option they will at least
take seriously. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to bet on rational thinking at this point.
Anyway I agree it's the best move for congressional Democrats.
Yet another other option is to continue the investigation indefinitely. I'm going to say
it is their default move actually. In that case, the House Judiciary Committee would spend a
few weeks putting on their own show, then say they would like more evidence to be really
sure, returning matters to the House Intelligence Committee, and we repeat the cycle.
I am liking all the commenters here that understand that there is only one empire party
with two mythical faces. I think this kabuki is necessary if you don't have a major WAR to
keep the masses focused on or otherwise distracted from the underlying R2P which I translate
to Rape2Protect.
It is sad to see us all talking about which of the lesser of horrible evils will continue
the leadership of American faced empire.....I hope it crashes soon and takes the global elite
down with it.....how many barflies are ready to stand up and say NO to the owners of the
Super-Priority derivatives that will say they own the world because of their casino (no skin
in the game) bets that are currently "legal" in America when the crash comes?
American "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist
system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The
Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see
much greater hostility to -- if not outright rebellion against--the American military and
spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking
for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance
they get. That should tell you all you need to know about Americans.
If this show should teach people in the US anything (again), it is how both US parties
descend like vultures onto countries where they manage to take over the government. Five
billion poured into Ukraine with the requisite murder and mayhem, and who knows how many
billions come pouring back out. It's a real jackpot for those in the right positions to scoop
it into their pockets.
The average people in the US don't even have a genuine safety net. Important for all
those productive resources to go to pedophile islands and sinecures for coke head sons of
politicians, obviously.
Re: #3 Allen – well said. The GOP is the party of the rich. The Democrats are the
party the rich pay to keep the left at bay when the Republicans lose.
The problem with this prediction is that the MSM has been breathlessly pronouncing that THIS
IS EXPLOSIVE EVIDENCE!!!! pretty much every day and after every witness testimony.
So if you are a member of the public who gets their "information" from the MSM (and, be
honest, that is most of the people in the USA) then you have been force-fed is that Trumps
defense against these allegations has already been shredded, and that his guilt has already
been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
How can those opinion-makers then turn around and say "Nah, it'll be fine" and settle for
a mere censure?
Wouldn't the Sheeple respond with a fully-justified "Hey, hang on! What gives?"
The Democrats has leapt on a Tiger. Nobody made them do it, but now they are there I don't
think they are going to be able to leap off.
Some of the first-term nobodies, maybe, but not the Schiffs and the Pelopis and the
Nadlers.
Hang on for dear life and hope for a miracle is probably their only option now.
And, who knows, that trio may be so incompetent that they actually think they are going to
win.
james, the deck is stacked even more against independents than it is against actual
mildly leftist candidates who run as democrats. there are a substantial number of people who
think the only way to change the country is to take over the democratic party. frankly, that
isn't going to happen, and nobody is going to win as an independent candidate with all the
procedural rules making it so hard to even get on the ballot, while the state government,
which is invariably controlled by one of the two parties, throws every roadblock, legal and
illegal, in the way. my gut feeling is things are going to have to get quite a bit worse
before the citizenry starts to explode, and there's no telling how that process will work
out, and no way to control it once it reaches critical mass.
The US is a one party State-- Pepsi _Pepsi Lite. Both parties are capitalist. It is rather
humorous the attention paid to a Dim vs Repug argument. Small thinking for small minds---
As I posted at the beginning of the impeachment process, the Dems would be foolish to hang it
all on the arcane shenanigans in Ukraine but rather should impeach Trump on the numerous more
serious breaches and crimes that he has committed. I also worried that the Democratic Party
leaders would blow the opportunity to demonstrate that Trump and the Republican Party are
rotten to the core and harmful to the country. And so they have blown it. What an inept pack
of asses.
I would think that even censure is still going to be a hot potato for the Democrats. Looking
at the procedure as far as wikipedia describes it, it hasn't done anything of significance
when it comes to being used against a president, especially as the Democrats won't want
to censure Trump for matters in which they themselves are equally complicit, as has been
discussed here.
That means they would be censuring on the same shaky grounds that they would have
impeached him, which only prolongs attention upon the dubious claims of the indictment. It
seems to me Trump will, rather than be shamed by the process, only be saying 'Make my day',
and hopefully have his Attorney General come forward with exonerating revelations on that
issue in the judicial proceeding that it was my contention the impeachment effort had been a
last ditch one to forestall such.
Wishful thinking on that, I know - but at least that probe has merit.
Thanks for your reply! And thanks for linking the Keen video! Made a comment on that
thread.
As I wrote when the possibility of Trump's impeachment arose almost as soon as he was
inaugurated, the entire charade reminds me of Slick Willie's impeachment, trial and
exoneration--the Articles of Impeachment utilized were such that he'd avoid conviction just
as they will be for Trump.
Allen @ 3 said; "The party's true function is thus largely theatrical. It doesn't exist
to fight for change, but only to pose as a force which one fine distant day might possibly
bestir itself to fight for change. Thus the whole magic of the Dem Party -- the essential
service it renders to the US power structure -- lies not in what it does, but in its mere
existence: by simply existing, and doing nothing, it pretends to be something it's not; and
this is enough to relieve despair & to let the system portray itself as a
"democracy."
With very few exceptions, you nailed it..Your description of the Dem. party is sad, but
true.....
Not having much time to watch the show trial it appears to me the Democrats still have a set
of very weak candidates. Anyone who knows Biden knows he in not now and never will be able to
handle a campaign against Trump.
Trump is up against an entrenched powerful bureaucracy and people who buy ink by the
55 gallon barrel. The democrats need to take a hard turn towards Mayor Pete and Tulsi. The
rank and file Democrats are tired of the elite political class in the same fashion that
the rank and file Republicans were tired of the political establishment which caused then to
turn to Trump.
Is the Democrat political establishment smart enough to take a few steps back and push
forward some outsiders? I doubt that but they would not lose much if they did. Any new
leaders would have the same stable of bureaucrats to pick from which will still be there long
after they are gone.
The real Trump move would be to hit the twitter right before the house impeachment vote
and announce that he has instructed the House Republicans to vote for impeachment.
He could lay out his story about how the American People never got to hear the full
story because of house dems, and how the Senate would fully investigate the 2016 election,
Russiagate, Ukraine, and whatever else they want. Maybe even make Hillary testify. Heads
would explode and his base would love it.
The...***The***...core takeaway, the battle at the heart of Russiagate/Ukrainegate, is that
it does not matter who the People elect as President and what platform he was elected on the
Deep State will decide foreign policy.
democrats republicans makes no difference both teams are managed by self serving scum who
refuse to allow "what the people want" to distract them from the big one. "what can I
steal?".
People meed to appreciate two things about both the dems and the rethugs. The first is
they supply a much-needed insight into: "How low can I go as a worthless hang off the wagon
by me fingernails, careerist. The second? That every hack must understand that eventually
every talking head is seen for the ugly sellout which they are.
There is no 'honourable way through this mess', one either quietly resigns pulling the pin
on the worst of us all, or one accepts the previously unacceptable, that we are most likely
both musically n functionally illiterate but it never matters what-u-say, what really counts
is what you do.
Whoever it was the Democrats should shun that person before it creates more damage to
their party.
I would disagree here. If the Democrats continue they will destroy themselves hopefully
leading to Mutually Assured Destruction as they would need to do something very drastic to
destroy the Republicans in return e.g. expose 9/11, Iraq etc, let the swamp / Deep State go
M.A.D. and from the political ashes parties and politicians can rise who are actually working
for the betterment of the USA and its people.
To the people here clamoring for Bernie Sanders to go independent: The American
electoral system is very unique. The two parties -- GOP and Dems -- are much more than mere
political parties: they are the American electoral machine itself. It is impossible to win
the presidency without being the candidate of one of the two, that's why Trump also didn't go
as an independent either.
Bernie Sanders is different from all other independent presidential candidates in American
History because he was the first to really want to win. That's why he penetrated the
Democratic machine, even though he became senator many times as an independent. He read the
conjuncture correctly and, you have to agree, he's been more influential over American
political-ideological landscape than all the other independents put together (not considering
Eugene Debs as an independent).
American "Democracy" is a mask for the American Empire and its capitalist
system--including especially the American Military and its Intelligence apparatus (aka The
Deep State). If the American people don't identify with these institutions, you would see
much greater hostility to--if not outright rebellion against--the American military and
spooks.
Instead, you see the very opposite: the American people saluting, glorifying, "thanking
for their service," and politically fellating the US military and spy agencies every chance
they get.
That should tell you all you need to know about Americans. by: AK74 @ 34
<= No not yet do I agree with you.. The American young people are forced into the
military in order to afford to be educated, and in order to have access to health care and
good-level workforce entry jobs especially the military is default for children of struggling
parents that cannot fund a college education or for the kids who are not yet ready to become
serious students.
The USA has not always discounted America or denied Americans. When I grew up, a college
education was very affordable, health care was available to even the most needy at whatever
they could afford, most of us could work our way through the education and find decent entry
level jobs if we were willing to dedicate ourselves to make the opportunity of a job into a
success (education, degrees, licenses were not needed, just performance was enough).
Unfortunately third party private mind control propaganda was used to extend into fake space,
the belief that the USA provides a valuable service to American interest. As time went on,
the USA had to hid its activities in top secret closets, it then had to learn to spy on
everyone, and it had to prosecute those (whistle blowers) who raised a question. Hence the
predicament of the awaken American dealing with friends that still believe the USA is good
for America.. Others hope the good times will return but the USA tolerance for descent is
dissipating. After the 16th amendment and the federal reserve act in 1913 the USA began to
edge America out in favor of international globalization.
Most of the really important parts of what made the USA great for Americans has been sold
off [privatized] and the protections and umpiring and refereeing that the USA used to provide
to keep the American economic space highly competitive and freely accessible to all
competitors has not only ceased, but now operates as a monopoly factory, churning out laws,
rules and establishing agencies that make the wealthy and their corporate empires wealthier,
richer and more monopolistic at the expense of everyday Americans.
The USA began to drop America from its sights after WWII. The USA moved its efforts and
activities from American domestic concerns to global concerns in 1948, neglected its advance
and protect American ideology; it imposed the continental shelf act in 1954 and the EPA act
in 1972, in order to force American industry out of America (the oil business to Saudi Arabia
and OPEC); by 1985-95 most businesses operating in America were either forced to close or
forced to move to a cheap third world labor force places.. .<=the purpose is now clear, it
was to separate Americans from their industrial and manufacturing know-how and to block
American access to evolving technology . At first most Americans did not notice.
Many Americans are only now waking to the possibility that things topside have changed and
some are realizing just how vulnerable the US constitution has made the USA to outside
influence. .. thanks to the USA very little of good ole America remains. but the humanity
first instinct most Americans are born with remains mostly unchanged, even though the
globalist have decimated religious organizations, most Americans still believe their maker
will not look favorably on those who deny justice, democracy or who abuse mankind. The USA
has moved on, it has become a global empire, operating in a global space unknown to most
Americans. The USA has created a world of its own, it no longer needs domestic America, it
can use the people and resources of anyone anywhere in the world for its conquest.
The last two political campaigns for President were "Change=Obama" and "Make America Great
Again=Trump"; neither of these two would have succeeded if Americans did not feel the
problem.
"... Doesn't Warren claim to have indigenous ancestors herself and was proud of it? She caused Trump to call her "Pocahontas"? She agrees to support the unelected interim president Jeannine Añez, who refers to indigenous inhabitants as satanic? Warren is a very horrible person, inhumane, amoral, and rather stupid overall, who wants to get rich. ..."
"... I personally think that capitalism with "human face" and robust public sector is the way to go. But imperialist imposition and aggression is not the part of "human face" that I imagine. ..."
"... I'm sorry but you all need to come to terms with the farce that is the American political system. Anyone who was supporting Warren or even considering voting for her for ANY reason is apparently either in denial or is being duped. Warren is a Madison Avenue creation packaged for US liberal consumption. ..."
"... She hangs out with Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright, two evil women if ever there were. Now they make the three witches brewing one coup/regime change after another. She's not smart enough to see that HRC and MA are leading her around by her nose. People should call out this phoney everywhere she goes. BTW, Rachel Maddow completes an odious clique. ..."
"... This is a bit of exaggeration. The three ladies are more like good students, they did not write the textbook but they good grades for answering as written, or like cheerleaders, they jump and shout but they do not play in the field. Mind you, "interagency consensus" was formed without them. ..."
"... The DNC's strategy for this election is to ensure that Bernie doesn't go into the Convention with enough delegates to win the first ballot. (Once voting goes past the first ballot, super-delegates get to weigh in and help anoint a candidate who's friendly to the Party's plutocratic-oligarch principals.) ..."
"... That's the reason the DNC is allowing and encouraging so many candidates to run. Warren's specific assignment is to cannibalize Bernie's base and steal delegates that would otherwise be his, by pretending to espouse most of his platform with only minor tweaks. She's been successful with "better educated," higher-income liberal Democrats who consider themselves well informed because they get their news from "respectable" sources -- sources that, unbeknownst to their target audiences, invariably represent the viewpoint of the aforementioned plutocratic oligarchs. ..."
"... if Warren becomes the nominee, I will support her over Trump. It's a lesser of two evils choice, but we must recognize that no candidate will be perfect–ever. ..."
"... Zionism is typically the gateway drug for Democratic would-be reformers. Once they've swallowed that fundamental poison, the DNC feels secure it's just a matter of time before they Get With the Program 100%. Given that "Harvard" and "phony" are largely synonymous, what else could've been expected? ..."
Reiterates Her Neoconservative Policies Against Venezuela
Elizabeth Warren repeated her support for regime change in Venezuela in an interview in September with the
Council on Foreign Relations , a central gear in the machinery
of the military-industrial complex. "Maduro is a dictator and a crook who has wrecked his country's economy, dismantled its democratic
institutions, and profited while his people suffer," Warren declared. She referred to Maduro's elected government as a "regime" and
called for "supporting regional efforts to negotiate a political transition." Echoing the rhetoric of neoconservatives in Washington,
Warren called for "contain[ing]" the supposedly "damaging and destabilizing actions" of China, Russia, and Cuba. The only point where
Warren diverged with Trump was on her insistence that "there is no U.S. military option in Venezuela."
Soft-Pedals Far-Right Coup in Bolivia
While Warren endorsed Trump's hybrid war on Venezuela, she more recently whitewashed the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.
Warren refused to comment on the putsch for more than a week, even as the far-right military junta massacred dozens of protesters
and systematically purged and detained elected left-wing politicians from MAS.
Finally, eight days after the coup, Warren broke her silence. In a short tweet, the putative progressive presidential candidate
tepidly requested "free and fair elections" and calling on the "interim leadership" to prepare an "early, legitimate election."
What Warren did not mention is that this "interim leadership" she helped legitimize is headed by an extreme right-wing Christian
fundamentalist, the unelected "interim president"
Jeanine Añez. Añez has referred
to Bolivia's majority-Indigenous population as "satanic" and immediately moved to try to overturn the country's progressive constitution,
which had established an inclusive, secular, plurinational state after receiving an overwhelming democratic mandate in a 2009 referendum.
Añez's ally in this coup regime's interim leadership is
Luis Fernando
Camacho , a multi-millionaire who emerged out of neo-fascist groups and courted support from the United States and the far-right
governments of Brazil and Colombia. By granting legitimacy to Bolilvia's ultra-conservative, unelected leadership, Warren rubber-stamped
the far-right coup and the military junta's attempt to stamp out Bolivia's progressive democracy. In other words, as The Grayzone
editor Max Blumenthal put it, Liz's
Big Structural Bailey compliantly rolled over for
Big IMF Structural Adjustment Program
.
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone , and the producer of the "
Moderate Rebels " podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His
website is BenNorton.com , and he tweets at @
BenjaminNorton .
A vote for evil is never a good choice, and choosing a candidate you perceive as a lesser evil still condones evil. Allowing
the Oligarchy to limit your choice gives them the power to continue advancing evil policies. They control both major parties.
You may succeed in getting non-gender specific restrooms in your Starbucks, but the murdering war machine will continue unabated.
Now, we are seeing the true colors of candidates, who have professed to be progressive. Sanders went on a "tirade" against
Maduro during the last "debate" I saw. Tulsi Gabbard has stayed against US Imperialism, but, I'm sure the Democratic policy controllers
will never nominate her. I foresee I'll be voting for the Socialist next year.
Raymond M. , November 22, 2019 at 18:09
""""On Nov. 10, the U.S. government backed a far-right military coup against Bolivia's democratically elected President Evo
Morales bla blla bla".
And the 3 right wing candidates spent more time slinging mud at at each other than at Morales. Had the CIAs top front man Ortez stepped aside, the vote would not have split and allowed Morales to claim a first round victory and avoid
a run-off that he would have lost. And the right wing Christian fundamentalist for sure was a CIA plant who manged to split the
vote further.
Under the Trump administration, the CIA can even run a coup right.
If only those anti-Western rulers seen the light and joined RBWO (rule* based world order, * rules decided in DC, preferably
by bipartisan consensus), then the economy would run smoothly and the population would be happy. Every week gives another example:
By The Associated Press, Nov. 21, 2019, BOGOTA, Colombia
Colombians angry with President Iván Duque and hoping to channel Latin America's wave of discontent took the streets by the tens
of thousands on Thursday in one of the biggest protests in the nation's recent history. [ ] Police estimated 207,000 people took
part. [ ] government deployed 170,000 officers, closed border crossings and deported 24 Venezuelans accused of entering the country
to instigate unrest.
So if only Iván did not start unnecessary conflict with Maduro, these 24 scoundrels would stay home and the trouble would be
avoided. Oh wait, I got confused
CitizenOne , November 21, 2019 at 22:10
You must imagine that when candidtes suddenly become mind control puppets what is going on. The scariest thing in American
Politics is how supposedly independent and liberal progressives somehow swallow the red pill and are transported into the world
of make believe. Once inside the bubble of fiction far removed from human suffering which is after all what politicians are supposed
to be about fixing they can say crazy things. Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump are the only souls to retain their independent (yet
opposite) minds and both of them got the boot for being different.
Hide Behind , November 21, 2019 at 20:44
The puppet masters are experts, on the one hand there is A Republican, and on the other is a Democrat, but even they mess up
now and then get the different strings tangled.
Some come back on stage on the different hand so to save time they give a puppet two faces.
Watching same puppets gets old so every so often 2-4-6 they restring an old one that was used as props in past, change their makeup
a bit to give them new faces.
We do not actually elect the puppet, we instead legitimize the Puppeteers who own' s the only stage in town.
Those who choreograph the movements and change the backgrouds, media outlets and permanent bureaucrats know the plays before they
are introduced, and they know best how to get adults to leave reality behind and bring back their childhood fantacies.
Days of sugar plums, candy canes, socks filled with goodies and not coal, tooth fairys, and kind generous Fairy God Mothers.
Toy Nutcracker soldiers that turn into Angelic heros, Yellow brick roads, Bunnies with pocket watches, and and magic shoes of
red, or of glass in hand of handsome Princes and beautiful Princesses, all available if we vote.
So who votes, only those who control the voting puppets know that reality does not exist, they twitch we react, and at end of
voting counts one of hand's puppets will slump and cry, while others will leap and dance in joy, only for all to end up in one
pile until the puppeteers need them for next act.
Frederike , November 21, 2019 at 17:30
"What Warren did not mention is that this "interim leadership" she helped legitimize is headed by an extreme right-wing Christian
fundamentalist, the unelected "interim president" Jeanine Añez.
Añez has referred to Bolivia's majority-Indigenous population as "satanic" and immediately moved to try to overturn the country's
progressive constitution, which had established an inclusive, secular, plurinational state after receiving an overwhelming democratic
mandate in a 2009 referendum."
Doesn't Warren claim to have indigenous ancestors herself and was proud of it? She caused Trump to call her "Pocahontas"?
She agrees to support the unelected interim president Jeannine Añez, who refers to indigenous inhabitants as satanic?
Warren is a very horrible person, inhumane, amoral, and rather stupid overall, who wants to get rich.
Everything she agreed to in the interview listed above is pathetic. I had no idea that she is such a worthless individual.
arggo , November 22, 2019 at 19:57
"neocon" explains this. She seems to have the support of very foundational structures that enabled Hillary Clinton Democrats to attack
and destroy Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Warren has not lost my vote for the simple reason she never had it in the first place. None of this, sickening as it is, comes
as any surprise. Warren is an unapologetic capitalist. She's like Robert Reich in that regard. They both believe capitalism–if
reformed, tweaked a bit here and there–can work. To give her credit, she's always been very honest about that. And of course our
doctrine of regime change is all in the service of capitalism. Unless I'm simply confused and mistaken.
Sherwood Forrest , November 22, 2019 at 09:38
Yes, Capitalist First! That makes it so difficult for any aware person to believe she sincerely supports a wealth tax, Universal
Healthcare, Green New Deal, College loan forgiveness, family leave or anything else the 1% oppose. Because promising like Santa
is part of Capitalist politics, and then saying," Nah, we can't afford it."
I personally think that capitalism with "human face" and robust public sector is the way to go. But imperialist imposition
and aggression is not the part of "human face" that I imagine.
So Warren's imperialist positions are evil and unnecessary to preserve capitalism, how that projects at her as a person it
is hard to tell. A Polish poet has those words spoken by a character in his drama "On that, I know only what I heard, but I am
afraid to investigate because it poisons my mind about " (Znam to tylko z opowiada?, ale strzeg? si? tych bada?, bo mi truj? my?l
o ) As typical of hearsay, her concept of events in Venezuela, Bolivia etc. is quite garbled, she has no time (but perhaps some
fear) to investigate herself (easy in the era of internet). A serious politician has to think a lot about electability (and less
about the folks under the steam roller of the Empire), so she has to "pick her fights".
It is rather clear that American do not care if people south of the border are governed democratically or competently, which
led Hillary Clinton to make this emphatic statement in a debate with Trump "You will not see me singing praises of dictators or
strongmen who do not love America". One can deconstruct it "if you do not love America you are a strongman or worse, but if you
love America, we will be nice to you". I would love to have the original and deconstructed statement polled, but Warren is not
the only one afraid of such investigations. So "electability" connection to green light to Bolivian fascist and red light to Bolivarians
of Venezuela is a bit indirect. Part of it is funding, part, bad press.
brett , November 21, 2019 at 15:15
I'm sorry but you all need to come to terms with the farce that is the American political system. Anyone who was supporting
Warren or even considering voting for her for ANY reason is apparently either in denial or is being duped. Warren is a Madison
Avenue creation packaged for US liberal consumption.
She is a fraud and a liar. One trained in psychology can see, in her every
movement and utterance, the operation that is going on behind the facade. Everything Warren says is a lie to someone. She only
states truth in order to later dis-inform. Classic deception. She (her billionaires) has latched on to the populism of the DSA
etc. in order to sabotage any progressive momentum and drive a stake in it.
Rob Roy , November 22, 2019 at 00:40
She hangs out with Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright, two evil women if ever there were. Now they make the three witches
brewing one coup/regime change after another. She's not smart enough to see that HRC and MA are leading her around by her nose.
People should call out this phoney everywhere she goes. BTW, Rachel Maddow completes an odious clique.
This is a bit of exaggeration. The three ladies are more like good students, they did not write the textbook but they good
grades for answering as written, or like cheerleaders, they jump and shout but they do not play in the field. Mind you, "interagency
consensus" was formed without them.
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 14:53
The DNC's strategy for this election is to ensure that Bernie doesn't go into the Convention with enough delegates to win the
first ballot. (Once voting goes past the first ballot, super-delegates get to weigh in and help anoint a candidate who's friendly
to the Party's plutocratic-oligarch principals.)
That's the reason the DNC is allowing and encouraging so many candidates to run.
Warren's specific assignment is to cannibalize Bernie's base and steal delegates that would otherwise be his, by pretending to
espouse most of his platform with only minor tweaks. She's been successful with "better educated," higher-income liberal Democrats
who consider themselves well informed because they get their news from "respectable" sources -- sources that, unbeknownst to their
target audiences, invariably represent the viewpoint of the aforementioned plutocratic oligarchs.
Absolutely nothing in Warren's background supports her new calculatedly progressive primary persona. She was a Reagan
Republican. When the Republican Party moved right to become the party of batshit crazy and the Democratic Party shifted right
to become the party of Reagan Republicans, she became a Democrat. She's not a good actress, and it takes willing suspension of
disbelief to buy into her performance as a savvier, wonkier alternative to Bernie. And when she's pressed for details (Medicare
for All) and responses to crises (Venezuela and Bolivia), the cracks in her progressive façade become patently obvious. She's
a sleeper agent for Democratic-leaning plutocrats, like Obama was in 2008, and she would never get my vote.
PS: Impressed by Warren's progressive wealth-tax plan? Don't be. Our country's billionaires know she won't fight for it, and
that if she did, Congress would never pass it. (They know who owns Congress.) Besides, do you really think Pocahontas would
beat Trump? Do you think Sleepy Joe would? The billionaires wouldn't bet on it. And they're fine with that. Sure, they'd like
someone who's more thoroughly corporatist on trade and more committed to hot régime-change wars than Trump is, but they can live
just fine with low-tax, low-regulation Trump. It's the prospect of a Bernie presidency that keeps them up at night
and their proxies in the Democratic Party and allied media are doing everything they can to neutralize that threat.
mbob , November 21, 2019 at 18:13
@Peter
Thanks for this beautiful post. I agree with it 100%. I've been trying to figure out why Democrats are so consistently unable
to see through rhetoric and fall for what candidates pretend to be. Part of it is wishful thinking. A lot of it is, as you wrote,
misplaced trust in "respectable" sources. I have no idea how to fix that: how does one engender the proper skepticism of the MSM?
I haven't been able to open the eyes of any of my friends. (Fortunately my wife and daughter opened their own eyes.)
Warren is, if you look clearly, driven by her enormous ambition. She's the same as every other candidate in that regard, save
Bernie.
Bernie is driven by the same outrage that we feel. We need him.
In the last Israeli massacre on Gaza she was all for the IDF killing Palistinians. Americans like to look at the CCP and cry
about China being a one party state. Well is the US not a one party state?= Are the views of the Democrats and Republicans not
the same when it comes to slaughtering people in the third world? There is not a razor`s edge between them. Biden, Warren, Sanders,
Trump, Cruz and Pense they are all war criminals, or if elected will soon become war criminals.
From someone who at the beginning showed promise and humanity, she has turned into Albright and Clinton. How f**king sad is
that?
Dan Kuhn , November 21, 2019 at 14:33
Better to see her for what she really is now then after the election if she were to win. She is disgusting in her inhumanity.
Rob , November 21, 2019 at 13:43
This Is, indeed, disturbing and disappointing. Warren seems so genuinely right on domestic economic and social issues, so how
could she be so wrong on foreign policy issues? The same principles apply in both–justice, fairness, equity, etc. That said, she
is no worse than any of the other Democratic candidates in that regard, with the exceptions of Sanders and Gabbard, so if Warren
becomes the nominee, I will support her over Trump. It's a lesser of two evils choice, but we must recognize that no candidate
will be perfect–ever.
Far better to stick to your principles and write in " None of the above." believe me with this article we can easily see that
Trump is no worse nor better than Warren is. They are both pretty poor excuses as human beings.
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 16:04
@Rob:
If you'll allow me to fix that for you, "What Warren tactically claims to support, in the primaries, seems so genuinely
right on domestic economic and social issues ." I'm convinced Warren is an Obama 2.0 in the making. I don't think anyone
can match Obama's near-180° turnabout from his 2008 primary platform and that if Warren is elected, she will try to make Wall
Street a little more honest and stable, maybe advocate for a $12 minimum wage, and maybe try to shave a few thousand dollars off
student-loan debts. I suppose that technically qualifies as less evil than Trump. But I fully expect her to jettison 90% of her
primary platform, including a progressive tax on wealth and Medicare for All. And when you factor in her recently confirmed approval
of US military and financial imperialism -- economic subversion and régime-change operations that cost tens of thousands of innocent
foreign lives, and other peoples their sovereignty -- at what point does "less evil" become too evil to vote for?
John Drake , November 21, 2019 at 13:13
" presidential candidate tepidly requested "free and fair elections". Such a statement ignores the fact that Evo Morales term
was not up; therefore elections are not called for. This means she supports the coup. Restoration of his position which was illegally
and violently stolen from him are in order not elections until his term is up.
Her position on Venezuela is nauseating; as the article states classic neo-conservative. Maybe Robert Kagan will welcome her into
their club as he did with Hillary.
Warren used to be a Republican, she has not been cured of that disease; and is showing her true colors. Maybe it's best as she
is differentiating herself from Bernie. I was concerned before she started down this latest path that she would do an Obama; progressive
rhetoric followed by neo-liberal-or worse- behavior once in office. Maybe she is more honest than Obama.
Guy , November 21, 2019 at 12:40
Warren can't be very informed about what democracy actually means .Democracy is not the same as capitalism .
Not a US citizen but am very disappointed with her stated platform .
Short of divine intervention Tulsi will never make it but Sanders for president and Tulsi as VP would do just fine to re-direct
the US foreign policy and maybe ,just maybe make the US more respectable among the rest of the nations of the world.
It would make a lot of sense from actuarial point of view. The chances that at least one person on the ticket would live healthily
for 8 years would be very good, without Tulsi
Punkyboy , November 21, 2019 at 12:02
I was pretty sure Warren was a Hillary clone; now I'm absolutely sure of it. Another election between worse and worser. I may
just stay home this time, if the world holds together that long.
Socratic Truth , November 21, 2019 at 11:42
Warren is just another puppet of the NWO.
Ma Laoshi , November 21, 2019 at 11:12
I remember years and years ago, I guess about when Lizzie first entered Congress, that she went on the standard pandering tour
to the Motherland and an astute mind commented: Zionism is typically the gateway drug for Democratic would-be reformers. Once
they've swallowed that fundamental poison, the DNC feels secure it's just a matter of time before they Get With the Program 100%.
Given that "Harvard" and "phony" are largely synonymous, what else could've been expected?
Peter in Seattle , November 21, 2019 at 15:32
@Ma Laoshi:
Speaking of Harvard, having contemplated the abysmal track record compiled by our "best and brightest" -- in Congress,
in the White House, and on the federal bench -- I am now almost as suspicious of the Ivy League as I am of the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security (WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas). The mission of both is to train capable,
reliable, well-compensated servants to the US plutocracy. (And the only reason I say "almost" is because a non-negligible number
of black sheep have come out of the Ivy League and I'm not aware of any that have come out of WHINSEC.)
Sam F , November 23, 2019 at 18:59
Harvard admissions are apparently largely bought, and doubtless those of Yale and others.
MIT was strictly militarist warmongers in the 1970s, and one compete with 80% cheaters.
Dfnslblty , November 21, 2019 at 11:12
" The only point where Warren diverged with Trump was on her insistence that "there is no U.S. military option in Venezuela."
"
Hell, one doesn't need a military option after immoral, illegal and crippling sanctions.
This essay is the most disturbing piece all year-2019.
Vote anti-military – vote nonviolence.
Don't give these murderers anything but exposure to humane sensibilities.
I didn't think Trump supported a military solution in Venezuela. That was John Bolton's baby and Trump fired him as one would
hope he would soon fire Pompeo as has been hinted at. Trump campaigned on ending wars of choice but has given in to the MIC at
almost every turn. Maybe he will resign in leiu of being impeached. We might then see a Rand Paul vs. Bernie Sanders. I could
live with either one
Skip Scott , November 21, 2019 at 09:12
Once again the Democratic Party is pushing to have our choice for 2020 be between corporate sponsored war monger from column
A or B.
I wish Tulsi would "see the light" and run as an Independent in 2020. There is absolutely no way that she gets the nod from
the utterly corrupt DNC. She is abandoning her largest base (Independents) by sticking with the Democratic Party. Considering
the number of disgruntled non-voters, she could easily win the general election; but she will never win the Democratic primary.
The field is purposely flooded to ensure the "superdelegates" get the final say on a second ballot.
AnneR , November 21, 2019 at 08:50
Warren is as inhumane, amoral and imperialist as anyone in the WH and the US Congress, and she is certainly kindred in spirit,
thought and would be in deed, as Madeline Albright, the cheerful slaughterer of some 500,000 Iraqi children because the "price
was worth it." Of course, these utterly racist, amoral people do not have to pay "that price" nor do any of their families. (And
let us not forget that Albright and Killary are good friends – Warren is totally kindred with the pair, totally.)
And clearly Warren – like all of the Demrat contenders – is full on for any kind of warfare that will bring a "recalcitrant"
country into line with US demands (on its resources, lands etc.). She is grotesque.
She and those of her ilk – all in Congress, pretty much, and their financial backers – refuse to accept that Maduro and Morales
*both* were legally, legitimately and cleanly re-elected to their positions as presidents of their respective countries. But to
do that would be to go against her (commonly held) fundamental belief that the US has the right to decide who is and is not the
legitimate national leader of any given country. And what policies they institute.
Anyone who supports economic sanctions is supporting siege warfare, is happily supporting the starvation and deprivation of
potentially millions of people. And shrugging off the blame for the effects of the sanctions onto the government of the sanctioned
country is heinous, is immoral and unethical. WE are the ones who are killing, not the government under extreme pressure. If you
can't, won't accept the responsibility – as Warren and the rest of the US government clearly will not – for those deaths you are
causing, then stay out of the bloody kitchen: stop committing these crimes against humanity.
Cara , November 21, 2019 at 15:25
Please provide documentation that Sanders is, as you claim, a "full-on zionist supporter of "Israel" and clearly anti-Palestinian."
Sanders has been quite consistent in his criticism of Israel and the treatment of Palestinians: timesofisrael.com/bernie-sanders-posts-video-citing-apartheid-like-conditions-for-palestinians;
and; jacobinmag.com/2019/07/bernie-sanders-israel-palestine-bds
"Sanders is less so, but not wholly because he is a full-on zionist supporter of "Israel" and clearly anti-Palestinian"
Sanders is definitely not "full-on zionist supporter", not only he does not deny that "Palestinians exist" (to died-in-the-wool
Zionists, Palestinians are a malicious fiction created to smear Israel etc., google "Fakestinians"), but he claims that they have
rights, and using Hamas as a pretext for Gaza blockade is inhumane (a recent headline). One can pull his other positions and statements
to argue in the other direction, but in my opinion, he is at the extreme humane end of "zionist spectrum" (I mean, so humane that
almost not a Zionist).
And again, if we do win despite all the structural injustices in the system the Rs inherited and seek to expand, well, those
injustices don't really absolutely need to be corrected, because we will still have gotten the right result from the system
as is.
This is a pretty apt description of the mindset of Corporate Democrats. Thank you !
May I recommend you to listen to Chris Hedge 2011 talk
On Death of the Liberal Class At least to the first
part of it.
Corporate Dems definitely lack courage, and as such are probably doomed in 2020.
Of course, the impeachment process will weight on Trump, but the Senate hold all trump cards, and might reverse those effects
very quickly and destroy, or at lease greatly diminish, any chances for Corporate Demorats even complete on equal footing in 2020
elections. IMHO Pelosi gambit is a really dangerous gambit, a desperate move, a kind of "Heil Mary" pass.
Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. And that's what happening right now and that's why
I suspect that far right populism probably will be the decisive factor in 2020 elections.
IMHO Chris explains what the most probable result on 2020 elections with be with amazing clarity.
I want to remind you of Bill Barr's speech to the Federalist Society a week ago. He made a
specific point about the plot to sabotage
Donald Trump's Presidency :
Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The
Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver
available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language
used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously
connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous – indeed
incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means
is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done
in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means
necessary, a duly elected government.
I believe that Bill Barr intentionally signaled that the sedition by the intelligence
community, the FBI and the Department of Justice will not be allowed to slide. But he is going
to do everything to punish them according to the law. He is committed to a rule of law and
enforcing the laws of this country.
In the late 1990s, Durham was tapped by Bill Clinton's justice department to investigate
Boston police and FBI agents' connections with infamous gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. That
investigation ultimately identified corrupt law enforcement officials who had given the killer
information he then used to kill informants and eventually became a part of the case that led
to Bulger's conviction.
Durham's investigation implicated Robert Mueller. According to knowledgeable sources, the
Clinton Justice Department would not allow Durham to
bring charges against Mueller :
In the 1980's, while Mr. Connolly was working with Whitey Bulger, Mr. Mueller was assistant
United States attorney in Boston in charge of the criminal division and for a period was the
acting United States attorney here, presiding over Mr. Connolly and Mr. Bulger as a
''top-echelon informant.'' Officials of the Massachusetts state police and the Boston Police
Department had long wondered why their investigations of Mr. Bulger were always compromised
before they could gather evidence against him, and they suspected that the F.B.I. was
protecting him.
Law enforcement officials also have said they wondered why the United States attorney's
office seemed to give Mr. Bulger impunity. But hearings by United States District Judge Mark
Wolf in 1998 found that Mr. Connolly had not told his bosses in the United States attorney's
office about his work with Mr. Bulger. In general, Judge Wolf found what he described as a
culture of secrecy in the F.B.I.'s handling of its informants that sometimes subverted the
purpose of the program.
I do not believe that Bill Barr is going to prevent John Durham from following the evidence
and charging those culpable with crimes. I suspect that this fact is weighing heavily on Jim
Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennab, Jim Clapper and others in the FBI, DOJ and intelligence
community. We will know more in a month.
The most important outcome is transparency, where the public gets to see the breadth &
depth of the activities including the collusion with the media to shape the narrative and the
use of Congressional committees to further the narrative.
The public needs to be able to read about the entire plot and all the sub-plots and the
cast of characters with the roles each played.
We need this to be able to comprehend the extent of violence to the rule of law by those
entrusted with enforcement of the law and the operation of the nations' intelligence
agencies.
We can judge when Durham is done if Barr's speech to the Federalist Society was just
rhetorical or if he really meant it.
Yes. Agree. Informing the public about the true scale of the operation would be very helpful.
That's the acid question: What will Barr deliver?
Of course if he does that the propaganda organs will unleash their vitriol on him and
claim he is Trump's bag carrier. It's not gonna change the minds of any NeverTrumper. It's
value will be a record for posterity.
It is worth pondering, what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up? After
all he is one of them. Bill & Hillary attended his wedding to Melania. He has been
photographed at parties with Epstein and moved in celebrity social circles. He's been more
zionist than others before him and he's fed the MIC handsomely. He's not reformed the
surveillance state one iota. It remains at least as secretive and powerful as before. He's
allowed multinational US corporations to repatriate overseas profits to buyback stock that
financially rewards the managerial class. He's done nothing that attacks elite interests. Is
it just that he beat them at their own game and their egos are bruised? In his first run for
public office he wins the biggest prize by defeating the Bush dynasty and Senators and
Governors long in Republican Party leadership and then the Most sure thing, the so entitled
Clinton machine.
You see similar smear operations on Tulsi too. At least with her one can argue that she
has never been a club member.
"what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up?"
I don't think it's that hard to figure out: he's too orange, he's too much of an outsider,
he broke Hillary's dream.
But the real crime was saying that the US should try to get along with Russia.
If he had never said the word "Russia" or "Putin" they'd still hate him but we'd be on the
level of psychiatrists speculating that Twitter makes you crazy or something. And it would
the the dims and their tame presstitutes saying that without the (powerful) back up of the
deepstate/borg/blob
You can't run much of an impeachment circus on POTUS's choice of hair product, but Russia
Russia Russia, that keeps going. He colluded with Putin; OK we can't prove that but he wasn't
exonerated; he weakened brave little Ukraine in its fight against Putin. That's all they've
got.
I did hear Barr's definition of "The Resistance" and was so happy that someone finally
explained how evil that idea is in our Democratic Republic. I was so sick of those smug
people I have met who proudly proclaim their allegiance to "The Resistance," as if they count
themselves equal to the French Resistance in WWII against the Nazis.
My wish is that any of the "Resistance" who have made their living on tax-funded salaries
are ripped out of those positions and placed in tax-funded prison cells. And this time, I
would like it if they would be properly guarded so that they can't escape their shame and
punishment through what will be judged as suicide.
In fact, I might enjoy it if the Smithsonian's National Zoo would add displays of the
Resistors right next to any sort of display of venomous snakes.
(There, I've vented my frustration about how long this process for justice has taken and
for the hours and hours of Adam Schiff on television screens. I am not usually a bitter
person, but this whole episode has taken its toll on many of us who are just mere citizens
and tax payers.)
Among the questions that Larry's contribution begs here, is whether branches of this
investigative trail lead back to Mueller himself. If we believe Durham will follow it to
Whitey Bulger and Mueller's potential involvement in enabling murder, then why not to Uranium
One, and his role in the approval of the sale, the (non)investigation of the bags of cash
changing hands, the contributions to the Clinton Foundation and the Bill Clinton speech in
Moscow for $500,000.
And if there, then why not to Mueller's role in the lead up, and follow up to 911?
The opposing positions of Warren and her primary opponent Bernie Sanders on Bolivia
highlight an increasingly clear policy gap between the two Democratic frontrunners.
11-20-19
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential nomination frontrunner Elizabeth Warren
endorsed the recent U.S. backed military coup d'état in Bolivia Monday. Warren's
statement carefully avoided using the word "coup," and instead referred to the new government
of Jeanine Añez as an "interim leadership," effectively validating the new
administration.
She stated that the Bolivian people "deserve free and fair elections, as soon as
possible," implying that the October 20 vote, won convincingly by President Evo Morales, was
not clean, thus taking essentially the same position as the Trump administration, who made no
secret of their relief that Morales was ousted.
The opposing positions of Warren and her primary opponent Bernie Sanders on Bolivia
highlight an increasingly clear policy gap between the two Democratic frontrunners.
11-20-19
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential nomination frontrunner Elizabeth Warren
endorsed the recent U.S. backed military coup d'état in Bolivia Monday. Warren's
statement carefully avoided using the word "coup," and instead referred to the new government
of Jeanine Añez as an "interim leadership," effectively validating the new
administration.
She stated that the Bolivian people "deserve free and fair elections, as soon as
possible," implying that the October 20 vote, won convincingly by President Evo Morales, was
not clean, thus taking essentially the same position as the Trump administration, who made no
secret of their relief that Morales was ousted.
... five of his closest advisers and associates have been convicted or pleaded guilty of
felony crimes
This is just a smear because the crimes of these guys had nothing to do with the office of
President.
Manafort
He was likely set up and had no policy role. AFAIK, he has very little connection to Trump -
but some connection to Roger Stone.
Roger Stone
Self-destructed by lying to Congress (and others) about his connections to Wikileaks. No
impact on policy. His demise had nothing to do with Trump.
Flynn
He was likely set up because he told the world that the Obama Administration had made a
"wilful decision" to support the rise of ISIS. That set-up came before the election. No
affect on policy and Trump was not involved.
Cohen
As Trump's fixer he's closely connected to Trump but the Stormy Daniels fiasco had no
connection to policy.
Papadopoulos
Fingered in the Russiagate nonsense, his "felony" was deceptiveness during an interview and
that brought him 14 days in jail. Unlikely that he had any measurable affect on policy or
close connection to Trump himself.
Numbers show joke is on the US, not Huawei US ban lit a fire under Huawei, seen
taking lead in smartphones and awash in cash as bonds trade at a premium
By Umesh Desai
Unlisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies was made an international
pariah by US regulators earlier this year after a ban on buying key parts and on access to
crucial markets.
You think that sounded the death knell for the company? Think again.
This week, Huawei announced a US$286 million
bonuses bonanza to its employees . Its bonds continue to trade above par, and its cash
balances are massive. Hardly the signs of a company struggling under sanctions.
The company has repeatedly denied US allegations that it is a front for the Chinese
government – the justification Washington cited for banning US companies from using
Huawei-manufactured gear.
Huawei is the world's biggest telecom equipment maker and it's the second biggest smartphone
maker.
According to data from International Data Corporation, smartphone shipments in the
July-September quarter rose 18.6% to 66.6 million, just behind global leader Samsung's 78.2
million.
"Huawei has been gaining market share in China and overseas despite US trade war frictions
and may become the leading smartphone maker in the next two quarters," said Nitin Soni,
director of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings.
He said telcos across emerging markets, which are facing capital expenditure pressures
and limited 5G business viability in the short term, may be willing to buy Huawei's 5G
equipment given it is cheaper and has better technology than European counterparts.
It's not just Soni. Industry leaders also acknowledge Huawei's quality standards
.
Indian telco Bharti Enterprises' chairman Sunil Mittal said recently, for example, "I can
safely say their products in 3G and 4G that we have experienced are significantly superior to
Ericsson and Nokia. I use all three of them. "
Indeed, the bond-market performance of the unrated, unlisted company confirms Huawei's
strength. Its dollar-denominated bonds traded in global markets are changing hands at above
par, indicating bond investors are confident about the company's cash position and liquidity
situation.
Its bonds due 2025, which pay a coupon of 4.125%, are trading at a price of $104 while the
holder would only get $100 at maturity. The premium would be compensated by the annual coupon,
which would reduce the yield. The bonds are currently yielding 3.4% compared with the 4.25%
yield at the time of the issuance. In price terms the bonds have rallied from $99 in 2015 to
$104. Prices move inversely to yields.
The financial highlights also betray no signs of weakness. The company has a cash hoard of
$39 billion and generates $10 billion from operations each year.
So, in fact, the US ban on Huawei may be helping the company.
"A ban on US companies such as Google to supply software to Huawei may lead to faster
innovation by Huawei to develop its own operating system and chips," said Soni.
"In 2019, the bottom 99% of families will pay 7.2% of their wealth in taxes, while the top
0.1% of households will pay just 3.2%."
~~Elizabeth Warren~
do you see how EW has finally opened our eyes?
sure! poor people think about wealth as being income. they think about Wealth as being
their salary. from the perspective of a wealthy senator wealth is a function of assets. EW
had the guts to share this perspective with us, to open our eyes to reality.
we should not be taxing the payroll we should not be taxing the capital gains and other
income. we should be taxing non productive assets, assets which cannot be hidden which cannot
be taken off shore.
the Swiss have such a tax. all of their real estate is taxed at a rate of 0.3% per annum.
it would be easy for us to stop all local taxes All County taxes all state taxes and all
federal tax then initiate a 1% tax on all real property unimproved and on all improved real
property. we should continue this tax until our federal debt is completely discharged. such a
taxation shift would revv up our productive activity and increase our per capita GDP. as
usual there would be winners and there would be losers. the losers would be those who want
more inequality and the winners would be
"... Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term "revenue maximizing" -- a standard piece of economic jargon -- describing it as "disgustingly immoral." ..."
"... Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s. He did, however, refer on a few occasions to "fat cat" bankers and suggested that financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with " Obama rage ," and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012. ..."
No, the really intense backlash against Warren and progressive Democrats in general is
coming from
Wall Street . And while that opposition partly reflects self-interest, Wall Street's Warren
hatred has a level of virulence, sometimes crossing into hysteria, that goes beyond normal
political calculation.
What's behind that virulence?
First, let's talk about the rational reasons Wall Street is worried about Warren. She is, of
course, calling for major tax increases on the very wealthy, those with wealth exceeding $50
million, and the financial industry is strongly represented in that elite club. And since
raising taxes on the wealthy is highly popular , it's an
idea a progressive president might actually be able to turn into real policy.
Warren is also a big believer in stricter financial regulation; the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, which was highly effective until the Trump administration set about gutting
it, was her brainchild.
So if you are a Wall Street billionaire, rational self-interest might well induce you to
oppose Warren. Neoliberal_rationality/ does not, however, explain why a money manager like Leon Cooperman
-- who just two years ago
settled a suit over insider trading for $5 million, although without admitting wrongdoing
-- would circulate an embarrassing, self-pitying open letter
denouncing Warren for her failure to appreciate all the wonderful things billionaires like
him do for society.
Nor does it explain why Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren
adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term "revenue maximizing" -- a standard piece of
economic jargon -- describing it as "disgustingly immoral."
The real tell here, I think, is that much of the Wall Street vitriol now being directed at
Warren was previously directed at, of all people, President Barack Obama.
Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating
financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He
and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared
with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s. He did, however, refer on a few occasions to "fat cat" bankers and suggested that
financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And
the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with "
Obama
rage ," and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012.
I wonder, by the way, if this history helps explain an odd aspect of fund-raising in the
current primary campaign. It's not surprising that Warren is getting very little money from the
financial sector. It is, however, surprising that the top recipient isn't Joe Biden but
Pete
Buttigieg , who's running a fairly distant
fourth in the polls. Is Biden suffering from the lingering effects of that old-time Obama
rage?
In any case, the point is that Wall Street billionaires, even more than billionaires in
general, seem to be snowflakes, emotionally unable to handle criticism.
I'm not sure why that should be the case, but it may be that in their hearts they suspect
that the critics have a point.
What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons
of yore, today's Wall Street tycoons don't build anything tangible. They don't even direct
money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion
of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in
consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.
Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually
acts as a drag on the economy -- and America is well past that point .
Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve
their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it's not
surprising that people who couldn't handle Obama's mild, polite criticism are completely losing
it over Warren.
What this means is that you should beware of Wall Street claims that progressive policies
would have dire effects. Such claims don't reflect deep economic wisdom; to a large extent
they're coming from people with vast wealth but fragile egos, whose rants should be discounted
appropriately. The Times is committed to publishing
a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of
our articles. Here are some tips
. And here's our email: [email protected]
.
If anything good can come from the Democrat's incessant efforts to impeach Donald
Trump it will be the outgrowth, from the nurturing 'mother of necessity,' of a more inclusive
political system that acknowledges more than just a compromised duopoly as the voice of the
American people.
With complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, the Democrat House Intelligence
Committee under Adam Schiff has
abandoned all pretense of democratic procedure in their
effort to remove the 45th President
of the United States from office.
Indeed, the Democrats have
provided the Republicans with a Machiavellian crash course on
the subtle art of decadent behavior for getting what you want
, which of course is ultimate
political power, and to hell in a proverbial hand basket with the consequences. The Republicans
have been snoozing through a game of 2D checkers, holding out hope that Sheriff Billy Barr and his
deputy John Durham will
round
up
the real criminals, while the Democrats have been playing mortal combat.
The dark prince in this Gothic tale of diabolical, dare I say biblical, proportions is
none other than Adam 'Shifty' Schiff,
who, like Dracula in his castle dungeon, has
contorted every House rule to fit the square peg of a Trump telephone call into the bolt hole of a
full-blown impeachment proceeding. Niccolò Machiavelli would have been proud of his modern-day
protégé.
As if to mock the very notion of Democratic due process, whatever that means,
Schiff and
his torch-carrying lynch mob took their deliberations down into the dank basement, yes, the
basement, of the US Capital
where they have been holding secretive depositions in an
effort to get some new twist on the now famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President
Zelensky back in June. But why all the cloak and dagger theatrics when the transcript has long been
available for public consumption?
At one point, the frazzled Republicans bared a little backbone against this bunker mentality
when they
crashed
the
basement meetings for some really outstanding optics. Schiff, betraying a lack of foresight, could
not defenestrate the well-dressed hooligans since the meetings, as mentioned, are being held inside
of a windowless dungeon. The Republican troublemakers were ushered back up the stairs instead.
Considering what Prince Schiff has managed to pull off over the course of this not-made for
television impeachment process is astounding, and
could not have happened without the
drooling complicity of the lapdog media corporations.
Schiff got the ball bouncing when he
performed a Saturday Night Live skit of the Trump-Zelensky phone call on the hallowed floor of
Congress. The imaginary voices in Schiff's head made the president sound like a mafia boss speaking
to one of his lackeys.
Not only did Schiff survive that stunt, it was
revealed that he blatantly lied, not once
but several times, about his affiliation with the White House insider,
reportedly a CIA
officer, who, without ever hearing the Trump-Zelensky phone call firsthand, blew the whistle
anyways. The Democrats claim Trump was looking for some 'quid pro quo' with Kiev, which would dig
up the dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for the release of $400 million in military
aid. The transcript, however, points to no such coercion, while Zelensky himself denies that he was
pressured by Trump.
Meanwhile, Schiff has taken great efforts to keep the identity of the whistleblower a 'secret'
out of "safety concerns." The Republicans in the House said they will subpoena the whistleblower
for the public impeachment that starts next week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters. Yet
Schiff has awarded himself the power to reject any witnesses the Republicans may wish to grill.
"We'll see if he gives us any of our witnesses,"
Jordan said.
A person need not feel any particular fondness for Donald Trump to find these circumstances
surrounding the impeachment show trial as disgraceful, dishonorable and beneath the dignity of the
American people.
And whether they want it or not, the fallout from Schiff's shenanigans
will have repercussions long into the future of the US political system, which is groaning under
the weight of corruption and deceit.
It is doubtful the Republicans will soon forgive and forget what the Democrats have put them
through ever since Trump entered office in 2016. From Russiagate to Ukrainegate, the Trump White
House has been held hostage by a non-stop, media-endorsed hate campaign to oust a democratically
elected POTUS. Although it would be difficult for the Republicans, who lack the support of the
media, an overwhelmingly left-leaning propaganda machine, to exact an equal amount of revenge on
the Democrats when the latter have one of their own in the White House, they will certainly try.
This will lead the Republic into an inescapable vortex of infighting where the sole
function of the political system will be based on that of vengeance and 'pay backs' and more waste
of time
and money as the parties investigate the crimes of the other side.
The public, which is slowly awakening to the problem, will ultimately demand new
leadership to break the current two-party internecine struggle.
Thus, talk of a
civil war in the United States, while possible, is being overplayed. The truth will be much simpler
and far less violent.
Out of the dust and ashes of the defunct duopoly that is now at war with itself, the American
people will soon demand fresh political blood in Washington and this will bring to the forefront
capable political forces that are committed to the primary purpose of politics:
representing the needs of the people, once again.
Tags
Politics
Wilberweld says: November 7, 2019
at 2:11 pm GMT 100 Words Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly
when talking with Henry Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men
you've destroyed". Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Klapper. So he
is viewed as weak, an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a
"penalty-free activity
"... The truth is that for the Clintonite-Bushite elite almost all Americans are 'deplorable'. What is fun for them is to play geopolitics – the elite version of corporate travel perks – just look at how shocked they are that Trump is not playing along. ..."
Recent class history of US is quite simple: the elite class first tried to shift the burden
of supporting the lower classes on the middle class with taxation. But as the lower class
became demographically distinct, partially via mass immigration, the elites decided to ally
with the ' underpriviledged ' via identity posturing and squeeze no longer needed
middle class out of existence.
What's left are government employees, a few corporate sinecures, NGO parasitic sector, and
old people. The rest will be melded into a few mutually antagonistic tribal groups providing
ever cheaper service labor. With an occasional lottery winner to showcase mobility. Actually
very similar to what happened in Latin America in the past few centuries.
The truth is that for the Clintonite-Bushite elite almost all Americans are
'deplorable'. What is fun for them is to play geopolitics – the elite version of
corporate travel perks – just look at how shocked they are that Trump is not playing
along.
Unlike the USA (under Neocon stewardship) China has not squandered twenty trillion dollars
of its national solvency bombing countries which never attacked it post 9-11.
China's leaders (unlike our own) never LIED its people into launching obscenely expensive,
illegal wars of aggression across the middle east. (WMD's, Mushroom clouds, Yellow Cake,
etc.)
China has used its wealth and resources to build up its infrastructure, build out its
capital markets, and turbo charge its high tech sectors. As a consequence, it has lifted
nearly half a billion people out of poverty. There has been an explosion in the growth of the
"middle class" in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are now living comfortable "upwardly
mobile" lives.
The USA, on the other hand, having been defrauded by its "ruling elites" into launching
and fighting endless illegal wars, is now 23 trillion dollars in catastrophic debt.
NOT ONE PENNY of this heinous "overspending" has been dedicated to building up OUR
infrastructure, or BUILDING OUT our middle class.
It has all gone into BLOWING UP countries which never (even) attacked us on 9-11.
As a consequence , the USA is fast becoming a failed nation, a nation where all its wealth
is being siphoned into the hands of its one percent "war pilfer-teers".
It is so sad to have grown up in such an amazing country , with such immense resources and
possibilities, and having to bear witness to it going down the tubes.
To watch all our sovereign wealth being vaporized by our "lie us into endless illegal war"
ruling elites is truly heartbreaking.
The white middle class is the only group that might effectively resist Globohomo's designs on
total power.
Blacks? Too dumb. Will be disposed of once Globohomo is finished the job.
Hispanics? Used to corrupt one party systems. Give them cerveza and Netflix and they're
good.
East Asians? Perfectly fine with living like bug people.
South Asians? Cowardly; will go with the flow.
The middle class is almost completely unique to white people.
Racial aliens cannot wrap their minds around being middle class. They think I'm crazy for
appreciating my 2009 Honda Accord. They literally cannot understand why somebody would want
to live a frugal and mundane life. They are desperate to be like Drake but most end up broke.
It will be very easy for GloboHomo to control a bucket of poor brown slop.
There IS a black middle class, but a big chunk of that works for governments of all
shapes and sizes.
Strictly speaking, there is no more "middle class" in the sense of the classical
economists: a person with just enough capital to live off the income if he works the capital
himself or herself. By this definition professionals (lawyers, dentists, physicians, small
store owners, even spinsters [1] and hand loom operators in a sense) were middle class. Upper
class had enough property to turn it over to managers, lower class had little or no property
and worked for others (servants and farm workers, for example). Paupers didn't earn enough
income per year to feed themselves and didn't live all that long, usually.
What we have is "middle income" people, almost all of whom work as an employee of some
organization -- people who would be considered "lower class" by the classical economists
because they don't have freedom of action and make no independent decisions about how the
capital of their organizations is spent. Today they are considered "intelligentsia", educated
government workers, or, by analogy, educated corporate workers. IMHO, intelligentsia is a
suicide job, and is responsible for the depressed fertility rate, but that's just me.
Back in the AD 1800s and pre-AD 1930 there were many black middle class people. usually
concentrating on selling to black clientele. Now there are effectively none outside of
criminal activities, usually petty criminal. And so it goes.
Of course, back then there were many white middle class people also, usually concentrating
on selling to white clientele. Now there are effectively none, except in some rural areas.
And so it goes.
Counterinsurgency
1] Cottagers who made their living spinning wool skeins into wool threads.
@unit472 A
lot of the middle class are Democrats but not particularly liberal. Many of them vote
Democrat only when they personally benefit. For example, my parents were suburban public
school teachers. They voted for Democrats at the state level because the Democrats supported
better pay and benefits for teachers but voted for Republicans like Goldwater and Reagan at
the national level because Republicans would keep their federal taxes lower. They had no
political philosophy. It was all about what left them financially better off. My parents also
got on well with their suburban neighbors. Suburbanites generally like their local school
system and its teachers and the suburban school systems are usually careful not to engage in
teaching anything controversial. A lot of the government employed white middle class would be
like my parents. Except in situations where specific Republicans talk about major cuts to
their pay and pensions they are perfectly willing to consider voting Republican. They are
generally social moderates, like the status quo, are fairly traditionalist and don't want any
radical changes. Since the Democrats seem be trending in a radical direction, this would put
off a lot of them. Trump would be more appealing as the status quo candidate. When running
the last time, he carefully avoided talking about any major cuts in government spending and
he's governed that way too. At the same time, his talk of cutting immigration, his lack of
enthusiasm for nonwhite affirmative action, and his more traditional views on social issues
is appealing to the white middle class.
The term middle class is used in the U.S. to mean middle income. It has nothing to do with
class. Why not just say what you mean? Most of the middle class that we say is disappearing
is really that rarest of phenomenons. A prosperous working class. The prosperous American
working class is no longer prosperous due to the Neoliberal agenda. Free trade, open borders
and the financialization of everything.
Americans know nothing of class dynamics. Not even the so called socialists. They don't
even see the economy. All they see is people with infinite need and government with infinite
wealth. In their world all of Central America can come to the U.S. and the government (if it
only wants to) can give them all homes, health care and education.
Lets stop saying class when we mean income. Not using the word class would be better than
abusing it.
Anyway. Yes. Middle Class denotes white people. The coalition of the fringes is neither
working, middle nor ruling class. They are black or brown. They are perverts or feminists. If
the workers among them identified as working class they would find common ground with the
Deplorables. We can't have that now can we.
Are we to the point where we've collectively resigned ourselves to the death of the
middle class?
In the neoliberal worldview, the middle class is illegitimate, existing only as a
consequence of artificial trade and immigration barriers. Anytime Americans are spied out
making a good living, there is a "shortage" that must be addressed with more visas. Or else
there is an "inefficiency" where other countries could provide said service or produce said
product for less because they have a "comparative advantage."
Anyway. Yes. Middle Class denotes white people. The coalition of the fringes is neither
working, middle nor ruling class. They are black or brown. They are perverts or feminists.
If the workers among them identified as working class they would find common ground with
the Deplorables. We can't have that now can we.
I don't know about that anymore. Increasingly, "middle class" means Asian, with Whiteness
being associated with the lower middle class (or perhaps "working class"). Sometimes the
media uses the term " noncollege Whites," which I think is actually very apt. They are the
ones who identify with Whiteness the most.
Thank you, @BlackWomxnFor ! Black trans and
cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy and I
don't take this endorsement lightly. I'm committed to fighting alongside you for the big,
structural change our country needs. https://t.co/KqWsVoRYMb
People need to remember that we literally didn't even have democracy until the trans
movement started and finally brought us to The Right Side of History.
America's misguided war on Chinese technology By Jeffrey D Sachs November 8,
2019
The worst foreign-policy decision by the United States of the last generation – and
perhaps longer – was the "war of choice" that it launched in Iraq in 2003 for the stated
purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that did not, in fact, exist. Understanding
the illogic behind that disastrous decision has never been more relevant, because it is being
used to justify a similarly misguided US policy today.
The decision to invade Iraq followed the illogic of then-US vice-president Richard Cheney,
who declared that even if the risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands was tiny – say, 1%
– we should act as if that scenario would certainly occur.
Such reasoning is guaranteed to lead to wrong decisions more often than not. Yet the US and
some of its allies are now using the Cheney Doctrine to attack
Chinese technology. The US government argues that because we can't know with certainty that
Chinese technologies are safe, we should act as if they are certainly dangerous and bar
them.
Proper decision-making applies probability estimates to alternative actions. A generation
ago, US policymakers should have considered not only the (alleged) 1% risk of WMD falling into
terrorist hands, but also the 99% risk of a war based on flawed premises. By focusing only on
the 1% risk, Cheney (and many others) distracted the public's attention from the much greater
likelihood that the Iraq war lacked justification and that it would gravely destabilize the
Middle East and global politics.
The problem with the Cheney Doctrine is not only that it dictates taking actions predicated
on small risks without considering the potentially very high costs. Politicians are tempted to
whip up fears for ulterior purposes.
That is what US leaders are doing again: creating a panic over Chinese technology companies
by raising, and exaggerating, tiny risks. The most pertinent case (but not the only one) is the
US government attack on the wireless broadband company Huawei. The US is closing its markets to
the company and trying hard to shut down its business around the world. As with Iraq, the US
could end up creating a geopolitical disaster for no reason.
I have followed Huawei's technological advances and work in developing countries, as I
believe that fifth-generation (5G) and other digital technologies offer a huge boost to ending
poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals. I have similarly interacted with other telecom
companies and encouraged the industry to step up actions for the United Nations' SDGs. When I
wrote a short foreword (without compensation) for a
Huawei report on the topic, and was criticized by foes of China, I asked top industry and
government officials for evidence of wayward activities by Huawei. I heard repeatedly that
Huawei behaves no differently than trusted industry leaders.
The US government nonetheless argues that Huawei's 5G equipment could undermine global
security. A "back door" in Huawei's software or hardware, US officials claim, could enable the
Chinese government to engage in surveillance around the world. After all, US officials note,
China's laws require Chinese companies to cooperate with the government for purposes of
national security.
Given the technology's importance for their sustainable development, low-income economies
around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G rollout. Yet despite providing no
evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away from Huawei
Now, the facts are these. Huawei's 5G equipment is low-cost and high-quality, currently
ahead of many competitors, and already rolling out. Its high performance results from years of
substantial spending on research and development, scale economies, and learning by doing in the
Chinese digital marketplace. Given the technology's importance for their sustainable
development, low-income economies around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G
rollout.
Yet despite providing no evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away
from Huawei. The US claims are generic. As a US Federal Communications Commissioner
put it , "The country that owns 5G will own innovations and set the standards for the rest
of the world, and that country is currently not likely to be the United States." Other
countries, most notably the United Kingdom, have
found no back doors in Huawei's hardware and software. Even if back doors were discovered
later, they could almost surely be closed at that point.
The debate over Huawei rages in Germany, where the US government threatens to curtail
intelligence cooperation unless the authorities exclude Huawei's 5G technology. Perhaps as a
result of the US pressure, Germany's spy chief recently made a claim
tantamount to the Cheney Doctrine: "Infrastructure is not a suitable area for a group that
cannot be trusted fully." He offered no evidence of specific misdeeds. Chancellor Angela
Merkel, by contrast, is fighting
behind the scenes to leave the market open for Huawei.
Ironically, though predictably, the US complaints partly reflect America's
own surveillance activities at home and abroad. Chinese equipment might make secret
surveillance by the US government more difficult. But unwarranted surveillance by any
government should be ended. Independent UN monitoring to curtail such activities should become
part of the global telecommunications system. In short, we should choose diplomacy and
institutional safeguards, not a technology war.
The threat of US demands to blockade Huawei concerns more than the early rollout of the 5G
network. The risks to the rules-based trading system are profound. Now that the US is no longer
the world's undisputed technology leader, President Donald Trump and his advisers don't want to
compete according to a rules-based system. Their goal is to contain China's technological rise.
Their simultaneous attempt to neutralize the World Trade Organization by
disabling its dispute settlement system shows the same disdain for global rules.
If the Trump administration "succeeds" in dividing the world into separate technology camps,
the risks of future conflicts will multiply. The US championed open trade after World War II
not only to boost global efficiency and expand markets for American technology, but also to
reverse the collapse of international trade in the 1930s. That collapse stemmed in part from
protectionist tariffs imposed by the US under the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act , which
amplified the Great Depression, in turn contributing to the rise of Adolf Hitler and,
ultimately, the outbreak of World War II.
In international affairs, no less than in other domains, stoking fears and acting on them,
rather than on the evidence, is the path to ruin. Let's stick to rationality, evidence and
rules as the safest course of action. And let us create independent monitors to curtail the
threat of any country using global networks for surveillance of or cyberwarfare on others. That
way, the world can get on with the urgent task of harnessing breakthrough digital technologies
for the global good.
Deval Patrick served on the board at subprime mortgage giant Ameriquest. Melody Barnes
is on the board at bigwig defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Textbook cases of the
revolving door corruption Warren frequently attacks. https://t.co/KU3Ct3j9eC
If she really cared about the policies she is running on she would have endorsed Bernie.
Period. It was during the primary that Hillary said, "single payer will never ever happen
here."
Bernie was running on it and yet Warren did not endorse him for it. If she actually wants to
help us she would drop out and tell people to vote for Bernie. Sure everyone has the right to
run for president, but we know or believe that she is only running to keep Bernie from becoming
president.
She is lying to us about not taking money from rich people and corporations because she
took their money for her senate campaign and transferred it to her presidential campaign. If
she isn't up front about this then how can we trust her on anything else?
Elites eliting about elites while elitseplaining to working Americans about how they are
going to vote for some elites and beat the Republicans elite. https://t.co/l0W8QPUT0E
"Who is to the left of Bloomberg on guns and climate change?" Hmm let me think...of course
it's not Biden. Nor Harris...Kilobits.... Buttigieg or even Warren. Doh!
Warren did that(what Alex Thompson tweeted about) at her town hall here. Called herself a
teacher, really pushed her teacher history, and asked "Are there any teachers in the crowd",
etc etc. It was so fake and pandering. I wanted to barf. Do people really fall for this
stuff? The folksy garbage was poured on mighty thick. I was sitting there thinking "Come on,
lady-you've been a professor at the highest profile law school in the country for how long
now?"
Yep.
It's funny-I spent 10 years at Harvard, and I lived near The Yard and the law school. I knew
a lot of faculty at H, and was privy to a lot of the politics that went on. My bs detector
was honed there. At the town hall, I could see right through her. It was all so familiar.
Don't underestimate the cunning and doublespeak. What is that quote-"When someone shows you
who they are, believe them"?
Why didn't she proclaim her great groundbreaking achievement of being Harvard's "first
woman of color" professorial appointment? Isn't she proud of that any more?
Dog, that woman seems to be in a race to seem the least authentic. Can't her staff tell
her to act natural?
After I post this comment, I'm gonna get me a beer.
Why assume that what we see isn't her natural self, such as it is? Or, rather, that
there's anything more genuinely human underneath the pandering, opportunistic surface? As
Petal cited above, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."
Clinton Democrats, Inc is the parasitic network of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets,
phony activist organizations, and outright scam operations masquerading as a movement
"... The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. ..."
"... We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. ..."
"... Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies, particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly, they have not been. ..."
"... However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty. ..."
Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about
Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we
have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party
establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:
The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia
attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an
"attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no
"attack" in 2016, only, as I have
previously explained , ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America
have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the
allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and
its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and
fund-raising. We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies
under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of
National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential
candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this
operation " Intelgate ," and it has
since been well documented by other writers, including
Lee Smith in his new book . Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain
leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed
such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will
leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain. We also
learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully
trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media --
leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and
report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate
allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York
Times seem
eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and
his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's
critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or
grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and
the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert
Mueller report. And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by
Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations
that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can
elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative
and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if
he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did
his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge"
accusations still being directed at him? Similarly, as I have asked repeatedly, if confronted
with a US-Russian Cuban missile–like crisis -- anywhere Washington and Moscow are
currently eyeball-to-eyeball militarily, from the Baltic region and Ukraine to Syria -- will
Trump be as free politically as was President John F. Kennedy to resolve it without war? Here
too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss
national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both
Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to
negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the
demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)
The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to
reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war. Whether President
Trump serves one or two terms, he must be fully empowered to cope with the multiple
possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation. That requires ridding him and our nation
of Russiagate allegations -- and that in turn requires learning how such allegations
originated.
Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible
or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based
in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies,
particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly,
they have not been.
However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not
fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed.
It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.
"... The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted. ..."
"... In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates. ..."
"... The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . ..."
"... The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race, ..."
"... f Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent. ..."
"... Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time: ..."
"... Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet. ..."
"... Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," ..."
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC
acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters
acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as
to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper
candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever
to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion
of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined
use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that
SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide,"
specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear
to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid
and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to
selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate
blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a
recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled:
" Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics
ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this
original article, please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates. ..."
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC
acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters
acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as
to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper
candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever
to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion
of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined
use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that
SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide,"
specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear
to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid
and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to
selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate
blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a
recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled:
" Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics
ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this
original article, please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory. ..."
The defense counsel also took issue with Jared Beck for what they termed as: " Repeatedly promoted patently false and deeply offensive
conspiracy theories about the deaths of a former DNC staffer and Plaintiffs' process server in an attempt to bolster attention for
this lawsuit." This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the
defense counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process.
They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID
corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly
appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory.
The DNC defense lawyers then argued:
" There is no legitimate basis for this litigation, which is, at its most basic, an improper attempt to forge the federal courts
into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political party selected its candidate in a presidential
campaign ."
The brief continued:
" To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run directly contrary
to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties,
especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office."
It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process
is protected under the first amendment. If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee
had no established fiduciary duty "to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent." It seems
here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary
duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially towards the
candidates involved.
Adding to the latest news regarding the DNC Fraud Lawsuit was the recent
finding by the UK Supreme
Court, which stated that Wikileaks Cables were admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.
If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents
of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did in favor the campaign of
Hillary Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign.
The outcome of the appeal of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit remains to be seen.
Elizabeth Vos is the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief at
Disobedient Media .
"... There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details. ..."
"... They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes. ..."
"... He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria. ..."
"... Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence ..."
" In a sense, the current NeoMcCartyism (Russophobia, Sinophobia) epidemic in the USA can
partially be viewed as a yet another sign of the crisis of neoliberalism: a desperate attempt
to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade using scapegoating -- creation of an
external enemy to project the problems of the neoliberal society.
I would add another, pretty subjective measure of failure: the degradation of the elite.
When you look at Hillary, Trump, Biden, Warren, Harris, etc, you instantly understand what I
am talking about. They all look like the second-rate, if not the third rate politicians.
Also, the Epstein case was pretty symbolic."
I had decided to stay on the sidelines for the most part after making a few earlier
comments, but I liked this summary, except I would give Warren more credit. She is flawed like
most politicians, but she has made some of the right enemies within the Democratic Party.
On Trump and " the Deep State", there is no unified Deep State. There is a collection of
Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and
governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but
also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on
policy details.
They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is
antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes.
He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose
him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is
incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game
right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say
he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside
Syria.
But yes, scapegoating is a big thing with liberals now. It's pathetic. Our policies are
influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go
to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence .
For the most part, if we have a horrible political culture nearly all the blame for that is
homegrown.
Donald 11.07.19 at 4:40 am (no link)
Sigh. Various typos above. Here is one --
Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but
would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about
Russian influence.
--
I meant to say I would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from
liberals talking about Russian influence.
Steven Rattner's Rant Against Warren
By Dean Baker
The New York Times gives Steven Rattner * the opportunity to push stale economic bromides in
columns on a regular basis. His column ** today goes after Senator Elizabeth Warren.
He begins by telling us that Warren's plan for financing a Medicare for All program is "yet
more evidence that a Warren presidency a terrifying prospect." He goes on to warn us:
"She would turn America's uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste,
*** European-style system. If you want to live in France (economically), Elizabeth Warren
should be your candidate."
It's not worth going into every complaint in Rattner's piece, and to be clear, there are
very reasonable grounds for questioning many of Warren's proposals. However, he deserves some
serious ridicule for raising the bogeyman of France and later Germany.
In spite of its "dirigiste" system France actually has a higher employment rate for prime
age workers (ages 25 to 54) than the United States. (Germany has a much higher employment
rate.) France has a lower overall employment rate because young people generally don't work and
people in their sixties are less likely to work.
In both cases, this is the result of deliberate policy choices. In the case of young people,
the French are less likely to work because college is free and students get small living
stipends. For older workers, France has a system that is more generous to early retirees. One
can disagree with both of these policies, but they are not obvious failures. Large segments of
the French population benefit from them.
France and Germany both have lower per capita GDP than the United States, but the biggest
reason for the gap is that workers in both countries put in many fewer hours annually than in
the United States. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an
average worker in France puts in 1520 hours a year, in Germany just 1360. That compares to 1780
hours a year in the United States. In both countries five or six weeks a year of vacation are
standard, as are paid family leave and paid sick days. Again, one can argue that it is better
to have more money, but it is not obviously a bad choice to have more leisure time as do
workers in these countries.
Anyhow, the point is that Rattner's bogeymen here are not the horror stories that he wants
us to imagine for ordinary workers, even if they may not be as appealing to rich people like
himself. Perhaps the biggest tell in this piece is when Rattner warns us that under Warren's
proposals "private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency, would be
effectively eliminated."
Okay, the prospect of eliminating private equity, now we're all really scared!
Dirigisme is an economic doctrine in which the state plays a strong directive role, as
opposed to a merely regulatory role, over a capitalist market economy.
Maybe this is the wake-up call that Democrats need.
My old colleagues at The Upshot published a poll yesterday (*) that rightly terrified a
lot of Democrats (as well as Republicans and independents who believe President Trump is
damaging the country). The poll showed Trump with a good chance to win re-election, given his
standing in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.
This was the sentence, by Nate Cohn, that stood out to me: "Nearly two-thirds of the Trump
voters who said they voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 say that they'll
back the president" in hypothetical match-ups against Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth
Warren.
Democrats won in 2018 by running a smartly populist campaign, focused on reducing health
care costs and helping ordinary families. The candidates avoided supporting progressive
policy dreams that are obviously unpopular, like mandatory Medicare and border
decriminalization.
The 2020 presidential candidates are making a grave mistake by ignoring the lessons of
2018. I'm not saying they should run to the mythical center and support widespread
deregulation or corporate tax cuts (which are also unpopular). They can still support all
kinds of ambitious progressive ideas -- a wealth tax, universal Medicare buy-in and more --
without running afoul of popular opinion. They can even decide that there are a couple of
issues on which they are going to fly in the face of public opinion.
But if they're going to do that, they also need to signal in other ways that they care
about winning the votes of people who don't consider themselves very liberal. Democrats, in
short, need to start treating the 2020 campaign with the urgency it deserves, because a
second Trump term would be terrible for the country.
What would more urgency look like? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would find some way
to acknowledge and appeal to swing voters. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would offer more of a
vision than either has to date. Pete Buttigieg, arguably the best positioned to take
advantage of this moment, would reassure Democrats who are understandably nervous about his
lack of experience. And perhaps Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar can finally appeal to more of
Biden's uninspired supporters. ...
* One Year From Election, Trump Trails Biden but
Leads Warren in Battlegrounds https://nyti.ms/2NDDeNb
NYT - Nate Cohn - November 4 - Updated
The Bloomberg News headline on
November 2 was stark: "Nancy Pelosi Is Worried 2020 Candidates Are on Wrong Track." Wrong track
as in, the Democrats are on their way to losing the upcoming presidential election. As reporter
Sahil Kapur put it, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi is issuing a pointed message to Democrats running for
president in 2020: Those liberal ideas that fire up the party's base are a big loser when it
comes to beating President Donald Trump."
Among the losing ideas Pelosi cited was Medicare for All. And in fact, the plans of
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders -- each struggling to get to the left of the other in the
Democratic primary -- are becoming the stuff of both consternation and comedy. Over the
weekend, Saturday Night Live
mocked Warren's $52 trillion health plan: "We're talking trillions! When the numbers are
this big, they're just pretend!"
We can observe: being the butt of jokes about fiscal recklessness is not how one wins a
presidential election. Or as Pelosi observed, "Remember November. You must win the Electoral
College."
Invoking her own ideological credentials, Pelosi tossed a sharp query at insurgent Democrats
as a whole: "As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: what are you
thinking?" As the Bloomberg piece explained, Pelosi was aiming, yet again, at Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive "Squad." Pelosi and the Democratic establishment
worry that democratic socialists and Third World-minded radicals will take the party into
George-McGovern-in-1972
territory (as
this author here at TAC suggested might well happen last year).
Advertisement
Pelosi would certainly seem to know a lot about left-wing liberalism; her most recent rating
from Americans for Democratic Action was an A+ 95 percent. Indeed, while she's old enough to
remember poor McGovern, she also remembers, more recently, Walter Mondale. In 1984, the
Democrats held their national convention in Pelosi's hometown, giving Mondale their
presidential nomination. Whereupon Republicans gleefully tagged him as a "San Francisco
Democrat." Mondale was from Minnesota, but no matter -- he lost 49 states.
Mindful of that baleful history, Pelosi offered a fascinating lesson in political
non-transitivity, between her hometown and another Great Lakes state: "What works in San
Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan. What works in Michigan works in San Francisco
-- talking about workers' rights and sharing prosperity."
In other words, while one can sell Midwestern mutualism in San Francisco, one can't sell San
Francisco liberalism in Michigan -- which is hardly a Republican bastion.
Yet if we look closer at Pelosi's liberalism, we note something interesting. On strictly
economic issues, as distinct from sociocultural issues, she's not that left-wing. Yes, she
describes herself as a "left-wing San Francisco liberal," but most of her leftism is focused on
lifestyle. Her economic style is, in fact, distinctly Clintonian neoliberal. Here's more
from the Bloomberg story: "Pelosi said Democrats must stick with pay-as-you-go rules to avoid
adding to the debt, a point of contention with left-leaning figures who want to permit more
deficit spending for ambitious liberal priorities. 'We cannot just keep increasing the debt,'
she said."
We can note that "pay-go"
is about as orthodox an economic nostrum as one can find these days; it's typically associated
with deficit-minded "budget
hawks," of the type funded by the late Pete Peterson, a big-time Republican who crusaded
for cuts to earned entitlements.
Indeed, Peterson, who made a small fortune at Lehman Brothers and a big fortune at the
Blackstone Group, would have been pleased to read more of what Pelosi had to say. According to
Bloomberg, she "stopped short of endorsing a tax on wealth, an idea that Warren and Sanders
have embraced as a means to reduce income inequality and expand the safety net."
One might presume that the
18 billionaires who live in San Francisco were duly pleased by their representative's
restraint. They might be generous donors to the Democratic Party and to other good causes, and
thus have proven their commitment to social justice. Thus they need to conserve their capital,
to continue their good works -- that's Pelosi's fat cat-friendly position.
Moreover, it's not just billionaires that Pelosi is looking out for; in addition, she's
protective of mere millionaires . Per Bloomberg: "She also steered clear of backing a
cap on pay for chief executive officers."
Yes, in that same interview, Pelosi called Donald Trump's 2017 tax-cut bill "dumb" -- and
that will check the box for Democratic partisans and inattentive ideologues.
But then she added something curiously centrist. She said she wanted any changes in the tax
bill to be aimed at lowering the debt and to be "bipartisan." To those paying close attention,
these are signal code words, suggesting, yet again, that Pelosi sees any possible tax increase
as a deficit reduction tool, as opposed to added fiscal support for a spending spree. Moreover,
in saying that she wants any revision of the tax bill to be bipartisan, she's making
Republicans integral to the process -- and that can't be pleasing to AOC-type tax-raisers.
Nobody's accusing Pelosi of being a conservative. Yet her legendary leftism does seem to be
curiously concentrated in the lifestyle area -- especially the San Francisco area. For
instance, there's the Equality Act, which Pelosi identifies as a top legislative priority, even
as Republicans have so far blocked it. In the words of the Heritage Foundation's
Ryan T. Anderson , the bill would
force employers to cover abortion, and medical professionals to perform or assist in
performing abortions force employers to pay for sex "reassignment" procedures in their health
insurance plans, and require medical professionals to perform them. . . . force all schools
and businesses to open their women's bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and sports teams to
boys who "identify as" girls and to men who "identify as" women.
That's a tall order of social liberalism, or, as some might prefer to describe it, left-wing
hegemonism.
Indeed, bills such as the Equality Act are so egregious and extreme that one might begin to
suspect that they serve a purpose beyond advancing the goals of Planned Parenthood and Drag
Queen Story Hour. And what purpose might that be? Perhaps Pelosi seeks to cloak her neoliberal
economic agenda in the bright raiment of avant-garde sexual progressivism. That would be sort
of a neat trick, right? That is, Pelosi has carpentered a platform that includes planks
favorable to both tycoons and transgenders -- and yet the pro-trans plank is what generates the
most headlines, pro and con. To put it another way: the LGBTQ-friendly plank obscures the
billionaire-friendly plank.
Pelosi is a smart woman. She's been around politics all her life; both her father and
brother were mayors of Baltimore. So if she's found a new kind of high-low political formula --
combining the rich and the risqué -- it's surely not an accident. And it's certainly
working for her: she was re-elected last year to her 17th term by a 73 percent margin
. She has, in fact, engineered a new kind of Democratic political machine, one that's also
working in other big cities.
There's just one thing: as Pelosi herself says, the San Francisco model can't sell in
Michigan and, by extension, in probably 35 other states. So in 2020, if the Democrats continue
to lurch left, on both economic and cultural issues, they could well find themselves
McGovern-ized, or Mondale-ized.
For her part, Pelosi will say that she tried to warn them: think Michigan Wolverines, she
said, not San Francisco drag queens. Yet even if the Democrats lose the presidential election
next year, Pelosi will survive, continuing to be a best friend to both billionaires and drag
queens. Of course, Pelosi, 79, can't be their best friend forever , yet it's a safe bet
that her successor will try to follow the same model.
As we have seen, it's questionable whether the Pelosi Model helps the Democratic Party as a
whole. But for those financing it, and flaunting it, it's working just fine.
James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at. He served as a White
House policy aide to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
E stablishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that
the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media
reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going
so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred "
pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented
to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2016 Democratic primary debate. (YouTube/Screen shot)
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured
discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with
the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer
Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military
organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies
remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to
"to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is
highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton
campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
"Bernie or Bust" protesters at the Wells Fargo Center during Democrats' roll call vote to nominate Hillary Clinton. (Becker1999,
CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes
to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled
Senate blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perceptionof the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon
in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed
titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective
tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News.
If you value this original article, please consider making
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It appears that the DNC is responsible in fomenting this new cold war with Russia.
The party has become a war party and made the world very unsafe.
Instead of taking responsibility for Russiagate, it simply has progressed on to impeachment, no apologies simply moving on
to the next tactic.
And why you might ask?
And weren't we a bit put off by our own intelligence agencies contributing to the overthrow of the Trump administration using
the NYT and WAPO to spread innuendo and political chaos ?
Great analysis, yes it is the DNC, but larger than that it is the corporate oligarch which monoplize the power in both so-called
parties which gave us Trump and which still prefer him to Sanders.
Perception is everything. That is why the rigged "superdelegate" system was so effective. Clinton's sham "lead" became self-fulfilling
prophesy. Many people told me, "I like Bernie but I'm voting for Hillary because she's more electable." Pure perception.
To test this widely held view, in March 2016 I started tallying every poll (at Real Clear Politics) that pitted Sanders and
Clinton not against each other, but against GOP contenders including a reality-show buffoon named Trump. I did this all the way
through early June, tallying 150 polls with no cherrypicking.
Result? Sanders outperformed Clinton against GOP candidates in 135 of 150 polls. That's 90 percent of the time. You can still
see the results posted at my site BernieWorks.com.
What's more, Sanders remained consistently strong. It was so remarkable, so I dubbed him Iron Man Sanders. Meanwhile, Clinton's
pattern of results across dozens upon dozens of polls showed disturbing signs of electoral weakness.
No one was paying attention. The corrupt system's rigged structure played a crucial role. The criminally fraudulet DNC and
complicit corporate media played their respective roles.
So, disastrously wrong public perception won.
My tallies clearly show that if Sanders had become the nominee, he would have wiped the floor with Trump. And we would be living
in a different world.
vinnieoh , November 6, 2019 at 12:01
As to your last sentence: yes I think he would have won handily, but no we would not be living in a different world. Recall
that virtually no-one who should have endorsed Sanders did so – not Warren, and certainly not that oft-touted icon of "progressivism"
my own Senator Sherrod Brown; in fact none in the D party that I can think of. They all obeyed the dictate of their undemocratic
ruling central cabal. You need friends and allies to propose and enact legislation, and Bernie would have had few. As for foreign
policy, aka WAR in US-speak, there was a completely unacknowledged military coup in 2000, right here in the good ol' US. The POTUS
does not direct the ambitions of this empire.
Do I wish he would have won – absolutely, and that possibility yet exists. We've all watched the very unsubtle way in which
the media is colluding with the D establishment. As soon as one candidate rises in the polls the media ignores them and focuses
on one of the vote diluters inserted there to staunch the gathering rebellion. There was a piece by Jake Johnson on CD about the
Sanders' campaign rightfully complaining about blatant misrepresentation of Sanders popularity in the polls. When distortion or
silence proves ineffective look for primary election fraud to ensue.
My younger brother was one that was under the spell of that establishment party perception in '16 and I argued with him several
times about it. I was flabbergasted and somewhat angry to hear him say recently that "Sanders could have won" then, but he can't
now.
Good points in the article the main point being the democratic party was far more guilty of interfering with the democratic
primaries by undermining Sanders. The media was complicit and should be considered an accessory to election rigging.
We the people didn't hold the democratic party heads accountable and therefore we are seeing a repeat happening again. I refuse
to be forced to vote force someone I deplore just because they aren't republican. I will always vote for the best candidate. The
duopoly is fiercely maintained by the oligarchs for just that reason. They correctly predict that consumer zombies will stay loyal
to their team and I think they lost control of the process in 2016 by thinking if they ran Krusty the Clown Trump against Hillary,
she certainly win. They didn't have a good handle on the animosity so many people had for Hillary, including millions of progressives
who were are bitter about the wicked, illegal, immoral, unethical, un-American machinations by the democratic henchmen as laid
out expertly in the article.
Korey Dykstra , November 5, 2019 at 22:48
It must be nearly impossible to be an honest politician when many charges made against you are based on lies couched as the
truth (with out evidence) which in turn has to be defended in a way that conveys knowledge and truthfulness. Extremely difficult
against an opponent versed in or deflecting from factual and/or provable information. Great article. I have not read too mcu on
Consortium but will read it consistently from now on
Manqueman , November 5, 2019 at 20:35
Actually, far more harm to democratic institutions has been done not by the DNC or Russians and foreign interests but by our
own GOP.
Ash , November 6, 2019 at 14:55
Thank you for that totally unbiased and nonpartisan viewpoint.
Maura , November 5, 2019 at 19:19
How foolish to use Russia in their plots against republicans.And still nothing gets done!
Walton Andrews , November 5, 2019 at 18:40
Impeachment is all about manufacturing a crime and using an investigation to damage your political opponent. The goal is to
give your friends in the establishment media excuses for an endless series of negative headlines slamming your opponent. The "Russia
collusion" charges were extremely useful in generating propaganda even though they fizzled out when it came time to present some
actual evidence. Today, the Democrats are running the investigations. But the Republicans are open to the same tactics (Remember
the Benghazi hearings?). Congress doesn't have time to address the real problems of the country – they are playing political games.
I will vote third party in 2020 because any vote for a Democrat or a Republican is sending the message that you will go along
with the degenerate system in Washington.
mary-lou , November 6, 2019 at 12:17
vote, but make your ballot paper invalid (in Europe we do this): this way they can see you support the democratic process,
but not the political system. cheers!
Nathan Mulcahy , November 5, 2019 at 18:03
Until Obama's first election in 2008 I was Dem leaning. That's when I started to complain to my Democratic supporting friends
that I find it more meaningful and satisfying to debate and discuss political issues with Republicans as opposed to Democrats.
My rationale was that while I do not agree with the Republicans' worldview I see a rationale. In contrast, Democrats argue illogically
and irrationally.
I was smart enough to recognize what a fraud Obama is, and Ended up not Voting Obama. Instead I voted for the Greens.
Needless to say that that cost me a lot, including friendships Only now do I realize how perceptive I was. The irrationality
and cognitive dissonance of the Dims (among the way I thought it appropriate to change the name of the Party) are in full bloom
now. Only the sheeple are unable to recognize their mental disorder.
Mike K , November 6, 2019 at 02:43
In contrast, Democrats argue illogically and irrationally.
Yes, yes they do.
Richard Annotico , November 6, 2019 at 05:06
[And Look How Well They Did .You are Brilliant
You thereby might be responsible fot TRUMP the CON MAN !!! Take A bow !!!!
Skip Edwards , November 5, 2019 at 16:29
As our country is ever more exposed to be the democratic hypocrisy that it is, we are finding that oligarchic empires never
last. History certainly has proven that time and again. What leaves me in dismay, however, is how seemingly educated, intelligent
societies continually fall asleep while any basic securities that the majority of those populations rely on are stolen away. It
is like sailors whose ship has gone down, we cling to any flotation available to hold us up for one last breath of air as the
sharks circle. What is the answer, you might be asking? Is there an answer? That we certainly cannot be sure of. But one thing
is for certain; and that is, taking the same steps to solve this problem and expecting anything different from the usual results
does not speak wisely of an intelligent people. As the article states, or maybe it was a comment, elections have not, and will
not, change one thing in our entire existence as a nation. Taking to the streets just might be our only answer if we are to retain
any pride in ourselves. And, without pride, what are we?
Mike K. , November 6, 2019 at 03:01
Those sharks you speak of consist of among others, the multinational companies who bribe congresspeople to pass bad trade bills
and rewrite tax code which allowed those companies to offshore good paying jobs and otherwise exfiltrate our wealth. The election
of Trump may well change some things in Washington DC. After the investigations by Durham, Barr, and Horowitz are completed, you
will see the depths that govt officials and various media pundits, descended in their illegal, unconstitutional effort to overturn
the 2016 election results. Hopefully, congress will retract their claws long enough to pass a bill giving congress vastly more
oversight of our IC including the NSA and CIA, along with the FBI.
Lois Gagnon , November 5, 2019 at 16:28
Western Empire centered in the US is being challenged and its illegitimacy exposed by increased wars of aggression abroad and
creeping authoritarianism domestically. Those profiting off the system for decades will resort to the usual tactics of lies, smears
and violence to prevent having to surrender their power.
Elections have no doubt been rigged for a long time, but it's being done in the open now. Those who continue to believe they
live in a functioning democracy being attacked by Russia are probably beyond hope for the short term. The cognitive dissonance
is more than they can deal with. Trump's mistaken elevation to the presidency seems to have turned once functioning brains into
easily controlled masses of obedient children. It's been surreal to watch the transformation.
Perhaps after another election fiasco for the ruling establishment, people will being to question who is really responsible
for the way things are. Then again, maybe not.
karlof1 , November 5, 2019 at 16:13
Pardon me, but how many people were cited to have committed felonies but were never prosecuted for their criminality? Might
I presume that's merely the tip of an iceberg and that the truth of the matter is the entire electoral process within the USA
is utterly corrupt and thus illegitimate?! And of course there's a bipartisan effort to ensure no legislation regulating political
parties ever gets to a vote so we the people have no means to alter their behavior!
I've looked long, hard and deep into the USA's fundamental problems and have mused about various bandages for the 1787 Constitution
that might put the nation back into the hands of those in whose name it was organized–The People–but most people just don't seem
to give a damn or argue that the situation isn't all that bad and just greater citizen activism is all that's required. What was
it JFK said–"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." If the electoral process
is completely illegitimate as it certainly appears to be, then the only real recourse citizens retain is revolution. Have the
corporate pukes at the DNC & RNC thought through the outcome of their behavior; or perhaps revolution is what they want to see
occur so they can crush it and establish the dictatorship their actions deem they prefer.
Yes Ill join the revolution but please, just one more game of Candy Crush first. Can't you see I'm busy.
Charlene Richards , November 5, 2019 at 16:00
Progressives will NEVER have a seat at the Democrat Party table.
The Democrats and the DNC are hopelessly corrupt and the only way to strip them of their power is for ALL true Progressive
Americans to walk away and refuse to vote for ANY Democrat, Trump or no Trump.
Just as Sanders got screwed by them and he and his supporters KNEW it and he STILL supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton
who is a known liar and corrupt criminal!
I will vote for Tulsi in the California primary only because she had the guts to call out Clinton for what she is.
But I can promise all of you, if necessary the Superdelegates will step in to stop Sanders and when the corruption happens
again next year I will start campaigning for Trump.
Believe me. Not playing their games with them is the ONLY way to stop them.
And I hope Canova will run against DWS again as an Independent. She is evil!!
Skip Edwards , November 5, 2019 at 16:52
Thank you, Charlene, for your simple clarity on a viable, trustworthy candidate to work for. That person is Tulsi Gabbard.
Bernie lost it for me when he "supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton" after what the Clinton/DNC did to him in the last
election (sorry Bernie; but, you showed your true staying power with that one). Though again I will say it; it will take most
of us in the streets to make the changes we need. Climate change is our real enemy with regards to our survival. US created endless
wars blind us from this reality along with the silent killer, unrelenting population growth on a finite planet. If you care about
any future for those coming after us, those three issues are all that really matter.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:07
It seems to me though, that not voting at all would be preferable in the circumstances you describe, to voting for such a one
as trump. I'll never give my vote to any wickedly repulsive human being, no matter their party affiliation. Most Green Party candidates
have been ethical, reasonable, kind, highly intelligent, and have good plans for the commons. But of course, to each his or her
own, Charlene. Cheers, regardless.
Mike K , November 6, 2019 at 03:35
ML one more thing, would you vote for a candidate who hasn't initiated any regime change type of war and is doing his best
to extricate us from the ones he inherited?
Even saint obama sent mountains of arms to Syria via Libya, which ended up in ISIS hands and killed US troops. Despicable!
rosemerry , November 5, 2019 at 15:28
"casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections". I am not an American but cannot believe that anyone could even pretend
that there is any aspect of democracy in the US electoral process. As well as gerrymandering, the overwhelming effect of donors"
ie bribes, and the appointment of partisan judges to SCOTUS and most of the other courts in the land make the selection and election
of candidates a completely undemocratic procedure.Interference by Russia could never be significant, especially if, as Pres. Putin
pointed out, the difference between the policies o the two Parties is minimal.
Steve Naidamast , November 5, 2019 at 15:27
I am a Green I don't care anymore :-(
Michael Crockett , November 5, 2019 at 14:03
I agree with your assessment of the DNC. They deflect from their own reprehensible conduct to blame Russia for interfering
in our elections. No evidence is needed. It just a mind numbing stream of Russia! Russia! Russia! US elections are among the most
corrupt in the world (Carter Foundation). It appears that our criminal justice system, to include our courts, can not or will
not offer any remedy to this crisis.
Hopelb , November 5, 2019 at 13:55
The only way we US citizens can circumvent this undemocratic treachery is to hold a parallel vote on paper ballots that can
be publicly counted if the election results are contested. Just read that Amazon or was it google has the cloud contract for tabulating
votes in 40% of our elections.
HRC/the DNC not screaming night and day for I hackable paper ballots/publicly counted puts the lie to their Russia hoax.
Thanks for the great article! Love your show.
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:42
We've spent years reading and talking about the illegitimacy of elections, interspersed with people railing against those who
don't vote. Each election is "the most important of our lifetimes," and "every vote counts," and if Democrats lose, we're back
to shouting that (fill in the blank) stole the election.
We've gone over "politics 101" a thousand times. Most votes come down to economic issues, and these are the very issues by
which the Clinton right wing divided and conquered the Dem voting base., middle class vs. poor. The Obama years confirmed that
this split is permanent. It isn't the result of arcane ideological differences, much less "Facebook trolls," but of the suffering
caused by the policies of the Democrat Party. Predictably, we once again see much work going into to setting the stage to blame
an expected election defeat on anything/everything other than this.
Antiwar7 , November 5, 2019 at 13:12
One cannot?
The Democratic Party will probably annoint Warren or Biden, one of the establishment candidates. After all, they could point
to Trump as justification for "managing" their primary voters!
And then anyone with a brain and a heart will vote third party.
C.K. Gurin , November 5, 2019 at 18:52
Anyone with a brain and a heart will vote Bernie.
Why the heck do you think the DNC IS working so hard to stab him in the back again.
Mike from Jersey , November 5, 2019 at 13:11
Excellent article.
It seems that dishonesty is not just acceptable to the two political parties and to the media but it is now considered "accepted
practice."
This, of course, has nothing to do with real democracy. Real democracy requires honesty to function properly.
One can only conclude that we no longer have a democracy in this country.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:00
Very well said. While the DNC corruption is the proper focus for reformers, the Repubs celebrate corruption as an ideal. In
Florida where "Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes [but] Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor"
I have an ongoing investigation of racketeering involving the theft of over 100 million in conservation funds by wealthy scammers
in government, all of whom do far are Repubs. They regularly sell public offices to donors (get yours now): $2K for committee
memberships and $32K for chairmanships, including your state university board of trustees, no qualifications at all required.
They include judges state and federal, governors, prominent senators, you name it. Money=virtue=qualification is the core of their
belief system, and white-collar theft is their profession and only skill.
I am astounded that Canova got a summary judgment against Snipes, but not that Snipes had no prosecution or penalty and remained
in the very office in which the public trust was utterly betrayed.
michael , November 6, 2019 at 07:40
Your comment calls out corruption by Republicans, but the one concrete example you give is of Brenda Snipes, a Democrat, stealing
a Democratic primary for Wasserman Schultz over Canova? As Federal and Florida judge Zloch noted, primaries are a mere formality.
The DNC can pick any candidates they want, votes are meaningless. The GOP has always been the party of business, mean and corrupt.
But since the Clintons, the DNC has passed them in Wall Street support, corruption and war mongering; and of course they have
abandoned their constituents, the Poor, the Working Class, and Progressives, knowing they will not vote for Republicans and "have
nowhere else to go".
Thank you for reinforcing my cynicism in the two party system in America. Both parties are at fault here of denigrating the
public's confidence in the electoral process. How better than to blame the Russian boogie man in trying to rig our already rigged
system. That's the purview of the plutocrat and oligarch cabal and their elite enablers in government. Stay in your lane.
Jill , November 5, 2019 at 12:50
This article makes many excellent points.
The US hasn't had an authentic election in a very long time. Even if the process was at one time more transparent, the CIA
and OGA/other entities have taken out presidents who they didn't like. Then we come to 2000 where the election for president was
clearly stolen by Bush and again in 2004, there was a likely election theft by Bush. (These thefts may have been by agreement
of both legacy parties, as opposed to actual election theft. I say this because the Democratic party did not fight tooth and nail
to make votes count or challenge voter roll purges that were happening in plain sight.)
What has changed now are the tools available to engage in mass election theft/voter disenfranchisement. Microsoft will be determining
the coming election as they are the ones rolling out the voting machines. This is why we desperately need paper ballots. I lived
in Ohio and I knew people who saw their vote changed in front of their eyes. As we will not get paper we need to figure out some
way around unverifiable machine votes. That may be by filming one's vote or community efforts to have people come out of the polls
and mark a citizen provided private paper ballot. Basically, a citizen run paper parallel voting apparatus that could provide
some basis to challenge unverified machine votes.
This article points out some other things which have changed in the current society. The ability to ignore what most people
really want is endemic. This is coupled with the ability to manipulate people to "want" someone they actually wouldn't "want"
as a candidate where it not for massive propaganda and information restriction. Further, the government is lawless. The powerful
will not be held to account for rigging or stealing elections. That has been made perfectly clear. The lack of legal accountability
has necessitated making certain that citizens will not ask for evil and illegal actions committed by "their" parties' candidate/office
holder to be questioned or called out. The government/corporate amalgam needs a closed system, no legal questions, no citizen
questions. This allows complete impunity for all wrongdoing.
Thus we find ourselves in an incredibly dangerous place. People cling to a party/candidate with a zeal once reserved for cult
leaders. As the cults run most of the discourse and have most of the information (as cults generally do) I think we must look
at ways that people have successfully left cults and apply these stories to our own lives. We must break out of the cult.
Dfnslblty , November 5, 2019 at 12:48
Thanks for a good essay
Keep writing
torture this , November 5, 2019 at 12:30
LOL! I just changed from unaffiliated to Democrat so I can caucus/vote* for the least worst Democrat knowing that I'll end
up voting Green-no-in-between anyway when the multi-party rigged election happens. I never feel dumber than when I waste my time
filling out ballots or showing up for caucuses.
* Colorado changed procedures and I haven't given enough of a shit to figure out what I have to do, yet.
Jeff Harrison , November 5, 2019 at 12:11
The Economist, of course, has called the US a flawed democracy and they were probably being kind. On top of the chicanery Ms.
Vos identifies here, we have the Republicans doing their dead level best to suppress the vote of anyone that even looks like they'd
vote for someone else besides a Republican.
This is the Republicans pure and simple. They are the ones that are focused on winning at all costs. And both parties are now
Republicans. There is, of course, the Republican party which has become extremely right wing in the wake of St. Ronnie, driving
any moderate Republican out of the party and those people have infested the Democratic party as DINOs. Three Names herself is
a former Goldwater Girl. The highly anticipated rematch between Donnie Murdo and Three Names will be a real disaster. (Hint: Donnie
Murdo might get impeached but he'll never be convicted in the Senate)
Was there ever a better argument put forth that would prove that the Chinese Communist Party is a far better form of government
than is the corrupt democratic process in the USA. At least the CCP gives the Chinese people a competant government, with the
over all well being of the population first and foremost. Just look at where this democratic????? system of government has gotten
us. The entire system looks like the movie " The Gangs of New York" with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the rival gang leaders.
Well one thing is certain, we won`t be seeing this op ed in the New York Times or Newsweek or any other major American news
outlet any time soon.
Antonio Costa , November 5, 2019 at 11:25
Yes the rot that is the DNC!
Thank you for this great summary, that brings us to now.
These parties must be eliminated. They cannot be reformed.
Paul , November 5, 2019 at 11:23
When I read this I have to wonder if the Russia agenda is anything less than a raging success. The Democrat party is doing
the work for them by splitting the country by their single minded focus on Impeaching Trump. I do not know if that was the intent
but it certainly is the result.
michael , November 5, 2019 at 11:08
According to REAL CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou a Russian "asset" is someone paid by the Kremlin. The only people paid by
Putin were the Clintons who received $500,000 for a talk to Putin's bank in Moscow while Hillary was Secretary of State.
The only recent documented interference in Elections was by New Knowledge pretending to be Russians to swing the Alabama US
Senate race from Moore to Jones: a 'technological advance that we'll see much more of from NSA/State department spin-offs in 2020).
And by Ukraine's fake Black Ledger which knocked Paul Manafort from Chairman of the Trump Campaign, thus helping Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 Campaign. Manafort is a sleazy corrupt politico just like the Bidens, Ciaramalla, the Podestas and Greg Craig, the
latter two working closely with Manafort in the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.
jmg , November 5, 2019 at 10:24
A prediction from 2016 that turned out to be correct:
"Hillary Clinton just planted a bomb under American Democracy . . .
"By far the most irresponsible and dangerous Hillary Clinton has done is however to accuse a foreign power – Russia – of meddling
in the election in order to prevent her winning, and to impose Donald Trump on the American people.
"This is dangerous and irresponsible at so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start.
"Firstly, it is not true. . . ."
(Hillary Clinton just planted a bomb under American Democracy -- The Duran -- Oct 31, 2016)
Great article. The use of Russia as the red herring to confuse the public and to serve the Democratic Party apparatchiks. Not
a surprise as ordinary folks like me can see it yet it works. Witnessing the venom in Mueller's voice when he spoke about the
evil Russians interfering in our elections says a lot about the Washington mindset.
Then the point that people don't matter, money does is not a new idea but a telling one about the way we select our leaders.
Throw in the media that benefits most from the money flow and you get what Ms. Vos eloquently describes in the article, a very
corrupt and damaging system.
Skip Scott , November 5, 2019 at 09:16
Excellent commentary! It is apparent to anyone who bothers to think that the DNC did more to destroy our democratic process
than anything Russia could ever be capable of. They constantly cry about the electoral college, yet they have "superdelegates"
set up in the primary process to ensure that "corporate sponsored warmonger from column B" becomes the only Democratic Party option
in the General Election. To call it blatant hypocrisy is an understatement.
Democracy has always been a farce in the USA, and Russia has nothing to do with it.
If everyone started boycotting corporate news shows, it would go a long way toward ending their negative influence over our
lives. There is no excuse for watching CNN, MSNBC or any of the other corporate news outlets, unless of course you want to hear
the lies that the billionaires want you to hear.
Sixty years now of mass delusion. The southern strategy has worked well during the decades.. BUT. This president has exposed
it all. Money Honey, and the Southerners are starting to feel.. STUPID.
I must say, of all of it's confessions, the "we left enough soldiers to protect the oil" (In Iraq/Iran) was casually blurted out
as plain speech.
It's the beginning of the end..good riddance gop.
Paul Ellis , November 5, 2019 at 04:19
Thank you very much for putting all this together in one article. It's great to have as a resource to help people see what's
going on with the DNC.
Jeff Harrison , November 5, 2019 at 01:26
Fortunately, the DNC doesn't want any of my money or support for their candidates. And the RNC is, if anything worse.
torture this , November 5, 2019 at 12:32
Are you crazy (I know you're not)? They lust for your vote and will do ANYTHING they can to get it except offer you anything
you need.
Realist , November 5, 2019 at 00:09
As a life-long registered Democrat I have felt totally betrayed by the DNC for the fraudulent and illegal acts that Ms. Vos
so lucidly and comprehensively outlines in her piece. It is beyond my understanding why so many rank and file party members continue
to embrace the lies and seditious acts that the organisation they entrust with defending their constitutional rights has never
stopped perpetrating, even after being repeatedly caught red-handed. Undoubtedly the collusion of a fully partisan mass media
has a great deal to do with this sad reality. However, one must insist that Trump Derangement Syndrome and extreme Russophobia,
widely propagated by that corrupt media, are not valid reasons to adopt the same sleazy standards and morals reflexively attributed
by Democrats to Republicans for generations. Maybe it used to be only half the country, when Democrats purportedly stood for strictly
objective empirical truth, impartiality and fair play, but now, in light of proven shameless Democratic fraud, deception, false
narratives and phony alibis, most of the country insists upon brazenly embarrassing itself beyond all belief. People don't seem
to care whether they are governed by a rigorously open constitutional process or a demagogic dictator who seizes or sneaks into
power through fraud, as long as that dictator is from "their" tribe. Shameful.
Ditto! It's like a pass interference call in football. My team never deserves a flag and the other side always does.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:05
Yes, primitive tribalism remains at the core of politics, due to the extreme political ignorance spawned by our corrupt mass
media.
michael , November 6, 2019 at 09:52
"It is beyond my understanding why so many rank and file party members continue to embrace the lies and seditious acts that
the organisation they entrust with defending their constitutional rights has never stopped perpetrating, even after being repeatedly
caught red-handed. "
The rank and file party members have nowhere else to go and the DNC leadership knows it.
jadan , November 4, 2019 at 23:27
Our electoral system doesn't work because no one can have any confidence that their vote is counted as cast in a state wide
or national venue. Aside from gerrymandering, the purging of voter rolls, and other tricks and techniques of election rigging,
there is the manipulation of numbers in computerized vote counts that undermines the validity of US election results. It's not
the Russians or any other outside influence. It's not possible as a practical matter to do a recount of a presidential election.
Why would any rational person have confidence in the outcome?
Fixing the electoral system would be easy in theory but too many players depend on a rigged system. Fact is, no one wants a
true count of the majority vote because it would run counter to special interests that have grown accustomed to buying elections.
The DNC becomes just another special interest. An electoral system that counted every vote as cast and could be recounted would
destroy the oligarchy.
"Our democracy" is a fantasy. Funny how no politician calls for reform of the electoral process. Not even Bernie.
Sam F , November 5, 2019 at 13:12
Yes, and the reforms are quite easy, although some require amendments to the Constitution:
1. Limiting campaign contributions to the average day's pay annually (or similar means) with accounting and penalties.
2. Monitor public officials and all relatives and associate for life, with heavy penalties for payoffs etc.
3. Similar measures to isolate mass media (say over 10% of market in subject area or region) from economic power.
4. Strict monitoring of voting machine design/production/usage, or requirement of manual balloting.
But as you note, "too many players depend on a rigged system."
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:52
Agree, and while such reforms have been needed for decades, they would not change the consequences of Democrats successfully
splitting apart their own voting base. By now, middle class liberals simply appear to be unaware of, or unconcerned about, this
split, making it a lost cause.
Bethany , November 5, 2019 at 16:18
Right. Not even Bernie. And no one talks about Julian Assange either. None of them, including Bernie, wanted what WikiLeaks
revealed to be revealed. Bernie's refusal to fight the obvious rigging last time and his subsequent directive to vote for Hillary
were very enlightening. His weak defense of Tulsi Gabbard was also enlightening. Every day I am aware of what Hannah Arendt described
as 'the iron bands' of totalitarianism tightening and don't foresee relief in the future.
nondimenticare , November 5, 2019 at 17:45
It puts me in mind of the election of Liberal Justin Trudeau, who campaigned on a platform of reforming the unfair, he said,
Canadian voting system of first past the post to a form of proportional representation. (This was after years of a Conservative
government.) What a surprise that when he won the election with a majority government, he had a middle-of-the-night epiphany that
the voting system is quite fine as is.
The same reason we haven't gotten tax reform in the US even when people had a modicum of power: Everyone was sure that s/he
was a rich person hiding in a poor person's body and, by golly, when that rich person emerged s/he wanted to keep all the loot.
A pipe dream then, a virtual impossibility now.
Erelis , November 5, 2019 at 22:16
"Fixing the electoral system would be easy in theory but too many players depend on a rigged system. " Indeed. First, I have
worked many an election and the ONLY people who can steal an election are the people inside the electoral infrastructure. That
is, no Russian hacker sitting in Moscow who can change the results of an election. In America it is Americans cheating other Americans.
(Just look to the the centuries long disenfrancshment of African America voters or recently in Georgia–not a Russian in sight.)
In 2000 I thought the democratic party leadership would lead the way to electoral reform as there were just a ton of compliants
about computer based voting machines. Nada. Instead the democrats blamed Nader. There is only one conclusion. Neither the democrats
nor republicans want to give up their electoral advantages to change and alter and the direction of the outcomes of an election.
Zhu , November 4, 2019 at 23:23
I first voted in the US in 1972. Nothing important has ever improved because of voting. We get more wars on third world people,
more homelessness, no matter which team wins. No wonder more than half never vote!
Sweet William , November 5, 2019 at 11:30
that's just silly. Encouraging people not to vote has been highly successful in this country. thanks for your help in making
it a successful tactic. CN plays a part in that same old sorry: both sides are equally evil.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:30
This is to Sweet William: Denying party leaders legitimacy, which they both richly deserve to be denied them, is but one way
to deal with the utter sham that comprises our electoral system. I don't judge people for not voting out of sheer outrage and
protestation. I have always voted and since I could not abide either candidate in 2016, I voted Green, but don't judge people
for making the decision not to participate in protest. It's one thing to be completely incurious and apathetic, it's quite another
to be raging mad and calling the system out for what it is- a completely corrupted unethical mess like our fascistic, lying, murdering,
bellicose empire, the USA. I am not proud to be an American. But my right to vote includes my right NOT to, Sweet William.
jadan , November 5, 2019 at 23:01
People do not believe their votes are counted as cast because they aren't. There is no way to recount a national election.
Nothing changes for most people by and large while great benefits accrue to the elites. The war racket continues. exploitation
of the environment and labor continues. People do not trust their government to work for them, so why vote? This is the result
of a rigged system that is not transparent. It is easy to fix the system. Paper ballots will not solve the problem. We need to
develop a block chain system for voting. Just as a bitcoin is secure, so can a voter's ID be secure. You could easily check to
see if your vote was counted as cast. The election itself could be recounted quickly and easily. The majority of people are not
right wing libertarian or left wing radicals. If the voice of the genuine majority were delivered in an election, the oligarchy
would collapse.
Jeffery Denton , November 4, 2019 at 22:11
Next I would like to hear your take on WHY the Republicans went along with the russiagate conspiracy theory. And what Joe thinks
as well.
Skip Scott , November 5, 2019 at 09:20
The MIC funds both parties to a large extent. Trump's musings about detente with Russia made him the enemy of the establishment
on both sides of the aisle.
Antiwar7 , November 5, 2019 at 13:15
Because either 1) they're on the national security gravy train, or 2) they can be easily pressured by all the forces of 1).
DH Fabian , November 5, 2019 at 13:54
Republicans fully support the "Russia-gate" insanity because they see how it has driven away more Dem voters, making Democrats
too dangerous to vote for.
ML , November 5, 2019 at 20:42
I think Antiwar7 has it just about right and so does Skip Scott. I'd add that Trump's musings on detente with Russia went no
further in his tiny, grasping mind than "what will I get out of this personally" if I encourage rapprochement with Russia? Except
that the word "rapprochement" isn't in his vocabulary- but you get the idea.
Noah Way , November 4, 2019 at 21:54
Despite the blatant manipulation of the 2016 election by the Dems (to Hillary's chagrin, LOL) and the coordinated post-election
disenfranchisement of the elected president (no matter how awful he is) by the collapsed accusations of RussiaGate and likewise
the totally fabricated UkraineGate (just think about this for a millisecond – they're using an anonymous CIA "source" to blame
Trump for something Biden actually did, and which has been a basic tool of US foreign policy since WWII), this is only part of
domestic election meddling by both parties that includes gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, media manipulation, unlimited
anonymous money in politics, electronic vote hacking, supreme court interference, etc., etc., etc.
The entire system is corrupt from the top to the bottom.
For those of us who can actually remember political arguments made by Democrats in the
80's and 90's, it's ridiculous to say that neoliberalism in the US never existed except as
a term of abuse.
People bragged about being a new type of sophisticated market loving Democrat in sharp
contrast to old liberal dinosaurs like Tip O'Neill. Cranky Observer mentioned Charles
Peters and the Washington Monthly.
There was also The New Republic -- remember the joke " even the liberal New Republic"
supports conservative policy X? The point was they took pleasure in being Third Way style
neoliberals who were often hawkish on foreign policy and eager to question liberal
Democratic pieties, to the point it became a cliche that Republicans would cite them.
The New Republic and The Washington Monthly were neoliberal the way Commentary was
neoconservative. ( There was also a period where you weren't supposed to believe there were
such people as neocons. It was supposed to be an antisemitic code word.)
I think the idea that neoliberalism never existed in the US except as a term of abuse
from leftists first popped up in the 2016 Democratic primaries. I don't have a cite -- it's
just my recollection.
Elizabeth Warren Releases $20.5 Trillion Plan to Pay
for 'Medicare for All' https://nyti.ms/2N9lI4F
NYT - Thomas Kaplan, Abby Goodnough
and Margot Sanger-Katz - November 1
WASHINGTON -- Senator Elizabeth Warren on Friday proposed $20.5 trillion in new spending
through huge tax increases on businesses and wealthy Americans to pay for "Medicare for all,"
laying out details for a landmark government expansion that will pose political risks for her
presidential candidacy while also allowing her to say she is not raising taxes on the middle
class to pay for her health care plan.
Ms. Warren, who has risen steadily in the polls with strong support from liberals excited
about her ambitious policy plans, has been under pressure from top rivals like former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to release details about paying for her biggest plan, "Medicare
for all." Her new proposal marks a turning point for her campaign, in which she will have to
sell voters on a tax-and-spending plan that rivals the ambitions of the New Deal and the
Great Society while also defending it against both Democratic and Republican criticism.
Under Ms. Warren's plan, employer-sponsored health insurance -- which more than half of
Americans now receive -- would be eliminated and replaced by free government health coverage
for all Americans, a fundamental shift from a market-driven system that has defined health
care in the United States for decades but produced vast inequities in quality, service and
cost.
Ms. Warren would use a mix of sources to pay for the $20.5 trillion in new spending over a
decade, including by requiring employers to pay trillions of dollars to the government,
replacing much of what they currently spend to provide health coverage to workers. She would
create a tax on financial transactions like stock trades, change how investment gains are
taxed for the top 1 percent of households and ramp up her signature wealth tax proposal to be
steeper on billionaires. She also wants to cut $800 billion in military spending.
Ms. Warren's estimate for the cost of Medicare for all relies on an aggressive set of
assumptions about how to lower national health care costs while providing comprehensive
coverage to all Americans. Like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, she would essentially
eliminate medical costs for individuals, including premiums, deductibles and other
out-of-pocket expenses.
Critically, her new plan would not raise taxes on middle-class Americans, a question she
has been asked over and over but has not answered directly until now. When confronted on the
campaign trail and debate stage, she emphasized instead that her plan would result in higher
overall costs for wealthy people and big corporations but lower costs for middle-class
families. ...
"A key step in winning the public debate over Medicare for all will be explaining what
this plan costs -- and how to pay for it," Ms. Warren wrote in her plan. To do that, she
added, "We don't need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny."
The issue of health care helped Democrats win control of the House in last year's midterm
elections, after unsuccessful attempts by President Trump and Republicans in Congress to
repeal the Affordable Care Act. It has been a central issue again this year as Ms. Warren and
other Democrats have competed for their party's presidential nomination, highlighting a
divide on policy between the party's moderates and its liberal wing that favors
transformative change. ...
Ms. Warren's proposal shows just how large a reorganization of spending Medicare for all
represents. By eliminating private health insurance and bringing every American into a
federal system, trillions of dollars of spending by households, employers and state
governments would be transferred into the federal budget over the course of a decade.
Her financing plan is based on cost estimates that are on the low side, relative to those
from other serious economists who have assessed the program. Her estimate of $20.5 trillion
over 10 years is based on a recent cost model by the Urban Institute, but with several
different assumptions that lower the cost from Urban's estimate of $34 trillion over the same
period.
Ms. Warren attempts to minimize fiscal disruption by asking the big payers in the current
system to keep paying for health care through new taxes. She would create a new "employer
Medicare contribution" that would effectively redirect what employers are already paying to
health insurers, totaling $8.8 trillion over a decade. Small businesses would be exempt if
they are not currently paying for their employees' health care.
Ms. Warren has also proposed that states pay the federal government much of what they
currently spend to cover state workers and low-income residents under the Medicaid
program.
But she also describes new revenue streams to replace the other big chunk of health
spending: the money spent by households on premiums, deductibles and direct payments for
services like dental care that are not always covered by insurance.
Ms. Warren would raise $3 trillion in total from two proposals to tax the richest
Americans. She has previously said that her wealth tax proposal, another signature of her
campaign, would impose a 3 percent annual tax on net worth over $1 billion; she would now
raise that to 6 percent. She would also change how investment gains are taxed for the top 1
percent of households.
In addition to imposing a tax on financial transactions, she would also make changes to
corporate taxation. She is counting on stronger tax enforcement to bring in $2.3 trillion in
taxes that would otherwise go uncollected. And she is banking on passing an overhaul of
immigration laws -- which itself would be a huge political feat -- and gaining revenue from
taxes paid by newly legal residents.
Ms. Warren's plan would put substantial downward pressure on payments to hospitals,
doctors and pharmaceutical companies. She expects that an aggressive negotiation system could
lower spending on generic medications by 30 percent compared with what Medicare pays now, for
example, and spending on prescription drugs could fall by 70 percent. Payments to hospitals
would be 10 percent higher on average than what Medicare pays now, a rate that would make
some hospitals whole but would lead to big reductions for others. She would reduce doctors'
pay to the prices Medicare pays now, with additional reductions for specialists, and small
increases to doctors who provide primary care. ...
This seems almost uniformly great. I only have two quibbles.
One is that a 6% wealth tax is actually too high, confiscatory even. The reason is that if
expected ROI is about 6%, the tax takes all the expected return. In perpetuity that is
equivalent to taking the entire net worth. Property tax is a pretty good guide here, 1-1.5%
works, perhaps a bit more.
Two is that the slant shows up immediately with this reporter. One example: "Ms. Warren
would use a mix of sources to pay for the $20.5 trillion in new spending over a decade..."
Note the use of "new spending". This may make sense if the subject is limited to government
spending, but we all know the game is to distract from the good lowered-aggregate spending
and emphasize the component spent by the evil government. We may see much more of this
misdirection including by primary opponents.
She is basically proposing to municipalize the entire payment flows for healthcare, much
as proposals now exist for California to municipalize PG&E, both excellent ideas.
Senator Elizabeth Warren on Friday released her proposal to pay for Medicare for All, a
plan to move every American to government-run health insurance that would reshape the US
health care system.
Warren's plan, outlined in a 9,275-word Medium post, included complex ideas for paying for
health care costs after private insurance is ended . It's a lot to digest, so here are five
takeaways.
Much of it is based on the Medicare for All Act
The plan released by Warren on Friday is primarily aimed at answering the question of how to
pay for single-payer health care. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of how her health care
plan would work, Warren points to the existing Medicare for All Act, that "damn bill" Senator
Bernie Sanders colorfully reminded debate viewers that he wrote.
Under the Medicare for All Act, introduced by Sanders in April and cosponsored by Warren,
all US residents would be automatically enrolled in a national health care plan administered
by the federal government. In addition to traditional medical coverage, the Medicare for All
Act includes vision and dental, plus long-term care services.
It relies on a lot of assumptions
At the outset, Warren acknowledges that it's difficult to predict what health care costs
will be in the future, and she notes that current projections about how much Medicare for All
would cost vary widely. Because the Medicare for All Act leaves open questions about how the
single-payer system would work, including major ones like the amount that health care
providers would be compensated, Warren fills in the gaps to arrive at a total cost estimate.
Outside analysts, including two local experts, cited by Warren estimate her plan would result
in overall US health care costs that are slightly lower than what the nation currently
spends.
Arriving at a specific cost allows Warren to figure out how she will pay for it, and there
are some assumptions here, too.
To fund the plan without increasing taxes on the middle class, Warren relies on enacting
seemingly unrelated legislation, including immigration reform. The pathway to citizenship for
millions of people in her immigration proposal would add to the tax base. Warren also wants
to cut defense spending.
There aren't new middle class taxes, but there are hikes for businesses and the
wealthy
Warren announced her Medicare for All plan with a major promise not to increase taxes on
the middle class, but that doesn't mean some taxes won't go up. After accounting for existing
federal spending and health care spending by employers that would be redirected to the
government, there's still a big hole. Warren fills it by levying new taxes and closing
loopholes in ways that target financial firms and large corporations. She also increases her
previously proposed wealth tax.
Some businesses would be hit harder than others. As Vox points out, if Warren asks
businesses to send their existing employee health insurance payments to the government,
businesses that currently provide inadequate insurance, or no insurance at all, fare much
better than those that provide good insurance coverage. That sets up a kind of penalty for
businesses that offer health coverage: They're helping pick up the tab for Medicare for All,
but they no longer have an advantage in attracting top talent with generous benefits.
Under Warren's plan, that situation is temporary as businesses would eventually pay into
the system at the same rate. And Warren says employers ultimately will be better off because
they won't get hit with unpredictable changes in health care costs.
It would be difficult to implement
Moving every single American to a new health care plan is a massive endeavor, so much so
that Warren says she'll release an entirely separate plan that deals with how to handle the
transition.
The transition has become a sticking point in the Democratic primary, with moderates like
former vice president Joe Biden using the lengthy time period (Sanders' plan says it would
take four years) as a reason to oppose it altogether.
And then there's the problem of passing such legislation: During the debate around the
Affordable Care Act in 2010, a proposed public option to allow people to buy into a
government-run health care plan nearly sunk the entire bill, and was stripped out of the
landmark legislation. The episode underscored the difficulty of implementing a government-run
health care program, even one popular with voters.
Warren has a plan for that, though. She wants to get rid of the filibuster, meaning the
Senate would need a simple majority to pass legislation, rather than the 60 votes currently
required to stop debate.
Warren has been reluctant to go on the offensive, but that may be changing
As she rose in the polls, Warren resisted leveling direct attacks against her primary
opponents. Warren's style has been to rail against the concept of big money fueling a
campaign, rather than directly criticizing individual candidates who have taken cash from
high-dollar fund-raisers.
But there are hints that this could be changing. Warren's lengthy Medicare for All plan
includes rebuttals to the criticism she's gotten from the moderate wing of the primary field,
calling on candidates who oppose her plan to explain how they would cover everyone.
"Make no mistake -- any candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All and
refuses to answer these questions directly should concede that they have no real strategy for
helping the American people address the crushing costs of health care in this country. We
need plans, not slogans," she wrote.
The corporate health sub system
Intimately involves
the entire corporate system
We are on course toward
20 % of our economic output
Flowing thru our domestic
health services and products sectors
Where is the cost control mechanism
Simply in part
Progressively resourcing
And rechanneling the inflow of funds
Addresses a result not a cause
We have to address costs
We need a cap and trade market system
With a cap sector to GDP ratio that
Slowly squeezes down
the relative costs of the health sector
Public option is the transition
That empowers
people themselves
To spontaneous determine
the timing and pattern of
Their own transitioning
Anything else is political folly
Liz has set a bold end state vision
Bravely out laying where we must go eventually
And drawing in
the major shift in the share of
The total social cost burden
to the wealthy classes
But that's an end a destination
not a path
Urge choice not mandates
as the better path
The present corporate cost
burden share
is a mess
That should self dissolve over time
Now we need an optional public system
And
A means to capture the
Present corporate pay ins
Piecemeal over time as employees opt out of corporate plans into publicnplans one by one
Liz Warren would double her proposed billionaire
wealth tax to help fund 'Medicare for All' https://cnb.cx/332evbX
... Warren's wealth tax proposal would also impose a 2% tax on net worth between $50
million and $1 billion. She has previously said that it would be used to fund her ambitious
climate agenda, a slate of investments in child care and reductions in student loan debt.
But Warren is refusing to tax the middle class. She released an analysis produced by
several respected economists on Friday that suggests she will not have to.
Former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson, former Labor Department Chief Economist Betsey
Stevenson, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, wrote that Warren could pay
for her program "without imposing any new taxes on middle-class families."
The economists cite a number of possible revenue and spending options that they found
could generate $20.5 trillion in additional funding. Much of that funding is expected to come
from reallocating employer spending on health care and taxing the increased take-home pay
that employees are expected to receive under her system.
But taxes on the wealthy form a substantial portion. Doubling the billionaire wealth tax
will raise $1 trillion over 10 years, the economists found. They note in their analysis that
the calculation assumes a 15% rate of tax avoidance. ...
Despite
scant polling evidence, Joe Biden's continued
lead , and serious
concerns over her viability with the broader electorate, Elizabeth Warren's Democratic
presidential campaign has taken on an air of inevitability.
Just this fall, the emcee of the financial television circuit, Mad Money 's Jim
Cramer, has gone from wailing "She's got to be stopped" to insisting, "I don't think she's
nearly as anti-business" as commonly portrayed. Either way, Cramer continues, "I think there is
such a thing called Congress." The implication is even if the prairie populist by way of
Massachusetts goes the distance, Wall Street's network on Capitol Hill would make mincemeat of
her agenda.
In my interviews with members of Congress, especially Republicans, Warren's nomination is
generally treated as a fait accompli. Perhaps it's projection, Warren is who many partisan
Republicans think the Democrats are: female, lawyerly and anti-capitalist. The contest of
Warren vs. Donald Trump would provide, if nothing else, clarity.
The dynamic extends past Northeast Washington. Where people put their money where their
mouth is -- political gambling sites -- Warren's chances of winning the Democratic nomination
are assessed at nearing 40 percent. On PredicitIt.com, one can buy a Warren share an absurd
thirty-eight cents on the dollar.
Advertisement
The idea of Democrats nominating an aged, gaffe-prone white male popular with industry and
in the Rust Belt seems absurd on the face: "That's our nominee, right?" David Axelrod,
mastermind of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, earlier this month crowned Warren the
"front-runner."
There's just one problem with this line of thinking: it's not at all clear Warren is going
to be the Democratic nominee for president. Her principal rival, Biden, the former vice
president, still leads in some national polls. Biden is frequently compared to Jeb Bush, the
establishment favorite, paper tiger on the Republican side in the last round.
There are two problems with this analogy. Biden isn't nearly as "establishment" as the
former Florida governor. Bush was the cash-flush son and brother of two presidents, while Biden
is bleeding
dough and has failed to procure the endorsement of the president he served. Conversely,
unlike Bush, whose lead nationally evaporated by Labor Day, Biden has stubbornly stayed more or
less at the top of the heap through all of 2019.
It's Halloween and Democratic voters haven't been spooked enough by the former vice
president's at-times catastrophic performance to dump him. Unlike Bush, Biden has an ace in the
hole: the anchoring constituency of his party, African-American voters. If Bush had commanded
the acclaim of evangelical Christians he might have held on despite his other weaknesses as a
candidate. Biden is also relatively
popular , while the Bush clan is rightly still blamed for the destruction of American
prestige at home and abroad.
Biden frequently, even pathetically presents himself as an "Obama-Biden Democrat."
ButBiden's candidacy remains most similar to a non-Bush 2016 candidate: Donald Trump, the
front-runner the "smart set" claimed was doomed from the start. Like Trump, Biden is
famous . And as Biden has hit campaign troubles, the former veep's raison d'etre can
take on an air of the self-evident: I'm leading the race because I'm leading the race.
Like Trump, who would proudly spend literally hours of his campaign rallies reading off
primary poll results, Biden also seems content to run a campaign based on his own lead. After
weeks of purported political battering, Biden told 60 Minutes Sunday: "I know I'm the
frontrunner."
With almost Trump-like flare, Biden noted: "Find me a national poll with a notable a couple
exceptions." What was true of the last Democratic debate, earlier this month in Ohio, may be
true of the 2020 election as a whole. As Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National
Interest , said
: "It was a good night for the old codgers on stage."
Indeed, insistences from career progressives and conservatives that Warren is the true
Democratic standard-bearer can take on a mawkish tone. Surely, in a time of ubiquitous
partisanship, the victors will be most ideological. The Democrats are moving ever left, the
Republicans, ever right. Surely, it is time for a true believer.
But the logic is too clever by half. Templates are incomplete assessments of the world, but
play along: if Trump is Biden's proper analogue, then Warren's candidacy is perhaps most akin
to Ted Cruz's in 2016. Like Cruz, Warren is somewhat
unpopular with her colleagues, which doubles as a badge of honor with many, more
ideological activists.
But party activists perhaps understand the organization they serve less than they think they
do. Isn't it just as possible, indeed maybe even likely, that Warren, like Cruz, is waiting for
a day that will never come? Trump's "implosions" were never reflected at the ballot box. Maybe
so, it will also be with Biden.
Templates aren't perfect, however. While Cruz did well with evangelicals, Warren has failed
to make inroads among African Americans. And unlike Cruz, the establishment has warmed to
Warren's rise -- her campaign doubles as a Harvard satellite campus.
But perhaps Warren's greatest weakness as a candidate, as it was for Cruz, is that she is
not the real voice of her party's discontented. A well placed source told me that in 2012 he
advised Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, that the person who wins America's big elections
today is the most pessimistic of the two messengers.
Of the 2016 conservatives, Cruz was perhaps most polite to Trump, but in failing to ape the
future president's program, he never emerged as anything more than a poor imitation of the real
estate mogul. Immigration and ennui over America's international role were the orders of the
day, and for a core contingent, no substitutes for Trumpian nationalism would do.
Warren experiences this vulnerability, an intensity gap, not with Biden, but with Bernie
Sanders. Warren, perhaps sensing the establishment's warmth to her, takes pains to emphasize
that she is still a capitalist. Perhaps accordingly, socialist Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez, the
most powerful millennial politician, has thrown in with Sanders, the candidate she volunteered
for four years ago. For the under-forty set, which has been mired in a now-decade of low growth
and the vise-grip of rising housing, education and healthcare costs, Warrenism, like Cruzism,
may come too little, too late.
A well placed source told me that in 2012 he advised Mitt Romney, the Republican
nominee, that the person who wins America's big elections today is the most pessimistic of
the two messengers.
Ummmm... Romney LOST.
For the under-forty set, which has been mired in a now-decade of low growth and the
vice grip of rising housing, education and healthcare costs, Warrenism, like Cruzism, may
come too little, too late.
The article was nearly completely about Biden vs Warren then changed course near the end
by bring Sanders into it. So Warrenism may be "too little, too late" so Dems will go for
less with Biden? Sorry, it really seems incoherent to me.
Yeah, the analogy that makes more sense is Trump:Cruz as Bernie:Warren, except instead of
being a total fraud with no political experience, Bernie has 40 years of experience, with
lots of accomplishments, and is seen as far-and-away the most trustworthy and with the
highest favorability.
As competing right-wing and left-wing versions of the "cool nerd"? I guess so, though the
essence of the "cool nerd" is that most people don't think the "cool nerds" are cool.
Is Biden really less "Establishment" than Jeb Bush?. A lot depends on how you define
Establishment -- and the word is very slippery and hard to define. I'd say they were both
Establishment to something like the same degree. Bush has a waspy pedigree and two
presidents in his family, but 38 years in the Senate made Biden part of the Washington
Establishment to a high degree. Neither of them had much substance. Biden was sort of like
the ottoman in a Washington salon - something you might not notice until you tripped over
it - but still he was a Washington fixture. Jeb Bush had the connections, but so far as
Washington was concerned there was something provincial about him.
It doesn't really matter who wins the Democrat's party nomination or who wins the
Presidential election. The 'Deep State' runs the government and will continue to run the
government no matter which pony is the face on stage. Pick your puppet at the polls. That
is if you want to waste your time voting at all.
True of any candidate except Trump who is the only one not controlled by the Deep State.
Not that he hasn't had limited success so far in going up against them, given their control
of the FBI and CIA and ability to manufacture scandals at will such as the "Russia
Collusion" hoax.
I'll agree that Trump is somewhat outside the 'Deep State's' control. I'll state that I am
not a fan of most of his policies or the man himself and it is my firm opinion that even
though he is not an 'offspring' of the Deep State, his actions and interests are
self-focused just like those that are bred from within. None of them give a rat's behind
about Joe Public; it's the super-elites serving the interests of the super-elites.
The socalled Deep State swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. That oath comes before
their loyalty to Trump.
Trump is president, not dictator. He doesn't just get to do whatever he wants despite
the fact he thinks he can, he thinks he is above the Constitution.
"I have to the right to do whatever I want as president." - Trump
You no doubt nodded in agreement when he said that, but if a Democratic president ever
said that, you'd erupt in outrage completely forgetting how you felt when Trump said
it.
The previous Democratic president ruled largely through executive orders, if you haven't
noticed. Not a dictator, right. While those upholders of the Constitution which are so dear
to you, violated it left and right in everything foreign policy. Try better.
Actually, as Alex stated, rule by Executive Order has become more prevalent with each
successive President regardless of political party. Without going into a long explanation,
I'll just say that the Constitution has been eroded by all Branches of the government -
unfortunately, it's getting to the point where it will be completely ineffectual soon.
Warren (as well as Bernie Sanders) would have been a great candidate for the Democratic
Party to try to win back working-class whites in 2016, but nowadays it seems they are the
Republican base and big Trump supporters and aren't returning back to the fold.
Democrats would do better to find a more center-right figure to win over
neoconservatives, liberatarians, and suburban America, all alienated by Donald Trump and by
what the Republican Party has become, which could potentially get them states like Arizona,
Texas, North Carolina, and the like.
That describes most of the Democratic also-rans, and pretty much Biden, too. And Hilary
Clinton, of course, and look how inspiring she was to the Democratic electorate.
You're pretty much describing Andrew Yang. His base is currently small, but very
passionate, consisting of progressives, disaffected Trump voters, working class whites,
libertarians, etc., basically anyone on the political spectrum.
Warren is who many partisan Republicans think the Democrats are: female, lawyerly and
anti-capitalist.
A few paragraphs down, you said "Warren, perhaps sensing the establishment's warmth to
her, takes pains to emphasize that she is still a capitalist." Did you just assume your
readers would prefer the smear up front and the facts buried near the bottom?
" Franklin Foer : All the investment bankers who have voodoo dolls of you
might be a bit surprised that you recently described yourself as "capitalist to the bone."
What did you mean?
Elizabeth Warren : I believe in markets and the benefits they can produce when
they work. Markets with rules can produce enormous value. So much of the work I have done
-- the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, my hearing-aid bill -- are about making
markets work for people, not making markets work for a handful of companies that scrape all
the value off to themselves. I believe in competition."
Like Cruz, Warren is somewhat unpopular with her colleagues
Wake me up when something actually analogous to Ted Cruz happens, like if Warren calls
the eventual nominee a "narcissist" and "serial liar" for whom "morality doesn't exist" and
then goes on to phone bank for him in the general.
Well, looks like I already have to wake you up. Remember that story with her saying that it
ain't right when a veep's son serves on the board of a foreign company and then immediately
backtracking after having understood what she just said?
Sounds like Warren is thinking of "Capitalism, with fixes from outside capitalism"
I'll admit, even the criticisms make me more interested in her. Though I fear that it's
more of a 'too good to be true' concept. My time in customer service helped me to
understand that sometimes you have to give Hard Messages to people as you really can't have
Everything You Want. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing Warren as "OMG this is everything I
wanted." Which is one of the red flags I had over Trump.
It's hard though. I know that giving hard messages is basically a death sentence in
campaigns so people don't do that. But Bernie did and he's not dying. BLAH.
In any case, don't go too hard on TAC articles about democratic candidates. It's sort of
like when a US new organization puts an editorial on a foreign culture. It's not a bad
viewpoint to have, but it IS going ot be..well.. different.
It becomes more and more obvious with each day that nominating Biden is incomparably
greater priority to the Democratic Party as an institution than winning the election. Yes,
Warren is no orator (which is an extremely ill omen for a candidate when running against
someone like Trump), but neither Biden is. Warren, with all her faults, at least speaks
like a non-orator with both hemispheres functional. While Biden is simply babbling.
And that's not to mention the fact that Democrats (yet) have a candidate who would
reliably beat any opponent aside from Rand Paul - Tulsi Gabbard. But these... epitomes of
alternative genius keep on trying to drive her away from their party at all costs instead
of holding on to her for dear life.
Trump won because of the number of other Republican candidates who wanted to fight it out
to the bitter end, rather than throw in their lot with a better candidate like Cruz or even
Jeb! Had it come down to two Republican candidates, Trump and one holding more traditional
views, it is likely Trump would have lost the Republican nomination.
The Democrats look the same for 2020. Biden represents the Clinton, Republican-lite wing
of the party. He has the name recognition and the big money backing. Sanders is a true
leftist. And Warren is somewhere in-between. The question is whether or not Sanders and
Warren will fight it out to the bitter end, leaving Biden with just enough of a plurality
to win the nomination. I don't give any of the rest a chance.
I tend to think that Trump would beat Biden. For the same reasons he beat Clinton: he's
a neo-liberal, neo-conservative who could give a rat's a$$ about the pain of the working
and middle-classes. I think Warren could beat Trump. She's really not a leftist
economically, and a lot of independents would see her as a rational, thoughtful person, as
opposed to Trump's Trumpism.
My lawn chair and popcorn favorite would be a Trump/Sanders title fight. Maybe terrible
for the country, but definitely fun to watch.
I think she is probably to the right of either Nixon or Eisenhower. She's certainly not
proposing a 91% marginal income tax rate (Eisenhower) or a fully socialized health care
system (Nixon). The world has shifted so far to the right in modern times that I can
understand that some see her as far left.
The reason that Nominee Warren is unlikely to get black support is that she played a card
that was not hers to [play and doubled down on the matter and continues to play that card
inspite of the cold hard light of day that she wasn't, and is not native american.
There is a huge wave of under current simmering anger because I don't cleave to notions
of some incorrectly underpinnings of "conservatism", that are sacrosanct. I don't put much
stock in identity political machinations online. It is simply a nonfactor or less of a
factor than what is on the page as to some's ideas.
But the hijacking of someone's history that is not your own in any fashion and profiting
from the same -- for people whose history are hog to negative narratives, this simply will
not sit well.
----------------
Senator Cruz's attempts to rig the Colorado primaries violates the principles of fair
play. Making arguments about being pro-country and at the same time manipulating the
immigration arguments to favor undermining US citizens -- don't invite much enthusiasm for
his leadership.
"The reason that Nominee Warren is unlikely to get black support is that she played a card
that was not hers to [play and doubled down on the matter and continues to play that card
inspite of the cold hard light of day that she wasn't, and is not native american."
Why in the world would African Americans care one wilt about Warren claiming she was
Native American?
Af-Ams are big on identity..but the only time I've seen it brought as an issue is when
someone who's not Af-Am claims they are Af-Am.
Republicans have a big issue with her using the term. But it's similar to Democrats
hating Trump's attacks on Latinos: the ones that rage weren't considering her in the first
place.
Warren will win or lose the Black vote by whether she notes their issues and offers
options that will change their current situation, something Hillary failed to do in those
key states. Though first she'll need them win them over from Biden. Possible, though not
easily.
Not really sure why the author thinks warren is somehow outside the democratic norms, she
has worked consistently for the working voters that make up her district by trying to bring
some balance against the large corporations that pretty much control the economy. Even
conservatives, the champions of big business and the haters of unions and all social
programs seem to actually have second thoughts about crushing the life out of the common
man, or at least they write occasional comments that make nice to them while giving the
corporations massive tax cuts and cutting the social programs.
If I was a bit more cynical I would think that they are pretty nervous about an
articulate candidate with a solid slate of actual policy papers and positions that try to
lay out a way to make the economy work for the regular folks. Why they might actually be
trying to claim that she will take the side of the corporations that run conservative
politics..
I think Warren's big problem is how she talks and how she looks.
Ever since TV came into the political process, image has become incredibly important.
Look at Ted Cruz. He just looked...weird.
Warren is frenetic when she talks on the debate stage. Mute your TV during the next
debate and watch. She also talks like a school marm.
Lasty, history does not smile on wonks. People want easy-to-understand programs and
straight talk. Warren constantly dodges how she will pay for her programs. This will not
play well in 2020.
I still think it will be Sanders, with the 1980 and 2016 GOP primaries as the templates,
and the crisis in the Reagan/Thatcher/neo-liberal consensus being the bedrock of his, and
Trump's, appeal.
Trump was such a wild card in 2016 that it's hard to make connections or analogies to any
other presidential election. You don't have to see Joe Biden as some clone of Jeb Bush to
see that they both have real deficiencies as candidates. Cruz also was a lousy candidate
who wouldn't have won the nomination or the general election, but he was blindsided by
Trump, someone new from outside politics.
There's nobody in sight who could blindside Warren like that, and I get the feeling that
the Democratic Party base (the White half of it anyway) is more comfortable with Warren
than the Republican Party base was with Cruz. Even Evangelicals couldn't quite bring
themselves to love Ted. However unpopular Warren is with the electorate as a whole, party
loyalists and activists have no problem with her.
I don't see Buttigieg winning the nomination. Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said that
Tom Dewey looked like the little plastic man at the top of the wedding cake. Now that we
have gay marriage, voters are offered the a candidate who looks like the little plastic man
on top of a gay wedding cake. I suspect they won't go for him.
Had Cruz been the nominee he would have had the same advantage that Trump did: Hillary
Clinton herself. She was a deeply unlikable candidate and 2016 is best described as
"Hillary lost" as opposed to "Trump won." Pretty much any Republican, excepting maybe Bush
with his family baggage, would have bear Hillary, and with a more respectable showing.
Letting their foreign policy being hijacked (or, rather, joyridden) by neolib lunatics, the
twins of neocon wackos. That can hardly be called "competence" and "prudence".
The winners write history. Surviving losers also rewrite history ('Gone with the Wind").
Or, past lives are never written about at all. The problem is that western government has
swirled down the drain into incompetent delusion. Corporations rule. Plutocrats are in combat
over the spoils. Protests won't work until police and mercenaries realized that they aren't
being paid enough to die or to subjugate their own families.
Right now, the problem is two million Californians forced out of their homes or waiting
with no electricity for evacuation orders. The American government is simply incapable
rebuilding Puerto Rico or Northern California . Or handling global plagues such as
African Swine Fever that has already killed a quarter of the global pig population. Simply
put, climate change, overpopulation, and rising inequality assure that revolutions cannot be
orderly.
The 10% Technocrats like Elizabeth Warren will try to keep things running until they can't
anymore.
If Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren, there will a chorus of well-funded voices
declaring that her progressivism would destroy the economy. So it's not irrelevant to look at
how that sort of thinking is holding up abroad 1/
Pocketbook Woes Drive an Unlikely Comeback in Argentine Presidential Race
President Mauricio Macri rose to office with a promise that free markets would wrest
Argentina from its boom-and-bust cycle. But with the country in recession, voters may now
turn to an archrival.
5:55 AM - 27 Oct 2019
Macri was the business community's candidate; he was going to bring sound management in
after years of populism, and things were going to be great. But he screwed up the
macroeconomics, borrowing heavily in dollars (!), and presided over recession 2/
Chile has long, as Branko Milanovic says here, been the poster child for neoliberalism. I
remember very well when Bush & co tried to sell Chile's privatized pensions as a
replacement for Social Security. But rampant inequality is now causing mass unrest 3/
Obviously governments of both left and right can mess up. But the persistent belief that
big business and the wealthy know How Things Work and can run the economy best is completely
at odds with experience 4/
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... ,
a
Without the necessary due diligence in planning both the transition and the aftermath going
into the meme, then Medicare for All is a promise for some, a threat to many more, and a boat
anchor for the Democratic Party. It could be a great plan if adequately executed, but given
the haphazard approach to leaning on buzz words and memes instead of a explanatory framework,
then this plan will be an executioner's block next November, if not just Tuesday week. The
Democratic Party has screwed itself again unless just pure outrage and at Trump and
Republican politicians can rescue the Dembots from their own idiot angels.
In her heart, Warren is more of Eisenhower (or Nixon, if you wish ) republican type then a
real fight against excesses of neoliberalism. that actually makes her chances to win 2020
elections much stronger and changes that she will bring radical chances much weaker.
First, as a general rule, politicians who propose meaningful change should get specific
enough about their idea so that voters can have a good look before they go to the polls. So
Warren is setting a good example on this front and likely raising the bar for other Democratic
party aspirants.
Second, I want to make sure I'm not falling prey to the cognitive bias called the halo
effect, which is a tendency to see people as all good or all bad. So I want to make sure my
reaction to the neoliberal frogs that sometimes hop out of Warren's mouth doesn't taint my
reading of her generally. For instance, her private equity plan is very strong, particularly
her sweeping ideas about how to make private equity firm principals liable when they bankrupt
companies. But as America's top bankruptcy scholar, the core of that plan falls in an area
where she has unparalleled expertise.
But generally, Warren's change programs have a frequent shortcoming: they do a great job of
assessing the challenge but then propose remedies that fall well short of remedying them.
As Matt Yglesias pointed out in January :
If Two-Income Trap were released today, I'd say it suffers from a striking mismatch
between the scale of the problem it identifies and the relatively modest solutions it
proposes. Tougher regulation of consumer lending would be welcome but obviously would not
fundamentally address the underlying stagnation of income.
On top of that, Warren's "I have a plan" mantra sounds an awful lot like a dog whistle to
Clinton voters. And even though I've only given a good look at two of her plans so far ex her
private equity plan, there's a lot not to like in both of them. We
covered her wealth plan earlier, and didn't treat Sanders' at the same time because hers
was sucking up all the media attention even though Sanders had proposed a wealth tax years
before she did. That was a mistake. Sanders' wealth tax plan is better than Warren's.
Even though Sanders plan has the same fundamental problem, that of not recognizing how the
IRS in recent decades has never won a large estate tax case where you have the same valuation
issues with a wealth tax, Sanders proposes a more aggressive beef up of the IRS than Warren
does, so he may have a sense of the severity of the enforcement problem and also provides for
some legal fallbacks regarding valuation. He also realistically does not depict his tax as a
global wealth tax, since there's no way to get the needed information or cooperation on foreign
holdings that aren't in bank or brokerage firms.
But even more important, both Warren and Sanders wealth tax schemes rely on the work of
economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in devising their taxes and estimating how much
they'd yield. The structure of Sanders' tax hews to their recommendations as to how to maximize
revenues and cut into inequality. Warren's does not. So contrary to popular perceptions,
Sanders' wealth tax plan
should get higher wonk points than Warren's .
So on to the next Warren plan.
Warren's Excess Lobbying Tax
Warren presented her Excessive Lobbying Tax
. The problem it is meant to solve is not just lobbying as currently defined, which is the
petitioning of member of Congress to influence legislation. Warren is out to tackle not just
that but also what she depicts as undue corporate influence in the regulatory process:
But corporate lobbyists don't just swarm Congress. They also target our federal
departments like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau .
Regulatory agencies are only empowered to implement public interest rules under authority
granted by legislation already passed by Congress. So how is it that lobbyists are able to
kill, weaken, or delay so many important efforts to implement the law?
Often they accomplish this goal by launching an all out assault on the process of writing
new rules -- informally meeting with federal agencies to push for favorable treatment,
burying those agencies in detailed industry comments during the notice-and-comment rulemaking
process, and pressuring members of Congress to join their efforts to lobby against the
rule.
If the rule moves forward anyway, they'll argue to an obscure federal agency tasked with
weighing the costs and benefits of agency rules that the rules are too costly, and if the
regulation somehow survives this onslaught, they'll hire fancy lawyers to challenge it in
court.
Before we get to Warren's remedies, there are some odd things about the problem statement.
One is that she fails to acknowledge that regulatory rulemaking devises more specific policies
in order to implement legislation. That reflects the fact that legislation often isn't detailed
enough to provide a definitive guide to agencies. And the public is entitled to weigh in on
rulemaking. So what she is objecting to is that corporate interests are able to overwhelm the
comment process. Second is that there is a significant abuse that she fails to mention, that
some proposed rule changes, such as regarding net neutrality, where ordinary citizens weighed
in heavily, saw comments on the other side that were submitted by bots, overwhelming the
agency. The bot abuse is specific and important, and it's odd to see Warren leave it by the
wayside.
Warren's plan has three main prongs. First, she would make pretty much anyone who as part of
their employment seeks to influence Federal legislation or regulation register as a lobbyist.
They would be require to make public who they'd been lobbying and what information they
provided (an interesting question here as to what gets reported from in person
discussions).
Second, she would require that "every corporation and trade organization" with over $500,000
per year in lobbying expenditures is subject to an "excess lobbying tax". Spending of $500,000
to $1 million would be taxed at a 35% rate, over $1 million, at a 60% rate, and over $5
million, 75%.
Warren states that her tax would have raised $10 billion in the last ten years and she
intends to use that for the third major leg of her programs, which is various anti-lobbyist
initiatives. She plans to spend the revenues on
A "Lobbying Defense Trust Fund" to bolster "Congressional independence from lobbyists" by
providing more money to Congressional support bodies like the CBO
Extra funding to agencies that are on the receiving of lobbying. When an entity in the
$500,000 or higher lobbying spending bracket, the agency gets a special allocation "to help
it fight back".
An Office of the Public Advocate to help ordinary citizens get better representation in
the lobbying process
She also asserts that her plan will also "shut the revolving door between government and K
Street" but she offers no mechanism to provide for that. So that is a handwave.
The Conceptual Flaws in Warren's Approach
It's hard to know how much of this Warren believes and how much of this was dreamed up by
her staffers (the document is signed "Team Warren).
Taxation is the wrong approach . Even though Warren discusses how much money her tax would
raise, her strident disapproval of lobbying and the punitive tax levels make clear that the
purpose of the tax is to discourage lobbying. But if lobbying is as bad as Warren believes it
is, she should instead be prohibiting abuses, like comments by bots. In the 1970s, economist
Martin Weitzman came up with an approach to determine when taxation was the right way to
discourage problematic behavior, as opposed to barring it.
A summary from the Bank of England's celebrated economist Andrew Haldane :
In making these choices, economists have often drawn on Martin Weitzman's classic public
goods framework from the early 1970s. Under this framework, the optimal amount of pollution
control is found by equating the marginal social benefits of pollution-control and the
marginal private costs of this control. With no uncertainty about either costs or benefits, a
policymaker would be indifferent between taxation and restrictions when striking this
cost/benefit balance.
In the real world, there is considerable uncertainty about both costs and benefits.
Weitzman's framework tells us how to choose between pollution-control instruments in this
setting. If the marginal social benefits foregone of the wrong choice are large, relative to
the private costs incurred, then quantitative restrictions are optimal. Why? Because fixing
quantities to achieve pollution control, while letting prices vary, does not have large
private costs. When the marginal social benefit curve is steeper than the marginal private
cost curve, restrictions dominate.
The results flip when the marginal cost/benefit trade-offs are reversed. If the private
costs of the wrong choice are high, relative to the social benefits foregone, fixing these
costs through taxation is likely to deliver the better welfare outcome. When the marginal
social benefit curve is flatter than the marginal private cost curve, taxation dominates. So
the choice of taxation versus prohibition in controlling pollution is ultimately an empirical
issue.
Moreover, the tax would hit all lobbyists. Who do you think has the better odds of raising
more money to offset the tax and carrying on as before: Public Citizen or the Chamber of
Commerce?
By contrast, one idea of ours that could have helpful chilling effects would be to go much
much further than merely requiring all lobbyists, broadly defined, to register and also require
them to provide reports on what government officials they contacted/met with and what
information they provided them.
We'd also make these lobbyists subject to FOIA and provide stringent standards that apply
only to lobbyists, such as:
Set strict and tight time limits for responses (California requires that an initial
determination be made in 10 days, for instance)
Require judges to award legal fees and costs to parties who successfully sue over FOIAs
where the records were withheld. Provide for awards in cases where the defendant coughs up
records as the result of a suit being filed. Set punitive damages for abuses (such as
excessive delay, bad faith responses). Strictly limit invocation of attorney/client privilege
to demonstrable litigation risks
Letting journalists and members of the public root around in the discussion between various
think tanks and their business allies would regularly unearth material that would be
embarrassing to the parties involved. It would go a long way toward denting the perceived
legitimacy of lobbying, which over time would strengthen the immune systems of the
recipients.
Warren assumes that most people in Congress and at regulators are anti-corporate but are
overwhelmed by lobbyists. First, the piece presents a Manichean world view of evil greedy
corporate interests versus noble underrepresented little people. And while this is very often
true, it's not as absolute as Warren suggests. The companies are often have conflicting
interests, which can allow for public-minded groups to ally with the corporate types who are on
their side on particular matters.
A second part of the Manichean take is the notion that the agencies aren't on board with the
corporate perspective. Unfortunately, reality is vastly more complicated. For instance, banking
regulators are concerned overall with the safety and soundness of the institutions they
oversee. They aren't in the business of consumer advocacy or consumer protection save as
required by legislation. The concern with safety and soundness perversely means that they want
the institutions they oversee to be profitable so as to help assure capital adequacy and to
attract "talent" to make sure the place is run adequately. (We've stated repeatedly we disagree
with this notion; banks are so heavily subsidized that they should not be seen as private
businesses and should be regulated as utilities). For instance, in the late 1980s, McKinsey was
heavily touting the idea of a coming bank profit squeeze. McKinsey partner Lowell Bryan in his
1992 book Bankrupt spoke with pride at how his message was being received, and in particular,
that regulators were embracing deregulation as a way to bolster bank incomes.
Another complicating factor is that in certain key posts, industry expertise and therefore
an insider status is seen as key to performing the job. For instance, it's accepted that the
Treasury Secretary should come from Wall Street so he can talk to Mr. Market. Of all people, GW
Bush defied that practice, appointing corporate CEOs as Treasury Secretary. The position wound
up being a revolving door in his Administration as his appointees flamed out. Finding a modern
Joe Kennedy, someone who knows sharp industry practices and decides to go against incumbents,
is a tall order.
Similarly, agencies have career staffers and political appointees at a senior level. That
included critical roles like the head of enforcement at the SEC. If Republicans or
pro-corporate Democrats control the Administration and the Senate, business-friendly appointees
will go into these critical posts. The optics may be better with the Democrats, but the outcome
isn't that much different. As Lambert likes to say, "Republicans tell you they will knife you
in the face. Democrats tell you they are so much nicer, they only want one kidney. What they
don't tell you is next year they are coming for your other kidney."
So Warren is also implicitly selling the idea of Team Dem as anti-corporate vigilantes, a
fact not in evidence.
And speaking of kidneys a letter from a departing SEC career employee and Goldman
whistleblower, James Kidney, shows how even staffers who want to do the right thing have their
perspective warped over time.
As we said about his missive, which you can read in full :
Two things struck me about Jim Kidney's article below. One is that he still wants to think
well of his former SEC colleagues
Number two, and related, are the class assumptions at work. The SEC does not want to see
securities professionals at anything other than bucket shops as bad people. At SEC
conferences, agency officials are virtually apologetic and regularly say, "We know you are
honest people who want to do the right thing." Please tell me where else in law enforcement
is that the underlying belief.
So it also seems unlikely that there is a cadre of vigorous regulators just waiting to be
unshackled by the likes of Warren and her anti-lobbyist funding. The way institutions change is
by changing the leadership and enough of the worker bees to send the message that the old way
of doing things isn't on any more. That does not happen quickly. And absent a system breakdown
like the Great Depression, staff incumbents know that talks of new sheriffs in town may not
last beyond the next election cycle.
And the experience of Warren's hand picks at her own pet agency shows that they were all too
willing to let corporations set the agenda. Recall that Warren recommended that Richard
Cordray, head of the CFPB when it became clear she would not get the job, and Raj Date, the
first deputy director of the CFPB, was also an ally of hers. From our 2012 post,
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Launches "Make Life Easier for Lobbyists" Tool :
There is more than a little bit of NewSpeak in this idea. "Streamlining regulations" is
generally right wing code for "eliminating/relaxing regulations." Admittedly, Elizabeth
Warren during her brief time as de facto head of the nascent CFPB, proposed and launched a
project to simplify mortgage disclosure forms to combine
two required forms into one and make them easier to understand .
However, this opening of the door by Cordray does not look as likely to produce such happy
outcomes. Maybe this is a means for the CFPB to force lobbyists to provide their input in a
format that makes it easier for CFPB to process. But I can't imagine that Cordray or Raj Date
would say to the American Bankers Association: "We are trying to create a level playing
field, so we won't meet with you. Put it in writing and we'll give it due consideration."
So if this portal is a supplemental channel, who exactly is it intended to serve? The
dropdown menu on the "Tell Us About Yourself" page tells us who it expects to comment: people
from organizations, specifically:
Financial services provider
Trade association
Government agency
Community organization
Other
In other words, it does not contemplate that consumers have the expertise or motivation to
provide input. Citizens are probably assumed to be represented via the CFPB itself or perhaps
also by consumer groups, but even then, they may have specific axes to grind (think the
AARP).
More generally, this is another example of attacking the problem at the wrong level. The
reason there is so much corruption in Washington is that the pay gap between what people can
make at senior levels at regulators versus what they can make in the private sector is so
enormous. And pay matters more than ever given the cost of housing, private schools, and
college. Singapore's approach was designed explicitly to prevent corruption in government: pay
top-level bureaucrats at the same level as top private sector professional (think law firm
partners) and have tough and independent internal audit. We are a long long way from embracing
any system like that, but it's important to recognize what the real issues are.
Lobbyist "tax" walks and quacks like an attack on free speech and the right to petition the
government . Even worse, she makes it easy to attack her program in court with this section and
similar observations in her piece:
In the first four months, the DOL received hundreds of comments on the proposed
[fiducairy] rule, including comments from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Morgan Stanley, Bank
of America, BlackRock, and other powerful financial interests. After a public hearing with
testimony from groups like Fidelity and J.P Morgan, the agency received over 100 more
comments -- including dozens from members of Congress, many of which were heavily slanted
toward industry talking points. Because the law requires agencies to respond to each concern
laid out in the public comments, when corporate interests flood agencies with comments, the
process often becomes so time-consuming and resource-intensive that it can kill or delay
final rules altogether -- and that's exactly what happened.
Warren is depicting the act of making public comments as an abuse. And her clear intent is
to reduce corporate input. This particular bit is very problematic: " .many of which were
heavily slanted toward industry talking points." Was she objecting to the fact that a lot of
the submissions were highly parallel, and therefore redundant, designed to choke the pipeline
or simply that they presented familiar pro-business tropes and were low value added? Not being
well crafted is not a basis for rejecting a public comment.
Warren sets herself for a legal challenge to her idea with this bit: "..if the regulation
somehow survives this onslaught, they'll hire fancy lawyers to challenge it in court," and she
later criticizes opponents of the fiduciary rule:
Today, the Department of Labor is led by Eugene Scalia, the very corporate lawyer and
ex-lobbyist who brought the lawsuit to kill off the proposal.
Was Warren missing in action in civics class when they presented the fact that Presidents
make appointments subject to the advice and consent of the Senate? And what would she do about
future Eugene Scalias? She is intimating that he shouldn't have been allowed to serve, but
that's the call of the Senate, not hers.
But more important, Warren makes it clear that she is so opposed to undue corporate
influence that she objects to judicial review. Help me. Philosophically, the US system allows
even the devil to have the benefit of law. But apparently not former law professor Elizabeth
Warren.
Again, the problem of ordinary people and pro-consumer organizations being outmatched in
court isn't going to be solved by treating use of the legal process as illegitimate. The idea
in her scheme that struck me as the most promising was the idea of an Office of the Public
Advocate. If I were in charge, I'd throw tons of money at it, including for litigation.
The Practical Flaws in Warren's Approach
Since this post is already long, we'll address these issues briefly. The IRS is a weak
agency that loses cases against corporate American all the time. A colleague recently confirmed
that take with an insider story on enforcement matters. The short version is that the IRS was
unable even to pursue issues only of moderate complexity. The problem isn't just expertise but
apparently also poor internal communication and coordination.
Tax avoidance is completely legal. If you don't think some of the targets of Warren's tax
would find ways to restructure their operations so as to greatly reduce their tax burdens, I
have a bridge I'd like to sell you. And they'd probably do it not so much to reduce taxes ("We
need more donations due to meanie Warren" would be a powerful fundraising cry and a lot of the
heavyweight groups and big corporations that lobby directly wouldn't miss a stride) as to avoid
funding her anti-lobbying initiatives.
And who would be least able to reorganize their lives to reduce the tax hit? The smaller
public advocates, natch.
* * *
It could be that I've simply hit upon two of Warren's weakest plans. But I have a sneaking
suspicion not. A contact who is an expert on political spending gave a big thumbs down to her
campaign reform proposal. The spectacle of Warren, whose Congressional staffers would regularly
turn out pointed, well-argued, very well supported requests for information from officials that
showed her to be operating way way above legislative norms, publishing plans that score high on
formatting and saber rattling and low on policy plumbing is a bad sign.
The most charitable interpretation is that Warren has weak people on this part of her
campaign and either doesn't know or doesn't care. But Warren historically has also show herself
to be an accomplished administrator. Is she more over her head than the press has figured
out?
Just an excellent critique. My view of Warren's plans was rather shallow and limited. I
could not find any flaws in your assessment. One might think that a senator would have a
better grasp of how DC works – or at least human nature.
"... Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis. ..."
"... I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent, rigid class system ..."
"... If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners. ..."
"... The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things (despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly likely to be manipulated like Trump. ..."
"... I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say. ..."
The headline will become operative in December, if as expected, the Trump Administration
maintains its refusal to nominate new judges
to the WTO appellate panel . That will render the WTO unable to take on new cases, and
bring about an effective return to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which
preceded the WTO .
An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading
"on WTO terms", but those terms will probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if
it does).
likbez 10.27.19 at 11:22 pm
That's another manifestation of the ascendance of "national neoliberalism," which now is
displacing "classic neoliberalism."
Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are
essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the
old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it is impossible because
the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorables) and now is hanging in
the air. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to
be very destructive.
That's why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt
classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the
second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as "Better Trump then Trump" although she
proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like "original" Trump probably can be easily
coerced by the establishment, if she wins.
All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by "neoliberal Intelligentsia" does not change the
fact that neoliberalism entered the period of structural crisis demonstrated by "secular
stagnation," and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably can argue only about
how long it will take for the "national neoliberalism" to dismantle it and what shape or form
the new social order will take.
That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be
better, or more just. Neoliberalism was actually two steps back in comparison with the New
Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.
John, I am legitimate curious what you find "exactly right" in the comment above. Other than
the obvious bit in the last line about new deal vs neoliberalism, I would say it is
completely wrong, band presenting an amazingly distorted view of both the last few years and
recent history.
Neo-liberalism is not a unified thing. Right wing parties are not following the original
(the value of choice) paradigm of Milton Friedman that won the argument during the 1970s
inflation panic, but have implemented a deceitful bait and switch strategy, followed by
continually shifting the goalposts – claiming – it would of worked but we weren't
pure enough.
But parts of what Milton Friedman said (for instance the danger of bad micro-economic
design of welfare systems creating poverty traps, and the inherent problems of high tariff
rates) had a kernel of truth. (Unfortunately, Friedman's macro-economics was almost all wrong
and has done great damage.)
"In that context it felt free to override national governments on any issue that
might affect international trade, most notably environmental policies."
Not entirely sure about that. The one case where I was informed enough to really know
detail was the China and rare earths WTO case. China claimed that restrictions on exports of
separated but otherwise unprocessed rare earths were being made on environmental grounds.
Rare earth mining is a messy business, especially the way they do it.
Well, OK. And if such exports were being limited on environmental grounds then that would
be WTO compliant. Which is why the claim presumably.
It was gently or not pointed out that exports of things made from those same rare earths
were not limited in any sense. Therefore that environmental justification might not be quite
the real one. Possibly, it was an attempt to suck RE using industry into China by making rare
earths outside in short supply, but the availability for local processing being unrestricted?
Certainly, one customer of mine at the time seriously considered packing up the US factory
and moving it.
China lost the WTO case. Not because environmental reasons aren't a justification for
restrictions on trade but because no one believed that was the reason, rather than the
justification.
I don't know about other cases – shrimp, tuna – but there is at least the
possibility that it's the argument, not the environment, which wasn't sufficient
justification?
Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and
institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.
In the EU, East Asia, and North America, some of what has taken place is the
rationalization of bureaucratic practices and the weakening of archaic localisms. Some of
these developments have been positive.
In this respect, neoliberalism in the blanket sense used by Likbez and many others is like
what the the ancien regime was, a mix of regressive and progressive tendencies. In the
aftermath of the on-going upheaval, it is likely that it will be reassessed and some of its
features will be valued if they manage to persist.
I'm thinking of international trade agreements, transnational scientific organizations,
and confederations like the European Union.
steven t johnson 10.29.19 at 12:29 am
If I may venture to translate @1?
Right-wing populism like Orban, Salvini, the Brexiteers are sweeping the globe and this is
more of the same.
Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing
Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional
quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face
of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular
stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't
collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic
growth without end/crisis.
I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading
system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent,
rigid class system .
If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to
hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or
nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good"
mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.
Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but
self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social
cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners.
The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is
probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be
shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years
of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will
probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things
(despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly
likely to be manipulated like Trump.
Again, despite the fury the old internationalism is collapsing under stagnation and
weeping about it is irrelevant. Without any real ideas, we can only react to events as
nationalist predatory capitals fight for their new world.
I'm not saying the new right wing populism is better. The New Deal/Great Society did more
for America than its political successors since Nixon et al. The years since 1968 I think
have been a regression and I see no reason–alas–that it can't get even worse.
I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way
likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem
being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral
values against socialism, no matter what voters say.
It is a particular mutation of the original concept similar to mutation of socialism into
national socialism, when domestic policies are mostly preserved (including rampant
deregulation) and supplemented by repressive measures (total surveillance) , but in foreign
policy "might make right" and unilateralism with the stress on strictly bilateral regulations
of trade (no WTO) somewhat modifies "Washington consensus". In other words, the foreign
financial oligarchy has a demoted status under the "national neoliberalism" regime, while the
national financial oligarchy and manufactures are elevated.
And the slogan of "financial oligarchy of all countries, unite" which is sine qua
non of classic neoliberalism is effectively dead and is replaced by protection racket of
the most political powerful players (look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here
;-)
> I think every sentence in that comment is either completely wrong or at least
debatable. And is likbez actually John Hewson, because that comment reads like one of John
Hewson's commentaries
> Most obviously, to define Warren and Trump as both being neoliberals drains the
term of any meaning
You are way too fast even for a political football forward ;-).
Warren capitalizes on the same discontent and the feeling of the crisis of neoliberalism
that allowed Trump to win. Yes, she is a much better candidate than Trump, and her policy
proposals are better (unless she is coerced by the Deep State like Trump in the first three
months of her Presidency).
Still, unlike Sanders in domestic policy and Tulsi in foreign policy, she is a neoliberal
reformist at heart and a neoliberal warmonger in foreign policy. Most of her policy proposals
are quite shallow, and are just a band-aid.
> Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every
political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of
the free market.
This is a typical stance of neoliberal MSM, a popular line of attack on critics of
neoliberalism.
Yes, of course, not everything political and institutional development of the last 40
years comes down to the worship of the "free market." But how can it be otherwise? Notions of
human agency, a complex interaction of politics and economics in human affairs, technological
progress since 1970th, etc., all play a role. But a historian needs to be able to somehow
integrate the mass of evidence into a coherent and truthful story.
And IMHO this story for the last several decades is the ascendance and now decline of
"classic neoliberalism" with its stress on the neoliberal globalization and opening of the
foreign markets for transnational corporations (often via direct or indirect (financial)
pressure, or subversive actions including color revolutions and military intervention) and
replacement of it by "national neoliberalism" -- domestic neoliberalism without (or with a
different type of) neoliberal globalization.
Defining features of national neoliberalism along with the rejection of neoliberal
globalization and, in particular, multiparty treaties like WTO is massive, overwhelming
propaganda including politicized witch hunts (via neoliberal MSM), total surveillance of
citizens by the national security state institutions (three-letter agencies which now
acquired a political role), as well as elements of classic nationalism built-in.
The dominant ideology of the last 30 years was definitely connected with "worshiping of
free markets," a secular religion that displaced alternative views and, for several decades
(say 1976 -2007), dominated the discourse. So worshiping (or pretense of worshiping) of "free
market" (as if such market exists, and is not a theological construct -- a deity of some
sort) is really defining feature here.
Regardless of what do you think about Donald Trump, what intelligence community did was a plain vanilla coup d'état approved by Obama
and coordinated by run by Brennan faction in CIA. With active participation of factions of FBI (Counterintelligence department),
Department of Justice (several highly placed officials) and State Department (which is a real neocon vipers nest so the majority of high level officials,
especially connected with the Ukrainian color revolution participated) eagerly participated in the coup.
They left too many fingerprints in this and now Barr hopefully will brings some individuals to justice for this coup.
Notable quotes:
"... I was fortunate to participate in a forum in August sponsored by the Ron Paul Institute. Here is my presentation on the attempted coup by US Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community. ..."
I was fortunate to participate in
a forum in August sponsored by the Ron Paul Institute. Here is my presentation on the attempted
coup by US Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community.
"... You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little - a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump - except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence. ..."
"... General Michael Flynn , for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about). ..."
"... Last week he put out a narrative that US Chargé d'Affaires to Ukraine Bill Taylor fired a gun-that-smoked fer sure in testimony. Except, of course, as per Mr. Schiff's usual practice, he refused to issue any actual transcript of the interview in evidence, while there are plenty of indications that Mr. Taylor's second-hand gossip was roundly refuted under counter-questioning by the non-Jacobin minority members of the House intel Committee. ..."
"... Mr. Schiff's pattern lo these many months of strife has been to claim ultimate proof of wrongdoing only to have it blow up in his face. It's a face that many Americans are sick of seeing and hearing from, and I am serenely confident that before this colossal scandal is resolved, the Congressman from Hollywood will be fatally disgraced, as was his role-model, Senator Joseph McCarthy, before him. ..."
Judging by the volume of intemperate emails and angry social media blasts that come my way, the party of impeachment seems to
be inhaling way too much gas from the smoking guns it keeps finding in the various star chambers of its inquisition against you-know-who.
You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little - a $32 million-dollar effort
starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised,
and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump - except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence.
When you state just that, these frothing hysterics reply that many background figures - if not the Golden Golem of Greatness himself
- were indicted and convicted of crimes by Mr. Mueller's crew. Oh yes!
The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency was indicted for spending $400,000 on Facebook ads (and never extradited
or tried in a court-of-law). Pretty impressive victory there!
The hacking of Hillary Clinton's emails by "Russia"? Still just alleged, never proven, with plenty of shady business around
the search for evidence.
Paul Manafort, on tax evasion of money earned in Ukraine, 2014? We'll see about that as the whole filthy business of the 2014
Ukraine regime change op under Mr. Obama gets reviewed in the months ahead.
George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI? Stand by on that one, too; still a developing story.
General Michael Flynn , for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance
of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing
about).
To set the record straight I'm forced to repeat something that these New Age Jacobins seem unable to process: you don't have to
be a Trump cheerleader to be revolted by the behavior of his antagonists, which is a stunning spectacle of bad faith, dishonesty,
incompetence, and malice -- and is surely way more toxic to the American project than anything the president has done . Every time
I entertain the complaints of these angry auditors, I'm forced to remind myself that these are the same people who think that "inclusion"
means shutting down free speech, who believe that the US should not have borders, who promote transsexual reading hours in the grammar
schools, and who fiercely desire to start a war with Russia.
That's not a polity I want to be associated with and until it screws its head back on, I will remain the enemy of it. In fact,
in early November I'm traveling to New York City, where the Jacobin city council has just made it a crime to utter the phrase illegal
alien in a public place, with a $250,000 penalty attached. I challenge their agents to meet me in Penn Station and arrest me when
I go to the information kiosk and inquire if they know what is the best place in midtown Manhattan to meet illegal aliens.
The volume of Jacobin hysteria ratcheted up to "11" late last week when the news broke that the Attorney General's study of RussiaGate's
origins was upgraded to a criminal investigation, and that a voluminous report from the DOJ Inspector General is also about to be
released. What do you suppose they're worried about? Naturally the Jacobins' bulletin board, a.k.a The New York Times ,
fired a salvo denouncing William Barr -- so expect his reputation to be the next battle zone for these ever more desperate fanatics.
Talk of preemptively impeaching him is already crackling through the Twitter channels. That will be an excellent sideshow.
Meanwhile, how is Rep, Adam Schiff's secret proceeding going?
Last week he put out a narrative that US Chargé d'Affaires to Ukraine Bill Taylor fired a gun-that-smoked fer sure in testimony.
Except, of course, as per Mr. Schiff's usual practice, he refused to issue any actual transcript of the interview in evidence, while
there are plenty of indications that Mr. Taylor's second-hand gossip was roundly refuted under counter-questioning by the non-Jacobin
minority members of the House intel Committee.
Mr. Schiff's pattern lo these many months of strife has been to claim ultimate proof of wrongdoing only to have it blow up
in his face. It's a face that many Americans are sick of seeing and hearing from, and I am serenely confident that before this colossal
scandal is resolved, the Congressman from Hollywood will be fatally disgraced, as was his role-model, Senator Joseph McCarthy, before
him.
Larry Johnson
says that James Clapper and John Brennan set up a CIA task force to prevent Trump from
winning the 2016 election. That is quite possible or even likely. There will be
bureaucratic traces of it and some people will sing. Barr and Durham will find them. Where
will it end? Well ...
Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi - 23:26 UTC · Oct 25,
2019
LOL. Barack Obama is going to love this interview his former DIA James Clapper just gave
to CNN about the Durham probe: "It's frankly disconcerting to be investigated for having
done... what we were told to do by the president of the United States."
Clapper: Trump administration is sending us this message
Don't expect AG Barr to come up with a real investigation of any CIA op
against Trump. Barr worked for the CIA in the 70s while he was going to law school in
Washington, DC. As Attorney General his first time around he protected the first Bush
regime from the Iran-contra fallout. It was Robert Swan Mueller III, the very special
prosecutor of Manuel Noriega, who managed to not notice the cocaine and weapons moved
through Panama for Ollie North and friends. Or, for that matter, all the money-laundering
the CIA was doing through Panamanian banks.
A secret CIA task force to ensure Clinton won? It would have started by telling the world
that Clinton was the patriot who stood up and repeated what she was told to say by the CIA.
It could have continued by presenting a report that Clinton Ca$h was dingbat. And that the
CIA found no evidence of email server practices being used by foreign agencies. And under the
table it could have pressured Comey to keep his useless mouth shut and actually be competent
enough to control his underlings' mouths too. If they had any real competence, they could
have either planted stories (true!) in the foreign media about Trump's business career or
exposed the ongoing Cambridge Analytica sleaze.
If they had any real competence, they knew the biggest asset Trump had was billions of
dollars of free publicity that wasn't ever going to go to Bernie Sanders. It's not clear why
they'd think a CIA task force would help that. Rich people not buying advertising from Trump
megaphones was the solution there.
But of course the rich people are the #1 Trumpists, because Wall Street, the real swamp,
is Trump's native habitat.
Lastly of course it is not at all clear why they think impeaching Trump is going to
give them what they want, any more than it's clear how Trump isn't giving them enough of what
they want.
It's not like he actually draining the "Swamp," even in the half-wits' definition of
the "Swamp" as elected politicians who follow the law or the unnamed and unnameable
conspirators of the Deep State.
Look, the dirt the Clinton campaign had was the Access Hollywood tape, and they used it.
(Not officially of course.) And, supposing, for a deranged moment, that Seth Rich leaked the
DNC emails to Julian Assange, why does Trump want to kill Jullian Assange?
The call for Bill Barr to rig up to rig up a fake conspiracy charge is contemptible. It
shows you how people could have sincerely believed Moscow show trials.
Don't expect AG Barr to come up with a real investigation of any CIA op against Trump. Barr
worked for the CIA in the 70s while he was going to law school in Washington, DC. As Attorney
General his first time around he protected the first Bush regime from the Iran-contra
fallout. It was Robert Swan Mueller III, the very special prosecutor of Manuel Noriega, who
managed to not notice the cocaine and weapons moved through Panama for Ollie North and
friends. Or, for that matter, all the money-laundering the CIA was doing through Panamanian
banks.
The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the DOJ's
Russiagate probe taking it up a notch, to now be turned into criminal investigation.
Deep State officials John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey better lawyer up.
What began as an administrative review by the Justice Department into the origins of
Russiagate has "shifted" to a criminal inquiry , according to the New
York Times , citing two people familiar with the matter.
The move will allow prosecutor John H Durham the power to subpoena documents and witnesses,
to impanel a grand jury, and to file criminal charges. Durham's progress has
been closely monitored by Attorney General William Barr, who appointed the veteran investigator
in May , tasking him with looking into FBI and CIA intelligence gathering operations
surrounding the 2016 US election.
As the Daily
Caller ' s Chuck Ross notes, Barr said on April 10 that he believed "spying" had taken
place against the Trump campaign , and that he doesn't buy former FBI officials' version of how
the collusion investigation began.
Little is known about Durham's activities so far in the investigation. The Times report
said it is unclear when the investigation took on a criminal element, or what specific crime
Durham is investigating.
Durham
accompanied Barr to Italy late in September as part of an inquiry into U.S. intelligence
agents' activities there during the 2016 campaign. They also inquired about Joseph Mifsud, a
mysterious Maltese professor who established contact with Trump aide George Papadopoulos in
2016. – Daily
Caller
Just over three weeks ago , the Times also reported that President Trump asked the
Australian Prime Minister to help Barr uncover the origins of "Russiagate," a move which
Justice Department officials said "would be neither illegal nor untoward for Trump to ask."
And according to NBC News , Durham has set his sights on former CIA Director John Brennan and former
national intelligence director James Clapper .
Durham's investigation has been running parallel to a probe by Justice Department Inspector
General (and registered Democrat) Michael Horowitz, who told Congress on Thursday that he
expects his report to be "lengthy," but able to be made mostly available to the public.
The Durham probe is similar to a Justice Department inspector general's investigation into
the FBI's surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Michael Horowitz, the inspector
general, told Congress on Thursday that the report of that investigation is "lengthy" and
that he anticipates most of it will be made public.
Horowitz has been investigating whether the FBI misled the foreign surveillance court in
spy applications against Page. Investigators relied heavily on the Steele dossier in the
applications, though information in that document was largely unverified. Unlike Durham,
Horowitz has not had subpoena power, and cannot use a grand jury as part of his
investigation. – Daily
Caller
And of course, with Durham's administrative review turning into a criminal probe , the
Times has already given away the predictable response from the left; Barr is
investigating the Obama intelligence community to help Trump win in 2020. Nothing to see here
folks, right?
Warren (D)(1): "Warren cutting into Biden's lead in new SC 2020 Democratic poll" [
Post and Courier ]. "Biden's lead in South Carolina, which had hovered around 20 percentage
points since the summer, has shrunk Biden received 30 percent to Warren's 19 percent. Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders at 13 percent and California Sen. Kamala Harris at 11 percent are the only
two other candidates with double-digit results in South Carolina . The biggest gains in the
latest poll came from fifth- and sixth-place contenders, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg
and billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer." • Everybody loves a winner, but the gains
in the third tier show SC is still fluid (though perhaps not a firewall for Biden).
Yet another case where Warren's problem statement isn't commensurate with the proposed
solution .
Impeachment
"Republicans criticize House impeachment process -- while fully participating in probe" [
WaPo ]. "Then the questions begin to fly, largely from the expert staff hired by lawmakers
on the House Intelligence Committee and other panels participating in the probe. Each side gets
an equal amount of questions, as dictated by long-standing House rules guiding these
interviews. 'It starts one hour, one hour,' said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), explaining how the
questioning moves beyond one-hour blocks for each side. 'Then it goes 45, 45, 45, 45, with
breaks, occasionally, and breaks for lunch.' Meadows, one of Trump's staunchest allies, said
each side has been allowed an unlimited amount of questions they can ask of witnesses.' Those
participating in the closed-door depositions generally say that these interviews are very
professional and that both sides have operated under
rules that were approved in January ." • As I've said, I don't like the policy on
transcripts, and my litmus test for legitimacy is that there's no secret evidence at all. I
don't much like that Republicans can't subpeona witnesses, either.
"MSNBC names four renowned female journalists as moderators for November debate" [
NBC ]. "Moderating the Nov. 20 event, which is being co-hosted by MSNBC and The Washington
Post, will be Rachel Maddow, host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC; Andrea Mitchell, host
of "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on MSNBC and NBC News' chief foreign affairs correspondent;
Kristen Welker, NBC News' White House correspondent; and Ashley Parker, a White House reporter
for The Washington Post." • The count of journalists is off by at least one.
"... The official GOP talking points are that the Impeachment trial is a Deep State partisan witch hunt, being conducted in private and the equivalent of a coup or an attempt to overturn the 2016 elections. This is just being done to create some image that those talking points are substantiated. ..."
"... The impeachment is an Intelligence Community (aka Deep State) operation condoned by the Dems. They have decided to widen the scope to include lots of crimes, rather than just the phone call/funding block issue. This ups the ante, as Trump could easily get out of that, but being continuously assaulted with new claims will be much more difficult. Thus, transforming his investigation into the completely QueenOfWarmongers rubbish known as RussiaGate into a criminal probe with supeona power and so forth creates a counter narrative which Trump can use to defend himself. ..."
"... As for handcuffs, my targets would be Bush, Cheney, Clapper and Brennan, and possibly Mueller too (see his 'management' of the Anthrax attacks). ..."
"... Brennan in cuffs will require his partners in crime at the Oval Office meeting of the principles in late 2016 to be led away in handcuffs also. The 2016 Oval Office meeting which launched the FISA court referral will necessarily implicate the POTUS. ..."
"... Tax evasion took down gangster Al Capone. Like Al Capone a lesser charge will have John Brennan viewing the world through iron bars. For the intelligence community to actively attempt to decide an election and then actively attempt the coup of a President is damn, damn, damn serious but it pales in comparison to the 9/11 false flag. John Brennan stood at the apex of the 9/11 treachery (interestingly, Robert Mueller was involved too, but his role appears limited to the cover up). It appears John Brennan will get away with 9/11. ..."
"... In other words the Mueller investigation literally was a conspiracy theory. Any mass media organization that discusses "conspiracy theories" but fails to point out this biggest one of them all is engaged in deliberate deceit. ..."
"... I suspect that John Bolton is in fact the mastermind behind this fake "whistleblower" stunt. it's the sort of action Bolton would do as the master bureaucrat, spread false rumors of what the call between Trump and Zelensky contained among his subordinates and Neocon fellow travellers to feed into the narrative of a corrupt deal with Zelensky to derail Trumps plans in Ukraine and Russia and feed the Democrats impeachment push. Trump declassifying the transcript of the conversation probably caught him by surprise and threw a wrench into his plans since Trump has refused to declassify documents in the past and the State Department probably would have argued that Trump not declassify the conversation. ..."
"... In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of the case. Judge Sullivan insisted that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation. He appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate whether members of the trial team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt. ..."
Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia
investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry,
according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it,
John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand
jury and to file criminal charges.
In contrast these formulations in Bezos' blog on the very same issue are confusing me.
The federal prosecutor tapped by Attorney General William P. Barr to examine the origins of
the FBI's probe of President Trump's 2016 campaign is conducting an investigation officials
consider criminal in nature, according to a person familiar with the matter.
...
The significance of officials deeming Durham's probe "criminal" is difficult to determine by
itself.
...
It was not immediately clear whether officials' consideration of his work as criminal
represented a shift in the seriousness of his investigation or whether a grand jury had been
convened.
Durham's work is considered as criminal? The investigation itself has committed a crime? The
attorney is a criminal?
One wonders if this choice of phrasing was intended to be ambiguous.
Anyway.
I for one will cheer when Durham puts handcuffs on John Brennan.
Posted by b on October 25, 2019 at 12:09 UTC | Permalink
The official GOP talking points are that the Impeachment trial is a Deep State partisan
witch hunt, being conducted in private and the equivalent of a coup or an attempt to overturn
the 2016 elections. This is just being done to create some image that those talking points
are substantiated.
In order to understand this, you need to start with impeachment, and then look at what is
behind that.
The impeachment is an Intelligence Community (aka Deep State) operation condoned by
the Dems. They have decided to widen the scope to include lots of crimes, rather than just
the phone call/funding block issue. This ups the ante, as Trump could easily get out of that,
but being continuously assaulted with new claims will be much more difficult. Thus,
transforming his investigation into the completely QueenOfWarmongers rubbish known as
RussiaGate into a criminal probe with supeona power and so forth creates a counter narrative
which Trump can use to defend himself.
This seems pretty obvious.
The more interesting thing is, why did Polosi take on the impeachment inquiry? Well, it
will burn Biden, which is probably good because he's lost it. And, it will create all this
anti-Trump sentiment. But, her job, via the DNC is to get a nominee who will keep the status
quo and defeat Trump. They are currently putting their apples in the Warren bucket. This is
acceptable to the powers behind the scenes (MIC/Oil/...) as she will do the least amount of
change.
But, Polosi and the core Dems bigger problems are Burnie and Gabbard. They represent
radical change and the powers that should not be will do whatever they can to prevent that.
And, the bigger problem there is that Bernie's strategy is to create a movement which will
continue to engage. From his 2016 campaign you get AOC and Omar who are also radical. Thus,
this is a threat which will need to be constantly fought. And, with the lack of engagement by
the younger generation with the standard media outlets, they are even harder to control.
Now that the cat is out of the bag about RussiaGate, I imagine that the powers that be are
pissed off with QueenOfWarmongers for her stupid claims about Gabbard and Stein being Russian
assets. Flogging a dead horse (does not make it run faster). This just further enrages those
who are for more radical change.
Meanwhile, the "gang of four" are learning, independently and from Bernie, how power works
in DC. This represents a further challenge.
As for handcuffs, my targets would be Bush, Cheney, Clapper and Brennan, and possibly
Mueller too (see his 'management' of the Anthrax attacks).
IMO this investigation of the Mueller investigation is one part revenge and the rest is
gathering the evidence against Trump in order to bury it ahead of Trumps reelection. The full
Mueller report nor the evidence to produce it have been released and with this new
investigation controlled by Trumps protector it never will be while Barr and Trump are still
in power.
The conservative ruling power elite are staging a coup in America in order to establish
permanent conservative minority control of the levers of power and they see this as their
last best hope of achieving that goal. Buckle up this is going to get ugly as the
conservatives are starting to panic.
Brennan in cuffs will require his partners in crime at the Oval Office meeting of the
principles in late 2016 to be led away in handcuffs also. The 2016 Oval Office meeting which
launched the FISA court referral will necessarily implicate the POTUS. However, I don't
see these events materializing because compared to the president Trump replaced, Trump has
been far less urbane, educated and civil. All we usually ask of presidents is to be cool and
sophisticated when ordering the drone murders of our fellow U.S. Citizens, case in point as
ordered by Barack Obama with the 8-year old Nasser al Awlaki and her 16-year old brother,
Abdulrahman.
Tax evasion took down gangster Al Capone. Like Al Capone a lesser charge will have John
Brennan viewing the world through iron bars. For the intelligence community to actively
attempt to decide an election and then actively attempt the coup of a President is damn,
damn, damn serious but it pales in comparison to the 9/11 false flag. John Brennan stood at
the apex of the 9/11 treachery (interestingly, Robert Mueller was involved too, but his role
appears limited to the cover up). It appears John Brennan will get away with 9/11.
But, like Al Capone, John Brennan will live out his life caged up with his own kind.
With any luck this may all lead back to Obama, he is a truly evil man who (literally) got
away with murder. Perhaps if he got dragged away in handcuffs with Trump, Brennan et al then
we'd finally get a true assessment of his time as president...
From the early days of Russiagate I expected that the truth would never come out. (This is
the US of A, after all) Democrats would continue to live in their media
shaped delusions. (I am a Green Party voter). What truth did come out would be shaped by the
media to keep the Democratic voters steadfast in their heartfelt delusions.
Reuters has an article linked from their front page that is similar in intent to the
Bezo-blog that b has pointed out. I tried to choose a couple of paragraphs from the Reuters
article so that you would get the intent of it, but it is the *whole* thing, so read it.
**While reading it** try and see the article from the viewpoint of a brainwashed Democrat.
The article was designed to feed confirmation bias.
Read the whole thing, please.
Here are two unsurprising paragraphs:
Democrats and some former law enforcement officials say Barr is using the Justice
Department to chase unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that could benefit the Republican
president politically and undermine former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia
investigation.
Mueller's investigation found that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump,
and led to criminal convictions of several former campaign aides. But Mueller concluded
that he did not have enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy with Russia.
The short of it: They're now already acting like a bunch of cockroaches scrambling when
the light's turned on, all looking to pin the blame on someone else.
He'd also love to see leading media propagandists charged, something I wholeheartedly
agree with. (Though I'd string up all the propagandists for much worse crimes than
Russiagate, which like "impeachment" was never anything more than retarded political
theater.)
Only two options here folks: Either the Washington Bezos Post is a) staffed
by deliberate liars or it is b) staffed by morons who cannot construct a comprehensible
sentence.
Well, there is a third possibility: c) Both of the above.
The US is now a country that has a growing cabal of current and past leadership that are
criminally complicit in deceiving the American public as is detailed in the Joe Rogan
Experience #1368 - Edward Snowden video that is almost 3 hours long....see Petri comment # 67
in Open Thread for link.....this is not Snowden the glitz movie but Snowden the very
intelligent and humanistically patriotic person.
The recent phase of deception, according to Snowden has its roots in the 3 letter spy
agencies having overstepped constitutional bounds after 9/11. While the deception about
monitoring of Americans is criminal, its long term underlying goal is, and has been, to cover
up the take over of America by the international cult behind private finance led empire.
In case all missed the slow frog boiling transition, what use to be a country that was
established to be by and for the people (E Pluribus Unum) has now been turned into a tool of
unilateral financial control of the world that is faltering because China/Russia, et al are
not going along with the program.
The ongoing deception house of cards is collapsing as Might-Makes-Right can no longer hold
it together. The demise of the private finance/property/inheritance centered social contract
of the West is not a straight forward collapse as we are seeing, but collapsing it is.
How so very interesting to watch unfold.....as Snowden would encourage you, each of us has
our opportunity to play our part in evolving our society.....play your part without fear like
Snowden encourages and has provided such moving example of.
I find it impossible to get my hopes up that justice will ever be served to anyone in a
position of authority or malign influence in this country because they're all part of the
same Kabuki theater designed to keep us divided, confused, and unable to coalesce around a
strategy to confront them.
These investigations are always the stalling tactic they use to keep one side hoping for
justice while making the opposing side feel that it's the victim of a witch hunt, and
invariable both sides will be disappointed in the results while the power structure will
remain intact.
The only time anything resembling "justice" is served is when some low-level persons with
enough name recognition to make headlines, i.e. Martha Steward or these celebrity parents who
paid to get their kids into college, are sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion of a
functioning justice system. In reality the justice system we have is nothing more than
another line in the phalanx of defense the ruling elites (see: globalists, capitalists,
zionists) have built to protect their corrupt position of power.
Nobody who lies us into wars, orchestrates terrorist attacks (real or synthetic) against
us, or smuggles heroin from Afghanistan to a city near you as part of a domestic
destabilization campaign will ever get into trouble until we bring that trouble directly to
them outside of official channels.
To your list of indictments of Mueller you might add his role in the run up to 9/11 and in
its (non)investigation; the Whitey Bulger travesty in Boston; Uranium One. I'm sure there's
more. Precisely contrary to the Paladin of integrity portrait of Mueller, the Swamp would
have so much on this guy as to make him a safe pair of hands with the Russiagate IO. Who else
(unless senile) would want that turkey on their record?
Fuzzball @ 6--
And to your list of other perps, we might consider adding:
Cheryl Mills, Clinton counsel
Susan Rice
Samantha Power
Comey the canary
Clinton herself
Glenn Simpson
and Mr. No-Scandal himself, Hoops and change $$ cha-ching.
That WashPost article, born to confuse, is bizarre. Good catch.
As for Durham, is it known here that he has a track record of covering up for CIA
misdeeds: viz. , briefly, torture and destruction of evidence of torture? A pretty odd
choice for Trump to have made to uncover the plot against him.
"...Mueller ... did not have enough evidence to establish a criminal
conspiracy..."
In other words the Mueller investigation literally was a conspiracy theory. Any mass
media organization that discusses "conspiracy theories" but fails to point out this
biggest one of them all is engaged in deliberate deceit.
In a seismic legal filing, lawyers for Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national
security adviser Michael Flynn, have produced evidence they allege points to a "plot to set
up an innocent man and create a crime" – conduct "so shocking to the conscience and
so inimical to our system" they argue the case against him must be dismissed.
In the document, Flynn's lead legal representative Sydney Powell contends the very
foundation of his prosecution, a 24th January 2017 FBI interview in which the Bureau
alleges he lied about speaking with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak in December
2016.[.]
[.]
"I made your edits" to Michael Flynn's 302 -- his FBI report from the interview Mueller
used to convict him
This is a long inteview with Angelo Codevilla, a conservative writer, academic, and card
carrying member of the Borg. I first ran into him around the time Russia went in to save
Assad, in Asia Times. Some interesting views on the Borg, Russiagate, Snowden, Syria,
Kissinger, etc.
Once upon a time if a person having a superior position in government or business got caught
in an indisgression that impugned his/her honor, the individual would pull their pistol from
their desk drawer and solve the problem as that was deemed the right & proper course of
action -- the honorable thing to do to redeem one's self.
Thus once discovered after his first incident, for example, Bill Clinton would have spared
us all much crap by ending his days while Governor of Arkansas; and before him, Nixon; and
before him, Ike; and before him, Truman; Boeing's CEO; etc.
Alas, there's no sense of honor held by those seeking high office or corporate leadership.
Perhaps the only such person to ever have publicly expressed any contrition for his position
was Andrew Carnegie in his Gospel of Wealth .
But Philanthropy cannot ever atone for violation of the public trust. Even gangsters have
a Code of Honor, but US politicians and all too many bureaucrats--nah: their code is anything
goes in the pursuit of power. IMO, it's such Moral Bankruptcy that gnaws at most of us
barflies regardless of our politics. The Ds are just as guilty as the Rs but none ever go to
jail or get impeached, although occasionally one resigns. On more than one occasion, I've
thought it best just to liquidate the entire governing structure, instruments and denizens of
the federal government and begin again from scratch.
It seems fair to observe that the transition from the Depression to the final depravity of
WW2 must have collectively damaged/shifted the nation's moral center, or is that merely
wishful thinking in order to deal with the reality that at bottom the USA is a massively
immoral construct that must constantly lie to itself lest it wake up to its depravity. How
would kids today even sense that? Easy, through the utterly depraved levels of violence
present within things deemed games that teach how to dehumanize and kill other humans at a
very young age. So, it's actually very simple: A sick, depraved society produces a sick,
depraved government and businesses. One wonders what sort of entity is In God We Trust.
A number of weeks ago I was sent an email by one of my state Senators, Jeff Merkley. I shared
that email with fellow barflys as well as my response. Just today I received a "response" to
my rant about our failing country and below is that email which I think is indicative of how
lost America has become.....this is from what many would consider to be one of the
"better/progressive/representative of the people" Senators in the US....sigh
"
Dear James,
Thank you for contacting me to share your views about President Trump and the impeachment
inquiry opened in the House of Representatives. I appreciate hearing from you on this serious
issue.
I have heard from Oregonians in large numbers expressing their concerns about statements
made and actions taken by President Trump. I have also heard from some Oregonians who oppose
the impeachment inquiry. I would much prefer that the Senate take up the many House-passed
bills to address the real needs of working Oregonians, but I also believe we have a sworn
constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law and ensure that federal office-holders are
using their powers for the public interest, not their own.
Testimony and accounts from a number of people directly involved in U.S. foreign policy
lay out extensive efforts by President Trump and his aides to pressure the Ukrainian
government to investigate President Trump's political opponents and, it appears, to condition
U.S. aid on whether Ukraine succumbed to that pressure. The president also publicly called on
the governments of both Ukraine and China to investigate his political opponents during a
press conference on the White House lawn.
These actions are deeply concerning. The goal of U.S. foreign policy should always be to
protect American interests and American security. We cannot sacrifice those core objectives
for any individual's political or personal gain. The Founders were worried about exactly this
scenario, of a president corrupting U.S. foreign policy to serve himself, rather than the
American public, and explicitly discussed it during the Constitutional Convention as a prime
rationale for impeachment.
I also believe that the detailed case laid out by the Special Counsel of obstruction of
justice by the President warrants impeachment. Over 1,000 former federal prosecutors of both
parties have written to Congress to say that any other individual would be indicted on
multiple felony counts based on the evidence compiled by the Special Counsel.
I believe in those words carved above the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Under Law." If the
Department of Justice will not indict a sitting president then impeachment is the only avenue
available to ensure that nobody, not even the president, is above the law.
Impeachment should never be taken lightly, and never be used as a tool of partisan
politics. Disliking a president or their policy choices is not grounds for impeachment, but a
president corrupting his office and subverting the rule of law is. If the House does take the
solemn step of impeaching the President, I will work to ensure that there is a fair trial in
the Senate that presents the American people with a complete picture of the evidence and the
appropriate context to understand its significance.
I will continue to fight for an America where every individual – no matter how
powerful – is held accountable to the law. America's founders created the impeachment
process precisely for that reason.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and your engagement in our democracy.
I hope you continue to contact me about issues that matter to you.
All my best,
Jeffrey A. Merkley
United States Senator
"
So the kabuki hiding the cult of global private finance empire continues
"Equal Justice Under Law" Why wasn't that applied to Obama and Clinton since Merkley was
Senator then? What about Pelosi for not doing her duty to impeach George W Bush? And as we
all know, the list could go on and on. As I wrote above @24, Immorality rules the roost.
There're an average of 135 suicides daily within the USA, but none of them are politicos.
IMO, they need to do their part too and not leave it up to veterans.
Senator Merkley's letter, although sounding nice and righteous, fails to address the
selectivity in "Equal justice under law" that plagues this judicial system, hence rendering
it useless. If there was equality in justice, they should go back to the crimes of Reagan,
the Bushes, the Clintons and Obama before they get to Trump. By the way, Trump is guilty of
many crimes and I'm not discounting them, worst of all posing as a president.
The exhibit below is just a sample of how the deep state is working feverishly to get
their agenda back on tack. John Bolton who is the embodiment of the rot and filth that that
exist in American politics is now throwing more fuel into this fire.
Goes to show that there is no line between the democrats and republicans. These animals
are all woven from the same cloth.
Brennan knows where all the bodys are buried, much as I'd like to see him behind bars,
Its about as likely as me keeping Unicorns in my back paddock.
Sorry, the game is delay, delay and delay.
Its a threat and warning from Trump, but a bluff, because it simply will not happen.
@Bemildred #23
Second the reference.
And I add this snippet: bold is David Samuels, not bold is Angelo Codevilla
There was one quote, I forget who it came from, but it came out of an interaction of one
of the reasonably high-up war planners in the Defense Department and a journalist for, I
think it was, The Atlantic. And the quote was that power creates its own reality. So it
doesn't matter what we say, because even if it's not true now, by the time we're finished
we will make it true. And therefore there is no real difference between statements that are
true or false, as long as we make them.
Do you have the sense that a similar attempt to manufacture reality was at play in
what at this point are the still-unknown interactions between the CIA, the FBI, and the
Obama White House with regard to the surveillance of Donald Trump's associates, and the
attempt to suggest some vast Putin-Trump conspiracy to game American elections, and
whatnot?
I don't think that it went that far. Or I should say, I don't think the people involved
thought about it that deeply.
I would agree.
I think what you had was a small pooling of resources to tweak the news cycle with
regard to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, which then turned into
something very major.
After the election.
After the election. It was, like Watergate, a minor attempt to gain marginal advantage.
Which then, unintended by the people involved at the time, became something very big, which
escaped everyone's control.
I believe that there are a whole bunch of people in Washington right now who are quaking
in their boots because the House Intelligence Committee has shaken loose some of the
documents involved. Because in the long run there are no secrets in Washington. And one can
then wonder about the quality of the people who imagined that the things they did could
remain secret.
It really was a marvel. The idea was that if we all say it together long enough and we
shout it loud so nothing else can be heard, then it will become the effective truth,
Machiavelli's verita effettuale. But I mean, there is a limit to this. I have some close
personal friends who are more on the left, and I said to them: OK. Where's the evidence?
Who did what when to whom? Where are the quids and where are the quos? What's going on
here? And all they could say is, "Well, the investigation is going on."
What is not clear is just how much of the reality will come into the public's
consciousness.
Whose fault is this?
The fault here is not of Democrats on the left. The fault here is of Donald Trump and
his friends who have refused to enforce the most basic laws here. The most obvious one is
Section 798, (18 U.S. Code), the simple comment statute. Now anybody in the intelligence
business knows that this is the live wire of security law. It is a strict liability
statute. It states that any revelation, regardless of circumstance or intent, any
revelation period, of anything having to do with U.S. communications intelligence is
punishable by the 10 and 10. Ten years in the slammer, and $10,000 fine. Per count.
Now the folks who went to The Washington Post and The New York Times in November and
December of 2016 and peddled this story of the intelligence community's conclusion that
Trump and the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, these people ipso facto violated
§798.
Considering these matters are highly classified, and that the number of the people
involved is necessarily very small, identifying them is child's play. But no effort to do
that has been made.
@ Posted by: Michael Droy | Oct 25 2019 18:08 utc | 28
I doubt it (the second part) -- are you familiar with the depth of delusion of his
supporters? It's all about perception; they never noticed the underlying reality of his
tenure, so why would they start? They'll be more than happy to attribute it all to Agent
Orange or whoever becomes their subsequent bête noire/obsessive hate figure.
>Why not the whole shebang?! They all have blood on their hands.
> Posted by: Barovsky | Oct 25 2019 13:45 utc | 11
Because there would be no one left to give orders to the peons! How would we know what to do
without self-important Dear Leaders incorrectly telling us how to do our jobs, like at
Boeing?
Yes they all have blood on their hands. The motto "We must all hang together or we shall
surely all hang separately" comes to mind, except that there is no honor among these thieves.
Instead the DC Dunces have formed a circular firing squad, and everyone is waiting to see who
will shoot first.
Here's a report saying the slogan to be used in protests this weekend against Trump is
"Nobody is Above the Law." Unfortunately, that's one of the biggest of all BigLies. If that
were true, then we wouldn't be having this Impeachment free-for-all at all because Trump and
all his predecessors would already be in jail along with most of Congress, numerous
bureaucrats and businesspeople. It's a crying shame I'm barred from commenting at the website
I cited, but that's because I called out the crimes of Obama and Clinton, et al--talk about
double standards and total lack of credibility. If I were to attend one of the protests, I'd
carry a placard calling out the BigLie. If any barflies do, I hope they'll carry a similar
placard as the wholesale lack of applying the law is at the root of our collective corruption
problem.
The Jeff Bozo Propaganda Rag article was written by one Matt Zapotosky who covers Justice
Dept issues for the newspaper's national security team. He has a Bachelor of Journalism
degree from Ohio University.
Does this background seem to MoA barflies to be a bit odd? Shouldn't writers specialising
in Justice Dept issues have some understanding of the legal system and its operations, to the
extent of having law degrees themselves? Does the national security team at WaPo not smell as
if it's stacked to the rafters with intel agents telling people what to write?
One wonders also what Journalism students are taught at universities in Western countries
these days.
How is it that Trump demonstrators, whether for him or against him, are unable to notice the
Empire's world-wide killing machine that never sleeps? Huge crowds around the world shouted
"Hands Off Iraq" before the 2003 invasion. What happened to them? Did they all get too old
and sick to do anything anymore?
I used to know a journalism professor. He said most of his students were preparing for a
corporate career in public relations. Not many were interested in learning how to reveal the
crimes of the empire.
It was similar with a labor law class I audited a long time ago. I was the only
labor-oriented student. The rest were headed for "human resources management" or to be
corporate anti-labor lawyers.
There aren't enough handcuffs for all of these treasonous, criminal scum going back a hundred
years. May I suggest hemp rope? It's reusable and environmentally friendly.
thanks b... it is hard to see this getting traction if the msm is unwilling to address the
news in an unbiased manner, or leaves out critical information on what is taking place inside
the political system of the usa and the role that the cia-fbi has played in creating the
mueller investigation... thus the question of just who is Joseph Mifsud, remains off the
radar of most, in spite of how important this question about who he is in all of this...
disobedient media was asking this same question back in an article from april 4 2018 -
All Russiagate Roads Lead To London As Evidence Emerges Of Joseph Mifsud's Links To UK
Intelligence
i just can't see the msm cooperating here and that means trumps pushback on all this is
going to be hard to get traction unless something changes.. it will be framed as 'trump
trying to evade the impeachment process on him'...
so just where is joseph mifsud and what role has he played in all this? the dem crowd
claim he is russian intel! who is he and what agencies was he connected to? he played George
Papadopoulos
like a fiddle.. what agency was he working for? we need to know the answer to this to get
some traction here..
It is all following the predictions of the mysterious Q-anon, who has not been heard from
since the message board 8 Chan was taken off-line in the wake of mass shootings and the MSM
claiming right-wing white supremacists etc used 8 Chan for manifestos of their sick views
(despite using FaceBook, Twitter, general internet etc as well).
There were - in the 3570 'Q drops' (posts) from 29 Oct 2017 to 2 Aug 2019 - many
indications that Q was a group of US military intelligence agents who had close access to the
Trump administration and were using 8 Chan as a back channel communication to the public to
circumvent the MSM. At least that is the narrative and it is worth doing your own research to
see what you think.
Q predicted a week or so before it happened that mass shootings would be used for that
purpose to silence this back channel - but that the 'plan' would still go ahead - involving
Barr, Durham and Horowitz to take down the 'deep state', starting by exposing and prosecuting
the 'Russiagate' fake conspiracy as the planned coup of the DNC-Clinton
campaign-FBI-CIA-elements within UK&Australia-CNN-MSNBC-NYT-WaPo etc.
That 'plan' seems to be now unfolding - right according to plan.
@16 psychohistorian
The eternal powers available inside a constant state of emergency. Bush enabled Obama enabled
Trump. Especially via the post 9-11 editions of the sure-to-be-passed NDAA, signed into the
next year, l sometimes on the eves of midnight before the turn of the new year.
Have listened to half the Rogan-Snowden podcast so far. It's the stuff we all know is
happening, but the fine detail of how we got here are just so compelling.
If Google knows what you had for breakfast then 'In Don We Trust'
re ...One wonders what sort of entity is In God We Trust.
There was an explanation that fit/s the observed scene quite closely and even yields/ed
some prescient results. When I 1st heard it, my pause-button locked:
This is smoke and mirrors to take the heat off Trump after Juliani's "drug deal" didn't
deliver. They have tried this before with Rosenstein and couldn't even get an indictment out
of the grand jury. A judge just ordered the elease of the Muller evidence that Barr has been
deperatly trying to hide. If it shows that Barr was hiding it to protect the Trump clan the
gig is up on this whole tin foil hat cult Briebart and Fox have been manufacturing.
@karlof1 (26) If Pelosi had tried to impeach GW Bush, presumably for starting a war against
Iraq on false pretenses, the process would have severely damaged members of the Democratic
caucus, all but one of whom were complicit in approving that war. They did not formally
authorize or declare war, but they most definitely supported it. It's the same with
Russiagate and involves some of the same characters. The last thing they want is to have
their own complicity in a deep state/Clinton plot exposed.
Johnson had mentioned this being in the works some time ago. Looks like a section of the
swamp will be drained in a ig way - perhaps leaving Trumping a very powerful position for his
next term... which may not be a good thing.
Looks like Trump's opponents will be trying to use the media against him and the
investigation.
Although they have the media onside, if the investigation is above board then the Trump
faction will have the military. It was a fairly major conspiracy to prent Trump gaining
office and then trying to remove him from office that also involved foreign powers. If it
comes under subversion or something like that,then I take it the military may be able to act
to enforce the investigation findings.
Will be interesting.
Ukrainegate involves much more egregious crimes than Russiagate.
How exactly have we come to this? It is now an "abuse of power"
to investigate corruption. There is nothing suspicious whatsoever
about the timing of Trump's request to Zelensky. He had to wait till
a more favorable administration came to power in Ukraine to make the
request and Biden had already announced his candidacy by then. Poroshenko
has been accused of accepting a 100 million dollar bribe to terminate the
investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden. What is Burisma anyway? Has
it ever produced a single cu. ft. of gas or a single barrel of oil? Or
was it a front for money laundering and all the rest of the stories about it
are a crock of shit? Where does it get all the cash to throw at sleazy
politicians and their creepy relatives? The federal government is a vast
criminal conspiracy desperately trying to cover ut its crimes. Ukraine
is a monumental crime scene. The entire country should be cordoned off with
police tape. Under the Obama administration, a Walpurgisnacht of demonically
possessed democrats and some republicans,descended upon Ukraine in a satanic
orgy of rape, looting, pillage and corruption.
"At some point the lawyers for the media companies will wake up and realize that spreading
lies on behalf of people facing criminal charges could expose them to obstruction charges as
well."
Quote is from linked article at
@Posted by: james | Oct 25 2019 20:52 utc | 46
Thank you, that sounds valid to me. Links would be helpful. I usually have limited
connections to those sources as I am not a fan. I do like the intrepid musings of amazing
polly when she is outing the maxwell/epstein team and their captured media.
Thanks for your reply! Wasn't that a George Carlin quip or perhaps from Cache-22
?
Rob @47--
Thanks for your reply! As you'll know if you've read enough of my writings here, I hold
both Ds & Rs in contempt and judge them unfit to govern as most are guilty of one or more
crimes, and at the very least of subverting the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend.
On the current Syria thread, I wrote why that's so
here .
evilempire @50--
"The federal government is a vast criminal conspiracy desperately trying to cover ut[sic]
its crimes."
That's an excellent summation of its behavior since 1945. I'd go back further in time, but
I haven't found enough evidence to prove a bi-partisan criminal conspiracy prior to then,
although the collusion between FDR and Wendell Willkie in 1940 merits further
investigation.
Agree "it is pretty crazy". What's more crazy is if you read through the sometimes riddle
like nature of 'Q' - it is all predicted in detail: www.qmap.pub
Two sides of the Deep State at civil war - nationalist-industrial/military/DIA (with Fox
News and some alt-media) versus globalist-financial-industrial/CIA/FBI (with most MSM).
ia @ 17 said; "The only time anything resembling "justice" is served is when some low-level
persons with enough name recognition to make headlines, i.e. Martha Steward or these
celebrity parents who paid to get their kids into college, are sacrificed in order to
maintain the illusion of a functioning justice system. In reality the justice system we have
is nothing more than another line in the phalanx of defense the ruling elites (see:
globalists, capitalists, zionists) have built to protect their corrupt position of power."
While we here on B's set are following his He done it, no she did it, sure enough they did it
script. the drivers behind the the political actors are the corporate sponsors. How about
lets discussing them?
I want to know more about Burisma Holdings in the Ukraine,
who are the oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Gaze, and Lebanon Egypt etc. ?
It is interesting to study drug trafficking in Afghanistan.
The politicians are corporate driven yet no one is working that angle. Politicians are
immune, but private corporate persons are not. Lets look at wall street how do they play in
this..
And so Moon of Alabama finally you have uncovered the trolls. Finally you have exposed Jack
and Donkey. It took a long while. All that time the doubts were sown but we were never taken
in. I would speculate that they sent money... B. has to survive.
And so Moon of Alabama finally you have uncovered the trolls. Finally you have exposed Jack
and Donkey..." Lochearn@59
Any references? I do hope that you are right. Last week I described them as the Mutt 'n' Jeff
of trolling on this site.
@48/49 peter au... interesting speculation.. will wait and see what comes of all this..
@ 60 ben... would you say the same of mueller who was head of the fbi at the time of 9-11?
what does he know and when did he know it? lots of hidden bodies in both these peoples
pasts... maybe one's actions can even out the others here?
to Rob #47 - and you all. I believe that Pelosi's husband works high up in the MIC. Just as
Teresa May's hubby did. The May family picked up a little extra coin on the bombing of Syria
re the "poisoned spies." Just so, Feinstein's hubby is a RE dealer/developer in SanFran. When
the US Post Office got knee capped who do you suppose bought up the prime lovely
old Post office? It's all pretty sick - and has been going on for decades. Term limits and
public campaign financing is the
only solution. Never happen, but "never say never."
"I have determined that Ukraine has made progress in providing adequate and effective
protection of intellectual property rights. Accordingly, it is appropriate to terminate the
suspension of the duty-free treatment," Trump said in a proclamation on Friday."
I suspect that John Bolton is in fact the mastermind behind this fake "whistleblower"
stunt. it's the sort of action Bolton would do as the master bureaucrat, spread false rumors
of what the call between Trump and Zelensky contained among his subordinates and Neocon
fellow travellers to feed into the narrative of a corrupt deal with Zelensky to derail Trumps
plans in Ukraine and Russia and feed the Democrats impeachment push. Trump declassifying the
transcript of the conversation probably caught him by surprise and threw a wrench into his
plans since Trump has refused to declassify documents in the past and the State Department
probably would have argued that Trump not declassify the conversation.
"The US is now a country that has a growing cabal of current and past leadership that are
criminally complicit in deceiving the American public"
Obama legalized deceiving the American public in his 2012 NDAA, when "Constitutional Law
Professor" Obama repealed the Smith-Mundt Act, the propaganda ban that had been in effect
since around 1948. He literally legalized lying to us. Bet you never heard of it. Reporter
Michael Hastings blew the whistle on this and we all know what happened to him. https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5
And this all will be heard and judged by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has asked Flynn several
times to consider retracting his guilty plea because the judge smelled a rat:
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
unleashed his fury before a packed courtroom. For 14 minutes, he scolded. He chastised. He
fumed. "In nearly 25 years on the bench," he said, "I've never seen anything approaching
the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case."
It was the culmination of a disastrous prosecution: the public corruption case against
former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).
Stevens was convicted in October 2008 of violating federal ethics laws by failing to
report thousands of dollars in gifts he received from friends. But a team of prosecutors
from the U.S. Department of Justice is accused of failing to hand over key exculpatory
evidence and knowingly presenting false evidence to the jury.
The Stevens case is a cautionary tale. It reminds lawyers and nonlawyers alike of the
power and failures of our legal system and those who have sworn to uphold the rule of law.
At the center of the story are real people: an old and powerful politician, a crack defense
team, determined prosecutors, and their supervisors.
"This is a fascinating case study for all lawyers," says criminal defense lawyer Stanley
M. Brand, a partner at Brand Law Group, P.C. "In these high-stakes cases, both sides can
get pretty aggressive and push the envelope. It's great to be aggressive -- it's great to
push, but this case reminds people that they have to observe the limits and the rules."
For months Judge Sullivan had warned U.S. prosecutors about their repeated failure to
turn over evidence. Then, after the jury convicted Stevens, the Justice Department
discovered previously unrevealed evidence. Meanwhile, a prosecution witness and an agent
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) came forward alleging prosecutorial
misconduct. Finally, newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced
that he had had enough and recommended that the seven-count conviction against the former
Alaska senator be dismissed.
On April 7, Judge Sullivan did just that. But he was far from done.
In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of
the case. Judge Sullivan insisted that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too
numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation. He appointed
Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate
whether members of the trial team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt.
Starting w/evilempires comment, which is Wow. Then Miss Lacy, maybe goldherder too but not
sure, to Kadath and then Willow and pogohere I'm not sure I'm at b's site. Great comments.
But certainly not the norm. Things that makes one go hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm...welcome, btw.
"This article seems to contradict many of the points in the link you posted."
No doubt, and it's from 2014. I've read half-a-dozen versions of Biden in Ukraine, all of
them different. That one is all one guy talking, so not much as evidence of anything. But
interesting. Another one had Kolomoisky as the master hand behind the Burisma deception, and
the nominal boss as cutout for him. The guy I posted doesn't mention that. They all seem to
agree it's about gas though. I notice that 2014 piece you posted says Kerry was involved too,
but he would be being SoS.
It stinks any way you slice it. The main thing I take from it at the moment is the big
explosion it caused when Trump went after it is indicative of it's political importance. A
weapon in the war in DC. Poor Zelenski, he is caught in the middle. A comedian.
Did you have a point of view about it, or just sussing out mine?
Fellow barflies, please stop disrespecting other well-behaved patrons whose opinions you find
unappealing.
If you don't like certain commenters' opinions, check the author before reading each
comment.
Some here previously complained about JR being "one note". Well, arguably, we can
characterize psycho and circe similarly. But, they each speak up to remind us of their fairly
unique (at least one this board) perceptions and how new events relate to their mental model
of how things work. I find each of their viewpoints interesting and plausible, as well as
yours -- except when you're making unjustified negative personal remarks.
My opinion right now is that the article you linked may be major
disinformation. Zlochevsky wasn't even the owner of Burisma in 2012.
The article at nakedcapitalism and even b have reported that the owners
were Kolomoiski and perhaps Pinchuk.
evilempire @77: Yes, Naked Capitalism is pretty scrupulous. I tend to think it's Kolomoiski
too, thanks for sharing you view and the link. I was wondering what people here would think
about it.
Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the
thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside
an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it.
... ... ...
Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal
investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room
just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud
was, and struggled to even pronounce his name
... ... ...
As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own
historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud
and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a
criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has
happened before in history.
I do not believe in coincidence. I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that these
three events occurred late last night:
1. The investigation of the roots of the plot to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency is
now a criminal matter.
2. A letter from Inspector General Horowitz announcing that his report on the FISA fraud
would be out shortly with no major redactions.
3. The Government caved to Honey Badger Sidney Powell and allowed her to fully expose
criminal conduct by Michael Flynn's prosecutors.
What is going on? Two words. Bill Barr. The Attorney General has pulled the trigger and
altered the landscape in the Russiagate saga. Having been granted full authority by the
President to declassify information, including intel from the CIA and the NSA, he has now acted
in a powerful, but low key way.
The announcement that this is now a criminal investigation means that anyone, including FBI
agents and CIA officers, who try to hold back information or hide information will be
vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges. Criminal penalties attach. Faced with possible
charges of obstruction, FBI Director Christopher Wray and his sycophants last night folded like
a cheap tent in a hurricane in terms of blocking release of the Inspector General report on
FISA abuses. They also withdrew the FBI objections to the Exhibits that Sidney Powell had
attached to her brief explaining why the FBI had engaged in criminal activity against her
client, General Mike Flynn.
When Durham goes to the CIA, the DIA and the NSA asking questions and demanding documents
they must cooperate or face criminal charges. That is the gamechanger. President Trump granted
Bill Barr full authority to declassify any classified information. That includes anything
collected by the CIA or the NSA. Neither intelligence agency can hide behind the claim that
something is classified. If they try, they will face being charged with obstruction of
justice.
Bill Barr has a spine of steel and plays by the book. He does not color outside the lines. I
do not think the Deep State fully understands or appreciates the depth of peril they now face.
The lies and the withholding of key documents that have been common practice over the last two
and a half years will come to a screeching halt. At some point the lawyers for the media
companies will wake up and realize that spreading lies on behalf of people facing criminal
charges could expose them to obstruction charges as well.
That is what last night means.
Take John Brennan, for example. He is on the hook for perjury. While under oath before
Congress Brennan denied any knowledge of the Hillary-financed Christopher Steele dossier prior
to December 2016. But that is not true. Look for Brennan to be taking the fifth and saying
goodby to his TV gig. This is only the beginning.
With respect to the devastating brief filed by Michael Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, I
want to encourage you to read the piece penned by
Sundance put up at The Conservative Treehouse . A great summary and a chance to read the
actual documents yourself.
Three aces make a fine hand. It would be better to have four. I recommend Trump have
Secretary of the Navy Spencer recall Admiral Mcraven to active duty and charge him with
multiple violations of the UCMJ. That should put the military brass on notice that the jig is
up and they better obey civilian authority, i.e. Trump, or they'll be held to account.
And just in time, Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee has declared that the Mueller Grand
Jury materials must be turned over to the house Judiciary committee.
Coincidence now also the Obama judge who just ruled the House impeachment "inquiry" committee
has the right to all redacted Mueller report Grand Jury testimony. By next Wednesday.
The media spin will be Barr is acting as Trump's personal enforcer and using the powers of
the state to go after our great law enforcement and intel agencies while pursuing right wing
conspiracy theories.
In any case it seems there may be a race now between Nancy/Schiff & Barr/Durham.
It will be interesting to see who flips first and how far Durham's investigation goes and
if it will go up the chain to answer the question what did Obama know and when? And more
importantly if it will uncover collusion among foreign and domestic intelligence to interfere
in an election and frame a president?
I echo what Larry is encouraging readers here to do, that is read 'Honey Badger's' brief plus
the footnotes. It's splodey head material.
What these mutts did to the rule of law is unsettling to the nth degree. Flynn is and was
always innocent of the crappola charges. It's all clearly communicated in her 37-page filing
which also includes new detail with email communications, texts etc in her Exhibits.
As for the Radical Deep State cabal, putting this country and all of her people through
the hell they've created out of thin air, not to forget our allies, we MUST now demand a
full-no-holds-bar airing of the entire caper/coup attempt. Let the chits fall where they will
but they MUST fall. And they MUST pay dearly for the destruction to the countless innocent
lives who were targeted and destroyed by their intentional malice. They MUST pay dearly for
dividing the people of our country simply because they lost their power, their throne, their
New World Order wet dream. And they MUST pay dearly for the sheer hell they've put Trump,
Melania and all of their kids through as a family AND as our President.
Go get em Barr and Durham! Americans stand beside you in your pursuit of justice.
I CANNOT believe the Strzok-Page texts revealing they'd altered the 302s for Gen. Flynn's
January 2017 FBI interview are JUST NOW coming to light. This occurred nearly THREE YEARS
AGO! And it's probably cost the general several hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal
fees. God only knows what it's cost Americans in morale and treasure.
I hope this is going to go a long way in diminishing the FBI's chances of blaming its
seditious conduct on the CIA, when it's becoming more and more apparent that they were
co-conspirators. Has anyone heard of any sanctimonious tweets from the self-righteous James
Comey today???
And leftists have the nerve to call Trump voters fascists... SMFH.
Not conspiracy theory. This is a fact: " A conspiracy theory
promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American
election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. "
Bloomberg got it wrong: this is plotter who are trying to obscure Barr investigatiom with Ukrainegate, nor "The expansion of
the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House has
become a growing threat to the Trump presidency."
Notable quotes:
"... The expansion of the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House has become a growing threat to the Trump presidency. Even before Durham received his new powers, Democrats and others had expressed concerns that Trump wanted to weaponize the Justice Department to further his political aims. ..."
"... Since then, Barr has displayed a strong personal interest in advancing the probe, including traveling twice in recent months to ask Italian intelligence officials for help. He also has been in contact with Australian and British officials. ..."
"... FBI and CIA officials have said that they conducted legal and court-authorized surveillance when they learned of the Russian interference. But Trump and his allies contend that the surveillance -- which they call spying -- was an illegal operation to damage his campaign and presidency. ..."
"... A conspiracy theory promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the leaders of the impeachment investigation, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler released a joint statement late Thursday night in response to news about the Durham inquiry. "These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump's political revenge," the congressmen said. ..."
Prosecutor looking into Russia investigation given new powers
Expanded investigation comes amid impeachment peril for Trump
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether Donald Trump or his 2016 presidential
campaign was illegally spied upon, according to a person familiar with the matter, escalating the controversy
surrounding an inquiry that has remained largely secret for months.
John Durham, the federal prosecutor leading the effort, now has the authority to convene a grand jury and issue
subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or turn over documents.
Trump and his allies have long contended that the investigation into Russian interference in the election,
which led to the inquiry headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, originated with false accusations and was
politically motivated.
The expansion of the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment
investigation in the U.S. House has become a growing threat to the Trump presidency. Even before Durham received
his new powers, Democrats and others had expressed concerns that Trump wanted to weaponize the Justice Department
to further his political aims.
Until now, Durham, who heads the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut, has been doing a review into U.S.
counterintelligence activities conducted by the CIA, FBI and other agencies before and after the 2016 election,
especially related to Trump's campaign and the early days of his presidency.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May he was concerned there may have
been improper spying, though he added at the time he didn't have any concrete evidence. Shortly after the hearing,
Barr appointed Durham to lead the review.
Since then, Barr has displayed a strong personal interest in advancing the probe, including traveling twice in
recent months to ask Italian intelligence officials for help. He also has been in contact with Australian and
British officials.
Trump has ordered intelligence agencies to cooperate with the review and gave Barr wide authority to declassify
documents.
FBI and CIA officials have said that they conducted legal and court-authorized surveillance when they learned
of the Russian interference. But Trump and his allies contend that the surveillance -- which they call spying --
was an illegal operation to damage his campaign and presidency.
Ironically, the impeachment inquiry began over Trump's activities involving Ukraine. A conspiracy theory
promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American
election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the leaders of the impeachment
investigation, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler released a joint statement late Thursday night in response to
news about the Durham inquiry.
"These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under Attorney General
William Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump's political revenge," the
congressmen said.
-- With assistance by Billy House
(
Updates with Schiff and Nadler response, in
final two paragraphs
)
Published on
October 24, 2019 10:00 PM
With a great weeping, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments and clutching of pearls, the Democrats have declared that the
decision to withdraw troops from Syria was a
mortal sin .
Joe Biden called it "the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy." Elizabeth
Warren said Trump "has cut and run on our allies," and "created a bigger-than-ever humanitarian crisis." Kamala Harris announced,
"Yet again Donald Trump [is] selling folks out."
However, it required Mayor Buttigieg to make it a personal
moral imperative .
Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed -- ashamed -- of what their country
has done.
Democrats are totally honest and sincere here. It's not like they would have any
double-standards on this issue.
When Muir asked Buttigieg whether he would stick to his pledge to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in his first year
despite warnings from top American commanders, Buttigieg ducked the question and insisted that "we have got to put an end to
endless war." Turning to Biden, Muir cited "concerns about any possible vacuum being created in Afghanistan." But Biden brushed
them off, declaring, "We don't need those troops there. I would bring them home."
What makes these statements so remarkable is that experts warn that if the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan
in the absence of a peace agreement, Afghanistan will suffer a fate remarkably similar to what is happening in northern Syria.
It's not like this issue is anything less than black or white.
It's not like we would eventually have
the
choice of supporting either a Kurdish/Arab militia tied however loosely to the PKK, a designated terror group perceived by
Turkey as an existential threat, or
Turkey , a NATO member.
We keep hearing how we "betrayed our allies," but who promised the Kurds that we would fight Turkey on their behalf? It's
a big jump from "Let's both fight ISIS" to "Take that, NATO ally." But our garbage media, and our garbage politicians, sort
of hand wave away the fact that you can't "betray" someone by not doing what you never promised to do, especially when no reasonable
person could ever expect you to do it.
Oh wait. It's exactly like that.
All this virtue-signaling amounts to "I want you to send your sons and daughters to kill and maybe die fighting a long-time ally
because otherwise 'Putin will win'!"
Yes, Putin will get more control over a war-torn country, a ruined economy, with bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees.
Why must we deny him of this again?
And then there is the
lack of an AUMF
for us being in Syria. Which makes our occupation of Syria illegal, both by domestic law, and
international law .
Syria is not our country and U.S. troops were never authorized by its sovereign government to be there. Whether or not Washington
likes Damascus is irrelevant, under international law U.S. troops have no right to be there. Even flights over Syrian airspace
by the U.S. coalition are a violation of international agreements.
Why doesn't Bernie or Gabbard mention that this is an illegal war? People might care.
Also, does anyone remember when putting troops in Syria was something to be avoided?
Does anyone else remember the
16 times Obama said there would be no boots on the ground in Syria?
Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.
But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops
to Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These
forces do not have a combat mission."
We now have a stage full of presidential candidates that say they love Obama, yet ignore this part of his legacy (that he himself
violated).
Finally there is our legacy in Syria. Our legacy of
war crimes .
"The Commission finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that international coalition forces may not have directed
their attacks at a specific military objective, or failed to do so with the necessary precaution," it said.
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that result in death or injury to civilians amounts to a war crime in cases in which such
attacks are conducted recklessly," it added.
Engaging in an illegal war while committing war crimes is a "full stop" right there. No amount of virtue-signaling can justify
this.
And yet it still gets worse
.
In a now-famous secretly recorded conversation with Syrian opposition activists in New York, Former Secretary of State John
Kerry admitted that the United States was hoping to use ISIS to undermine the Syrian government. To put it bluntly, U.S. foreign
policy was duplicitous and used terrorism as a tool. This, of course, is a well-documented fact.
If we had a real media these candidates would all be crucified.
gjohnsit on Fri, 10/18/2019 - 5:38pm With a great weeping, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments and clutching of pearls,
the Democrats have declared that the decision to withdraw troops from Syria was a
mortal sin .
Joe Biden called it "the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy." Elizabeth
Warren said Trump "has cut and run on our allies," and "created a bigger-than-ever humanitarian crisis." Kamala Harris announced,
"Yet again Donald Trump [is] selling folks out."
However, it required Mayor Buttigieg to make it a personal
moral imperative .
Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed -- ashamed -- of what their country has
done.
Democrats are totally honest and sincere here. It's not like they would have any
double-standards on this issue.
When Muir asked Buttigieg whether he would stick to his pledge to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in his first year
despite warnings from top American commanders, Buttigieg ducked the question and insisted that "we have got to put an end to endless
war." Turning to Biden, Muir cited "concerns about any possible vacuum being created in Afghanistan." But Biden brushed them off,
declaring, "We don't need those troops there. I would bring them home."
What makes these statements so remarkable is that experts warn that if the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan
in the absence of a peace agreement, Afghanistan will suffer a fate remarkably similar to what is happening in northern Syria.
It's not like this issue is anything less than black or white.
It's not like we would eventually have
the choice
of supporting either a Kurdish/Arab militia tied however loosely to the PKK, a designated terror group perceived by Turkey as an
existential threat, or
Turkey , a NATO member.
We keep hearing how we "betrayed our allies," but who promised the Kurds that we would fight Turkey on their behalf? It's a
big jump from "Let's both fight ISIS" to "Take that, NATO ally." But our garbage media, and our garbage politicians, sort of hand
wave away the fact that you can't "betray" someone by not doing what you never promised to do, especially when no reasonable person
could ever expect you to do it.
Oh wait. It's exactly like that.
All this virtue-signaling amounts to "I want you to send your sons and daughters to kill and maybe die fighting a long-time ally
because otherwise 'Putin will win'!"
Yes, Putin will get more control over a war-torn country, a ruined economy, with bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees. Why
must we deny him of this again?
And then there is the
lack of an AUMF
for us being in Syria. Which makes our occupation of Syria illegal, both by domestic law, and
international law .
Syria is not our country and U.S. troops were never authorized by its sovereign government to be there. Whether or not Washington
likes Damascus is irrelevant, under international law U.S. troops have no right to be there. Even flights over Syrian airspace
by the U.S. coalition are a violation of international agreements.
Why doesn't Bernie or Gabbard mention that this is an illegal war? People might care.
Also, does anyone remember when putting troops in Syria was something to be avoided?
Does anyone else remember the
16 times Obama said there would be no boots on the ground in Syria?
Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.
But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops to
Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These forces
do not have a combat mission."
We now have a stage full of presidential candidates that say they love Obama, yet ignore this part of his legacy (that he himself
violated).
Finally there is our legacy in Syria. Our legacy of
war crimes .
"The Commission finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that international coalition forces may not have directed their
attacks at a specific military objective, or failed to do so with the necessary precaution," it said.
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that result in death or injury to civilians amounts to a war crime in cases in which such
attacks are conducted recklessly," it added.
Engaging in an illegal war while committing war crimes is a "full stop" right there. No amount of virtue-signaling can justify
this.
And yet it still gets worse
.
In a now-famous secretly recorded conversation with Syrian opposition activists in New York, Former Secretary of State John Kerry
admitted that the United States was hoping to use ISIS to undermine the Syrian government. To put it bluntly, U.S. foreign policy
was duplicitous and used terrorism as a tool. This, of course, is a well-documented fact.
If we had a real media these candidates would all be crucified.
The UAE is pumping millions of dollars into "vast and influential" lobbying efforts in the US, using a range of public relations
companies to help shape foreign policy issues, a report by a Washington-based non-profit alleged this week.
The report published by the Center for International Policy (CIP) claims that 20 US companies were paid around $20 million
to lobby politicians and other influential institutions on foreign policy issues.
"Though the Emirati's influence operation differs notably from the Saudi's in many ways, both rely heavily on their FARA
registered lobbying and public relations firms to brandish their image in the US, and to keep their transgressions out of the
public consciousness as much as possible," the report reads.
The report is part of CIP's Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, which aims to elucidate the "half-billion-dollar
foreign influence industry working to shape US foreign policy every single day".
The report added Emirati influence operation targeted legislators, non-profits, media outlets and think-tanks in an attempt
to portray the UAE to the world in a positive light.
The New Arab article quote "public relations firms to brandish their image in the US" has a word usage problem. The correct
word would be burnish, not brandish. You brandish your weapon. You burnish your image.
The UAE is pumping millions of dollars into "vast and influential" lobbying efforts in the US, using a range of public
relations companies to help shape foreign policy issues, a report by a Washington-based non-profit alleged this week.
The report published by the Center for International Policy (CIP) claims that 20 US companies were paid around $20 million
to lobby politicians and other influential institutions on foreign policy issues.
"Though the Emirati's influence operation differs notably from the Saudi's in many ways, both rely heavily on their FARA
registered lobbying and public relations firms to brandish their image in the US, and to keep their transgressions out of
the public consciousness as much as possible," the report reads.
The report is part of CIP's Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, which aims to elucidate the "half-billion-dollar
foreign influence industry working to shape US foreign policy every single day".
The report added Emirati influence operation targeted legislators, non-profits, media outlets and think-tanks in an attempt
to portray the UAE to the world in a positive light.
a lot of people think it is actually kind of *staged* by an agreement with Russia and Turkey, and if so, it'll force the United
States out of northern Syria, make the US look stupid, but actually give everybody what they want. Check it out:
--Turkey makes some initial attacks in northern Syria, tells the US to get out of the way and abandon the Kurds
--The Kurds are forced to ally with Syrian forces, and they are swept into the Syrian Army ranks (negating their ability to
go independent)
--The Syrian Army moves to the border and starts manning border crossings (already happening in many places), providing a long-term
buffer between Kurds and Turkey
--The Turkish-backed terrorist forces are expended in border confrontations (Turkey really does not want them long-term)
--Once things settle down, Syrian refugees move back into Syria, out of Turkey
--US forces are forced to move out of northeastern Syria and out of the oil fields (or be surrounded and starved out by Syrian/Russian/Kurdish
forces)
--Kurds are not wholesale slaughtered, and Democratic presidential candidates are revealed for their foolishness in the whole
thing
--Trump gets more of what he wants--more US troops out of Syria (against the wishes of the deep state)
--Turkey has a protected border and the incesant attacks from Kurds drops to manageable levels due to the Syrian army border
and the Kurds becoming integrated into Syrian forces.
I give this a 50% of how it will play out. Sure, there are current battles ongoing, but so far, Turkey is not attacking Syrian
forces, who are moving up into place on the border in many areas. The central area is still fluid, but let's see where it dies
down in a couple weeks.
"Democratic presidential candidates are revealed for their foolishness" won't happen. The MSM won't allow it.
a lot of people think it is actually kind of *staged* by an agreement with Russia and Turkey, and if so, it'll force the
United States out of northern Syria, make the US look stupid, but actually give everybody what they want. Check it out:
--Turkey makes some initial attacks in northern Syria, tells the US to get out of the way and abandon the Kurds
--The Kurds are forced to ally with Syrian forces, and they are swept into the Syrian Army ranks (negating their ability
to go independent)
--The Syrian Army moves to the border and starts manning border crossings (already happening in many places), providing
a long-term buffer between Kurds and Turkey
--The Turkish-backed terrorist forces are expended in border confrontations (Turkey really does not want them long-term)
--Once things settle down, Syrian refugees move back into Syria, out of Turkey
--US forces are forced to move out of northeastern Syria and out of the oil fields (or be surrounded and starved out by
Syrian/Russian/Kurdish forces)
--Kurds are not wholesale slaughtered, and Democratic presidential candidates are revealed for their foolishness in the
whole thing
--Trump gets more of what he wants--more US troops out of Syria (against the wishes of the deep state)
--Turkey has a protected border and the incesant attacks from Kurds drops to manageable levels due to the Syrian army border
and the Kurds becoming integrated into Syrian forces.
I give this a 50% of how it will play out. Sure, there are current battles ongoing, but so far, Turkey is not attacking
Syrian forces, who are moving up into place on the border in many areas. The central area is still fluid, but let's see where
it dies down in a couple weeks.
(as Kurdish Syria is sometimes called) is that one
of the Kurd leaders became a follower of Murray Bookchin after spending a bunch of time as a Marxist-Leninist, and so portions
of Kurdish society are an experiment in Bookchinism. Here is a
piece by Bookchin's daughter on the correspondence between him and the Kurds. Hopefully the Kurds will find some protection
in the new Putin-brokered Syria.
Otherwise, yeah, the Kurds are an ally of convenience for the Democratic Party and its apologists on that most disgusting of
propaganda instruments, National Public Radio.
but it should have also been illegal for us to arm the same people that we had declared terrorists. Now those people are killing
the people who fought on our side against the ones now doing the killing.. my head is spinning with all the insane talking points
coming from people who have never met a war they didn't support.
This is a good read.
Former and current US officials have slammed the Turkish mercenary force of "Arab militias" for executing and beheading Kurds
in northern Syria. New data from Turkey reveals that almost all of these militias were armed and trained in the past by the CIA
and Pentagon.
By Max Blumenthal
Left: John McCain with then-FSA chief Salim Idriss (right) in 2013; Right: Salim Idriss (center) in October, announcing the establishment
of the National Front for Liberation, the Turkish mercenary army that has invaded northern Syria.
Hmm..kinda hard to explain that huh? The article talks about Idriss in detail. As well as Obama and Hillary's roles in the
'no boots on the ground' war.
This should embarrass every person who is moaning over Trump's actions in Syria. Turkey was coming in one way or another and
the only way to stop them was for our troops to stand in their way. But what really ticks me off is all of that equipment they
left behind on their bug out. Not just tents , TVs and air conditioners and everything in between, but they left weapons and bombs
there and they just blew them up. This will make the defense companies very happy!
After the ceasefire, US backed
#Kurds are deciding to hand over the north of
#Syria to Turkey rather than the
Syrian army. All trump had to promise them was a stake in
#Syria 's oil fields.
https://t.co/euat8DvIa4
Syrian Girl lives in Syria and has been a good source of information, but I'm not sure if what she is reporting is true. But
wouldn't that shut lots of people up?
Obama kept troops out of Syria until the last minute. Then he took a force small enough to justify his successor's escalation.
So when the Turks tried to genocide the Kurds - like they were certain to do - Trump gets the blame. But it was supposed to be
Hillary. What was in it for her? The joy of another country seeing genocide?
The Kurds were promised land and valuable oil fields in North Eastern Syria by... the US. What's wrong with this picture? Damascus
has I invited the Kurds to be part of the multi-ethnic Syria. The Kurds refused and took America's deal. We armed them to the
teeth with 10s of billions of dollars of weapons. What could go wrong? Well just about everything as the US offer was highly illegal,
they are stealing Syrian oil, and Turkey will not accept any Kurdish permanent enclave on her border. Syria, Russia, Iran, China,
Hezbollah, Iraq and more support the reunification of all of Syria. Why were the Kurds so stupid? Go it? Blind belief in the all
powerful US!
"... In 1987, Michael Milken awarded himself $550 million in compensation. In New York City, spending by bankers -- a million dollars for curtains for a Fifth Avenue apartment, a thousand dollars for a vase of precious roses for a party -- was obscene. A major financier announced in the Hamptons one night that "if you have less than 750 million, you have no hedge against inflation." In Paris, a jeweler "dazzled his society guests when topless models displayed the merchandise between courses." In west Los Angeles, the average price of a house in Bel Air rose to $4.6 million. There was so much money it was nicknamed "green smog." ..."
In 1985, the Dow Jones average jumped 27.66 percent.
Making
money in stocks
, as a journalist put it, "was easy."
With lower interest rates, low
inflation, and "takeover fever," investors could throw a dart at a list of stocks and profit.
The next year was also very good.
The average gain of a Big Board stock in 1986
was 14 percent, with equity market indexes closing at a record high.
For the top performers, the amounts of money involved were staggering.
In 1987, Michael Milken awarded himself $550 million in compensation.
In New
York City, spending by bankers -- a million dollars for curtains for a Fifth Avenue apartment, a
thousand dollars for a vase of precious roses for a party -- was obscene. A major financier announced
in the Hamptons one night that "if you have less than 750 million, you have no hedge against
inflation." In Paris, a jeweler "dazzled his society guests when topless models displayed the
merchandise between courses." In west Los Angeles, the average price of a house in Bel Air rose to
$4.6 million. There was so much money it was nicknamed "green smog."
Ambitious men now wanted to change the world through finance.
Bruce Wasserstein
had been a "Nader's Raider" consumer advocate; he now worked at First Boston as one of the most
successful mergers and acquisitions bankers of the 1980s. Michael Lewis wrote his best-seller
Liar's
Poker
as a warning of what unfettered greed in finance meant, but instead of learning the
lesson, students deluged him with letters asking if he "had any other secrets to share about Wall
Street." To them, the book was a "how-to manual."
Finance was the center, but its power reached outward everywhere.
The stock
market was minting millionaires in a collection of formerly sleepy towns in California. Sunnyvale,
Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, Santa Clara, and San Jose in the 1960s had been covered with
"apricot, cherry and plum orchards," and young people there often took summer jobs at local
canneries. Immediately after Reagan's election, in December of 1980, Apple Computer went public,
instantly creating 300 millionaires, and raising more money in the stock market than any company
since Ford Motor had in its initial public offering of shares in 1956. A young Steve Jobs was
instantly worth $217 million.
Meanwhile, the family farmer had lots of people who said they were friends at election
time - even the glamorous music industry put on a giant "Farm Aid" concert in 1985 to raise money
for bankrupt growers.
But there was no populist leader like Congressman
Wright
Patman had been
during the New Deal in the Democratic Party anymore. On the contrary, "new"
Democrats like Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton of Arkansas worked to rid their state of the usury
caps meant to protect the "plain people" from the banker and financier. And the main contender for
the Democratic nomination in 1988, the handsome Gary Hart, with his flowing -- and carefully
blow-dried -- chestnut brown hair, spoke a lot about "sunrise" industries like semiconductors and
high-tech, but had little in his vision incorporating the family farm.
It wasn't just the family farmer who suffered.
On the South Side of Chicago,
U.S. Steel, having started mass layoffs in 1979, continued into the next decade, laying off more
than 6,000 workers in that community alone. Youngstown, Johnson, Gary -- all the old industrial cities
were going, in the words of the writer Studs Terkel, from "Steel Town" to "Ghost Town." And the
headlines kept on coming. John Deere idled 1,500 workers, GE's turbine division cut 1,500 jobs,
AT&T laid off 2,900 in its Shreveport plant, Eastern Air Lines fired 1,010 flight attendants, and
docked pay by 20 percent. "You keep saying it can't get worse, but it does," said a United
Autoworker member.
And all the time, whether in farm country or steel country, the closed independent shop
and the collapsed bank were as much monuments to the new political order as the sprouting number of
Walmarts and the blizzard of junk-mail credit cards from Citibank.
As Terkel put it, "In
the thirties, an Administration recognized a need and lent a hand. Today, an Administration
recognizes an image and lends a smile."
Regional inequality widened,
as airlines cut routes to rural, small, and even
medium-sized cities. So did income inequality, the emptying farm towns, the hollowing of
manufacturing as executives began searching for any way to be in any business but one that made
things in America. It wasn't just the smog and the poverty, the consumerism, the debt, and the
shop-till-you-drop ethos. It was the profound hopelessness.
Within academic and political institutions, Americans were taught to believe their longing for
freedom was immoral. Power was re-centralizing on Wall Street, in corporate monopolies, in shopping
malls, in the way they paid for the new consumer goods made abroad, in where they worked and
shopped. Yet policymakers, reading from the scripts prepared by Chicago School of Economics
"experts," spoke of these changes as natural, "scientific," a result of consumer preferences, not
the concentration of power.
By the time of the 1992 election, there was a sullen mood among the voters, similar to
that of 1974
. "People are outraged at what is going on in Washington. Part of it had to do
with pay raises, part of it has to do with banks and S&Ls and other things that are affecting my
life as a voter," said a pollster. That year, billionaire businessman Ross Perot ran the strongest
third-party challenge in American history, capitalizing on anger among white working-class voters,
the Democrats who had switched over to Reagan in the 1980s. He did so by pledging straightforward
protectionism for U.S. industry, attacking the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), and political corruption. Despite a bizarre campaign in which he withdrew and then
reentered the race, Perot did so well he shattered the Republican coalition, helping throw the
election to the Democrats. There would be one last opportunity for the Democrats to rebuild their
New Deal coalition of working-class voters.
The winner of the election, Bill Clinton, looked like he might do so. He had run
a populist campaign using the slogan "Putting People First."
He attacked the
failed economic theory of Reagan, criticized tax cuts for the rich and factory closings, and
pledged to protect Americans from foreign and domestic threats. "For too long, those who play by
the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft," Clinton said. "And those who cut corners and
cut deals have been rewarded." His campaign's internal slogan was "It's the economy, stupid," and
the 1992 Democratic platform used the word "revolution" 14 times.
As a candidate, Clinton's Democratic platform called for a "Revolution of 1992," capturing the
anger of the moment. But the platform was written by
centrist
Democratic Leadership Council
boss Al From, and for the first time since 1880 there was no
mention of antitrust or corporate power, despite a decade with the worst financial manipulation
America had seen since the 1920s. This revolution would be against government, in government,
around government.
In 1993, a book came out on lobbying in Washington. Wayne Thevenot, a
Clinton donor, laid out the new theme of the modern Democratic Party: "I gave up the idea of
changing the world. I set out to get rich."
Like Reagan, Clinton went after restrictions on banking. Reagan sought to free restrictions on
finance by allowing banks and non-banks to enter new lines of business. Clinton continued this
policy, but over the course of his eight years attacked restrictions on banks themselves. In 1994,
the Clinton administration and a Democratic Congress passed the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and
Branching Efficiency Act, which allowed banks to open up branches across state lines. Clinton
appointed Robert Rubin as his treasury secretary, super-lawyer Eugene Ludwig to run the Office of
the Comptroller of the Currency, and reappointed Alan Greenspan as the chairman of the Federal
Reserve.
All three men worked hard through regulatory rulemaking to allow unfettered trading in
derivatives, to break down the New Deal restrictions prohibiting commercial banks from entering the
trading business, and to let banks take more risks with less of a cushion.
Citigroup
finally got an insurance arm, merging with financial conglomerate Travelers Group, approved by
Greenspan, who granted the authority for the acquisition under the Bank Holding Company Act. In
1999, Clinton and a now-Republican Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which fully repealed
the Glass-Steagall Act that had shattered the Houses of J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon. The very
last bill Clinton signed was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which removed public
rules limiting the use of exotic gambling instruments known as derivatives by now-enormous banks.
Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which he touted as "truly
revolutionary legislation," and this began the process of reconsolidating the
old
AT&T
as the "
Baby
Bells
" merged.
At the signing ceremony, actress Lily Tomlin reprised her role as a Ma
Bell operator. Huge pieces of the AT&T network came back together, as Baby Bells merged from seven
to three. Clear Channel grew from 40 radio stations to 1,240. In 1996, the Communications Decency
Act was signed, with
Section
230 of the Act protecting certain internet businesses
from being liable for wrongdoing that
occurred on their platform. While not well understood at the time, Section 230 was one policy lever
that would enable a powerful set of internet monopolies to emerge in the next decade.
Clinton also sped up the corporate takeover of rural America by allowing a merger wave
in farm country.
Food companies had always had some power in America, but before the
Reagan era, big agribusinesses were confined to one or two stages of the food system. In the 1990s,
the agricultural sector consolidated under a small number of sprawling conglomerates that organized
the entire supply chain. Cargill, an agricultural conglomerate that was the largest privately owned
company in America, embarked on a series of mergers and joint ventures, buying the grain-trading
operations of its rival, Continental Grain Inc., as well as Azko Salt, thus becoming one of the
largest salt production and marketing operations in the world.
Monsanto consolidated the specialty chemicals and seed markets, buying up DeKalb Genetics and
cotton-seed maker Delta & Pine Land. ConAgra, marketing itself as selling at every link of the
supply chain from "farm gate to dinner plate," bought International Home Foods (the producer of
Chef Boyardee pasta and Gulden's mustard), Knott's Berry Farm Foods, Gilroy Foods, Hester
Industries, and Signature Foods. As William Heffernan, a rural sociologist at the University of
Missouri, put it in 1999, a host of formal and informal alliances such as joint ventures,
partnerships, contracts, agreements, and side agreements ended up concentrating power even further
into "clusters of firms." He identified three such clusters -- Cargill/Monsanto, ConAgra, and
Novartis/ADM -- as controlling the global food supply.
The increase in power of these trading corporations meant that profit would increasingly
flow to middlemen, not farmers themselves.
Montana senator Conrad Burns complained his
state's farmers were "getting less for our products on the farm now than we did during the Great
Depression." The Montana state legislature passed a resolution demanding vigorous antitrust
investigations into the meatpacking, grain-handling, and food retail industries, and the state
farmer's union asked for a special unit at the Department of Justice to review proposed
agricultural mergers. There was so little interest in the Clinton antitrust division that when
Burns held a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on concentration in the agricultural sector, the
assistant attorney general for antitrust, Joel Klein, didn't bother to show up. "Their failure to
be here to explain their policies to rural America," said Burns, "speaks volumes about what their
real agenda is."
In the Reagan era, Walmart had already become the most important chain store in America,
surpassing the importance of A&P at the height of its power. But it was
during the Clinton
administration that the company became a trading giant.
First, the corporation jumped in
size, replacing the auto giant GM as the top private employer in America, growing to 825,000
employees in 1998 while planting a store in every state. The end of antitrust enforcement in the
retail space meant that Walmart could wield its buying power to restructure swaths of industries
and companies, from pickle producers to Procter & Gamble. Clinton allowed Walmart to reorder world
trade itself. Even in the mid-1990s, only a small percentage of its products were made abroad. But
the passage of NAFTA -- which eliminated tariffs on Mexican imports -- as well as Clinton's embrace of
Chinese imports, allowed Walmart to force its suppliers to produce where labor and environmental
costs were lowest. From 1992 to 2000, America's trade deficit with China jumped from $18 billion to
$84 billion, while it went from a small trade surplus to a $25 billion trade deficit with Mexico.
And Walmart led the way. By 2003, consulting firm Retail Forward estimated more than half of
Walmart merchandise was made abroad.
Clinton administration officials were proud of Walmart, and this new generation of
American trading monopolies, dubbing them part of a wondrous "New Economy" underpinned by
information technology.
"And if you think about what this new economy means," said Clinton
deputy treasury secretary Larry Summers in 1998 at a conference for investment bankers focusing on
high-tech, "whether it is AIG in insurance, McDonald's in fast-food, Walmart in retailing,
Microsoft in software, Harvard University in education, CNN in television news -- the leading
enterprises are American."
It was also under Clinton that the last bastion of the New Deal coalition -- a
congressional majority held by the Democrats since the late 1940s -- fell apart
as the last
few holdout southern Democrats were finally driven from office or switched to the Republican Party.
And it was under Clinton that the language of politics shifted from that of equity, justice, and
potholes to the finance-speak of redistribution, growth and investment, and infrastructure decay.
The Democratic Party embraced not just the tactics, but the ideology of the Chicago
School.
As one memo from Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors put it, "Large size is
not the same as monopoly power. For example, an ice cream vendor at the beach on a hot day probably
has more market power than many multi-billion-dollar companies in competitive industries."
During the 12 years of the
Reagan and Bush
administrations, there were
85,064 mergers
valued at $3.5 trillion.
Under just seven years of
Clinton
, there were
166,310 deals
valued at $9.8 trillion.
This merger wave was larger than that of the Reagan era, and larger even than any since
the turn of the twentieth century, when the original trusts were created.
Hotels,
hospitals, banks, investment banks, defense contractors, technology, oil -- everything was merging.
The Clinton administration organized this new concentrated American economy through
regulatory appointments and through non-enforcement of antitrust laws.
Sometimes it even
seemed they had put antitrust enforcement itself up for sale. In 1996, Thomson Corporation bought
West Publishing, creating a monopoly in digital access to court opinions and legal publishing; the
owner of West had given a half a million dollars to the Democratic Party and personally lobbied
Clinton to allow the deal. The DOJ even approved the $81 billion Exxon and Mobil merger, restoring
a chunk of the Rockefeller empire.
Clinton advisor James Carville very early on in Clinton's first term noted what was
happening.
"I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the
pope or a .400 baseball hitter," he said.
"But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."
Toward the end of Clinton's second term, with a transcendent stock market, bars in the United
States began switching their television sets from sports scores to CNBC, to watch the trading in
real time.
In the 1990s, it wouldn't be Herbert Hoover overseeing a bubble, it would be a Democrat.
* * *
Finally,
Matt
pointed out on Twitter that
:
"This chapter is about Clinton. But there are two chapters
before about how Reagan facilitated the merger boom of the 1980s.
Our problems came through
both parties. Both. That is crystal clear.
"
20 October 2019FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry
C Johnson
Law Enforcement versus the Intel Community. That's the battle we will likely see unleashed
when the Horowitz report comes out next week. The New York
Times came out Saturday with info clearly leaked from DOJ that can be summarized
simply--the FBI was relying on the intel community (products from the CIA and NSA) under the
leadership of Jim Clapper. If they relied on bad, unverified information it ain't their fault.
They trusted the spies.
Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are.
Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:
Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators
have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and
unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are
trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent
review.
"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke. The facts of a conspiracy to take out
Donald Trump or cripple him are very clear. Robert Mueller and Jim Comey lied when they claimed
that Joseph Mifsud, who tried to entrap George Papdopoulus in London, was a Russian agent.
Nope. He worked for western intelligence. Unless Comey and DOJ have a document or documents
from the CIA or NSA stating that Mifsud worked for the Russians, they have no where to hide.
Plus, prosecutor John Durham now has Mifsud's blackberries. What do you think is the likelihood
that Mifsud was in communication with FBI or CIA or MI6 personnel? Very likely. Then there is
Stefan Halper, who played a key role in a sophisticated counterintelligence operation that
involved the FBI, the CIA British Intelligence and the media. The ultimate target was Donald
Trump. Halper's part of the operation focused on using an innocent woman who had the misfortune
of being born in Russia, Svetlana Lokhova, to destroy General Michael Flynn. Halper and Mifsud
both were involved in targeting General Michael Flynn. Not a conspiracy?
Halper's nefarious activities included manufacturing and publishing numerous false and
defamatory statements. Halper, for example, falsely claimed that Svetlana Lokhova was a
"Russian spy" and a traitor to her country. He also circulated the lie that Lokhova had an
affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence. Not content to use the
unwitting Svetlana as a weapon against General Flynn, Stefan Halper also acted with malice to
destroy Svetlana Lokhova's professional career and business by asserting that she was not a
real academic and that her research was provided by Russian intelligence on the orders of
Vladimir Putin.
Thanks to Robert Mueller we have clear evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Mueller's
investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused
on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow --
George Papadopolous --
Carter Page --
Dimitri Simes --
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at the Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges--six of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign
interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the pitch to "collude" with the
Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by
Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any
member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining
derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not
one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert
action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
We do not need to say anything about Dmitri Simes, who was unfairly smeared by even being
named as target in the investigation. And the "non" events at the Republican Convention, pure
nonsense.
The other six cases "investigated" my Mueller and his team of clowns are damning.
THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated
with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Mueller was downright dishonest in failing to identify
Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin.
He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in
2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this
operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's
Chief Prosecutors, Andrew
Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI
Informant business .
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with
Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS. Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in
late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International
Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) , which has all the hallmarks of a British
intelligence front. It is Joseph Mifsud, working for LCILP, who introduces the idea of meeting
Putin following a lunch with George in London.
And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary. During Papadopolous'
next meeting with Mifsud, George writes that Mifsud:
leaned across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary
Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They have thousands of emails."
More than three weeks before the alleged Russian hack of the DNC, Mifsud is peddling the
story that the Russians have Clinton's emails. Conspiracy?
CARTER PAGE. The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total
travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the
Trump campaign--he is described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position,
when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior
experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but
says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI
during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law
enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report. The Christopher Steele dossier was
used as "corroborating" intel to justify what was an illegal FISA warrant. The FBI lied about
the veracity of that dossier. Conspiracy?
TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016). This is another glaring example of a plant designed to
entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a
Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the
Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert
Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate
developer Aras Agalarov.
The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller
conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm
Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. Even the corrupt NBC News got these
damning facts about Veselnitskaya on the record:
The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June
2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous
Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.
In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received
the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax
evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been
hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.
Unfounded Conspiracy?
PAUL MANAFORT. If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be
walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton
buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC,
which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The
Hill, we now know the impetus to target
Manafort came from the DNC :
The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling
is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor,
Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases
tried, to help Hillary
Clinton .
In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National
Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman
and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor
Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in
hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration were
colluding with Ukraine.
GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN . This is the biggest travesty. Flynn was being targeted by the intel
community with the full collaboration of the FBI. Thanks to his new attorney, the Honey Badger
Sidney Powell, there is an avalanche of evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct and an
unjustified, coordinated effort by the Obama team to frame Flynn as catering to the Russians.
It is a lie and that will be fully exposed in the coming weeks.
Any fair reporter with half a brain would see these events as pointing to a conspiracy. But
not the liars at the New York Times. But the Times does tip us off to the upcoming mad scramble
for life boats. It will it the FBI and DOJ against the DNI, the CIA and NSA. According to the
Times:
It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham's team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His
investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said.
Mr. Durham would probably want to speak with Gina Haspel, the agency's director, who ran its
London station when the Australians passed along the explosive information about Russia's offer
of political dirt.
There is no abiding affection between the FBI and the CIA. They mix like oil and water. In
theory the FBI only traffics in "evidence." The CIA deals primarily with well-sourced rumors.
But the CIA will argue they were offering their best judgement, not a factual conclusion.
Brennan and Clapper will insist they were not in a position to determine the "truth" of what
they were reporting. It is "intel" not evidence.
The Horowitz report will not deal with the CIA and NSA directly. Horowitz can only point out
that the FBI folks insisted that they were relying on the intel community and had no reason not
to trust them. This is likely to get ugly and do not be surprised to see the intel folks try to
throw the FBI under the bus and vice versa. Grab the popcorn.
You seem to have faith Larry, and I am not offering this sarcastically, that the Misfud
Blackberries still have relevant data on them. I would be very surprised, (albeit pleasantly
so) and disappointed, if MI6 was that sloopy.
While I don't have much confidence in Barr & Durham actually indicting Brennan,
Clapper, Comey, et al, nor do I believe that they'll lay out in clear terms the collusion
between law enforcement, intelligence, corporate media, political operatives, foreign
governments and intelligence agencies to frame a presidential candidate & campaign, I
hope that some of these putschists will be made to pay at least a modest amount of their
personal gains through their media and consulting gigs. As David Habakkuk has noted I hope
the defamation lawsuit by Ed Butowsky is successful and that is then used as a template by
others to go after all those complicit in this travesty.
What I find despicable is the hypocrisy and moralizing tone of all these smear merchants.
These same characters now smearing Tulsi Gabbard using the same tropes. But even more, my
utter disgust is with all the DC cocktail circuit propagandists in the media who are no
longer even pretending.
I'm too old to see this happen, but my hope is that future generations will see the
complete destruction of the political duopoly and the media-intelligence propaganda complex.
They've been such a destructive force over the past five decades.
Warren (D)(1): "Elizabeth Warren to put out plan on how to pay for 'Medicare for All'" [
CNN ]. • "Pay for" being both delusional and a question nobody, including Warren,
ever asks about war, and "taxes on the middle class" being, shall we say, a well-worn,
content-free trope.
Warren (D)(2): "Why Criticize Warren?" [Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs ]. "What
will the right's main line of attack against Warren be? I think you can see it already,
actually: They will attempt to portray her as inauthentic and untrustworthy. She will be
painted as a Harvard egghead who has suddenly discovered populism for self-serving reasons, a
slippery elite who isn't telling you the truth about her agenda . What worries me about
Elizabeth Warren is that the criticisms of her as untrustworthy are not easy to wave away.
Warren began her 2020 campaign with a video claiming to be a Native American, even though she
isn't one. She
has now tried to bury the evidence that she did this, by deleting the video and all
accompanying social media posts .
I have tried, so far, to avoid lapsing into the usual discussions of "Bernie Sanders
versus Elizabeth Warren," but here I should note that one reason I think Bernie Sanders is
such a powerful potential candidate against Trump is that he doesn't have these kind of messy
problems of authenticity and honesty.
The thing almost nobody denies about Bernie is that you know where he stands."
As The Big Picture says above. This is a massive takedown, and I've focused on a single,
tactical issue, but this post is a must-read in full. If it's correct, the Warren campaign is
a train-wreck waiting to happen.
(Adding, the Cherokee issue really matters to me, because the Penobscots were enormously
powerful allies in the fight against the landfill (and cf. Standing Rock). It just drives me
bananas that Warren didn't check in with the Cherokees before declaring herself one of them.
I think it's an outrage, and I don't care if I get eye-rolls for it.)
20 October 2019FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry
C Johnson
Law Enforcement versus the Intel Community. That's the battle we will likely see unleashed
when the Horowitz report comes out next week. The New York
Times came out Saturday with info clearly leaked from DOJ that can be summarized
simply--the FBI was relying on the intel community (products from the CIA and NSA) under the
leadership of Jim Clapper. If they relied on bad, unverified information it ain't their fault.
They trusted the spies.
Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are.
Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:
Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators
have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and
unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are
trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent
review.
"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke. The facts of a conspiracy to take out
Donald Trump or cripple him are very clear. Robert Mueller and Jim Comey lied when they claimed
that Joseph Mifsud, who tried to entrap George Papdopoulus in London, was a Russian agent.
Nope. He worked for western intelligence. Unless Comey and DOJ have a document or documents
from the CIA or NSA stating that Mifsud worked for the Russians, they have no where to hide.
Plus, prosecutor John Durham now has Mifsud's blackberries. What do you think is the likelihood
that Mifsud was in communication with FBI or CIA or MI6 personnel? Very likely. Then there is
Stefan Halper, who played a key role in a sophisticated counterintelligence operation that
involved the FBI, the CIA British Intelligence and the media. The ultimate target was Donald
Trump. Halper's part of the operation focused on using an innocent woman who had the misfortune
of being born in Russia, Svetlana Lokhova, to destroy General Michael Flynn. Halper and Mifsud
both were involved in targeting General Michael Flynn. Not a conspiracy?
Halper's nefarious activities included manufacturing and publishing numerous false and
defamatory statements. Halper, for example, falsely claimed that Svetlana Lokhova was a
"Russian spy" and a traitor to her country. He also circulated the lie that Lokhova had an
affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence. Not content to use the
unwitting Svetlana as a weapon against General Flynn, Stefan Halper also acted with malice to
destroy Svetlana Lokhova's professional career and business by asserting that she was not a
real academic and that her research was provided by Russian intelligence on the orders of
Vladimir Putin.
Thanks to Robert Mueller we have clear evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Mueller's
investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused
on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow --
George Papadopolous --
Carter Page --
Dimitri Simes --
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at the Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges--six of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign
interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the pitch to "collude" with the
Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by
Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any
member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining
derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not
one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert
action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
We do not need to say anything about Dmitri Simes, who was unfairly smeared by even being
named as target in the investigation. And the "non" events at the Republican Convention, pure
nonsense.
The other six cases "investigated" my Mueller and his team of clowns are damning.
THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated
with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Mueller was downright dishonest in failing to identify
Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin.
He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in
2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this
operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's
Chief Prosecutors, Andrew
Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI
Informant business .
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with
Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS. Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in
late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International
Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) , which has all the hallmarks of a British
intelligence front. It is Joseph Mifsud, working for LCILP, who introduces the idea of meeting
Putin following a lunch with George in London.
And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary. During Papadopolous'
next meeting with Mifsud, George writes that Mifsud:
leaned across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary
Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They have thousands of emails."
More than three weeks before the alleged Russian hack of the DNC, Mifsud is peddling the
story that the Russians have Clinton's emails. Conspiracy?
CARTER PAGE. The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total
travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the
Trump campaign--he is described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position,
when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior
experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but
says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI
during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law
enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report. The Christopher Steele dossier was
used as "corroborating" intel to justify what was an illegal FISA warrant. The FBI lied about
the veracity of that dossier. Conspiracy?
TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016). This is another glaring example of a plant designed to
entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a
Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the
Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert
Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate
developer Aras Agalarov.
The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller
conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm
Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. Even the corrupt NBC News got these
damning facts about Veselnitskaya on the record:
The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June
2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous
Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.
In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received
the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax
evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been
hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.
Unfounded Conspiracy?
PAUL MANAFORT. If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be
walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton
buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC,
which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The
Hill, we now know the impetus to target
Manafort came from the DNC :
The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling
is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor,
Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases
tried, to help Hillary
Clinton .
In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National
Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman
and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor
Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in
hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration were
colluding with Ukraine.
GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN . This is the biggest travesty. Flynn was being targeted by the intel
community with the full collaboration of the FBI. Thanks to his new attorney, the Honey Badger
Sidney Powell, there is an avalanche of evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct and an
unjustified, coordinated effort by the Obama team to frame Flynn as catering to the Russians.
It is a lie and that will be fully exposed in the coming weeks.
Any fair reporter with half a brain would see these events as pointing to a conspiracy. But
not the liars at the New York Times. But the Times does tip us off to the upcoming mad scramble
for life boats. It will it the FBI and DOJ against the DNI, the CIA and NSA. According to the
Times:
It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham's team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His
investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said.
Mr. Durham would probably want to speak with Gina Haspel, the agency's director, who ran its
London station when the Australians passed along the explosive information about Russia's offer
of political dirt.
There is no abiding affection between the FBI and the CIA. They mix like oil and water. In
theory the FBI only traffics in "evidence." The CIA deals primarily with well-sourced rumors.
But the CIA will argue they were offering their best judgement, not a factual conclusion.
Brennan and Clapper will insist they were not in a position to determine the "truth" of what
they were reporting. It is "intel" not evidence.
The Horowitz report will not deal with the CIA and NSA directly. Horowitz can only point out
that the FBI folks insisted that they were relying on the intel community and had no reason not
to trust them. This is likely to get ugly and do not be surprised to see the intel folks try to
throw the FBI under the bus and vice versa. Grab the popcorn.
CIA
Analysts Lawyer Up As Brennan, Clapper Ensnared In Expanding Russiagate Probe
by
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 - 14:30
0
SHARES
CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia's activities during the 2016 US
election have begun to hire attorneys, as Attorney General William Barr expands his investigation
into the origins of the Russia probe, led by US Attorney John Durham.
The prosecutor conducting the review, Connecticut U.S. Attorney
John Durham
,
has expressed his intent to interview
a number of current and former intelligence
officials involved in examining Russia's effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,
including former CIA Director
John Brennan
and former director of
national intelligence
James Clapper
, Brennan told NBC News. -
NBC
NBC
learned of the 'lawyering up' from three former CIA officials "familiar with the
matter," while two more anonymous leakers claim there's
tension between the Justice Department
and the CIA over what classified documents Durham has access to
.
With Barr's approval, Durham has expanded his staff and the timeframe under scrutiny,
according to a law enforcement official directly familiar with the matter. And
he is now
looking into conduct past Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017
, a Trump
administration official said.
One Western intelligence official familiar with Durham's investigation leaked that Durham has
been
asking foreign officials questions related to former Trump campaign aide George
Papadopoulos
, who was fed the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton by a Maltese
professor, Joseph Mifsud. While US media has sought to portray Mifsud as a Russian asset, the
self-described member of the Clinton foundation
has far
stronger ties to the West
.
According to
congressional
testimony
given by Papadopoulos last October as well as statements he's made over Twitter,
the
whole thing was an FBI setup -
as a 'woman in London, who was the
FBI's legal
attache in the UK'
and
"had a personal relationship to Bob Mueller after 9/11"
was
the one who recommended that he meet with Mifsud in Rome.
As the theory goes
; Mifsud, a US intelligence asset, feeds Papadopoulos
the rumor that Russia has Hillary Clinton's emails shortly after he announces he's going to join
the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos repeats the email rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer,
who alerts Australia's intelligence community, which notifies the FBI, which then
launches operation "Crossfire Hurricane" during which
the FBI sent
multiple spies
(including a 'honeypot') to infiltrate the Trump campaign
. Notably,
former FBI employee Peter Strzok flew to London to meet with Downer the day after Crossfire
Hurricane was launched -
while Strzok's boss, Bill Priestap was in London the day before
the Downer-Papadopoulos encounter
.
Only a few months ago, the Democrats' drive to the White House began with the loftiest of ideals, albeit a hodgepodge from trans
toilet "rights" to a 100 percent makeover of the health care system. It is now all about vengeance, clumsy and grossly partisan at
that, gussied up as "saving democracy." Our media is dominated by angry Hillary refighting 2016 and "joking" about running again,
with Adam Schiff now the face of the party for 2020. The war of noble intentions has devolved into Pelosi's March to the Sea. Any
chance for a Democratic candidate to reach into the dark waters and pull America to where she can draw breath again and heal has
been lost.
Okay, deep breath myself. A couple of times a week, I walk past the
café where Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet, often wrote.
His most famous poem, Howl , begins, "I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked." The walk is a good leveler, a reminder that madness (Trump Derangement in modern
terminology) is not new in politics.
But Ginsberg wrote in a time when one could joke about coded messages -- before the Internet came into being to push tailored
ticklers straight into people's brains. I'll take my relief in knowing that almost everything Trump and others write, on Twitter
and in the Times , is designed simply to get attention and getting our attention today requires ever louder and crazier stuff.
What will get us to look up anymore? Is that worth playing with fire over?
It is easy to lose one's sense of humor over all this. It is easy to end up like Ginsberg at the end of his poem, muttering
to strangers at what a mess this had all become: "Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells!
They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! To solitude!" But me, I don't think it's funny at all.
"... I suspect that Gabbard has very little chance of beating Trump because he is also campaigning - quite successfully - against 'endless wars', and Gabbard is too radical for most Americans. ..."
"... This sparks some interesting questions, such as, exactly who are party members, and how do they become members? The actual structure and functioning of political parties in the US is seldom discussed, and I wonder why that is. "Opaque" seems to be a good description ..."
"... The primary voting system is a huge financial subsidy to the two officially approved parties, which are, of course, merely two branches of the Business Party. ..."
"... Good for Tulsi. I love the way she punches. She not only decked Clinton in one, but she got a lot of other important points across at the same time. ..."
"... Whenever she tries to curve her stance close to the establishment, she comes off as someone who is running for Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense; as someone with her eyes on a high status job in the establishement. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton can't be thrown out of the Dem party because she in a sense IS the Dem party as it stands now, a long way from its roots. The Dem party now has been fully integrated into the bureaucracy, the intelligence services and the corporate media similar to how Tony Blair in the UK took the Labour Party to be deeply embedded in the UK establishment. ..."
"... Hillary is still around because she literally owns the Democrat party. Follow the funding: in 2016, almost all of it flowed through HRC. Not just the presidential, but the state and significant part of the local. ..."
Hillary Clinton appeared to suggest that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is the "favorite of the Russians" to win the 2020 presidential
election and is being groomed by Moscow to run as a third-party candidate against the eventual Democratic nominee.
...
The Russians already have their "eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party
candidate," she said, in an apparent reference to Gabbard.
"She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her, so far," Clinton
told David Plouffe, the podcast's host and the campaign manager for former President Obama's 2008 campaign.
"And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset," Clinton added, referring
to the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate.
The responses were appropriate:
Tulsi Gabbard @TulsiGabbard - 22:20 UTC
· Oct 18, 2019
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that
has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy,
there has been a ...
... concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through
your proxies and ...
... powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.
It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
The Streisand effect of Clinton's shoddy remark will help Tulsi Gabbard with regards to name recognition. It will increase her
poll results. With Joe Biden faltering and Elizabeth Warren increasingly exposed as a phony Clinton copy, Bernie Sanders could become
the Democrats leading candidate. Then the “favorite of the Russians” smear will be applied to him.
Clinton should be suspended from the Democratic Party for damaging it's chances to regain the White House. But the Democratic
establishment would rather sabotage the election than to let one of the more progressive candidates take the lead.
Voters do not like such internal squabble and shenanigans. The phony Ukrainegate 'impeachment inquiry' is already
a gift for Trump. Messing with the candidate field on top
of that will inevitably end with another Trump presidency.
and Suspend her from what? a lamp post? That's a little bit harsh.
Hillary is actually doing something constructive for the first time in her career - by giving a boost to Tulsi Gabbard who
is the only candidate who challenges the military industrial complex, which has probably caused more death and destruction than
anyone else in history.
I suspect that Gabbard has very little chance of beating Trump because he is also campaigning - quite successfully - against
'endless wars', and Gabbard is too radical for most Americans.
But none of the other Democratic candidates stand a chance of beating Trump either. The two front-runners are medically unfit
for any important challenging job - Biden (senility) and Sanders (recent heart attack/stroke?).
Tulsi is urging Hillary to "enter the race" !! Hillary is foaming at the mouth with desire to enter the 2020 race. Is Tulsi
working for Hillary?
Behind the scenes it was decided to make HunterBidenGate the pretext for a Trump impeachment. This, it
was thought, would damage Trump AND Biden and make way for the resurrection of Hillary Clinton. There were so many other pretexts
available but they chose this one.
"Clinton should be suspended from the Democratic Party"
This sparks some interesting questions, such as, exactly who are party members, and how do they become members? The actual
structure and functioning of political parties in the US is seldom discussed, and I wonder why that is. "Opaque" seems to be a
good description. Even a quick review of the Wikipedia entry reveals little.
As best I can tell, a person is a party member by checking the box on the voter registration form. The few times I have registered,
I did not check a box for any party. It is none of the state's business who I associate with or vote for.
It is also not the state's business to supervise and fund the selection of party candidates. But that is what happens in the
US. The primary voting system is a huge financial subsidy to the two officially approved parties, which are, of course, merely
two branches of the Business Party.
"It didn't come much clearer nor more explicit than when Gabbard fired up the Democratic TV debate this week. It was billed
as the biggest televised presidential debate ever, and the Hawaii Representative told some prime-time home-truths to the nation:
"Donald Trump has blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have
supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011 along with many in the mainstream media who have been championing
and cheer-leading this regime-change war."
The 38-year-old military veteran went on to denounce how the US has sponsored Al Qaeda terrorists for its objective of overthrowing
the government in Damascus."
Good for Tulsi. I love the way she punches. She not only decked Clinton in one, but she got a lot of other important points
across at the same time. The way she tries to finesse her stances on Iran, India and Israel is disturbing though.
Whenever she tries to curve her stance close to the establishment, she comes off as someone who is running for Secretary
of State or Secretary of Defense; as someone with her eyes on a high status job in the establishement.
When she's forthright, punches hard and says the things that many people are thinking but few dare say - as she did in her
statement on Syria, but didn't in her statement on Iran - she comes off as the first real candidate for President that I've seen
in my lifetime (I don't count the likes of Dennis Kucinich, who never seemed to actually want to win).
If Tulsi is serious about doing the world good, this is the path she needs to take. Speak the truths no one else is willing
to say; punch hard; stick with it. Yeah and be willing to die for it. If they can't stop you, which I don't think they can, they'll
come gunning for you...
Finally, at last, foreign affairs (i.e wars) has made it into a presidential campaign, and by a veteran, with veterans currently
being sanctified in the U.S. The women (Tulsi, Jill and Hillary) are getting down and dirty, too, which is always a good thing
and a feature of politics in time past, as in the Truman era. President Harry Truman: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of
the kitchen. If you cannot handle the pressure, you should not remain in a position where you have to deal with it."
Let's hope that they get into the details of Hillary's failures, including Libya, Somalia, and especially Syria. Let's get
it on! In the last election she never was forced to answer for her specific failures. Now's the time.
Hillary Clinton can't be thrown out of the Dem party because she in a sense IS the Dem party as it stands now, a long way
from its roots. The Dem party now has been fully integrated into the bureaucracy, the intelligence services and the corporate
media similar to how Tony Blair in the UK took the Labour Party to be deeply embedded in the UK establishment.
What Trump has successfully done from the right that Sanders/Gabbard (like Corbyn in the UK) are struggling to do from the
left is to attack the establishment that's in a permanent state of warfare abroad and at home against its "enemies" and unfettered
capitalism at home For a brief moment it was hoped by progressives that Obama - who defeated the faces of the establishment, Clinton
and McCain in 2008 - would really fight the establishment but he ended up becoming more of a celebrity politician like Trudeau
who talked a good game but was unable to effect real change on the ground which of course led to a large number or African Americans
not voting in 2016 and a lot of white blue collar Obama 2008 voters going for Trump.
The corporate media which has been totally corrupted and infiltrated by intelligence agencies - quote openly versus covertly
as in the past - is going to make every effort to shut down not just Gabbard but Sanders and ensure that Warren - a wannabe feel-gooder
like Obama - be completely neutered to effect real change.
Hillary is still around because she literally owns the Democrat party. Follow the funding: in 2016, almost all of it flowed
through HRC. Not just the presidential, but the state and significant part of the local.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is paying Facebook Inc. to run false
advertisements that its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is endorsing President Donald
Trump.
Warren's campaign sponsored the posts which were blasted into the feeds of U.S. users of
the social network, as it pushed back against Facebook's policy to exempt politicians' ads
from its third-party fact-checking program.
The ads, which begin with the falsehood, quickly backtracks: "You're probably shocked. And
you might be thinking, 'how could this possibly be true?' Well, it's not." ...
"If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should
not be in the position of censoring that speech," Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said
in a statement to CNN on the ads.
This isn't the first time Warren has used Facebook's own platform to make a political
point. In March, Facebook took down ads from her campaign that called for the company to be
broken up, but later restored them.
This time, Warren's latest ads strike a more forceful tone, calling on users to hold the
Facebook CEO accountable and to back her mission.
"Facebook already helped elect Donald Trump once," the ads read. "Now, they're
deliberately allowing a candidate to intentionally lie to the American people."
Great tactic, and Hilarious at that. I passed it on on my face book account. Great political
humor has been a proven vote winner. Anytime you get a chuckle, the residual resentment gets
same relief.
"... Yes, the U.S. government can hurt Huawei in the short term by limiting their access to technology (and to certain foreign markets). But, absent a viable competitor, this won't have much impact in the long term. Because Huawei is fundamentally not a technology company. Huawei is a human resources company. And is kind of obsessed with survival. ..."
"... Huawei's fundamental purpose has always been about survival. ..."
"... Huawei, like most engineering-based enterprises, has only one real resource, which is the cumulative brainpower of its people. This is the resource that creates the products and sells them to their customers. And as technology changes quickly, they must continually create and recreate the products – and therefore the value of the enterprise. Huawei's main strength is the system they have developed for the creation, assessment and distribution of value by over 190,000 people. It's about HR strategy. ..."
Huawei is going to beat Trump with human resources
By Jeff Towson
President Trump's placement of Huawei on the U.S. entity list was a body blow. The
magnitude of the hit should not be understated. Being cut off from U.S. technology so
suddenly staggered the multinational. But, to their credit, Huawei didn't go down. They took
the hit and stayed on their feet.
I'm not really sure what the U.S. government thought it would achieve with the ban. To
stop Huawei's growth in international markets? To shift 5G market share to Ericsson and
Nokia? To cripple the company? Just an assertion of principle?
I think they really just don't understand Huawei.
Yes, the U.S. government can hurt Huawei in the short term by limiting their access to
technology (and to certain foreign markets). But, absent a viable competitor, this won't have
much impact in the long term. Because Huawei is fundamentally not a technology company.
Huawei is a human resources company. And is kind of obsessed with survival.
Huawei's core strategy has always been about survival.
If you read Ren Zhengfei's talks and papers going back to the early 1990's, what jumps out
at you is how different Huawei is. The goal of the company has never really been about money.
Nor about becoming a tech giant. Nor about innovation. And it has definitely not been about
going public and getting a big payday. Huawei's fundamental purpose has always been about
survival.
"Being big and strong temporarily is not what we want. What we want is the ability and
resilience to survive sustainably," said Ren in 2001.
Actually he has been talking for literally decades about how Huawei can survive long-term
– and about the common causes of corporate decline. My simplistic take is that Ren came
up with a fairly logical plan for long-term survival: Serve your customers no matter what.
Then get big and slowly grind your competitors down with lower costs and greater R&D
spending. And within this, the only resource you really have are your people and their
cumulative brainpower.
Huawei's main resource is its people.
Huawei, like most engineering-based enterprises, has only one real resource, which is the
cumulative brainpower of its people. This is the resource that creates the products and sells
them to their customers. And as technology changes quickly, they must continually create and
recreate the products – and therefore the value of the enterprise. Huawei's main
strength is the system they have developed for the creation, assessment and distribution of
value by over 190,000 people. It's about HR strategy.
Unlike the companies in the U.S. and Europe, where the shareholders are the stakeholders
with ultimate say or multiple stakeholders, such as employees, owners and the community, at
Huawei, the only stakeholders you ever really hear about are the current employees. It's all
about the top contributing, current employees. Shareholders, providers of capital, retired
employees and even the founders are all a distant second in importance.
Note how different this is to other large engineering-focused companies (say GM and
Bosch), where much of the value goes into guaranteed salaries (regardless of contribution)
and into post-retirement benefits (i.e., not current employees). Huawei is not only focused
primarily on this one group, they are also operating much more as a meritocracy with regards
to labor.
Huawei to me looks a lot like what 3G capital has been doing in consumer-facing companies
like Budweiser and Burger King. They have instituted "meritocracy and partnership" on a
massive scale in a knowledge business. There is a lot of ownership. And you rise and fall
based on your performance.
Huawei is awesome at inspiring dedication in their top contributing, current employees.
And that is pretty logical. If brainpower is Huawei's main resource, this is the group that
creates that value. So recruiting and motivating this group is the biggest priority. And they
don't just want them motivated. They want them "all in."
In practice, this is actually pretty complicated. It's a big company. Employees are at
different stages of their lives and careers. How do you get current staff, senior staff and
incoming staff to go "all in" in creating value for customers – and therefore the
enterprise?
My outsider's take is that Huawei is mostly focused on motivating teams and team managers.
High-performance teams with aggressive and dedicated managers are the engine of Huawei. And
these are mostly in sales and marketing and R&D. They make the largest contributions to
the customers and therefore the enterprise. You motivate at the team level and within the
departments that matter most. And then you scale it up.
But how do you assess contributed value?
Staff are rated every 6-12 months across metrics such as sales performance (usually
team-based), talent, dedication, and the potential for advancement. The phrases I keep coming
across in my reading are "dedicated employees" and "high-performance teams." In fact, the
book on their HR book is titled Dedication.
Once assessed, how do you reward performance?
High-performing contributors are given higher bonuses, of course. But they are also
identified and given more opportunities (and responsibilities). They are given more training
and the option to participate in the employee share ownership program (very important). Low
performers, in contrast, are demoted or exited. Meritocracy works in both directions.
And this brings us back to the main point of this article: How does the U.S. tech ban
impact any of this? How does it impact an HR system for motivating the more than 190,000
employees that continually recreate the company and ensure its survival?
In the long term, it doesn't.
Yes, the company took a big hit in the short term in terms of its access to tech
(especially in semiconductors and in the consumer business) and to a few markets. But the
core of the company is still churning along like it has for 30 years. And I think it is very
likely Huawei will overcome these supply chain problems. And, ironically, the current crisis
is probably resulting in increased motivation and dedication across the company.
The term "centrist" is replaced by a more appropriate term "neoliberal oligarchy"
Notable quotes:
"... Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with his reelection chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating itself into public discourse. For that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits are already showing signs of going wobbly, suggesting , for instance, that censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as punishment for the president's various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a good tongue-lashing so that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for wimps. ..."
"... So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats aren't necessarily in a more favorable position. And that aren't the half of it. Let me suggest that, while Trump is being pursued, it's you, my fellow Americans, who are really being played. The unspoken purpose of impeachment is not removal, but restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with Mike Pence -- the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the exercise is to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled Trump to win the White House in the first place. ..."
"... For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated purpose of impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore history to its anointed path. ..."
"... In a recent column in The Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the essential point: Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest and utterly incompetent president comes nowhere close to capturing what's going on here. To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more important than anything he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking repudiation of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to see as foreordained. ..."
"... Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as "neoliberal oligarchy", members of the post-Cold War political mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative Bushes and nominally liberal Clintons, while leaving just enough space for Barack Obama's promise of hope-and-(not-too-much) change. ..."
"... These "neoliberal oligarchy" share a common worldview. They believe in the universality of freedom as defined and practiced within the United States. They believe in corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale. They believe in American primacy, with the United States presiding over a global order as the sole superpower. They believe in "American global leadership," which they define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all, while collecting degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to believe in a so-called meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power and privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of contemporary American political elites. And if Donald Trump's antagonists have their way, his removal will restore that sacred scripture to its proper place as the basis of policy. ..."
"... "For all their appeals to enduring moral values," Moyn writes, "the "neoliberal oligarchy" are deploying a transparent strategy to return to power." Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary precondition for achieving that goal. ""neoliberal oligarchy" simply want to return to the status quo interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous opposition to his mercurial reign, and their policies restored to credibility." Precisely. ..."
"... how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the "neoliberal oligarchy" who preceded him? ..."
"... Trump's critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet virtually no one has been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss inflicted by the architects of the Iraq War and the Great Recession. Why is that? As another presidential election approaches, the question not only goes unanswered, but unasked. ..."
"... To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship on his own bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat and lie. Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify as novelties. (Indeed, apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice president, what made Hunter Biden worth $50Gs per month to a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch? I'm curious.) That the president and his associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. "Trump's shambolic presidency somehow seems less unsavory," Moyn writes, when considering the fact that his critics refuse "to admit how massively his election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war to economic inequality." Just so. ..."
"... Exactly. Trump is the result of voter disgust with Bush III vs Clinton II, the presumed match up for a year or more leading up to 2016. Now Democrats want to do it again, thinking they can elect anybody against Trump. That's what Hillary thought too. ..."
"... Trump won for lack of alternatives. Our political class is determined to prevent any alternatives breaking through this time either. They don't want Trump, but even more they want to protect their gravy train of donor money, the huge overspending on medical care (four times the defense budget) and of course all those Forever Wars. ..."
"... Trump could win, for the same reasons as last time, even though the result would be no better than last time. ..."
"... I wish the slick I.D. politics obsessed corporate Dems nothing but the worst, absolute worst. They reap what they sow. If it means another four years of Trump, so be it. It's the price that's going to have to be paid. ..."
"... At a time when a majority of U.S. citizens cannot muster up $500 for an emergency dental bill or car repair without running down to the local "pay day loan" lender shark (now established as legitimate businesses) the corporate Dems, in their infinite wisdom, decide to concoct an impeachment circus to run simultaneously when all the dirt against the execrable Brennan and his intel minions starts to hit the press for their Russiagate hoax. Nice sleight of hand there corporate Dems. ..."
There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they
think.
From the time of Donald Trump's election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At
long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed
fashion, Trump has given his adversaries the very means to destroy him politically. They will
not waste the opportunity. Impeachment now -- finally, some will say -- qualifies as a virtual
certainty.
No doubt many surprises lie ahead. Yet the Democrats controlling the House of
Representatives have passed the point of no return. The time for prudential judgments -- the
Republican-controlled Senate will never convict, so why bother? -- is gone for good. To back
down now would expose the president's pursuers as spineless cowards. TheNew York
Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC would not soon forgive such craven behavior.
So, as President Woodrow Wilson, speaking in 1919 put it, "The stage is set, the
destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God." Of
course, the issue back then was a notably weighty one: whether to ratify the Versailles Treaty.
That it now concerns a "
Mafia-like shakedown " orchestrated by one of Wilson's successors tells us something about
the trajectory of American politics over the course of the last century and it has not been a
story of ascent.
The effort to boot the president from office is certain to yield a memorable spectacle. The
rancor and contempt that have clogged American politics like a backed-up sewer since the day of
Trump's election will now find release. Watergate will pale by comparison. The uproar triggered
by Bill Clinton's "
sexual relations " will be nothing by comparison. A de facto collaboration between
Trump, those who despise him, and those who despise his critics all but guarantees that this
story will dominate the news, undoubtedly for months to come.
As this process unspools, what politicians like to call "the people's business" will go
essentially unattended. So while Congress considers whether or not to remove Trump from office,
gun-control legislation will languish, the deterioration of the nation's infrastructure will
proceed apace, needed healthcare reforms will be tabled, the military-industrial complex will
waste yet more billions, and the national debt, already at $22 trillion --
larger, that is, than the entire economy -- will continue to surge. The looming threat posed by
climate change, much talked about of late, will proceed all but unchecked. For those of us
preoccupied with America's role in the world, the obsolete assumptions and habits undergirding
what's still called " national
security " will continue to evade examination. Our endless wars will remain endless and
pointless.
By way of compensation, we might wonder what benefits impeachment is likely to yield.
Answering that question requires examining four scenarios that describe the range of
possibilities awaiting the nation.
The first and most to be desired (but least likely) is that Trump will tire of being a
public piñata and just quit. With the thrill of flying in Air Force One having
worn off, being president can't be as much fun these days. Why put up with further grief? How
much more entertaining for Trump to retire to the political sidelines where he can tweet up a
storm and indulge his penchant for name-calling. And think of the "deals" an ex-president could
make in countries like Israel, North Korea, Poland, and Saudi Arabia on which he's bestowed
favors. Cha-ching! As of yet, however, the president shows no signs of taking the easy (and
lucrative) way out.
The second possible outcome sounds almost as good but is no less implausible: a sufficient
number of Republican senators rediscover their moral compass and "do the right thing," joining
with Democrats to create the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump and send him packing.
In the Washington of that classic 20th-century film director Frank Capra, with Jimmy Stewart
holding
forth on the Senate floor and a moist-eyed Jean Arthur cheering him on from the gallery,
this might have happened. In the real Washington of "Moscow Mitch"
McConnell , think again.
The third somewhat seamier outcome might seem a tad more likely. It postulates that
McConnell and various GOP senators facing reelection in 2020 or 2022 will calculate that
turning on Trump just might offer the best way of saving their own skins. The president's
loyalty to just about anyone, wives included, has always been highly contingent, the people
streaming out of his administration routinely making the point. So why should senatorial
loyalty to the president be any different? At the moment, however, indications that Trump
loyalists out in the hinterlands will reward such turncoats are just about nonexistent. Unless
that base were to flip, don't expect Republican senators to do anything but flop.
That leaves outcome No. 4, easily the most probable: while the House will impeach, the
Senate will decline to convict. Trump will therefore stay right where he is, with the matter of
his fitness for office effectively deferred to the November 2020 elections. Except as a source
of sadomasochistic diversion, the entire agonizing experience will, therefore, prove to be a
colossal waste of time and blather.
Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with his reelection
chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating itself into public discourse. For
that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits are already showing signs of going wobbly,
suggesting , for instance, that censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as
punishment for the president's various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay
in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a good tongue-lashing so
that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for wimps.
Besides, as Trump campaigns for a second term, he would almost surely wear censure like a
badge of honor. Keep in mind that Congress's
approval ratings are considerably worse than his. To more than a few members of the public,
a black mark awarded by Congress might look like a gold star.
Restoration Not Removal
So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats aren't necessarily in a more
favorable position. And that aren't the half of it. Let me suggest that, while Trump is being
pursued, it's you, my fellow Americans, who are really being played. The unspoken purpose of
impeachment is not removal, but restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with
Mike Pence -- the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the exercise is
to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled Trump to win the White House
in the first place.
Just recently, for instance, Hillary Clinton
declared Trump to be an "illegitimate president." Implicit in her charge is the conviction
-- no doubt sincere -- that people like Donald Trump are not supposed to be president.
People like Hillary Clinton -- people possessing credentials
like hers and sharing her values -- should be the chosen ones. Here we glimpse the true
meaning of legitimacy in this context. Whatever the vote in the Electoral College, Trump
doesn't deserve to be president and never did.
For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated purpose of
impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore history to its anointed
path.
In a
recent column in The Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the essential point:
Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest and utterly incompetent president comes nowhere close
to capturing what's going on here. To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more
important than anything he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking
repudiation of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to see as
foreordained.
Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as "neoliberal oligarchy", members of the post-Cold War political
mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative Bushes and nominally liberal
Clintons, while leaving just enough space for Barack Obama's promise of hope-and-(not-too-much)
change.
These "neoliberal oligarchy" share a common worldview. They believe in the universality of freedom as
defined and practiced within the United States. They believe in corporate capitalism operating
on a planetary scale. They believe in American primacy, with the United States presiding over a
global order as the sole superpower. They believe in "American global leadership," which they
define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all, while collecting degrees
from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to
believe in a so-called meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power and
privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of contemporary American
political elites. And if Donald Trump's antagonists have their way, his removal will restore
that sacred scripture to its proper place as the basis of policy.
"For all their appeals to enduring moral values," Moyn writes, "the "neoliberal oligarchy" are deploying
a transparent strategy to return to power." Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary
precondition for achieving that goal. ""neoliberal oligarchy" simply want to return to the status quo
interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous opposition to his
mercurial reign, and their policies restored to credibility." Precisely.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors
The U.S. military's "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad at the start of the Iraq War, as
broadcast on CNN.
For such a scheme to succeed, however, laundering reputations alone will not suffice.
Equally important will be to bury any recollection of the catastrophes that paved the way for
an über -qualified centrist to lose to an indisputably unqualified and
unprincipled political novice in 2016.
Holding promised security assistance hostage unless a foreign leader agrees to do you
political favors is obviously and indisputably wrong. Trump's antics regarding Ukraine may even
meet some definition of criminal. Still, how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the "neoliberal
oligarchy" who preceded him? Consider, in particular, the George W. Bush
administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (along with the spin-off wars that followed).
Consider, too, the reckless economic policies that produced the Great Recession of 2007-2008.
As measured by the harm inflicted on the American people (and others), the offenses for which
Trump is being impeached qualify as mere misdemeanors.
Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright lies or monumental
hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences, however, the intentions of those who
sold the war don't particularly matter. The results include
thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands wounded, many grievously, or left to
struggle with the effects of PTSD; hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured ;
millions displaced ;
trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered (and in its case
even formed
inside a U.S. prison in Iraq); and the Persian Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it
has yet to recover. How do Trump's crimes stack up against these?
The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented during the
administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his successor. Deregulating the
banking sector was projected to produce a bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a
direct result of
the ensuing chicanery, nearly 9 million Americans lost their jobs, while overall unemployment
shot up to 10 percent. Roughly 4 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The stock
market cratered and millions saw their life savings evaporate. Again, the question must be
asked: How do these results compare to Trump's dubious dealings with Ukraine?
Trump's critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet virtually no one has
been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss inflicted by the architects of the Iraq
War and the Great Recession. Why is that? As another presidential election approaches, the
question not only goes unanswered, but unasked.
Sen. Carter Glass (D–Va.) and Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D–Ala.-3), the co-sponsors of
the 1932 Glass–Steagall Act separating investment and commercial banking, which was
repealed in 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)
To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship
on his own bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat and lie.
Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify as novelties. (Indeed,
apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice president, what made Hunter Biden
worth $50Gs per month to a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch? I'm curious.) That
the president and his associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another
cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. "Trump's shambolic presidency
somehow seems less unsavory," Moyn writes, when considering the fact that his critics refuse
"to admit how massively his election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war
to economic inequality." Just so.
What are the real crimes? Who are the real criminals? No matter what happens in the coming
months, don't expect the Trump impeachment proceedings to come within a country mile of
addressing such questions.
Exactly. Trump is the result of voter disgust with Bush III vs Clinton II, the presumed
match up for a year or more leading up to 2016. Now Democrats want to do it again, thinking they can elect anybody against Trump. That's
what Hillary thought too.
Now the Republicans who lost their party to Trump think they can take it back with
somebody even more lame than Jeb, if only they could find someone, anyone, to run on that
non-plan.
Trump won for lack of alternatives. Our political class is determined to prevent any
alternatives breaking through this time either. They don't want Trump, but even more they
want to protect their gravy train of donor money, the huge overspending on medical care (four
times the defense budget) and of course all those Forever Wars.
Trump could win, for the same reasons as last time, even though the result would be no
better than last time.
LJ , October 9, 2019 at 17:01
Well, yeah but I recall that what won Trump the Republican Nomination was first and
foremost his stance on Immigration. This issue is what separated him from the herd of
candidates . None of them had the courage or the desire to go against Governmental Groupthink
on Immigration. All he then had to do was get on top of low energy Jeb Bush and the road was
clear. He got the base on his side on this issue and on his repeated statement that he wished
to normalize relations with Russia . He won the nomination easily. The base is still on his
side on these issues but Governmental Groupthink has prevailed in the House, the Senate, the
Intelligence Services and the Federal Courts. Funny how nobody in the Beltway, especially not
in media, is brave enough to admit that the entire Neoconservative scheme has been a disaster
and that of course we should get out of Syria . Nor can anyone recall the corruption and
warmongering that now seem that seems endemic to the Democratic Party. Of course Trump has to
wear goat's horns. "Off with his head".
Drew Hunkins , October 9, 2019 at 16:00
I wish the slick I.D. politics obsessed corporate Dems nothing but the worst, absolute
worst. They reap what they sow. If it means another four years of Trump, so be it. It's the
price that's going to have to be paid.
At a time when a majority of U.S. citizens cannot muster up $500 for an emergency dental
bill or car repair without running down to the local "pay day loan" lender shark (now
established as legitimate businesses) the corporate Dems, in their infinite wisdom, decide to
concoct an impeachment circus to run simultaneously when all the dirt against the execrable
Brennan and his intel minions starts to hit the press for their Russiagate hoax. Nice sleight
of hand there corporate Dems.
Of course, the corporate Dems would rather lose to Trump than win with a
progressive-populist like Bernie. After all, a Bernie win would mean an end to a lot of
careerism and cushy positions within the establishment political scene in Washington and
throughout the country.
Now we even have the destroyer of Libya mulling another run for the presidency.
Forget about having a job the next day and forget about the 25% interest on your credit
card or that half your income is going toward your rent or mortgage, or that you barely see
your kids b/c of the 60 hour work week, just worry about women lawyers being able to make
partner at the firm, and trans people being able to use whatever bathroom they wish and male
athletes being able to compete against women based on genitalia (no, wait, I'm confused
now).
Either class politics and class warfare comes front and center or we witness a burgeoning
neo-fascist movement in our midst. It's that simple, something has got to give!
Hillary Clinton has threatened to enter the 2020 presidential race for president after
President Donald Trump suggested on Twitter that she throw her hat in the ring in an effort to
"steal it away" from Elizabeth Warren. Trump tweeted Tuesday that "Crooked Hillary"
should run for president again to deprive the "Uber Left" Warren of a shot at the White
House, but only on "one condition" to be subpoenaed to "explain all of her high
crimes and misdemeanors."
I think that Crooked Hillary Clinton should enter the race to try and steal it away from
Uber Left Elizabeth Warren. Only one condition. The Crooked one must explain all of her high
crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting "C"
Subpoena!
Five hours after Trump's jab, Clinton replied: "Don't tempt me. Do your job."
Reaction to Clinton's warning was mixed, to say the least. While mainstream media outlets
seemed to love the idea, many social media users recoiled in horror at the thought of a 2016
re-run.
"I don't think my heart could take it" if Hillary really runs again, one fan
proclaimed on Twitter.
"The president is dropping by the city on Thursday for one of his periodic angry
wank-fests at the Target Center, which is the venue in which this event will be inflicted
upon the Twin Cities. (And, just as an aside, given the events of the past 10 days, this one
should be a doozy.) Other Minneapolis folk are planning an extensive unwelcoming party
outside the arena, which necessarily would require increased security, which is expensive.
So, realizing that it was dealing with a notorious deadbeat -- in keeping with his customary
business plan, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago has stiffed 10 cities this year for bills relating
to security costs that total almost a million bucks -- the company that provides the security
for the Target Center wants the president*'s campaign to shell out more than $500,000.
This has sent the president* into a Twitter tantrum against Frey, who seems not to be that
impressed by it. Right from when the visit was announced, Frey has been jabbing at the
president*'s ego. From the Star-Tribune:
"Our entire city will stand not behind the President, but behind the communities and
people who continue to make our city -- and this country -- great," Frey said. "While there
is no legal mechanism to prevent the president from visiting, his message of hatred will
never be welcome in Minneapolis."
It is a mayor's lot to deal with out-of-state troublemakers. Always has been."
This is not about Trump. This is not even about Ukraine and/or foreign powers influence on
the US election (of which Israel, UK, and Saudi are three primary examples; in this
particular order.)
Russiagate 2.0 (aka Ukrainegate) is the case, textbook example if you wish, of how the
neoliberal elite manipulates the MSM and the narrative for purposes of misdirecting attention
and perception of their true intentions and objectives -- distracting the electorate from
real issues.
An excellent observation by JohnH (October 01, 2019 at 01:47 PM )
"It all depends on which side of the Infowars you find yourself. The facts themselves are
too obscure and byzantine."
There are two competing narratives here:
1. NARRATIVE 1: CIA swamp scum tried to re-launch Russiagate as Russiagate 2.0. This is
CIA coup d'état aided and abetted by CIA-democrats like Pelosi and Schiff. Treason, as
Trump aptly said. This is narrative shared by "anti-Deep Staters" who sometimes are nicknamed
"Trumptards". Please note that the latter derogatory nickname is factually incorrect:
supporters of this narrative often do not support Trump. They just oppose machinations of the
Deep State. And/or neoliberalism personified by Clinton camp, with its rampant
corruption.
2. NARRATIVE 2: Trump tried to derail his opponent using his influence of foreign state
President (via military aid) as leverage and should be impeached for this and previous
crimes. ("Full of Schiff" commenters narrative, neoliberal democrats, or demorats.)
Supporters of this category usually bought Russiagate 1.0 narrative line, hook and sinker.
Some of them are brainwashed, but mostly simply ignorant neoliberal lemmings without even
basic political education.
In any case, while Russiagate 2.0 is probably another World Wrestling Federation style
fight, I think "anti-Deep-staters" are much closer to the truth.
What is missing here is the real problem: the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA (and
elsewhere).
So this circus serves an important purpose (intentionally or unintentionally) -- to disrupt
voters from the problems that are really burning, and are equal to a slow-progressing cancer in the
US society.
And implicitly derail Warren (being a weak politician she does not understand that, and
jumped into Ukrainegate bandwagon )
I am not that competent here, so I will just mention some obvious symptoms:
Loss of legitimacy of the ruling neoliberal elite (which demonstrated itself in 2016
with election of Trump);
Desperation of many working Americans with sliding standard of living; loss of meaningful
jobs due to offshoring of manufacturing and automation (which demonstrated itself in opioids
abuse epidemics; similar to epidemics of alcoholism in the USSR before its dissolution.
Loss of previously available freedoms. Loss of "free press" replaced by the neoliberal
echo chamber in major MSM. The uncontrolled and brutal rule of financial oligarchy and allied
with the intelligence agencies as the third rail of US politics (plus the conversion of the
state after 9/11 into national security state);
Coming within this century end of the "Petroleum Age" and the global crisis that it can
entail;
Rampant militarism, tremendous waist of resources on the arms race, and overstretched
efforts to maintain and expand global, controlled from Washington, neoliberal empire. Efforts
that since 1991 were a primary focus of unhinged after 1991 neocon faction US elite who
totally controls foreign policy establishment ("full-spectrum dominance). They are stealing money from
working people to fund an imperial project, and as part of neoliberal redistribution of wealth up
Most of the commenters here live a comfortable life in the financially secured retirement,
and, as such, are mostly satisfied with the status quo. And almost completely isolated from
the level of financial insecurity of most common Americans (healthcare racket might be the
only exception).
And re-posting of articles which confirm your own worldview (echo chamber posting) is nice
entertainment, I think ;-)
Some of those posters actually sometimes manage to find really valuable info. For which I
am thankful. In other cases, when we have a deluge of abhorrent neoliberal propaganda
postings (the specialty of Fred C. Dobbs) which often generate really insightful comments from the
members of the "anti-Deep State" camp.
Still it would be beneficial if the flow of neoliberal spam is slightly curtailed.
"... The intemperate comments of an imperial-minded candidate for the presidency ..."
"... The democrat coup/impeach/coup machine suffers is bi-polar disorder. Every they way fill the military industry complex trough! In their war manic state they supress freedom fighters, and arm their jailers, in their war depress state they support rioters in Hong Kong. If Donbass rebels were in Macao they would get US support, in Dobass the US will suppress freedom. ..."
"... With Ukraine, because the democrat neocons want to surround Russia, US national security arms Ukriane to forcibly put down Donbass as they attempt some form of "self determination". ..."
"... In the case of Hong Kong because US is enemy to the PRC (Red China at Menzie Chinn blog) the US is all for self determination, like Hitler was for pulling Sudetenland out of Czechoslovakia in 1938! ..."
"... This bipolar morality fits with deep state surveillance on Trump in 2016 and in 2019 claiming Trump doing it to Biden so that Trump/DoJ cannot fight corrupt (all) democrats ever! ..."
Is Time for the United States to Stand Up to China in Hong Kong
Tweets aren't enough. Washington must make clear that it expects Beijing to live up to its
commitments -- and it will respond when China does not.
By ELIZABETH WARREN
It Is Time for the United States to Stand Up to China in Hong Kong
Tweets aren't enough. Washington must make clear that it expects Beijing to live up to its
commitments -- and it will respond when China does not.
By ELIZABETH WARREN
[ Shocking and appalling; unethical and immoral; discrediting. The intemperate comments of an imperial-minded candidate for the presidency. ]
The democrat coup/impeach/coup machine suffers is bi-polar disorder. Every they way fill the
military industry complex trough!
In their war manic state they supress freedom fighters, and arm their jailers, in their
war depress state they support rioters in Hong Kong. If Donbass rebels were in Macao they would get US support, in Dobass the US will suppress
freedom.
With Ukraine, because the democrat neocons want to surround Russia, US national security
arms Ukriane to forcibly put down Donbass as they attempt some form of "self
determination".
In the case of Hong Kong because US is enemy to the PRC (Red China at Menzie Chinn blog)
the US is all for self determination, like Hitler was for pulling Sudetenland out of
Czechoslovakia in 1938!
This bipolar morality fits with deep state surveillance on Trump in 2016 and in 2019
claiming Trump doing it to Biden so that Trump/DoJ cannot fight corrupt (all) democrats
ever!
1) We don't know for certain what Shokin was investigating and what he wasn't.
2) Ukraine was rife with corruption. But most likely Biden was more concerned with
uprooting pro-Russian elements calling them corrupt as shorthand. Pro-Western corruption was
most likely overlooked.
3) We don't know why Hunter Biden was appointed to the Burisma board along with one of Joe
Biden's big bundlers and the CIA-friendly former President of Poland. We do know that Hunter
was put on the board immediately after the color revolution in Ukraine and that he served a
stint on the National Democratic Institute, which promotes regime change. Much more needs to
be learned about what the Bidens were up to in Ukraine and whether they were carpet baggers
cashing out.
As I have said, I would be delighted if Trump went down and took Joe Biden with him. The
last thing this country needs is a Joe Lieberman with a smiling face serving as President
which is basically what Joe Biden is.
"As I have said, I would be delighted if Trump went down and took Joe Biden with him."
Biden was already destroyed by Ukrainegate, being Pelosi sacrificial pawn (and for such
semi-senile candidate exit now looks the most logical; he can hand around for longer but the
question is why? ), but it is unclear how this will affect Trump.
In any case each accusation of Trump boomerang into Biden. And Biden China story probably
even more interesting then his Ukrainian gate story.
CIA ears over all Ukraine-gate are so visible that it hurts Pelosi case. Schiff is a sad
clown in this circus, and he has zero credibility after his well publicized love story with
Russiagate.
The fact that Warren is now favorite increases previously reluctant Wall Street support
for Trump, who is becoming kind of new Hillary, the establishment candidate.
And if you able to think, trump now looks like establishment candidate, corrupt
interventionist, who is not that far from Hillary in foreign policy and clearly as a "hard
neoliberal" aligns with Hillary "soft neoliberal" stance in domestic policy.
As Warren can pretend that she is better Trump then Trump (and we are talking about
Trump-2016 platform; Trump action were betrayal of his electorate much like was the case with
Obama) she has chances, but let's do not overestimate them.
Pelosi help with Trump re-election can't be underestimated.
Less than an hour after the New York Times dropped their
'bombshell' whistleblower claims that President Trump coerced the Australian PM into assisting his
investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe, the Aussie PM's office has destroyed the
narrative in two short sentences. An official statement confirmed:
"The Australian Government has
always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts
that help shed further light on the matters
under investigation. The
PM
confirmed this readiness once again in conversation
with the President"
So, the Aussies were always ready and willing to help (with no Trump coercion required) and the
Aussies reiterated such facts (with no apparent prodding from Trump).
So another 'bombshell' embarrasses the media...
* * *
As we enter a new era of anonymous whistleblowers heading into the 2020 election (a new
anti-Trump strategy
telegraphed by former CIA Director, John Brennan
), the
New
York Times
is out with a report that President Trump
asked the Australian Prime
Minister to help Attorney General William Barr uncover the origins of "Russiagate,"
according
to yet another 'whistleblower.'
A transcript of the call has been restricted to a small group of the president's aides,
according to the
Times
, which compared it to the "unusual decision" similar to how the
Trump administration restricted access to the transcript of a July call with the President of
Ukraine (which the last administration routinely did according to former national security adviser
Susan Rice
).
According to the
Times
, Trump was "using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal
political interests," however "Justice Department officials have said that
it would be
neither illegal nor untoward for Mr. Trump to ask world leaders to cooperate with Mr. Barr.
"
President Trump initiated the discussion in recent weeks with Mr. Morrison
explicitly
for the purpose of requesting Australia's help in the Justice Department review of the Russia
investigation
, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussion.
Mr. Barr requested that Mr. Trump speak to Mr. Morrison
, one of the people said. -
NYT
Of note, Barr appointed career prosecutor John H. Durham to investigate the origins of
"Russiagate," a move which Trump and his allies have suggested may be
potentially helpful
for the White House
.
Trump's request effectively meant that Australia would be
investigating itself over the
participation of Australian diplomat Alexander Downer
in an alleged spying - and potential
setup - on the Trump campaign.
Shortly after Trump aide George Papadopoulos announced his intention to work for the 2016
campaign, he was
lured to London
in March of 2016, where Maltese professor and
self-described
Clinton
foundation member
Joseph Mifsud
fed him the rumor that Russia had damaging
information on Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos would later relay this information to Downer, who passed it to the FBI, which in
turn launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane - the FBI's official investigation into the Trump
campaign.
The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election
began after
Australian
officials told the bureau
that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump
campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London
in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the
Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Papadopoulos also said that he had heard that the Russians had "thousands" of
Mrs. Clinton's emails from Joseph Mifsud
, an academic. Mr. Mifsud, who was last seen
working as a visiting professor in Rome, has disappeared. -
NYT
Barr began a review of the Russia investigation earlier this year with the stated goal of
determining whether the US intelligence community under Obama acted inappropriately - for example,
when
they sent Stefan Halper - a spy who had been paid
over $1 million
during Obama's presidency - to infiltrate Trump campaign aides Papadopoulos and
Carter Page
.
Last week the DOJ announced that it was exploring how other countries, including Ukraine,
"played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign."
Whatever the findings, we're sure the new 'whistleblower strategy' is sure to deflect from any
actual wrongdoing which may have been committed by government officials.
If Krugman is surprised that some Democratic donors will support Trump over Warren, he is not
an analyst.
And Obama was a Wall Street prostitute, much like bill Clinton, no questions about it. Trump
betrayal of his voters actually mirror the Obama betrayal. May suspect that Warren will be
malleable with will fold to Wall Street on the first opportunity, governing like Trump-lite.
Warren Versus the Petty Plutocrats. Why do they hate her? It's mainly about their
egos.
By Paul Krugman
Remember when pundits used to argue that Elizabeth Warren wasn't likable enough to be
president? It was always a lazy take, with a strong element of sexism. And it looks
ridiculous now, watching Warren on the campaign trail. Never mind whether she's someone you'd
like to have a beer with, she's definitely someone thousands of people want to take selfies
with.
But there are some people who really, really dislike Warren: the ultrawealthy, especially
on Wall Street. They dislike her so much that some longtime Democratic donors are reportedly
considering throwing their backing behind Donald Trump, corruption, collusion and all, if
Warren is the Democratic presidential nominee.
And Warren's success is a serious possibility, because Warren's steady rise has made her a
real contender, maybe even the front-runner: While she still trails Joe Biden a bit in the
polls, betting markets currently give her a roughly 50 percent chance of securing the
nomination.
But why does Warren inspire a level of hatred and fear among the very wealthy that I
don't think we've seen directed at a presidential candidate since the days of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt?
On the surface, the answer may seem obvious. She is proposing policies, notably a tax on
fortunes exceeding $50 million, that would make the extremely wealthy a bit less so. But
delve into the question a bit more deeply, and Warren hatred becomes considerably more
puzzling.
For the only people who would be directly affected by her tax proposals are those who more
or less literally have more money than they know what to do with. Having a million or two
less wouldn't crimp their lifestyles; most of them would barely notice the change.
At the same time, even the very wealthy should be very afraid of the prospect of a Trump
re-election. Any doubts you might have had about his authoritarian instincts should have been
put to rest by his reaction to the possibility of impeachment: implicit death threats against
whistle-blowers, warnings of civil war and claims that members of Congress investigating him
are guilty of treason.
And anyone imagining that great wealth would make them safe from an autocrat's wrath
should look at the list of Russian oligarchs who crossed Vladimir Putin -- and are now ruined
or dead. So what would make the very wealthy -- even some Jewish billionaires, who should
have a very good idea of the likely consequences of right-wing dominance -- support Trump
over someone like Warren?
There is, I'd argue, an important clue in the "Obama rage" that swept Wall Street circa
2010. Objectively, the Obama administration was very good to the financial industry, even
though that industry had just led us into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
Major financial players were bailed out on lenient terms, and while bankers were subjected to
a long-overdue increase in regulation, the new regulations have proved fairly easy for
reputable firms to deal with.
Yet financial tycoons were furious with President Barack Obama because they felt
disrespected. In truth, Obama's rhetoric was very mild; all he ever did was suggest that some
bankers had behaved badly, which no reasonable person could deny. But with great wealth comes
great pettiness; Obama's gentle rebukes provoked fury -- and a huge swing in financial
industry political contributions toward Republicans.
The point is that many of the superrich aren't satisfied with living like kings, which
they will continue to do no matter who wins next year's election. They also expect to be
treated like kings, lionized as job creators and heroes of prosperity, and consider any
criticism an unforgivable act of lèse-majesté.
And for such people, the prospect of a Warren presidency is a nightmarish threat -- not to
their wallets, but to their egos. They can try to brush off someone like Bernie Sanders as a
rabble-rouser. But when Warren criticizes malefactors of great wealth and proposes reining in
their excesses, her evident policy sophistication -- has any previous candidate managed to
turn wonkiness into a form of charisma? -- makes her critique much harder to dismiss.
If Warren is the nominee, then, a significant number of tycoons will indeed go for Trump;
better to put democracy at risk than to countenance a challenge to their imperial
self-esteem. But will it matter?
Maybe not. These days American presidential elections are so awash in money that both
sides can count on having enough resources to saturate the airwaves.
Indeed, over-the-top attacks from the wealthy can sometimes be a political plus. That was
certainly the case for F.D.R., who reveled in his plutocratic opposition: "They are unanimous
in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."
So far Warren seems to be following the same playbook, tweeting out articles about Wall
Street's hostility as if they were endorsements, which in a sense they are. It's good to have
the right enemies.
I do worry, however, how Wall Streeters will take it if they go all out to defeat Warren
and she wins anyway. Washington can bail out their balance sheets, but who can bail out their
damaged psyches?
"Deductive reasoning" within the media message is mob control.
"It ain't what you know... it's what you know that ain't so"#. Keep reading the mainstream
media!
Given enough time [and strategy wrt 2020 election] we will get to the bottom of Obama's
"criminal influence" on 2016 election.
It takes a lot more to debunk the Biden, Clinton, Nuland, Obama Ukraine drama. To my mind,
Ukraine needs to be clean as driven snow* to "earn" javelins to kill Russian speaking
rebels.
Why do US from Obama+ fund rebels in Syria (Sunni radicals mainly) and want to send tank
killers to suppress rebels where we might get in to the real deal?
# conservatives have been saying that about the 'outrage' started by the MSM for
decades.
Warren might be an improvement over the current situation. Moreover she has some sound ideas about taming the financial
oligarchy
"Best alternative to the above? Get Liz Warren elected, IMO."
True. IMHO Warren might be an improvement over the
current situation. Moreover she has some sound ideas about taming the financial oligarchy.
The idea of taking on
financial oligarchy will find strong support of voters and in some respects she is "a better Trump then Trump" as for
restoring the honor and wellbeing of the working people mercilessly squeezed and marginalized by neoliberalism in the USA.
Her book "The two income trap"(2004) suggests that this is not just a classic "bait and switch" election trick in
best Obama or Trump style.
And I would say she in her 70 is in better shape then Trump in his 73+. He shows isolated
early signs of neurologic damage (some claim sundowning syndrome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwh6Fu9BcAw slurring speech patterns, repetitions, disorientation, etc), which is
natural for any person in his 70th subjected to his level of stress.
But it is completely unclear to me whether the impeachment favors Warren or Trump. the treat of impeachment already
cemented fractures in Trump base which now, judging from comments in forums, is really outraged.
Some people are
talking about armed resistance, which is, of course, hopeless nonsense in the current national-security state, but does show
the state of their mind.
Also nobody here can even imagine the amount of dirt Obama administration accumulated by
their actions in Ukraine. They really supported a neo-fascist party and cooperated with neo-Nazi (other important players
were Germany, Poland and Sweden). Just to achieve geopolitical victory over Russia. Kind of total reversion of WWII alliance
for me.
That avalanche of dirt can affect Warren indirectly as she proved to be a weak, unsophisticated politician by
supporting Pelosi drive for impeachment instead of pretending of being neutral. Which would be more appropriate and much
safer position.
Neoliberal democrats despite all Pelosi skills ( see https://mediaequalizer.com/martin-walsh/2017/12/gifford-heres-how-pelosi-learned-mob-like-tactics-from-her-father
) really opened a can of worms with this impeachment.
Also it looks like all of them, including Pelosi, are scared of
CIA: https://galacticconnection.com/nancy-pelosi-admits-congress-scared-cia/
== quote == In response to Senator
Dianne Feinstein’s speech last week calling out the CIA for spying on her staffers, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was asked to comment
and gave what might be the most revealing comments to date as to why Congress is so scared of the CIA:
“I salute
Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell
you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without
evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”
Pelosi added that she has
always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price
because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth. ==end==
I strongly doubt that Trump will ever
risk to drop a bomb by declassifying documents about Obama dirty actions in Ukraine; so to speak go "all in" against
neoliberal Democrats and part of intelligence community (and possibly be JFKed).
But Trump is unpredictable and
extremely vindictive. How he will behave after being put against the wall on fake changes is completely unclear. I wonder if
Pelosi correctly calculated all the risks.
I wrote the other day about Wall Street fear and loathing of Elizabeth Warren, suggesting
that it has more to do with threatened egos than with money per se 1/
Some more thoughts on reports that Wall Street Democrats will back Trump over Warren.
Obviously it's hard to know how big a deal this is -- how many of these guys are there, were
they ever really Dems, and will they back Trump as more revelations emerge 1/
So I remembered a sort of time capsule from the eve of the financial crisis that nicely
illustrated how these guys want to be perceived, and retrospectively explains their fury at
no longer getting to pose as economic heroes 2/
The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age
The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive
age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important
than it once was.
The thing is, even at the time the idea that financial deregulation had ushered in a
golden age of prosperity was flatly contradicted by the data 3/
[Graph]
And of course the financial crisis -- which is generally considered to have begun just
three weeks after that article was published! -- made utter nonsense of their boasting 4/
But they want everyone to forget about the hollowness of their claims to glory; and Warren
won't let that happen, which makes her evil in their minds 5/
When Bill was president Warren met with Hillary and persuaded her to talk Bill into killing
Biden's increased protection for lenders from rapacious borrowers. When Hillary was senator she
supported the Bill. Warren gave an interview on the subject before she was involved in
politics. She was not happy.
Warren was the single female Democratic senator who declined to give Hillary an endorsement
before the primaries started. That's an event of some significance.
During the debates Warren took actions that helped Bernie on several occasions. Someone, I
think Paul Krugman, said Glass Stegall would have done nothing to stop the meltdown because it
didn't deal with shadow banking. Bernie was able to respond that he supported Warren's proposed
Glass Stegall bill, which did have provisions to regulate shadow banking. On another occasion
someone pointed out that Warren's bill did not break up big banks. Warren stated publicly that
the bill didn't propose breaking up too big to fail banks but she supported the idea.
Warren and Sanders both supported Clinton when she had the nomination locked up. It was
Bernie's responsibility to defend his supporters from Team Clinton's smears and insults during
and after the convention.
It wasn't Warren that Clinton invited to the Hamptons to be introduced to a few dozen of her
favorite fundraisers. It was Harris.
It wasn't Warren that Clinton invited to the Hamptons to be introduced to a few dozen of
her favorite fundraisers. It was Harris.
But, even if so, Harris was to be nothing more than a Clinton place-holder to be swept
aside one HER decided to resurrect the same Dimocratic party, which she has still not
successfully destroyed, even with minor assistance from Barack, JoJo and Wild Bill. Nope. My
contention is that Hillary Rodent Clinton will sweep the field of duped pseudo-contenders in
a fixed horse race. HRC -- still with her!~
"... The first casualty of Pelosi's cause is almost certain to be the front-runner for the party nomination. Joe Biden has already, this past week, fallen behind Senator Elizabeth Warren in Iowa, New Hampshire, and California. ..."
"... By making Ukraine the focus of the impeachment drive in the House, Pelosi has also assured that the questionable conduct of Biden and son Hunter will be front and center for the next four months before Iowa votes. ..."
"... What did Joe do? By his own admission, indeed his boast, as vice president, he ordered then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to either fire the prosecutor who was investigating the company that hired Hunter Biden for $50,000 a month or forego a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee that Kiev needed to stay current on its debts. ..."
"... There is another question raised by Biden's ultimatum to Kiev to fire the corrupt prosecutor or forego the loan guarantee. Why was the U.S. guaranteeing loans to a Kiev regime that had to be threatened with bankruptcy to get it to rid itself of a prosecutor whom all of Europe supposedly knew to be corrupt? ..."
"... This is bad news for the Biden campaign. And the principal beneficiary of Pelosi's decision that put Joe and Hunter Biden at the center of an impeachment inquiry is, again, Warren. ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
"... the Movers and Shakers in the Democrat Party have wanted Warren as their standard bearer on the belief that Biden is "yesterday" and that the rest of the field is either too loony (O'Rourke), nondescript (Booker) or -- potentially -- too corrupt (Harris).. ..."
"... Warren is the most pro-establishment candidate of all the non-establishment candidates, that is true ..."
"... Roughly 37% of Americans love Trump and will never change their mind. On the other side there are 38% who already supported impeachment based on previous investigations. That leaves 25% of Americans who are likely to be swayed one way or the other over this. In any case, those 25% are unlikely to be on this website. ..."
"... It'll be interesting to see what the voter turnout will be in 2020. 2016 --one of the most pivotal and controversial elections in modern times--saw 42% of the electorate stay home. This was a shockingly high numbter, little noted in the press. If you tack on the 6% who voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, that would mean that 48% of the electorate--nearly half--did NOT vote for either Trump or Clinton. ..."
"... Well, given that Trump has already released the transcript and Zelensky has already confirmed there were no pressure in their conversation plus said that Hunter's case is to be investigated by the AG, any impeachment hearings can only be damaging to those who decide to go further with them, because, as it turns out, there is no basis for such hearings and they were started a year before the election, showing what those who started them think regarding their own chances to win. ..."
Even before seeing the transcript of the July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,
Nancy Pelosi threw the door wide open to impeachment.
Though the transcript did not remotely justify the advanced billing of a "quid pro quo," Pelosi set in motion a process that is
already producing a sea change in the politics of 2020.
The great Beltway battle for the balance of this year, and perhaps next, will be over whether the Democrats can effect a coup
against a president many of them have never recognized as legitimate and have sought to bring down since before he took the oath
of office.
Pelosi on Tuesday started this rock rolling down the hill.
She has made impeachment, which did not even come up in the last Democratic debate, the issue of 2020. She has foreclosed bipartisan
compromise on gun control, the cost of prescription drugs, and infrastructure. She has put her and her party's fate and future on
the line.
With Pelosi's assent that she is now open to impeachment, she turned what was becoming a cold case into a blazing issue. If the
Democrats march up impeachment hill, fail, and fall back, or if they vote impeachment only to see the Senate exonerate the president,
that will be the climactic moment of Pelosi's career. She is betting the future of the House, and her party's hopes of capturing
the presidency, on the belief that she and her colleagues can persuade the country to support the indictment of a president for high
crimes.
One wonders: do Democrats, blinded by hatred of Trump, ever wonder how that 40 percent of the nation that sees him as the repository
of their hopes will react if, rather than beat him at the ballot box, they remove him in this way?
The first casualty of Pelosi's cause is almost certain to be the front-runner for the party nomination. Joe Biden has already,
this past week, fallen behind Senator Elizabeth Warren in Iowa, New Hampshire, and California. The Quinnipiac poll has her taking
the lead nationally for the nomination, with Biden dropping into second place for the first time since he announced his candidacy.
By making Ukraine the focus of the impeachment drive in the House, Pelosi has also assured that the questionable conduct of Biden
and son Hunter will be front and center for the next four months before Iowa votes.
What did Joe do? By his own admission, indeed his boast, as vice president, he ordered then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko
to either fire the prosecutor who was investigating the company that hired Hunter Biden for $50,000 a month or forego a $1 billion
U.S. loan guarantee that Kiev needed to stay current on its debts.
Biden insists the Ukrainian prosecutor was corrupt, that Hunter had done no wrong, that he himself was unaware of his son's business
ties. All these assertions have been contradicted or challenged.
There is another question raised by Biden's ultimatum to Kiev to fire the corrupt prosecutor or forego the loan guarantee. Why
was the U.S. guaranteeing loans to a Kiev regime that had to be threatened with bankruptcy to get it to rid itself of a prosecutor
whom all of Europe supposedly knew to be corrupt?
Whatever the truth of the charges, the problem here is that any investigation of the potential corruption of Hunter Biden, and
of the role of his father, the former vice president, in facilitating it, will be front and center in presidential politics between
now and New Hampshire.
This is bad news for the Biden campaign. And the principal beneficiary of Pelosi's decision that put Joe and Hunter Biden at the
center of an impeachment inquiry is, again, Warren.
Warren already appears to have emerged victorious in her battle with Bernie Sanders to become the progressives' first choice in
2020. And consider how, as she is rising, her remaining opposition is fast fading.
Senator Kamala Harris has said she is moving her campaign to Iowa for a do-or-die stand in the first battleground state. Senator
Cory Booker has called on donors to raise $1.7 million in 10 days, or he will have to pack it in. As Biden, Sanders, Harris, and
Booker fade, and "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg hovers at 5 or 6 percent in national and state polls, Warren steadily emerges as the probable
nominee.
One measure of how deeply Biden is in trouble, whether he is beginning to be seen as too risky, given the allegations against
him and his son, will be the new endorsements his candidacy receives after this week of charges and countercharges.
If there is a significant falling off, it could be fatal.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided
America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit
the Creators website at www.creators.com.
They would be, if it were Sanders to get the nomination. Warren's chances are, obviously, better than Biden's - anyone's, save
for complete fringe wackos, are - but, if they really wanted to win, they would need Sanders. Or, even better, Gabbard. But Sanders
is too independent, dangerously so, and Gabbard is an outright enemy of their totalitarian cult. Hence, they pick Warren, who
might be vaaaaaaaaaaguely considered Sanders-lite. But lite is not enough against someone like Trump. Or, even worse for them,
they resort to all possible and impossible machinations to still get Biden nominated. It'll be a screaming mistake, but it's not
excluded at all, given how easily the've just been lured into a trap.
Happened to tune in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday just as he was saying that Pelosi's motivation to spin the wheels was at least
in part to kill two birds with one stone--Trump AND Biden. Mehhh...maybe, but it's been clear from the beginning that the Movers
and Shakers in the Democrat Party have wanted Warren as their standard bearer on the belief that Biden is "yesterday" and that
the rest of the field is either too loony (O'Rourke), nondescript (Booker) or -- potentially -- too corrupt (Harris)..
Warren is the most pro-establishment candidate of all the non-establishment candidates, that is true . Incrowd-lite.
Bernie of course is the big unknown. Will he prevail over Warren?
If this scandal sinks Biden and Trump together, the Dems will come out ahead because they are not committed to Biden as their
nominee. I think Warren will be the biggest net winner. My prediction is that we see an impeachment with the Senate voting on
party lines to acquit. That could still be very damaging to Trump's election chances, if the portion of the public who dislikes
Trump decide that he abused his power.
Roughly 37% of Americans love Trump and will never change their mind. On the other side there are
38% who already supported impeachment based on previous investigations. That leaves 25% of Americans who are likely to be
swayed one way or the other over this. In any case, those 25% are unlikely to be on this website.
The main question, other than whether there is something damning that shows up, is whether the majority of voters think a quid
pro quo is necessary for corruption to be an impeachable offense. It is required in a criminal bribery conviction, but impeachment
isn't a criminal trial. Is the president using a diplomatic call to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political
rivals something the 25% will be okay with? If they believe the story of Biden's corruption, will they see that as justification
for using a diplomatic talk to push for an investigation into it? Will moderate voters who have a high opinion of Biden from the
his time as Vice President view this as an unfair attack on him or will they change their view of him to match Trump's narrative?
Biden is in a tough spot, because he will be smeared here whether he is guilty or not. Trump is very good as slinging mud to
distract from his actions. And most Americans are very unlikely to parse through the information overload to figure out whether
the fired prosecutor is corrupt, whether the decision to fire him came from Joe or the state department/UK/EU/local protest, whether
Hunter Biden was qualified for the job with his ivy law degree/experience on corp boards/previous consulting experience, and whether
the investigation into Burisma was actuall ongoing when Shokin was fired. Who has time to read through everything and figure out
which side is manufacturing a controversy?
But if Biden decides to go down a Martyr, it wouldn't be difficult for him to take Trump with him.
It'll be interesting to see what the voter turnout will be in 2020. 2016 --one of the most pivotal and controversial elections
in modern times--saw 42% of the electorate stay home. This was a shockingly high numbter, little noted in the press. If you tack
on the 6% who voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, that would mean that 48% of the electorate--nearly half--did NOT vote for
either Trump or Clinton.
These numbers are ominous and do not bode well for the future of this thing of ours.
Well, given that Trump has already released the transcript and Zelensky has already confirmed there were no pressure in their
conversation plus said that Hunter's case is to be investigated by the AG, any impeachment hearings can only be damaging
to those who decide to go further with them, because, as it turns out, there is no basis for such hearings and they were
started a year before the election, showing what those who started them think regarding their own chances to win. If Democrats
want to cut losses, they should stop it now and, using military terms, regroup immediately, nominating Gabbard who consistently
opposed this stillborn impeachment stupidity. But something makes me think they won't. Their visceral hatred to an anti-war candidate
like her is simply too strong.
I think you are missing that Trump's lawyers can subpoena people and drag up a lot of dirt on the Democrats too. I think it can
go both ways.
Still Warren can be tough for Trump. She is not tainted by Clinton. She is a chameleon; will sound sufficiently WASP in New
England and sufficiently woke in California and new York. If Buttgig becomes her sidekick he can get all the gays on-board.
You're missing one thing about Warren: she's a wonk. And she actually has some good ideas alongside the more crazy ones. Even
Tucker Carlson praised her book.
But Warren is an absolute stiff. Zero charisma. Like Kerry or Gore on their very worst day. And in this day and age, where
the only thing that counts for the overwhelming majority of low information voters are soundbites and how telegenic you come off
in a debate, someone like Trump will chew her up and spit her out for breakfast.
Warren? OK. I don't see how she could be any worse than Trump. Plus, we might not feel like we were snorkeling in a cesspool all
the time, like we do now.
Literally every progressive I know save one is team Warren. I think there might be an age divide. Progressives under thirty are
more likely to be for Sanders, and over thirty for Warren.
I have no idea what will happen with the election. But if Trump wins it after the Dems have done nothing for four years except
impeach him - every day is going to be like Christmas.
I sincerely hope that Trump is right in thinking that Biden is his biggest threat, because this affair is going to ensure Warren
is the nominee. I think a lot of proggy Dems know this as well, which partly explains their enthusiasm for impeachment at this
particular moment (not that they haven't been itching for this since November 8, 2016).
I agree Biden and Bernie are toast but Warren is far from a sure thing. Of all the democratic candidates Tulsi is the most attractive
in more ways than one and I could see Tulsi appealing to the many Trump voters who voted for him because he claimed to be non-interventionist
only to discover he is a war-pig like the rest of them. Imagine Tulsi in a debate with Trump! If not Tulsi I would bet another
high profile Dem will enter the race because Warren is un-electable and I would not be surprised to see Hillary get in the race
at the last minute. American's love re-matches and come-back stories.
In breaking news: Pelosi has just revealed who was behind all this. It's Cardinal Richelieu Russians again.
Does the girl even understand that, by saying so, she's, basically, stating that she's the chief Russian agent out there, because
she was the one who initiated that freak show?
Jesus Harold Christ, what a travelling circus. And this passes for a parliament these days.
Ukrainegate is Watergate in reverse. The farcical impeachment unintentionally acts as a foil, amplifying the significance of the
Ukraine stories in the press (John Solomon, Andrew McCarthy) which reveal a culture of corruption and venality permeating the
Democratic leadership: the Clintons, the Bidens, the DNC, the current Democratic caucus, and the entire deep state remnants of
the obama administration. We haven't seen election interference like this since the Watergate break-in and coverup. This impeachment
is the coup-de-grâce of the Democratic Party not just Biden. The Democrat faithful now have a choice between Scylla and Charybdis
- self-proclaimed socialists with a tenuous hold on reality, or the discredited establishment. As an old-school Democrat, I can
only hope that Trump buries them in 2020, so that the Democrats finally get the message and return to their pre-Clinton roots.
It is insane to pursue impeachment this late in a divisive President's mandate. The Democrats should spend their efforts selecting
a moderate nominee that doesn't show signs of cognitive decline (Only candidate that matches these requirements is Tulsi Gabbard.
) rather than make Trump a "victim" in the eyes of many.
Drama Don is doing a good enough job himself to make sure that the Democrats win in 2020. "Trump fatigue" is going to be the
most used expression next fall if Trump runs. If Trump is pushed out before the election, the Republicans may choose a charismatic
new nominee who actually has a chance to win in 2020. The biggest asset that the Democrats have in 2020 is Trump.
Somebody, somewhere, had decided that Democrats stand little chance with Biden, because he is so old and gaffe prone. So they
have put their money on Warren. Warren will choose Buttigieg as VP candidate, primarily because they want all that gay billionaire
money flowing in. At the same time, they tick the SJW boxes -woman, gay candidates, so the left will love them. The fix is in.
Hence the stupid "impeachment " controversy, which is obviously a sham to knock Biden out.
I voted for Trump, not as a Republican because I despise both political parties. I voted for him based on the need for a nationalist
trade policy, and especially because I was so against the TPP --and President Trump rewarded me for that vote his first week in
office by pulling the US out of TPP negotiations. Also I have great respect for you, Mr. Buchanan, and learned much from the 3
of your books I've read and recommended to others. But it looks like President Trump has been using his office for personal political
gain, so I am sorry to admit I support the impeachment investigation to bring the facts to light and make a judgement of whether
it is true he used the office to solicit a foreign country to help undermine his political opponent. But even before this, I'd
decided I will not vote for him again, mainly because I have become alarmed at the looming climate crisis, and believe we need
urgent policy towards full decarbonization of the global energy economy. But that doesn't motivate me to support the impeachment
inquiry, a path I hate and regret...but it seems there is no other way to demand the President not abuse his office and manipulate
foreign governments to help his political career. That is no patriot, that is corrupt and an embarrassment to our nation.
"...effect a coup against a president many of them have never seen as legitimate and have sought to bring down since before he
took the oath of office."
Every single word of that describes the Republicans in Congress during the eight years Obama was president. Every single syllable.
Remember that birth certificate? And remember that Dick Tracy villain, Pocket-Neck McConnell, an excrescence that still infects
us, standing up and actually saying, with a straight face, "Our ONLY goal is to make Obama a one-term president." Never mind an
economy that was in free-fall, right Mitch? Or a couple of bothersome wars going on?
And what about how, for the very first time in history, Standard and Poor's downgraded America's credit rating, all because
of completely meaningless Republican obstruction about the debt ceiling? And when I say completely meaningless, I mean completely
meaningless. Now, under Trump, the deficit is approaching a trillion, and those very same Republicans couldn't give a hoot.
It's all in the great 2012 book, It's Even Worse Than it Looks, by Ornstein and Mann. We've had partisanship and gridlock before.
But what was new is how the Republicans behaved under Obama: they treated him as completely illegitimate from the word go, and
absolutely refused to work with him under any and all circumstances. The stimulus, which by the way saved the entire world economy
from complete meltdown, didn't get a single Republican vote.
But Republicans can feel proud of one thing: their disgusting, scorched-earth, win-at-all-costs tactics are now business-as-usual
in Washington. Probably for all time. Nice going, guys.
Warren is the best candidate to defeat Trump. She is super smart ,honest and works hard as heck for the non 1% to get more of
a fair shake. If she softens her hard left positions she could be a great candidate
I assume most here are sick of hearing about it further today.
I enjoy speculating on what Speaker Pelosi might do with the results of the Impeachment
Inquiry by the House.
Assumption: The House finds grounds for Impeaching Trump and hands it to Pelosi.
What will she do or rather what can she do?
She can have the full House vote to Impeach and march the Articles over to the Senate.
She can have the House Censure Trump, not vote to Impeach, and go no further at this time.
That brings Trump's crimes to light, but saves the country from a Political Trial in the
Senate, that won't convict Trump.
She can hold the Committee's report for review and not go forward until and unless she
see's the POLITICAL need.
She can, IMO, have the House vote Articles of Impeachment and then HOLD them in the House
waiting to take them to the Senate at a much later date of her choice or never.
The Senate cannot act until the Speaker delivers the Articles of Impeachment. No where
does the Constitution declare WHEN those Articles, once voted, must be delivered, only that
they are to be.
She can set a new precedent if she desires. Who can stop her?
This would allow the Articles to float over Trump's head - and the Re-Election campaign
serving to restrain Trump, like a cudgel over his head - preventing or at least limiting more
of Trump's outrageous unconstitutional and illegal acts in Office until Election 2020.
Simultaneously this would allow The House to continue its multiple investigations of
Trump, including the IRS Whistle Blower complaint, further checking Trump, and even to open
more investigations into Trump's abuse of Office, e.g., his use of AG Barr on Ukraine/Biden
as well as investigations of AG Barr pursuing Ukraine/Biden.
Not to mention other investigations into Trump including NY's pursuit of Trump's Tax
Returns, which could well be as revealing as the Ukraine phone call transcript.
So, while today was interesting in D.C., the future is far more so, imho.
1. Biden is now a zombie and has less then zero changes to beat Trump. Even if nothing
explosive will be revealed by Ukraine-gate, this investigation hangs like albatross around
his neck. Each shot at Trump will ricochet into Biden. Add to this China and the best he can
do is to leave the race and claim unfair play.
2. Trump now probably will be reelected on the wave of indignation toward Corporate Dems
new witch hunt. People stopped believing neoliberal MSM around 2015, so now neolibs no longer
have the leverage they get used to. And by launching Ukraine-gate after Russiagate they
clearly overplayed their hand losing critical mass of independents (who previously were ready
to abandon Trump_
3. If unpleasant facts about neolib/neocon machinations to launch Ukraine-gate leak via
alternative press via disgruntled DNC operatives or some other insiders who are privy to the
relevant discussions in the Inner Party, they will poison/destroy the chances of any Dem
candidate be it Warren or anybody else. Joining this witch hunt greatly damages standing of
Warren exposing her as a mediocre, malleable politician ( unlike Tulsi )
4. Instead of running on policy issues the Democrats again tried to find vague dirt with
which they can tarnish Trump. This is a huge political mistake which exposes them as
political swindlers.
Neolib/neocon in Democratic Party from now on will be viewed as "The Children of
Lieutenant Schmidt" (a fictional society of swindlers from the 1931 classic "The Little
Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov).
I would say that Pelosi might now be able to understand better the situation in which
Wasserman-Shultz had found herself in 2016 and resign.
IMHO this is a king of zugzwang for neoliberal Dems. There is no good exit from this
situation.
After two years of falsely accusing Trump to have colluded with Russia they now allege
that he colluded with Ukraine.
In addition to overpaying their hand that makes it more difficult for the Democrats to
hide their critical role in creating and promoting Russiagate.
Here is one post from MA which tries to analyse this situation:
== quote ==
nil , Sep 25 2019 19:37 utc | 24
I think what's going in the brain trust of the DNC is something like this:
i. Biden is a non-starter with the public. He'll be devoured alive by the Republicans, who
only need to bring up his career to expose his mendacity.
ii. Warren might be co-opted, having been a Republican and fiscal conservative up to the
mid-90s, but what if she isn't?
iii. Sanders is a non-starter, but with the "people who matter". Rather than having to
threaten him with the suspicions around his wife, or go for the JFK solution, they'd rather
[make that] he didn't even get past the primaries, much less elected.
iv. As a CNN talking head said weeks ago, it's better for the wealthy people the DNC is
beholden to that their own candidate loses to Trump if that candidate is Sanders.
So better to hedge their bets start impeachment hearings, give Trump ammunition to destroy
Sanders or Warren. That way, the rich win in all scenarios:
a. If Biden wins the nomination, the campaign will be essentially mudslinging from both
sides about who is more corrupt. The rich are fine with whoever wins.
b. If Warren gets the nomination and is co-opted, the media will let the impeachment
hearings die out, or the House themselves will quickly bury it.
c. If Warren gets the nomination and is not co-opted, or if Sanders get it, the
impeachment will suck up all the air of the room, Trump will play the witchhunt card and will
be re-elected.
That's a very good idea to concentrate on your job instead of some fluff, or worse, criminal
activity.
Millions of dollars, millions of manhours of political discourse and newsmedia coverage,
were wasted on Russiagate. That's a typical "control fraud." Control fraud occurs when a
trusted person in a high position of responsibility in a company, corporation, or state
subverts the organization and engages in extensive fraud (in this case a witch hunt) for
personal gain.
Those hours could have been used researching and discussing country foreign policy,
economic policy, healthcare policy, industrial policy, environment policy and other important
for this nation topics.
Instead the Dems chased a ghost (and they knew that this a ghost) for 3 years and now
Pelosi have just signaled that they will spend the next 6 months chasing another ghost --
trying to impeach Trump for his attempt to re-launch (in his trademark clumsy, bulling way)
investigating Joe Biden's family corruption in Ukraine. Action which is in full compliance
with The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA)
During the last two years there were actions of Trump that probably deserved launching
impeachment proceeding. For example, attempt of regime change in Venezuela. But neoliberal
Dems were fully on board with that. So the main loss which this bunch of swindlers can't
settle with is the the loss in their ability to defraud the country: I feel that the
neoliberal Democrats' real problem with Trump is that he ended their scheme of defrauding the
country in favor of his own.
Now with this Ukraine-gate scandal the US voters have, in effect, are being defrauded by a
group of the same sophisticated political swindlers that ruled the county during Clinton and
Obama administrations.
"Instead of running on policy issues the Democrats again tried to find vague dirt with
which they can tarnish Trump."
If Warren is nominated she can run on dirt because she does not have the sewage history.
If she runs on policy people will remember that she will fce 20 million families who got a
$500/month Obamacare tax. These are the families that cost Dems four elections. She should
not mention medicare at all, once she has the nomination.
Impeachment is what happens when a President has sex and lies about it. So it has become
meaningless, thanks to Repubs.
If I were Trump, I would take the impeachment and run with it. Trump will claim he got
impeached because he was hunting for Biden sewage, and there is no Biden, thanks to the
impeachment. His team agrees, take the impeachment and run with it.
Who liked Biden? None of the young turks, they want Biden out as badly as they want Trump
out. I just have this feeling, Biden is a gonner, sort of a bipartisan play if you ask
me.
For The First Time, Warren Beats Out Biden For No. 1 Spot In National Poll
--
Biden gone. Harris gone. Pete gone. Beto gone. It is between Bernie and Liz. Both of whom
will be telling 10 million families that health care is free and they will not get hit with a
$500/month tax. Problem is, voters regret on this is lifelong, a ot of voters, right here in
this blog, think Obamacare was deceptive. But these same voters now put the cost on the
federal debt machine, courtesy of Trump, and they prefer that.
Trump wins as long as there is no blue bar and Repubs avoid mass shootings in Florida or
Texas. We, this group and our favorite economists have lost credibility on medical
programs.
Sanders is spend force in any case. His endorsement does not matter much. But for Warren this
is a blunder. Tulsi is the only one out of this troika who proved to be capable politician.
As I reported on the previous thread, Sanders endorsed the impeachment proceedings in a
tweet I linked to and cited. Gabbard is apparently the only D-Party candidate that said this
decision is a mistake.
This article about her stance is actually balanced. Citing her recent interview by
FOXNews :
"'I have been consistent in saying that I believe that impeachment in this juncture would
be terribly divisive for our country at a time when we are already extremely divided,'
Gabbard explained. 'Hyper-partisanship is one of the things that's driving our country
apart.'
"'I think it's important to defeat Donald Trump. That's why I'm running for president, but
I think it's the American people who need to make their voices heard, making that decision,'
she said.
"Regardless of how you feel about Gabbard, you have to give her credit on this front.
America is extremely divided today and politicians in Washington play into that. The
impeachment saga is a prime example of their role in this division ." [My Emphasis]
When one digs deeper into the forces Gabbard's attacking, she's the most patriotic one of
the entire bunch, including the Rs. I haven't looked at her election websites recently, but
from what I see of her campaign appearances, her and Sanders seem to be sharing each other's
policy proposals, although they both choose to place more emphasis on some than others. For
Gabbard, its the wonton waste and corruption of the Empire that keeps good things from being
done for all citizens at home, whereas Sanders basically inverts the two.
"... Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest of you are on your own." ..."
And yet America's policies were headed in the wrong direction. The big banks kept lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would
gut families' last refuge in the bankruptcy courts -- the same bill we describe in this book. (It went by the awful name Bankruptcy
Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, but it should have been called the Gut the Safety Net and Pay OIT the Big Banks Act.).
The proposed law would carefully preserve bankruptcy protections for the likes of Donald Trump and his friends, while ordinary families
that had been crushed by debts from medical problems or job losses were thrown under the bus.
When we wrote The Two-Income Trap, it was already pretty clear that the big banks would win this battle. The fight kept going
for two more years, but the tide of blame-the-unlucky combined with relentless lobbying and campaign contributions finally overwhelmed
Congress.
In 2005, the Wall Street banking industry got the changes they wanted, and struggling families lost out. After the law was rewritten,
about 800,000 families a year that once would have turned to bankruptcy to try to get back on their feet were shut out of the system.1
That was 800,000 families -- mostly people who had lost jobs, suffered a medical catastrophe, or gone through a divorce or death
in the family. And now, instead of reorganizing their finances and building some security, they were at the mercy of debt collectors
who called twenty or thirty times a day -- and could keep on calling and calling for as long as they thought they could squeeze another
nickel from a desperate family.
As it turned out, the new law tore a big hole in the last safety net for working families, just in time for the Great Recession.
Meanwhile, the bank regulators kept playing blind and deaf while the housing bubble inflated. Once it burst, the economy collapsed.
The foreclosure problem we flagged back in 2003 rolled into a global economic meltdown by 2008, as millions of people lost their
homes, and millions more lost their jobs, their savings, and their chance at a secure retirement. Overall, the total cost of the
crash was estimated as high as S14 trillion.2
Meanwhile, America's giant banks got bailed out, CEO pay shot up, the stock market roared back, and the investor class got rich
beyond even their own fevered dreams.3
A generation ago, a fortune-teller might have predicted a very different future. With so many mothers headed into the workforce,
Americans might have demanded a much heavier investment in public day care, extended school days, and better family leave policies.
Equal pay for equal work might have become sacrosanct. As wages stagnated, there might have been more urgency for raising the minimum
wage, strengthening unions, and expanding Social Security. And our commitment to affordable college and universal preschool might
have become unshakeable.
But the political landscape was changing even faster than the new economic realities. Government was quickly becoming an object
of ridicule, even to the president of the United States. Instead of staking his prestige on making government more accountable and
efficient, Ronald Reagan repeated his famous barb "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Tin from the government
and I'm here to help."'8 After generations of faithfulness to the promise of the Constitution to promote general welfare, at the
moment when the economic foundations of the middle class began to tremble, our efforts to strengthen each other and offer a helping
hand had become the butt of a national joke.
Those who continued to believe in what we could do together faced another harsh reality: much of government had been hijacked
by the rich and powerful. Regulators who were supposed to watch out for the public interest shifted their loyalties, smiling benignly
as giant banks jacked up short-term profits by cheating families, looking the other way as giant power companies scam mod customers,
and partying with industry executives as oil companies cut comers on safety and environmental rules. In this book we told one of
those stories, about how a spineless Congress rewrote the bankruptcy laws to enrich a handful of credit card companies.
Meanwhile, greed -- once best known for its place on the list of Seven Deadly Sins -- became a point of pride for Wall Street's
Masters of the Universe. With a sophisticated smile, the rallying cry of the rich and fashionable became "1 got mine -- the rest
of you are on your own."
These shifts played nicely into each other. Every' attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules tilted
more and These shifts played nicely into each other. Every attack on "big government" meant families lost an ally, and the rules
tilted more and more in favor of those who could hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers. Lower taxes for the wealthy -- and more money
in the pockets of those who subscribed to the greed-is-good mantra. And if the consequence meant less money for preschools or public
colleges or disability coverage -- the things that would create more security for an overstretched middle class -- then that was
just too bad.
Little by little, as the middle class got deeper and deeper in trouble, government stopped working for the middle class, or at
least it stopped working so hard. The rich paid a little less and kept a little more. Even if they didn't say it in so many words,
they got exactly what they wanted. Remember the 90 percent -- America's middle class, working class, and poor -- the ones who got
70 percent of all income growth from 1935 through 1980?
From 1980-2014, the 90 percent got nothing.9 None. Zero. Zip. Not a penny in income growth. Instead, for an entire generation,
the top 10 percent captured all of the income growth in the entire country. l(X) percent.
It didn't have to be this way. The Two-Income Trap is about families that w'ork hard, but some things go wrong along the way --
illnesses and job losses, and maybe some bad decisions. But this isn't what has put the middle class on the ropes. After all, people
have gotten sick and lost jobs and made less-than-perfect decisions for generations -- and vet, for generations America's middle
class expanded. creating more opportunity to build real economic security and pass on a brighter future to their children.
What would it take to help strengthen the middle class? The problems facing the middle-class family are complex and far-reaching,
and the solutions must be too. We wish there could be a simple silver bullet, but after a generation of relentless assault, there
just isn't. But there is one overriding idea. Together we can. It's time to say it out loud: a generation of I-got-mine policy-making
has failed -- failed miserably, completely, and overwhelmingly. And it's time to change direction before the entire middle class
has been replaced by hundreds of millions of Americans barely hanging on by their fingernails.
Americas middle class was built through investments in education, infrastructure, and research -- and by' making sure we all have
a safety net. We need to strengthen those building blocks: Step up investments in public education. Rein in the cost of college and
cut out- standing student loans. Create universal preschool and affordable child care. Upgrade infrastructure -- mass transit, energy,
communications -- to make it more attractive to build good, middle-class jobs here in America. Recognize that the modem economy can
be perilous, and a strong safety net is needed now more than ever. Strengthen disability coverage, retirement coverage, and paid
sick leave. And for heavens sake, get rid of the awful banker-backed bankruptcy law, so that when things go wrong, families at least
have a chance at a fresh start. We welcome the re-issue of The Two-Income Trap because we see the original book as capturing a critical
moment, those last few minutes in which the explanation of why so many hardworking, plav-by- tho-mlcs people were in so much trouble
was simple: It was their own fault. If only they would just pull up their socks, cinch their belts a little tighter, and stop buying
so much stuff, they -- and our country -- would be just fine. That myth has died. And we say', good riddance.
Minor quibbles aside -- Warren presumably doesn't derive most of her income from capital
owner-ship, and markets are compatible with socialism -- the
Massachusetts senator is right. She and Sanders draw their lineage from distinct political
traditions.
Warren is a regulator at heart who believes that capitalism works well as long as fair
competition exists; Sanders is a class-conscious tribune who sees capitalism as fundamentally unjust . Warren
frames her most ambitious reforms as bids to make capitalism " accountable
"; Sanders pushes legislation called the "
Stop BEZOS Act " and denounces ceos for exploiting
workers . Warren seeks a harmonious accord between workers and employers; Sanders
encourages workers to fight back.
Foreign policy differences spring from their respective traditions as well. While both are
suspicious of military interventionism, Vermont's junior senator has shown himself much more
willing to criticize the crimes of US empire -- famously proclaiming in
a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton that "Henry Kissinger is not my friend." Warren, though a
critic of Bush-style adventurism, sees America's role in more conventional terms, arguing in a
Foreign
Affairs essay this year that we should "project American strength and values
throughout the world."
Warren's political tradition is the left edge of middle-class liberalism; Sanders hails from
America's socialist tradition. Or, to put the distinction in more personal terms: Warren is
Louis
Brandeis , Sanders is Eugene Debs .
A house bill bans using Huawei and ZTE phones; also adds 1 billion in taxpayer paid for
equipment to be donated to to USA companies so the USA companies can trash the China made
equipment and exchange if for 1 billion in USA and Israel made equipment.
I wonder does this mean the USA and Israel cannot compete with the Chinese?
"... Rudy Drops New Bombs: Slams Obama Cabinet 'Pattern Of Corruption'; Claims China 'Bought' Biden ..."
"... Warren wins the nomination because the issue is Swamp Sewage and she hasn't been around long enough to emit much of it. Biden has a ton of it. Trump has three years of it. ..."
Rudy Drops New Bombs: Slams Obama Cabinet 'Pattern Of Corruption'; Claims China 'Bought'
Biden
---
Rudy on a roll. Go look it up on a safe site.
Warren wins the nomination because the issue is Swamp Sewage and she hasn't been around
long enough to emit much of it. Biden has a ton of it. Trump has three years of it.
"... Warren proved to be a very weak, mediocre politician. By joining the calls to "Impeach Trump" she proved this again. And this is not the first time she made a very bad call. Looks like she is completely malleable candidate. The candidate without spine outside his favorite re-regulation issues. ..."
"... Ukraine-gate impeachment process (aka another attempt to demonize Trump after Russiagate fiasco) is what Trump badly needs now, as it will cement his voting block and might bring back those voters who are appalled by his betrayal of almost all election promises. ..."
"... As Ukraine-gate is based on a false rumor and actually implicates Biden, not Trump (and after Trump decision to open the transcript Dems now need to move goalposts like it was with the inner party member Parteigenosse Mueller witch hunt ). ..."
"... It portrays the Dems as clueless political scum who are ready to resort to dirty tricks in order to protect neoliberal warmonger Biden, and maintain Wall-Street favorable status quo. ..."
The Senate republicans should be forced to block trumps impeachment. This is a good election
issue in deep purple states with a senator up for re election. Plus a good house issue. Let
the people judge both party wagons
Trump and Biden make a perfect pair of party Totem heads
Tulsi is the only talented politician among those who are running on Democratic Platform.
And I applaud her courage to stand against the mob
Warren proved to be a very weak, mediocre politician. By joining the calls to "Impeach
Trump" she proved this again. And this is not the first time she made a very bad call. Looks like she is completely
malleable candidate. The candidate without spine outside his favorite re-regulation issues.
She essentially gave Trump additional ammunition to attack her and poach her supporters. I
would now attack her along the lines:
"Do not believe anything Warren say; she does have spine. Look how easily she was
co-opted to join this witch-hunt. If Warren wins, she will instantly fold and will do what
bought by Wall Street Dems leadership will ask her. I am not perfect but I withstood
Russiagate witch-hunt and that proves that with all my faults I am the only independent
politician in this race, who can go against the flow and deliver what was promised; please
give additional time and I will deliver"
Of course, this is disingenuous projection as Trump did the same, but that's politics
;-)
I still believe that Warren has chances to win against Trump. But with such moves by Dem
leadership this might no longer be true. Why Warren does not attack Trump disastrous domestic
and foreign policy record instead of making such questionable calls is not clear to me. Just
a diagram "Trump promises vs reality" as election advertisement might improve her
chances.
Ukraine-gate impeachment process (aka another attempt to demonize Trump after Russiagate
fiasco) is what Trump badly needs now, as it will cement his voting block and might bring
back those voters who are appalled by his betrayal of almost all election promises.
As Ukraine-gate is based on a false rumor and actually implicates Biden, not Trump (and
after Trump decision to open the transcript Dems now need to move goalposts like it was with
the inner party member Parteigenosse Mueller witch hunt ).
It portrays the Dems as clueless
political scum who are ready to resort to dirty tricks in order to protect neoliberal
warmonger Biden, and maintain Wall-Street favorable status quo.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has supported the nuclear agreement since its
inception, has levied criticism toward the White House. On June 18, in response to a New York
Times report titled, "Trump Adds Troops After Iran Says It Will Breach Nuclear Deal" (a
questionable media framing given that the U.S. had already violated the deal), she
tweeted:
"I hope Iran chooses a different path. But let's be clear: Trump provoked this crisis. He
has no strategy to contain it, he's burned through our friends and allies, and now he's
doubling down on military force. We can't afford another forever war."
While Warren was correct to argue against war, she opens by appearing to place blame
against Iran, neglecting to acknowledge the U.S.'s role in villainizing Iran in the first
place.
On June 20, after reports of the Navy drone were published, Warren elaborated on her
comments, adopting a stronger oppositional stance to the prospect of war with Iran.
"Trump provoked this crisis, and his reckless foreign policy by tweet will only worsen it.
I've co-sponsored legislation to prohibit a war with Iran. We need to de-escalate tensions --
not let the war hawks in this administration drag us into conflict. #NoWarWithIran"
That same day, she followed with
"Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home. Instead he has pulled out of a deal that
was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for
further escalating this crisis -- we need to step back from the brink of war."
Here, Warren uses stronger language to denounce Trump's actions, but still falls short of
a moral denunciation of U.S. violence or a more incisive analysis of the Iran nuclear deal's
power relations. Meanwhile, Warren's vote for new sanctions against Iran in 2017 weakens her
legislative record. ...
Warren is far more progressive than mainstream Democrats like Joe Biden. She calls for
withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Warren campaigns for the United
State to rejoin the nuclear accord with Iran and to end trade pacts that hurt workers.
"Warren's foreign policy positions have shifted a fair amount in recent years,
particularly during the past few months," says Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the
University of San Francisco, who provides foreign policy advice to the Warren campaign.
"Warren's rise shakes up Democratic field" [ The
Hill ]. "A new poll showing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) leading former Vice President
Joe Biden in Iowa has shaken up the Democratic nomination battle -- and insiders across the
party are gaming out what it all means. Warren currently has 22 percent support to Biden's 20
percent, according to the well-respected Des Moines Register–CNN–Mediacom poll,
released Saturday night. The two are well clear of the rest of the field, with Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) in third place with 11 percent support . With more than four months to go, the
experts all agree that it's too early to make solid predictions. But the battle for Iowa is
heating up by the day."
Is there any reason to see what is going on as more than just Biden support bailing to "Plan
C", i.e., the next most establishment-friendly candidate who has any apparent chance of
winning? Sanders' support seems solid. Admittedly, I would much rather see Sanders slowly
eating away at the "pro-establishment" fraction of Dem voters, but there is nothing to suggest
that he is losing support.
The more I see of Warren, the less I like her- and I would not have voted for her to begin
with. I'm getting very tired of moderate Republicans being packaged and sold as
"progressives".
To her credit, Warren does have a theory of change:
After dinner, "Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice," Ms. Warren
writes. "I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say
whatever they want. But people on the inside don't listen to them. Insiders, however, get
lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People -- powerful people -- listen to what
they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don't criticize
other insiders.
"• I'm not sure I agree. There are many, many, many of those "boutique lobbying or
consulting shops" -- "
And how is Trump's shakedown hotel any different from DNC dialing for dollars? Or would it
be better if he limited himself just renting out the Lincoln Bedroom like the Clintons did?
I want to reiterate the point that Yglesias seems incapable of recognizing* that a network
of small shops could create more damage than one guy, even a titan. Look at health care policy,
for example. It looks like Elizabeth Warren's daughter runs a body-shop for the kind of person
Yglesias regards as harmless. Thread:
Samuel Douglas Retweeted Samuel Douglas
I spent some time looking into Warren Tyagi's consulting firm (Business Talent Group), and I
learned some interesting things 1/
Elizabeth Warren's daughter co-founded HealthAllies, a venture capital-backed health
benefits firm which was later acquired by United Health Group, the second largest health
insurer in the U.S.
NOTE * Incapable of recognizing, because obviously professionals don't have class
interests.
Wow, thanks for this, Lambert. See my link to the story in a reply
above for yet another shady bit about Warren's daughter. I wouldn't normally find myself on
RedState, but searching 'WARren daughter WFP' in the googlygoo brought this up first and after
a read-through, seems pretty straight-up. It even includes reporting from Jordan Chariton in
the meat of the story.
It's time for Warren to drop out. She's way too compromised.
"... With the inaugural "Huawei AppGallery" emerging with the Mate 30, the company has now positioned itself on an investment trajectory to create a new "Huawei core" to compete with the world of Google-led Android systems outright. ..."
"... Beyond Apple and the iPhone, the Android operating system dominates in the global smartphone market. Describing it as an "operating system" is barely fitting; it might otherwise be described as "an ecosystem" with a wide range of Google orientated services within it. ..."
"... They include the popular browser Chrome, the YouTube video service, Google mail and, most critically, the "Google Playstore," which, owing to its popularity, attracts more developers and investors than any other unofficial App stores. This "ecosystem" creates a "web of comfort" which effectively entrenches the consumer in the Android orbit. ..."
"... p until May 2019, Huawei was a part of this orbit. Its subsequent estrangement from Android owing to the American government's decision has forced some difficult choices. It has made markets keen to observe how the Mate 30 will perform given its lack of Google applications and the need for users to obtain some apps through third-party stores. ..."
"... So, the question is: How are they now adapting and making that transition? Bengt Nordstrom of North Stream research in Sweden notes that "they have a strategy to become completely independent from U.S. technology. And in many areas, they have become independent." ..."
"... Huawei's announced bid to invest over 1 billion U.S. dollars in developing its own application "core" or ecosystem. This, in essence, is an effort to get developers to establish applications for the new "Huawei App store" and thus establish a self-reliant, independent path from the world of Android. ..."
"... To achieve this, the company has pledged a competitive revenue sharing scheme of 15 percent to developers, half of that what Apple and Google demand for participation in their own app-stores. ..."
September 21, 2019
Huawei's pivotal moment
By Tom Fowdy
Huawei launched its Mate 30 series on Friday, the first new device produced by the
Shenzhen telecommunications firm since it has been blacklisted by the United States
government and excluded from American technology markets.
The subsequent result of the listing had led Google to sever ties with the company and
prohibit new devices from using its Play Store services and operating system, something which
ultimately impacts the Mate 30 Series, which is using an open-source version of Android.
The impact of it all has led Western commentators to ask questions about Huawei's future
in Western smartphone markets, particularly what applications can it access.
However, not all is bleak, and what may start off as a hindrance for the company is set to
transform into an opportunity. The United States' assault on the company has forced Huawei to
innovate.
With the inaugural "Huawei AppGallery" emerging with the Mate 30, the company has now
positioned itself on an investment trajectory to create a new "Huawei core" to compete with
the world of Google-led Android systems outright.
In this case, what seems like a detriment is part of a broader pivotal moment for Huawei.
The company's portfolio is about to change forever.
Beyond Apple and the iPhone, the Android operating system dominates in the global
smartphone market. Describing it as an "operating system" is barely fitting; it might
otherwise be described as "an ecosystem" with a wide range of Google orientated services
within it.
They include the popular browser Chrome, the YouTube video service, Google mail and,
most critically, the "Google Playstore," which, owing to its popularity, attracts more
developers and investors than any other unofficial App stores. This "ecosystem" creates a
"web of comfort" which effectively entrenches the consumer in the Android orbit.
U p until May 2019, Huawei was a part of this orbit. Its subsequent estrangement from
Android owing to the American government's decision has forced some difficult choices. It has
made markets keen to observe how the Mate 30 will perform given its lack of Google
applications and the need for users to obtain some apps through third-party stores.
So, the question is: How are they now adapting and making that transition? Bengt
Nordstrom of North Stream research in Sweden notes that "they have a strategy to become
completely independent from U.S. technology. And in many areas, they have become
independent."
First of all, we are well aware that Huawei is developing its own Harmony Operating System
as a contingency measure, although it has not chosen to apply it to the Mate 30 as an olive
branch to Google.
Second, and most excitingly is Huawei's announced bid to invest over 1 billion U.S.
dollars in developing its own application "core" or ecosystem. This, in essence, is an effort
to get developers to establish applications for the new "Huawei App store" and thus establish
a self-reliant, independent path from the world of Android.
To achieve this, the company has pledged a competitive revenue sharing scheme of 15
percent to developers, half of that what Apple and Google demand for participation in their
own app-stores.
This effort is combined with a wider scope in research and development from the company,
which is also designed to forfeit dependence upon American technology chains in terms of
critical components and other parts.
We have already seen massive investment pledges from Huawei to build new research and
development centers in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Brazil. They are not empty
promises, but a serious and strategic effort.
In this case, what was intended to be a political effort to destroy and contain Huawei is
likely to prove a pivotal turning point in the company's history with huge repercussions for
global smartphone and technology markets.
Instead of having once been reliant on and thus beneficial to American technology markets,
the outcome is that Huawei will re-emerge independent of and competing against it.
Armed with a pending new operating system, a new application development drive and a
broader research effort, what seemed otherwise a detriment is likely to bring a massive
opportunity. Thus, it is very important to examine the long-term prospects for the company's
fortunes ahead of short-term challenges.
FOX NEWS HOST Tucker Carlson was saying nice things about Elizabeth Warren again.
Well, not entirely nice things.
Speaking at a conference of conservative journalists and intellectuals this summer (*), he
took a moment to label the liberal Massachusetts senator and top contender for the Democratic
presidential nomination a "joke" and a "living tragedy."
But he also spoke, in admiring tones and at substantial length, about "The Two-Income
Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke," the book Warren wrote with her daughter in
2004.
"Elizabeth Warren wrote one of the best books I've ever read on economics," he said.
By that point, he'd already warned his audience about the perils of "monopoly power" and
declared that income inequality, which the right had long been trained to believe is "just a
pure invention of some diabolical French intellectual to destroy America," is actually
"completely real" and "totally bad."
His Bolshevist pronouncements were probably not a surprise to anyone who'd watched
Carlson's show closely in the months leading up to his speech. But Fox, despite its outsize
influence, has a relatively small audience.
And it's not just Carlson's evolution that's escaped notice. It's hard to keep track of
what most of the key players on the right are saying these days, with President Trump soaking
up so much attention.
But while the commander-in-chief thrashes about, something important is taking shape in
his shadow -- the outlines of a new conservatism inspired, or at least elevated, by his rise
to power.
It's a conservatism that tries to wrestle with the post-Cold War, post-industrial angst
that fired his election -- dropping a reflexive fealty to big business that dates back to the
Reagan era and focusing more intently on the struggles of everyday Americans.
"There are many downsides, I will say, to Trump," Carlson said, in his speech this summer.
"But one of the upsides is, the Trump election was so shocking, so unlikely ... that it did
cause some significant percentage of people to say, 'wait a second, if that can happen, what
else is true?' "
The reimagining is playing out not just on Carlson's show or in conservative journals, but
among a small batch of young, ambitious Republicans in Congress led by senators Josh Hawley
of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Their populist -- or "nationalist" or "post-liberal" -- prescriptions sometimes smack of
opportunism. And it's still not clear how far they're willing to stray from their party. But
it looks like there are places where the new nationalists could find common cause with an
energized left.
Whether the two sides can actually forge a meaningful alliance in the glare of our
hyperpartisan politics is an open question. But a compact -- even a provisional one -- may
offer the country its best shot at building a meaningful, post-Trump politics.
. . .
CARLSON DELIVERED HIS speech at the National Conservatism Conference -- the first major
gathering aimed at forging a new, right-of-center approach in the age of Trump.
"This is our independence day," said Yoram Hazony, an Israeli political theorist and chief
organizer of the event, in his spirited opening remarks. "We declare independence from
neoconservatism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism."
"We are national conservatives," he said.
Any effort to build a right-of-center nationalism circa 2019 inevitably runs into
questions about whether it will traffic in bigotry.
And one of the speakers, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, seemed to do
just that -- suggesting that "cultural compatibility" should play a role in deciding which
migrants are allowed into the country.
"In effect," she said, this "means taking the position that our country will be better off
with more whites and fewer nonwhites."
But Wax's speech, however discomfiting, stood out because it was so discordant.
Conference organizers took pains to prevent hate-mongers from attending -- ultimately
rejecting six applicants. ...
"Your ideas," he said, "are not welcome here." ...
"... "The Kirin 990 is not only an SoC and a 5G modem glued together. We put a lot of effort in integrating the two chips. So the new chip uses less power and generates less heat while getting the job done," said Huawei fellow Ai Wei before the launch event. ..."
"... The whole Kirin 990 5G chip is so dense that it contains 10.3 billion semiconductors, the first and largest of its kind. ..."
"... Another example is AI-based video quality improvements, which takes in a low quality video and render a better one. Objects in the rendered video have much sharper edges. Huawei technicians refused to explain how they made it, but the underlying tech seems to be object recognition, content-based pixel generation and noise reduction, since these are the tricks AI does well. ..."
"... Huawei's P30 Pro smartphone, together with the Kirin 980 chip, has taken "smartphone zoom to the next level," according to third-party review site DxOMark. The phone was on top of all smartphones when it comes to photography in DxOMark's ranking. The Kirin 990 is packed with more graphic features to continue Huawei's dominance. ..."
Smartest and fastest: Huawei reveals new smartphone chip Kirin 990 5G
By Gong Zhe
Chinese smartphone giant Huawei, which has been under heavy attack from the U.S.
government during the last few months, just revealed its next-generation smartphone
system-on-a-chip (SoC) product "Kirin 990 5G," signaling the company's business is not
stalled by foreign strangling.
The launch event was held simultaneously at IFA electronic show in Berlin, Germany, and in
Beijing on Friday.
In his keynote speech, Huawei's head of gadgets Richard Yu told the press that the chip is
more advanced than other flagship smartphone SoCs, because it has a built-in 5G modem.
Current rivals of the chip, like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, have no 5G modem and have to
rely on an extra chip to support 5G.
"The Kirin 990 is not only an SoC and a 5G modem glued together. We put a lot of
effort in integrating the two chips. So the new chip uses less power and generates less heat
while getting the job done," said Huawei fellow Ai Wei before the launch event.
The whole Kirin 990 5G chip is so dense that it contains 10.3 billion semiconductors,
the first and largest of its kind.
Flexible AI power
The chip also features three AI cores, two larger than the other smaller. This design,
first in smartphones, saves battery power by only using the small core to process simple AI
tasks, while resorting to the larger cores for more complex jobs.
The company named the cores "Ascend Lite" and "Ascend Tiny" to relate the cores to
Huawei's new, self-proclaimed "fastest AI training chip in the world," the Ascend 910.
Huawei built a showcase at the Beijing launch event to demonstrate the chip's AI power.
They showed a FaceID-like face recognition feature in a Kirin 990-powered developer board
that can work when the person is four meters away from the phone, times further than Apple's
current product.
Another example is AI-based video quality improvements, which takes in a low quality
video and render a better one. Objects in the rendered video have much sharper edges. Huawei
technicians refused to explain how they made it, but the underlying tech seems to be object
recognition, content-based pixel generation and noise reduction, since these are the tricks
AI does well.
Even better photos
Huawei's P30 Pro smartphone, together with the Kirin 980 chip, has taken "smartphone
zoom to the next level," according to third-party review site DxOMark. The phone was on top
of all smartphones when it comes to photography in DxOMark's ranking. The Kirin 990 is packed
with more graphic features to continue Huawei's dominance.
A Kirin 990-powered smartphone can shoot 4K videos (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 frames per
second, on par with market flagship phones.
The chip can also run DSLR-level noise-reduction algorithm – namely "Block Match 3D"
– to bring professional tech to consumer devices.
"Porting an algorithm from DSLR to smartphone may be easy. But getting the program to run
fast enough can be hard for any phone maker," Ai told CGTN Digital.
Non-U.S. tech
The design of Kirin 990 is still based on technology Huawei bought from British tech
company ARM, used by several mainstream brands.
After the U.S. began imposing restrictions on Huawei, ARM cut ties with the Chinese phone
maker. Despite this, Huawei has been able to use and modify AMRv8 technology thanks to its
permanent ARM license. Hence why chips like Kirin 990 can still be legally built and
sold.
In addition to ARM, there are other major smartphone tech companies cutting ties with
Huawei, forcing the Chinese company to create its own alternatives. After Google announced to
bar Huawei phones from installing their apps, Huawei started porting its IoT system "Harmony"
to smartphones.
But Huawei still wishes to use technologies from all over the world. As Ai Wei explained
at the launch event, "Huawei will not deliberately remove all U.S. tech from its smartphones.
But when the supply from U.S. was cut, Huawei has to find a way to survive."
"That's why Huawei chose to create its own technology," Ai added....
The point in article after article is that China is emphasizing technical advance in building
the economy from rural to urban applications and the emphasis will not be lessened. The rural
applications I am reading about are especially exciting.
I appreciate the interview, but Clayton Dube as director of the University of Southern
California's U.S.-China Institute knows remarkably little about China or American relations
with China. Possibly Dube is being especially cautious, but still:
"The air in Los Angeles," the academic explains by way of an example, "is influenced by
the air coming out of northern China. But of course, that bad air in China is produced by
factories often producing for the American market. And so we have not only outsourced
production, we've outsourced pollution."
This is absurdly wrong. China has been working on cleaning the environment for years now
and the effects as monitored have been dramatic.
The idea that China thinks of 1849 to 1949 as a colonial period that took them 100 years to
get free from, for instance, immediately helps me understand some of where they are coming
from.
The idea that China thinks of 1849 to 1949 as a colonial period that took them 100 years to
get free from, for instance, immediately helps me understand some of where they are coming
from.
[ Surely so, this very day is "International Day of Peace in Nanjing" in memory of the
victims of the terrible Japanese occupation:
Four Years After Declaring War on Pollution, China Is Winning
Research gives estimates on the longer lives that are now possible in the country.
By Michael Greenstone
On March 4, 2014, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, told almost 3,000 delegates at the
National People's Congress and many more watching live on state television, "We will
resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty."
China has had the benefit of skipping over other advanced nation's Legacy infrastructure.
Leapfrogging ahead in some areas of development is smart and saves money for China as
well, but that doesn't make China superior to other advanced nations.
The U.S. Has a Fleet of 300 Electric Buses. China Has 421,000
The rest of the world will struggle for years to match China's rapid embrace of electric
transit.
By Brian Eckhouse - Bloomberg
Fearing 'Spy Trains,' Congress May Ban a Chinese Maker of Subway Cars
By Ana Swanson
CHICAGO -- America's next fight with China is unfolding at a glistening new factory in
Chicago, which stands empty except for the shells of two subway cars and space for future
business that is unlikely to come.
A Chinese state-owned company called CRRC Corporation, the world's largest train maker,
completed the $100 million facility this year in the hopes of winning contracts to build
subway cars and other passenger trains for American cities like Chicago and Washington.
But growing fears about China's economic ambitions and its potential to track and spy on
Americans are about to quash those plans. Congress is soon expected to approve legislation
that would effectively bar the company from competing for new contracts in the United States,
citing national security and economic concerns. The White House has expressed its support for
the effort....
Terrific discussion on how the West perceives China...
[ Actually a discussion that shows a remarkable misperception of China even by an American
China academic-specialist. As such the discussion is important though discouraging. ]
"... "with considerable forethought [TV capitalists] are attempting to create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate and faithfully work for their employers for as low a wage as possible." He said TV was America's "drug." On another occasion, he took a 60 Minutes crew to the AP office in Burlington and, in a bit of turnabout, began interrogating their reporters. So perhaps the AP's announcement this week was a bit of long-simmering retribution. ..."
"... In his essential book, Out of Order -- still, 23 years after publication, the best analysis of election coverage -- Harvard political scientist Thomas Patterson said there are only four press narratives in an election campaign: "a candidate is leading, or trailing, or gaining ground or losing ground." And: "The press dumps on losers and those who are losing support, criticizes front-runners and praises those who catch fire -- at least as long as the bandwagon lasts." ..."
"... By placing bets on one candidate over another, the media virtually prevent that disfavored candidate from gaining ground. ..."
"... This may be the first time that social media compelled the MSM to change its narrative -- from losing candidate to gaining candidate, or what Patterson calls the "bandwagon effect." ..."
"... It is now a truism of election coverage that since the coverage often contorts itself to justify them, you follow the polls. Poll numbers are everything. ..."
Last week, even before Hillary Clinton's primary victory in California assured her the Democratic presidential nomination, the
Associated Press had already declared her the presumptive nominee.
Bernie Sanders and his supporters were sore , and they had a right to be.
Although
the AP defended its decision , saying that Clinton's crossing the delegate threshold was news and they had an obligation to report
it when they did (the day before the clinching primaries) the timing and the circumstances were suspicious. It appears that AP had
been hounding superdelegates to reveal their preferences, and blasting that headline just before those primaries threatened either
to depress Sanders' vote or Hillary's or both because the contest was now for all intents and purposes over.
Sanders has never been much of a media fan.
Last October,
Mother Jones reported that way back in 1979, he wrote in Vermont's Vanguard Press , an alternative newspaper, that
"with considerable forethought [TV capitalists] are attempting to create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy
this or that product, vote for this or that candidate and faithfully work for their employers for as low a wage as possible." He
said TV was America's "drug." On another occasion, he took a 60 Minutes crew to the AP office in Burlington and, in a bit
of turnabout, began interrogating their reporters. So perhaps the AP's announcement this week was a bit of long-simmering retribution.
Payback or not, Sanders and his supporters are justified in saying the mainstream media have not been entirely fair to him. But
that isn't because Sanders was anti-establishment or because he has attacked the media's monopolistic practices or because he claimed
to be leading a revolution or even because he was impatient with reporters who asked idiotic questions -- though he had done all
of those things.
Sanders was the victim of something else: the script. The media have a script for elections, and in that script the presumed losers
are always marginalized and even dismissed. The script, then, dictated that Sanders wasn't going to get favorable coverage. Or, put
more starkly, the MSM pick the losers and then vindicate that judgment.
From the moment he announced his candidacy in April 2015, the media treated Sanders as if he were unlikely to win.
In The New
York Times , that announcement was printed on page A-21, calling him a "long shot" but saying that his candidacy could force
Hillary Clinton to address his issues "more deeply." The article ended with a quote from Sanders: "I think people should be a little
bit careful underestimating me," which is exactly what The Times seemed to be doing.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton's announcement two-and-a-half weeks earlier
got prime
real estate in The Times and the judgment that the "announcement effectively began what could be one of the least contested
races, without an incumbent, for the Democratic presidential nomination in recent history." So already the roles had been cast --
though, of course, the perception that Sanders wasn't likely to beat Clinton was all but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In his essential book, Out of Order -- still, 23 years after publication, the best analysis of election coverage -- Harvard political scientist
Thomas Patterson said there are only four press narratives in an election campaign: "a candidate is leading, or trailing, or gaining
ground or losing ground." And: "The press dumps on losers and those who are losing support, criticizes front-runners and praises
those who catch fire -- at least as long as the bandwagon lasts."
As the presumed loser from the outset, Sanders didn't get negative coverage so much as he got negligible coverage.
An analysis by the TV News
Archive of cable television coverage since January 2015 provides graphs of Clinton's and Sanders' mentions that look alike, save
for one thing: Clinton was getting vastly more coverage than Sanders. How much more? On CNN, Clinton got more than 70,000 of the
Democratic-candidate mentions, while Sanders got just under 42,000. On MSNBC, Clinton got more than 93,000 mentions to Sanders' roughly
51,000. On Fox News, she got more than 71,000 mentions to his more than 28,000. The numbers are similar on the Lexis-Nexis database
of newspapers. In the past 30 days, Clinton received 2,591 mentions, Sanders only 922. By comparison, Trump got 5,568.
The numbers, of course, are constantly being updated. But the ratios remain more or less constant.
I suppose journalists would argue that time and space are inelastic; choices have to be made as to who receives coverage. If we
give it to Bernie Sanders, they might say, why not Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb or even Lincoln Chafee? Putting aside whether there
really is too little time (on cable where the same stories are repeated endlessly?), the decision over whom to cover and whom not
to cover is determinative. By placing bets on one candidate over another, the media virtually prevent that disfavored candidate
from gaining ground.
But in spite of the dearth of MSM coverage, Sanders did gain ground. That may have been due to his very active social media
presence, which assured that the Sanders name and message were being promulgated via the ether if not on the page or on the air.
Though Trump clearly mastered how to turn social media into MSM coverage by tweeting absurdities the press couldn't resist, Sanders
used social media to mobilize support, so that he was able to rustle up a crowd for a rally at a moment's notice, and a whole lot
of money.
This may be the first time that
social media compelled the
MSM to change its narrative -- from losing candidate to gaining candidate, or what Patterson calls the "bandwagon effect."
In turn, Sanders' crowds were huge. His fundraising was large and notable for the number of small donations. And most of all, his
poll numbers began rising.
It is now a truism of election coverage that since the coverage often contorts itself to justify them, you follow the polls.
Poll numbers are everything. As Sanders' numbers climbed, and especially after he trounced Clinton in New Hampshire, the story
was suddenly that
Sanders was leading a movement of young people dissatisfied with the old politics represented by Clinton, and angry with the
system.
Of course, even as the MSM called Sanders "aspirational" and "inspirational" and "idealistic" compared to Clinton, the praise
was then undercut when pundits compared him to another tribune of the disaffected, Donald Trump. "[Sanders] and Trump are peas in
a pod,"
wrote The Washington Post' s Dana Milbank , as late as last April.
None of this reluctant praise was because the press particularly liked Sanders. I think they still thought of themselves as realists
while Sanders was something of a political Don Quixote -- an old crank. But the media are in the drama business, and the story of
Sanders' energized youth army taking on Clinton's tired apparatchiks was a compelling one, and a whole lot better than Clinton marching
over Sanders like Sherman through Georgia. Indeed, nothing stirs the media like a good fight. The amount of Sanders' coverage appreciably
rose.
The problem was, to use the buzzword of this election, the math. No matter how much money Sanders raised, how many caucuses and
primaries he won or how much enthusiasm he stirred, he couldn't beat the delegate math -- which is to say, he was a loser. To the
media, his rise was a plot twist before the narrative wound its way to the inevitable conclusion. And, as Patterson wrote of the
media, "What is said of the candidate must fit the plot." Here the plot was that Sanders was not going to win because he was not
good enough to win.
Sanders' coverage in The New York Times is a case in point, and an important one because The Times drives so much
of the MSM's coverage. It is hardly a secret that The Times has had a jones for Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't excuse its
coverage of Sanders, which even included
an
article criticizing him for not doing more of the baby-kissing and hand-shaking that candidates usually do.
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote a scathing takedown of The Times' most egregious offense: a March article by
Jennifer Steinhauer on how Sanders functioned as a legislator. Headlined "Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years Via Legislative
Side Doors,"
as originally published , the article recounted how effective Sanders was at attaching amendments to pieces of legislation, both
Republican and Democratic, and forging coalitions to achieve his ends. The piece was bandwagon stuff.
But then something happened. The original article, already published, underwent a transformation in which Sanders suddenly wasn't
so effective a legislator. Even the
headline was changed to
"Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories." And this paragraph was added: "But in his presidential campaign
Mr. Sanders is trying to scale up those kinds of proposals as a national agenda, and there is little to draw from his small-ball
legislative approach to suggest that he could succeed."
Responding to angry Sanders supporters,
The Times' own public editor, Margaret Sullivan , asked why the changes were made and wrote, "Matt Purdy, a deputy executive
editor, said that when senior editors read the piece after it was published online, they thought it needed more perspective about
whether Mr. Sanders would be able to carry out his campaign agenda if he was elected president." Yeah, right.
You might note how short a step it is from losing to deserving to lose. The media always seem willing to take that step, not only
when it comes to Sanders but to any presumed loser. It may also explain why the media were so hard on Sanders' policies, ridiculing
them as pie-in-the-sky. On the other hand, Times columnist Paul Krugman, once a liberal hero, took a lot of flak from Sanders
supporters for criticizing several of the senator's proposals and favoring Clinton's. Sandernistas couldn't accept the possibility
that Krugman, whose liberal bona fides are pretty sound, was backing Clinton because he thought Sanders' proposals didn't
add up -- and not that he thought they didn't add up because he was backing Clinton. Even if Sanders was treated unfairly, he didn't
deserve to escape scrutiny just because he was a maverick.
By the same token, the press's presumption that Sanders was a loser wasn't wrong either. Sanders' claim that the system was somehow
rigged against him because of superdelegates proved not to be true. Sanders received far fewer votes than Clinton, 3.7 million less,
and he would have lost the nomination even if there had been no superdelegates, not to mention that he lost the basic Democratic
constituencies to her. What we will never know is if the race might have been different had the coverage been different -- that is,
if Sanders hadn't been
considered some outlier and preordained loser from the very beginning.
Another thing we will never know is how the coverage would have differed if it hadn't been so poll- or delegate-driven. Candidates
won't arrive at the finish line at the same time, but the media should at least let them begin at the starting line together. And
the voters should be the ones to winnow the field, not the press.
Now that Sanders has played his part juicing up the nominating drama, the media seem as eager to dispose of him as the Democratic
establishment does. They're ready to relegate him to his next role: confirmed sore loser.
A front-page story in Thursday's
edition of The New York Times griped , "Hillary Clinton Made History, but Bernie Sanders Stubbornly Ignored it," opening
with the line, "Revolutions rarely give way to gracious expressions of defeat."
No, they don't, and I don't think it is the business of the press to tell candidates when to or how to concede, much less complain
about it. The article went on to call Sanders' address after Tuesday night's primaries "a speech of striking stubbornness," as if
The Times and its barely pent-up exasperation with Sanders finally broke the dam.
But again, this isn't just what the MSM think of Bernie Sanders. It is what the media think of losers. They don't like them very
much, and they seem determined to make sure that you don't like them either -- unless they beat the press's own odds and become winners.
Neal Gabler is an author of five books
and the recipient of two LA Times Book Prizes, Time magazine's nonfiction book of the year, USA Today's biography of the year and
other awards. He is also a senior fellow at the Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment and Society and is currently writing a
biography of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
"... "Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation, would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing." ..."
"... Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never, ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion. ..."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler last week
over his 'Moby Dick'-like obsession with impeaching President Trump - days before Trump's 2016
campaign manager Corey Lewandowski
wiped the floor with Congressional Democrats during a contentious five-hour hearing on
Tuesday in front of Nadler's panel.
Pelosi's comments came during a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting of Democrats last week,
where she complained that Judiciary Committee aides have advanced the impeachment push "far
beyond where the House Democratic Caucus stands," according to Politico
.
" And you can feel free to leak this ," Pelosi added, according to several people who were
there.
It was the latest sign of the widening schism between Pelosi and Judiciary Committee
Chairman Jerry Nadler, two longtime allies who are increasingly in conflict over where to
guide the party at one of its most critical moments.
Both Pelosi and Nadler, who have served in the House together for more than 25 years,
insist their relationship remains strong. But their rift over impeachment is getting harder
and harder to paper over amid Democrats' flailing messaging on the topic and a growing divide
in the caucus. - Politico
And while Pelosi aides told Politico that Nadler has coordinated with her office on
investigations, legal strategy and messaging - and Pelosi has signed off on all the Judiciary
Committee's court filings against Trump, the House Speaker has been expressing skepticism for
months that a successful impeachment in the House would only lead to "exonerating" Trump on the
campaign trail after the effort dies in the GOP-led Senate.
Pelosi has privately clashed with Nadler over his aggressive impeachment agenda, arguing
the public does not support it and it does not have the 218 votes to pass on the House floor.
So far, about 137 Democrats say they would vote to open an official impeachment inquiry.
...
The relationship between the two veteran lawmakers has become strained . While Pelosi has
blocked the House from formally voting to open an impeachment inquiry, Nadler declared he is
authorized to begin one even without a House vote. -
Washington Examiner
"Am I concerned? The answer is yes!," Florida Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala told the
Washington Examiner . "In my district, I'm not getting asked about impeachment.
I'm being asked about healthcare, I'm being asked about the environment, and about
infrastructure. It's not like around the country they are thinking about impeachment. It's a
Washington phenomenon as far as I can tell."
... ... ...
During Tuesday's 'impeachment' hearing, Corey Lewandowski beat Congressional
Democrats like a red-headed stepchild - starting with his opening statement:
"Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these
investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many
Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the
United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation,
would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the
true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this
hearing."
" As for actual 'collusion,' or 'conspiracy,' there was none. What there has been, however,
is harassment of the president from the day he won the election ."
"Corey Lewandowski was very precise," Rep. Matt Gaetz, a member of the House panel, told
Fox News ' Sean Hannity. "And House Democrats looked like a dog that had chased a car
and then caught it and then did not know what to do about it ."
Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never,
ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion.
That's the reason a now 90% controlled Trump can't be allowed to escape
unscathed, no matter how otherwise useless the exercise -- even by the standards of their own
(apparent) issue agendas.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
"... This is no coincidence. The DNC elite, a who's who of Wall Street donors and "party insiders," have chosen Elizabeth Warren as the safest insurance policy to Joe Biden. Warren has positioned herself as the safer version of progressivism in contradistinction to Bernie Sanders' full-fledged New Deal politics. ..."
"... In recent weeks, Elizabeth Warren has been putting smiles on the faces of the Democratic Party establishment. Her performance at the DNC's summer fundraiser in San Francisco in late August received widespread positive coverage from the corporate media. The New York Times , for example, reported that Warren has been sending private messages to Democratic Party insiders to let them know that she is more interested in leading a "revival" of the Democratic Party rather than a revolution. ..."
"... In other words, Elizabeth Warren is saying and doing all the right things to position herself as the DNC's choice for the presidential nomination should the Biden campaign continue to falter. ..."
"... The DNC is looking for a candidate who will oppose Trump but support the neoliberal and foreign policy consensus that exists in Washington. At first, Warren's mimicry of Bernie Sanders' talking points raised a few eyebrows on Wall Street. While some of those eyebrows remain raised, the DNC clearly prefers Warren's "revival" over Sanders' "political revolution." ..."
From forgetting former President Barack Obama's name to having your
wife ask voters to "swallow
a little bit" of his pro-corporate positions on healthcare, the oligarchs in control of the
two-party political system in the United States are well aware of Biden's struggles .
According to the Washington Times , Biden is losing the support from the corporate
media. The editorial
cited a study from Axios which concluded that of 100 media stories about the Biden
campaign that received the most attention on social media, 77 were negative in character. While
Biden consistently leads in the polls, the DNC elite has gone fishing for of an insurance
policy for Biden's flailing campaign.
Enter Elizabeth Warren. At first, the Massachusetts Senator seemed like a dark horse in the
race and a mere thorn in the side of Bernie Sanders. Kamala Harris appeared to be the early DNC
favorite and her campaign has worked overtime to show its commitment to a neoliberal economic
and political agenda. However, Harris was stymied by Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's
thirty second run
down of her record as Defense Attorney and Attorney General for the state of California
during the second Democratic Party primary debate. Ever since, Harris has seen her stock
decline mightily
in the polls while Elizabeth Warren's polling numbers have increased dramatically.
This is no coincidence. The DNC elite, a who's who of Wall Street donors and "party
insiders," have chosen Elizabeth Warren as the safest insurance policy to Joe Biden. Warren has
positioned herself as the safer version of progressivism in contradistinction to Bernie
Sanders' full-fledged New Deal politics. As far back as late February of 2019, Warren was
deriding corporate "special interests" while signaling that she would not succumb to
"unilateral disarmament" in a general election against Trump by forgoing corporate
donations.
The progressivism of Elizabeth Warren was thus a malleable project with a history of
inconsistency, as evidenced by her constant flip-flopping on issues such as the privatization
of education in Massachusetts.
In recent weeks, Elizabeth Warren has been putting smiles on the faces of the Democratic
Party establishment. Her performance at the DNC's summer fundraiser in San Francisco in late
August received widespread positive coverage from the corporate media. The New York
Times , for example, reported that Warren has been
sending private messages to Democratic Party insiders to let them know that she is more
interested in leading a "revival" of the Democratic Party rather than a revolution.
An article
in The Atlantic provided snippet remarks from people like Don Fowler, described in the
piece as a former DNC-chair and "long-time Clinton-family loyalist," who called Warren "smart
as shit" for her inside-out approach to her political campaign. A more recent editorial in The
New York Times offered a glimpse into Warren's former big donor connections from her
2018 Senate campaign. According to the Times , Warren was able to transfer 10.4
million USD to her presidential campaign effort in part because of the generosity of the
very same corporate elite that she now condemns as holding too much influence over the
Democratic Party. NBC News further revealed that Elizabeth Warren has an open line of
communication with the much maligned but infamous Democratic Party establishment leader,
Hillary Clinton.
In other words, Elizabeth Warren is saying and doing all the right things to position
herself as the DNC's choice for the presidential nomination should the Biden campaign continue
to falter.
Donald Trump is guaranteed the nomination for the Republican Party ticket after
taking over the party in 2016 from defunct establishment figures such as Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush,
and Ted Cruz.
The DNC is looking for a candidate who will oppose Trump but support the
neoliberal and foreign policy consensus that exists in Washington. At first, Warren's mimicry
of Bernie Sanders' talking points raised a few eyebrows on Wall Street. While some of those
eyebrows remain raised, the DNC clearly prefers Warren's "revival" over Sanders' "political
revolution."
That's because Warren's campaign to "revive" the Democratic Party is bereft of political
principle. Whatever Sanders' political limitations as a "left" alternative to the
establishment, the Vermont Senator is by far more progressive than Warren. Warren voted for the
Trump Administration's recent
military budget in 2017 even after tens of billions of dollars were added by Congress to
the original proposal. During Israel's 2014 massacre of the Palestinians in Operation
Protective Edge, Warren claimed Israel had a
right to defend itself. Bernie Sanders offers a clear proposal for Medicare for All already
drafted in the Senate, while Elizabeth Warren believes that Medicare for All can be implemented
in
"many different ways." In CNN's Climate Town Hall, Warren opposed public control of utilities
while Sanders supported it. A deeper look at Elizabeth Warren reveals that she is more aligned
with the establishment than she wants the public to believe.
All of this is to say that the DNC is looking for the best-case scenario for its corporate
masters, which is the worst-case scenario for working people in the United States. The
principle goal of the DNC is to stop Bernie Sanders from getting anywhere near the nomination.
Prior to Warren becoming insurance policy for Joe Biden, the DNC hoped that the Massachusetts
Senator would split supporters of Bernie Sanders down the middle. This would lead either to a
clear path to the nomination for a handpicked candidate (Biden, Harris, fill in the blank) or
to a contested convention where the unelected but very wealthy
"superdelegates" would cast the deciding vote. Should Warren have turned out a lame duck,
the DNC could still rely on over a dozen candidates with careerist ambitions to force a
contested election at the DNC convention in Milwaukee.
Workers in the United States have no insurance policy when it comes to the 2020 presidential
election or any other election for that matter. Austerity, privatization, and super
exploitation is the law of the capitalist land in the USA. Sanders is attractive to many
workers in the U.S. because of his consistent articulation of an anti-austerity platform which
includes living wage employment, a Green New Deal to help provide that employment, and a solid
commitment to Medicare for All. But Sanders remains deeply loyal to the Democratic Party and
has stated firmly on several occasions on the campaign trail that he would support any
Democratic Party candidate should he lose the nomination. Sanders frames Donald Trump as the
most dangerous element in U.S. society even as his own party colludes to prevent him from
having a fair shot at the nomination. Sanders and his supporters must realize that Elizabeth
Warren is not a friend, but an opportunist who is more than willing to profit from their
demise. The best-case scenario for the working class is that wall to wall resistance to Sanders
will lead to a mass exodus from the party and open the door for an independent worker's party
to form amid the collapse of the DNC.
"... Ms. Warren described Washington as utterly compromised by the influence of corporations and the extremely wealthy, and laid out a detailed plan for cleansing it. ..."
"... "Corruption has put our planet at risk, corruption has broken our economy and corruption is breaking our democracy," Ms. Warren said Monday evening. "I know what's broken, I've got a plan to fix it and that's why I'm running for president of the United States." ..."
"... Their version of populism, which Mr. Sanders pioneered but did not bring to fruition when he challenged Hillary Clinton in 2016, is about attacking concentrated wealth and economic power and breaking its influence over government. Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, effectively tied for second place in their party's primary, both describe the country's political institutions as rotten and vow to make vast changes to the economy ..."
Warren and Trump Speeches Attack Corruption,
but Two Different Kinds https://nyti.ms/2IaKMVQ
NYT - Alexander Burns - September 17
In New York, Senator Elizabeth Warren described a government compromised by the influence
of the wealthy. President Trump, in New Mexico, denounced a "failed liberal
establishment."
Senator Elizabeth Warren stood beneath a marble arch in New York City, telling a crowd of
thousands that she would lead a movement to purge the government of corruption. Not far from
the site of a historic industrial disaster, Ms. Warren described Washington as utterly
compromised by the influence of corporations and the extremely wealthy, and laid out a
detailed plan for cleansing it.
"Corruption has put our planet at risk, corruption has broken our economy and
corruption is breaking our democracy," Ms. Warren said Monday evening. "I know what's broken,
I've got a plan to fix it and that's why I'm running for president of the United
States."
Only a few hours later, on a stage outside Albuquerque, President Trump took aim at a
different phenomenon that he also described as corruption. Before his own roaring crowd, Mr.
Trump cast himself as a bulwark against the power not of corporations but of a "failed
liberal establishment" that he described as attacking the country's sovereignty and cultural
heritage.
"We're battling against the corrupt establishment of the past," Mr. Trump said, warning in
grim language: "They want to erase American history, crush religious liberty, indoctrinate
our students with left-wing ideology."
The two back-to-back addresses laid out the competing versions of populism that could come
to define the presidential campaign. From the right, there is the strain Mr. Trump brought to
maturity in 2016, combining the longstanding grievances of the white working class with a
newer, darker angst about immigration and cultural change. And on the left, there is a vastly
different populist wave still gaining strength, defined in economic terms by Ms. Warren,
Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The messages underlined the possibility that the 2020 election could be the first in a
generation to be fought without an ally of either party's centrist establishment on the
ballot. While it is by no means certain that Ms. Warren will emerge as the Democratic
nominee, two of her party's top three candidates -- Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders -- are
trumpeting themes of economic inequality and promises of sweeping political and social
reform.
Their version of populism, which Mr. Sanders pioneered but did not bring to fruition
when he challenged Hillary Clinton in 2016, is about attacking concentrated wealth and
economic power and breaking its influence over government. Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders,
effectively tied for second place in their party's primary, both describe the country's
political institutions as rotten and vow to make vast changes to the economy . ...
Let's hope the Sanders campaign does not play this card.
"Senator Professor Warren continues to play error-free baseball in this here presidential
campaign. Not only does she schedule a certified Big Speech in Washington Square Park in New
York on Monday night to talk about the contributions of women to the labor movement not far
from the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, but also, in the afternoon, she scoops an
important endorsement across town. From The New York Times:
'The party endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the last presidential cycle,
at which time he described Working Families as "the closest thing" to "my vision of
democratic socialism." The group's endorsement of Ms. Warren on Monday, one of the few by a
prominent progressive organization this early in the primary, is sure to turn heads among
left-leaning Democrats who are desperate to defeat the current front-runner, Mr. Biden, in a
primary election where their party's ideological future is at stake.
Mr. Mitchell brushed off the possibility that the group's endorsement would be seen as a
sign of a splintering of the progressive left. The vote among "tens of thousands" of party
members resulted in a commanding majority for Ms. Warren, a party spokesman said; she
received more than 60 percent of the votes on the first ballot.'
The Sanders camp is already raising holy hell. They will now position SPW as a tool of her
corporate masters. (That's been going on for a while now among some of the more enthusiastic
adherents of the Sanders campaign. My guess is that it will become more general now.) The WFP
endorsement is an important and clarifying one. If there is a liberal lane, there's some
daylight open now."
"... I do like the author's take on the importance of corporations' fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, though. There WAS a time when a company's first priority was customer satisfaction. The moment they became corporations, however, customers went out the window in favor of the shareholders. ..."
Go to the section of Warren's website entitled
"Plans" and at the time of this writing you'll have a choice between a staggering 43 links.
Many of the plans could hugely impact our economy, but one stands above the rest in its
potential to overhaul our commercia landscape. Warren calls the reforms she envisions to
corporate mandates and governance
"accountable capitalism."
Corporations sometimes do bad things, and Warren's plan might stop some of them.
So just what is accountable capitalism? It was originally a bill proposed by Senator Warren
last year. In a fawning write-up in Vox
, Matthew Yglesias inadvertently exposed the idea's flimsy intellectual foundation:
Warren's plan starts from the premise that corporations that claim the legal rights of
personhood should be legally required to accept the moral obligations of personhood.
... ... ...
Warren's plan requires corporations valued at over $1 billion to obtain a special federal
charter. This charter exposes corporations to regulation from a new Office of United States
Corporations that "tells company directors to consider the interests of all relevant
stakeholders -- shareholders, but also employees, customers, and the community within which the
company operates -- when making decisions."
... ... ...
Warren has spent much of her career crusading against the harmful and unjust cozy
relationships between Wall Street and government, often to her credit. It's curious that
someone with such expertise in the matter doesn't seem at all concerned that this new
"accountability" would multiply the number of meetings, phone calls, and emails between senior
regulators and the titans of the private sector.
These billion-dollar corporations already employ armies of lawyers and accountants to
navigate regulatory minefields and turn them into weapons against their smaller competitors.
Does Warren believe this practice will stop overnight?
If most rent-seeking were a matter of nefarious corporate executives buying off weak or
greedy officials, we could just elect better people. The fact that this problem persists over
decades is indicative of a more subtle process. Rent-seeking is an inevitable systemic feature
in a network with thousands of contact points between business and government.
She had her chance in the '08 credit crash when she took on Wall Street & The
Banksters!
She ended up filling the Banksters & 1%'ers pockets with billions of Tarp funds some
of which were donated to her campaign while enacting competition killing Dodd Frank
compliance laws! No one was ever charged or convicted for the $9Trillion debacle!
I recall Barry the magical ***** had similar plans that disappeared the moment of his
coronation/deification. Campaign plans are like that: fictional lies that vanish like
magic.
I do like the author's take on the importance of corporations' fiduciary
responsibility to shareholders, though. There WAS a time when a company's first priority was
customer satisfaction. The moment they became corporations, however, customers went out the
window in favor of the shareholders.
These days, thanks to algos, things like revenue and performance don't even seem to matter
to stock valuation anymore, only buybacks and options seem to keep prices up.
The problem of corporation lack of empathy is not caused by capitalism, it is caused by
the lack of moral values of the people running the corporation. What is needed is a moral
framework within which to raise our young... Religion? Yes! correct answer.
I think the author is too generous with Warren's intentions. She pretends she cares, and
this is her misguided effort to "help". I don't think that's true.
Look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It, too, sounds like it's about
"helping" people. Warren proposed the whole thing, and wrote much of the legislation.
Its real purpose, if you look at its actions (which, I remind you, speak louder than
words) is to extort money from large companies in order to fund left-wing activist groups. In
nearly all its settlements, the CFPB offers companies the option to "donate" money to these
third-party groups in lieu of larger fines and penalties. They've diverted billions of
dollars to activist groups. Controlling the money allows them to control the groups, and
these groups can exert all kinds of pressure, usually in ways that would be illegal, if done
directly by the government.
It's the equivalent of having the government fund paramilitary groups or third party
propaganda.
Warren would establish this new "Office of United States Corporations" to extort even more
money, diverted to third parties to use to destroy people, companies, and anything else she'd
like to target but cannot target directly through government because of our pesky
Constitution.
She's an aspiring totalitarian dictator, using clever language and 21st century tools.
Don't pretend, for a moment, that she's interested in "helping" anyone - she'd happily kill
as many people as Hitler or Stalin ever did, if she had the chance.
Steve Peoples and Will Weissert - AP - September 16
NEW YORK -- Elizabeth Warren has released a sweeping anti-government corruption proposal,
providing a detailed policy roadmap for a fight she says is at the core of her presidential
campaign.
The Democratic senator from Massachusetts is announcing the plan Monday in Manhattan's
Washington Square Park, near the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Co., which caught fire in
1911, killing 140-plus workers. Many of those deaths later were attributed to neglected
safety features, such as doors that were locked inside the factory.
Warren's plan would ban lobbyists from many fundraising activities and serving as
political campaign bundlers, tighten limits on politicians accepting gifts or payment for
government actions and bar senior officials and members of Congress from serving on nonprofit
boards. ...
Senator Elizabeth Warren is blitzing the 2020 Democratic primary field with a series of
ambitious policy proposals covering everything from student loans to the use of federal
lands.
Her proposals have become a signature part of her campaign, solidifying her reputation as
a policy wonk and spurring a new campaign slogan: "I have a plan for that."
Big Tech breakup
Child care
Clean energy
Criminal justice
Economic patriotism
Electoral college
Farmers
Filibuster
Green energy
Gun control
Higher education
Housing
Immigration
Minority entrepreneurship
Native American issues
Opioids
Pentagon ethics
Public lands
Puerto Rico
Racial wage disparities
Reparations
Roe v. Wade
Rural communities
State Department
Tax plans
Trade
Voting rights
Wall Street regulation
"... By that point, he'd already warned his audience about the perils of "monopoly power" and declared that income inequality, which the right had long been trained to believe is "just a pure invention of some diabolical French intellectual to destroy America," is actually "completely real" and "totally bad." ..."
"... The reimagining is playing out not just on Carlson's show or in conservative journals, but among a small batch of young, ambitious Republicans in Congress led by senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida. ..."
"... Their populist -- or "nationalist" or "post-liberal" -- prescriptions sometimes smack of opportunism. And it's still not clear how far they're willing to stray from their party. But it looks like there are places where the new nationalists could find common cause with an energized left. ..."
"... And one of the speakers, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, seemed to do just that -- suggesting that "cultural compatibility" should play a role in deciding which migrants are allowed into the country. "In effect," she said, this "means taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites." But Wax's speech, however discomfiting, stood out because it was so discordant. Conference organizers took pains to prevent hate-mongers from attending -- ultimately rejecting six applicants. ... "Your ideas," he said, "are not welcome here." ... ..."
...But he also spoke, in admiring tones and at substantial length, about "The Two-Income Trap:
Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke," the book Warren wrote with her daughter in 2004.
"Elizabeth Warren wrote one of the best books I've ever read on economics," he said.
By that point, he'd already warned his audience about the perils of "monopoly power" and
declared that income inequality, which the right had long been trained to believe is "just a
pure invention of some diabolical French intellectual to destroy America," is actually
"completely real" and "totally bad."
His Bolshevist pronouncements were probably not a surprise to anyone who'd watched Carlson's
show closely in the months leading up to his speech. But Fox, despite its outsize influence,
has a relatively small audience.
And it's not just Carlson's evolution that's escaped notice. It's hard to keep track of what
most of the key players on the right are saying these days, with President Trump soaking up so
much attention.
But while the commander-in-chief thrashes about, something important is taking shape in his
shadow -- the outlines of a new conservatism inspired, or at least elevated, by his rise to
power.
It's a conservatism that tries to wrestle with the post-Cold War, post-industrial angst that
fired his election -- dropping a reflexive fealty to big business that dates back to the Reagan
era and focusing more intently on the struggles of everyday Americans.
"There are many downsides, I will say, to Trump," Carlson said, in his speech this summer.
"But one of the upsides is, the Trump election was so shocking, so unlikely ... that it did
cause some significant percentage of people to say, 'wait a second, if that can happen, what
else is true?' "
The reimagining is playing out not just on Carlson's show or in conservative journals, but
among a small batch of young, ambitious Republicans in Congress led by senators Josh Hawley of
Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Their populist -- or "nationalist" or "post-liberal" -- prescriptions sometimes smack of
opportunism. And it's still not clear how far they're willing to stray from their party. But it
looks like there are places where the new nationalists could find common cause with an
energized left.
Whether the two sides can actually forge a meaningful alliance in the glare of our
hyperpartisan politics is an open question. But a compact -- even a provisional one -- may
offer the country its best shot at building a meaningful, post-Trump politics.
. . .
CARLSON DELIVERED HIS speech at the National Conservatism Conference -- the first major
gathering aimed at forging a new, right-of-center approach in the age of Trump.
"This is our independence day," said Yoram Hazony, an Israeli political theorist and chief
organizer of the event, in his spirited opening remarks. "We declare independence from
neoconservatism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism." "We are national conservatives," he said. Any effort to build a right-of-center nationalism circa 2019 inevitably runs into questions
about whether it will traffic in bigotry.
And one of the speakers, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, seemed to do just
that -- suggesting that "cultural compatibility" should play a role in deciding which migrants
are allowed into the country. "In effect," she said, this "means taking the position that our country will be better off
with more whites and fewer nonwhites." But Wax's speech, however discomfiting, stood out because it was so discordant. Conference organizers took pains to prevent hate-mongers from attending -- ultimately
rejecting six applicants. ... "Your ideas," he said, "are not welcome here." ...
* At the National Conservatism Conference, an 'Intellectual Trumpist' Movement Begins to
Take Shape
DNC is a criminal organization and the fact that Debbie Wasserman
Schultz escaped justice is deeply regreatable.
Notable quotes:
"... The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0. ..."
"... Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed a different policy. ..."
"... The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class. But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party. ..."
"... I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place. Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party. ..."
"... As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. ..."
"... They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently damaged by immigration. ..."
"... If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their ethnicity and it's territory every time. I ..."
"... My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement. Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public. ..."
I hope that the candidate who is clearly the voters' choice, Bernie Sanders, may end up as the party's nominee. If he is, I'm
sure he'll beat Donald Trump handily, as he would have done four years ago. But I fear that the DNC's Donor Class will push Joe Biden,
Kamala Harris or even Pete Buttigieg down the throats of voters. Just as when they backed Hillary the last time around, they hope
that their anointed neoliberal will be viewed as the lesser evil for a program little different from that of the Republicans.
So Thursday's reality TV run-off is about "who's the least evil?" An honest reality show's questions would focus on "What are
you against ?" That would attract a real audience, because people are much clearer about what they're against: the vested
interests, Wall Street, the drug companies and other monopolies, the banks, landlords, corporate raiders and private-equity asset
strippers. But none of this is to be permitted on the magic island of authorized candidates (not including Tulsi Gabbard, who was
purged from further debates for having dared to mention the unmentionable).
Donald Trump as the DNC's nominee
The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing
social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial
markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0.
DNC donors favor Joe Biden, long-time senator from the credit-card and corporate-shell state of Delaware, and opportunistic California
prosecutor Kamala Harris, with a hopey-changey grab bag alternative in smooth-talking small-town Rorschach blot candidate Pete Buttigieg.
These easy victims are presented as "electable" in full knowledge that they will fail against Trump.
Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending
for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of
all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed
a different policy.
The Democratic Party's role is to protect Republicans from attack from the left, steadily following the Republican march rightward.
Claiming that this is at least in the direction of being "centrist," the Democrats present themselves as the lesser evil (which is
still evil, of course), simply as pragmatic in not letting hopes for "the perfect" (meaning moderate social democracy) block the
spirit of compromise with what is attainable, "getting things done" by cooperating across the aisle and winning Republican support.
That is what Joe Biden promises.
The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class.
But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic
column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party.
The Democratic National Committee worries that voters may disturb this alliance by nominating a left-wing reform candidate. The
DNC easily solved this problem in 2016: When Bernie Sanders intruded into its space, it the threw the election. It scheduled the
party's early defining primaries in Republican states whose voters leaned right, and packed the nominating convention with Donor
Class super-delegates.
After the dust settled, having given many party members political asthma, the DNC pretended that it was all an unfortunate political
error. But of course it was not a mistake at all. The DNC preferred to lose with Hillary than win with Bernie, whom springtime polls
showed would be the easy winner over Trump. Potential voters who didn't buy into the program either stayed home or voted green.
No votes will be cast for months, so I don't know how Mr. Hudson can say that Sanders is "clearly the voters choice." He would
be 79 on election day, well above the age when most men die, which is something that voters should seriously consider. Whoever
his VP is will probably be president before the end of Old Bernie's first term, so I hope he chooses his VP wisely.
In any case I laugh at how the media always reports that Biden, who has obviously lost more than a few brain cells, has such
a commanding lead over this field of second-raters. The voters, having much better things to do, haven't even started to pay attention
yet.
And, how could anyone seriously believe in these polls anyway? Only older people have land lines today. If calling people is
the methodology pollsters are using, then the results would be heavily skewed towards former VP Biden, whose name everyone knows.
I lost all faith in polls when the media was saying, with certainty, that Hillary was a lock to win against the insurgent Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate beside Trump with charisma today. With her cool demeanor, she is certainly the least unlikeable.
She would be Trump's most formidable opponent. But the democrats, like their counterparts, are owned by Wall Street and the Military
Industrial Complex. Sadly, most democrats still believe that the party is working in their best interests, while the republicans
are the party of the rich.
If you watch the debates tonight, which I will not be, you will notice that Tulsi Gabbard won't be on stage. That is by design.
She is a leper. At least the republicans allowed Trump to be onstage in 2016, which makes them more democratic than the democrats.
Plus they didn't have Super Delegates to prevent Trump from achieving the nomination he had rightfully won. Something to think
about since the DNC, not the voters, annointed Hillary last time.
If the YouTube Oligarchs still allow it, I plan on watching the post-debate analysis with characters like Richard Spencer and
Eric Striker. Those guys are most entertaining, and have insights that are not permitted to be uttered in the controlled, mind-numbing
farce of the mainstream media.
Elizabeth Warren seems a more likely nominee than Sanders.
Elizabeth Warren is phony as phuck(PAP). Just like forked tongued Obama she's really just a tool for the neo-liberal establishment,
which does make her more likely.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place.
Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would
be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party.
As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. Many of
them may be progressives but they refuse to understand the very non-progressive consequences of mass immigration (Or, one should
say over-immigration) or globalisation more generally. The increasing defection of such individuals to the Liberal Democrats in
Britain is a fascinating example. They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently
damaged by immigration.
It is interesting to see the see-saw effect of UKip and now the Brexit party in the UK (Well, in England). With them first
drawing working class voters from Labour without increasing Conservative performance, bringing about a massive conservative majority
and now threatening to siphon voters from the Tories with the opposite effect.
But UKip and later the Brexit party almost exist through the indispensable leadership of Nigel Farage and a very specific motivating
goal of leaving the EU. I can't see a third party rising to put pressure on the mainstream parties.
If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their
ethnicity and it's territory every time. I f the centre left refuses to understand this (Something that wouldn't have been
hard for them to understand when they still drew candidates from the working classes) they will continue their slide into oblivion
as they have done across the Western world. (Excluding 2 party systems and Denmark where they do understand this)
My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment
will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal
with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population
has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement.
Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation
is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to
dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public.
The novel internet mass media outlets that allowed such unpoliced political discussion to reach mass audiences will be pacified
by whatever means and America will slide into an Italian style trans-generational malaise at a national level for some time.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
Trump is trying to change the RNC away from Globalist elites and towards Christian Populist beliefs and Main Street America.
I am some what hopeful, as the U.S. is not alone in this trajectory. There is a global tail wind that should help the GOP change
quickly enough.
The true test will be the 2024 GOP nomination. A bold choice will have to break through to keep the RNC from backsliding into
the clutches of Globalist failure.
I think Sanders could have beat Trump in 2016. This time around it is not that clear because so many of his supporters in 2016
feel burnt.
Badly burnt. Or Bernt. He threw his support for Hillary, even if it was tepid, and then got a bad case of Russiagateitis which
his base on the left really hated. His left base never bought Russiagate for a minute. We knew it was an internal leak, probably
by Seth Rich, who provided all the information to Assange. He still seems to be a strong Israel supporter even if has stood up
to Netanyahu.
And while it may seem odd, many of his base on the left have grown weary of the global climate change agenda.
He has not advocated nuclear power and there is a growing movement for that on the left, especially by those who think renewables
will not generate the power we need.
But since Sanders does seem to attract the rural and suburban vote more than any other Democrat, Sanders has a chance to chip
away at Trumps' base and win the Electoral College. Another horrible loss to rural and suburban America by the Democrats will
cost them the EC again by a substantial margin, even if they manage to pull off another popular vote win.
the republican party is as globalist as you can find,and I'm sure you will be the first one to inform us when the global
elite including those in America throw in the towel,
Some elite Globalist NeverTrumpers, such as George Will and Bill Kristol, have thrown in the towel on the GOP. This allows
their "neocon" followers to return to their roots in the war mongering Democrat Party. So it *IS* happening.
The real questions are:
-- Can it happen fast enough?
-- Can it be sustained after Donald Trump term limits out?
I'm not bold enough to say it is inevitable. All I will say is, "There are reasons to be at least mildly hopeful."
Has everyone forgot the last time the DNC openly cheated Sanders he said nothing publicly, but then endorsed Clinton? Sanders
knows he is not allowed to become president, his role to prevent the formation of a third party, and to keep the Green Party small.
Otherwise he would jump to the Green Party right now and may beat the DNC and Trump.
Sanders treats progressives like Charlie Brown. Once again, inviting them to run a kick the football, only to pull it away
and watch them fall. He recently backed off his opposition to the open borders crazies, rarely mentions cuts to military spending
to fund things, and has even joined the stupid fake russiagate bandwagon.
Note that he dismisses the third party idea as unworkable, when he already knows the DNC is unworkable. Why not give the Green
party a chance? Cause he don't want to win knowing he'd be killed or impeached for some reason.
@Carlton Meyer The
Stalinist DNC openly cheated Tulsi Gabbard when they left her off the debate stage last night. When asked about it on 'The View'
recently, Sanders said nothing in her defense, or that she deserved to be on the stage. Nice way to stab her in the back for leaving
her DNC position to support you last time, Bernie. Socialist Sanders wants to be president, yet is afraid of the DNC. Nice!
Those polls were rigged against Tulsi, and everyone who is paying attention knows it. But, far from hurting her candidacy by
not making the DNC's arbitrary cut, her exclusion may wind up helping her. Kim Iverson, Michael Tracey, and comedian Jimmy Dore,
anti-war progressive YouTubers with large, loyal followings, have lambasted the out-of touch DNC for its actions. Tucker Carlson
on the anti-war right has also done so.
One hopes that the DNC's stupidity in censoring her message may wind up being the best thing ever for Tulsi's insurgent candidacy.
We shall see. OTOH, who can trust the polls to tell us the truth of where her popularity stands.
@RadicalCenter Do you
forget about Trump's declaration that he wants the largest amount of immigration ever, as long as they come in legally? There
are no good guys in our two sclerotic monopoly parties when it comes to immigration. Since both are terrible on that topic, at
least Tulsi seems to have the anti-war principles that Trump does not.
Democracy is a loaded word. Reasoning about it in a public discussion is thus fraught with
lots of difficulties. This comment is to highlight some crucial factors that are rarely
mentioned.
1. democracy is the particular political outcome of centuries of struggles within the
context of Early-Modernity in Western European societies (14th to 18th centuries). Three
forces were in competition for the control of power: the clergy, the nobility, and the new
rich merchants (those who in France were living in the "bourgs" and were thus called the
bourgeoisie. They were also the one's who were owning the capital). The gradual expansion of
the right to vote, to all adult citizens along the 19th and 20th centuries, was calibrated by
big capital holders to act as a system serving their interests through the manipulation of
the public's opinions. And man how successful the West is at this game
2. the history of the other people, outside of western territories, is rich with their own
experiences. Even if they are largely unknown to Westerners these histories offer viable
alternatives to the Western model of democracy. But Westerners are not interested to learn
about these other models. They firmly believe that their own system is the best and they are
always ready to impose it by force
3. Western political science is relatively young (1 or 2 centuries at best). This compares
with Chinese political science that spans over 3 millennia as a written matter that finds its
origin through oral transmission from earlier times.
_________
The words "Government of the People, by the People, for the People" is an ideological logo
that never materialized on any large scale nor over any long time-span anywhere on earth.
The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world' to East Asia and more
particularly to China is a 'fait accompli' that still has to register in the West. The longer
it takes the West to come to its senses the more painful the downfall will be and the more
totalitarian the governance system will become
The issue isn't really democracy, and in any event not liberal democracy, which is close
to an oxymoron, given that liberalism creates imbalances of power and wealth inimical to
democracy. And the argument is a bit incoherent : voting rights in most countries were based
on property ownership, not wealth as such, and much of the political conflict of the 19th
century was between traditional landowners and the emerging middle classes, who had the
wealth and wanted the power. Likewise, the move to neoliberalism had begun before the end of
the 1970s' and slower economic growth was a consequence of it, not a cause.
The real issue is that people expect political leaders, whom they elect and pay, to do
things. But modern political leaders have for the last generation or so developed the art of
saying that nothing can be done, or at least nothing that will make life better. So a
political figure who proposes to actually do something that people want is a dangerous and
disruptive force. Irrespective of their precise views and policies, they are a danger to the
current political class, which resolutely refuses to do anything useful.
+1000
The allergy to actually enacting policies that have been proven in the past to be beneficial
to the citizenry of a country is impressive in its almost pathological implementation. No
matter how bad the outcomes of neoliberal economics is, we can't possibly change those
policies. This goes beyond TINA. I look at people like Joe Biden and Jo Swinson and marvel at
their innate ability to defend the worst excesses of policies like bailing out the banks and
austerity and yet still cry crocodile tears for the people.
But if you cannot expect to elect a leader that migth do something this is another way of
saying democracy is in trouble. The result is that democracy is constrained by a dominant
ideology and this undermines democracy. Everything becomes technocratical and obscure,
particularly –but not only– monetary policy. I wonder by how much this already
short room of maneuver has to be reduced to allow claiming democracy is already dead. There
are many candidates that go with the discourse that "I will do the only thing that can be
done" so you know from the very beginning that business will go as usual an nothing will be
done. For instance, Joe Incremental Biden. A very good example in US is Health Care. A good
majority wants H.C. for all, but we migth find again that candidates that promise it are
effectively blocked because "it cannot be done (too expensive etc.)". I really think
democracy is in trouble if this occurs again.
Why should "science" have anything to do with democracy?
As someone from the united states, I live in a republic.
Our founding fathers rejected democracy as a form of government.Some of them, like alexander
hamilton loathed democracy Which is one reason I think he was an ass but that is besides the
point..
Democracy, as an ideal to be promoted in this republic with democratic assumptions . is
just something that stands on its own in the sphere of "civics"
democracy is just a practice of engaging with others. it is a discipline.
science may exemplify practical thinking and action as expressed in the scientific method
.. but democracy isn't just about what is the "most likely to be true" . it is just what
"most people choose" Now education is what lies between what those people know, how they know
it and then their choices as to what they really want . but science is a discipline that is
really to be exalted in a free society . but has no real place in the democratic institution.
IMO
People make democracy not science . and "people" is a tough nut to crack
Hitler was keen on science, to explain his motives his perversions of truth became state
mandated axioms of truth . despite being pure BS..
Under neo-liberalism, the state does little more than maintain the rights of ownership
and internal and external security through criminal justice and armed services –
notwithstanding, the state may bail out financial services if they require public
aid. Kevin Albertson [bold added]
It does more than just bail out financial services, the state PRIVILEGES them beforehand
by failing to provide something so simple, so obvious as, for example, inherently risk-free
debit/checking accounts for all citizens at the Central Bank (or National Treasury)
itself.
The result is nations have a SINGLE* payment system that MUST work through the banks or
not at all – making their economies hostage to what are, in essence,
government-privileged usury cartels.
We can have nations that are for their citizens or ones which privilege banks and other
depository institutions but not both.
*apart from mere physical fiat, paper bills and coins.
The problem may not be so much with democracy as with "representative" democracy. I
believe that it was Harvard that did a study that found that the wishes of the bulk of the
electorate were habitually ignored unless it aligned with the wishes of the wealthier portion
of society. In other words, after the elections were over, voter's wishes were not a factor.
Perhaps more imaginative ideas need to be adopted. We have secret balloting right now so how
about secret ballots in the Senate and the House of reps – on pieces of paper counted
in public under the watch of several parties. No digital crap allowed. No donor would be able
to tell what his purchased politician actually voted in any session. Every vote would then
become a conscience vote. When you think about it, there is nothing to say that how things
are now should also be the way that things always are.
" the promotion of the neo-liberal political economic paradigm need not result from a
conspiracy."
Just because it "need not" doesn't mean it does not. There is a playbook for
privatization:
1) Identify a government function that could provide a profit opportunity.
2) Deprive the dept. that provides that function of the funds needed to adequately do a
proper job of it.*
3) Point out, loudly & publicly, what a crappy job the gov't is doing.
4) Announce that "We have a solution for that" – which, of course, involves
privatization.*
*Note: steps 2 & 4 require co-operation of gov't representatives which is obtained
through lobbying & briber.. er, campaign contributions.
Well, now governments just 'restructure' and pass out contracts to justify laying off
employees. There is no need to starve a department of funds first.
My experience is that the contracted 'service' is oversold and mostly goes to pot, and the
gov will still renew the contracts for the crappy service providers over and over.
In simpler times, democracy was viewed at risk if citizens could vote themselves money.
Now citizens are at risk when pirates can dispense with the voting to get money.
A cruel twist is where those pirates and their paid pols stick the citizens with the
downside.
It seems to me, including all the above comments, underlying all of this is the pursuit of
"economic growth", which ultimately means the pursuit of economic wealth by the most powerful
of the ownership class at the expense of everyone else. And they are the group that buy and
install the politicians to ensure that pursuit remains as unimpeded as possible.
Examples of this off-the-rails philosophical and social justification of "modern"
capitalism are apparent to everyone (I hope); Shareholder Primacy, Intellectual "Property"
Laws, Health Care as a Profit Center replacing health care of citizenry, abstract legal
entities, Corporations, given the same rights (and few responsibilities) as individual
people, the taking over of education systems by this same ownership class, again primarily
for profit and propaganda, increasing for-profit, and control, surveillance, and more rule
the day.
Historically, and unfortunately, the prime reset has often been violent revolution. Mike
Duncan's Revolutions podcast teaches us many examples throughout history and should be
required listening for today's ownership class and politicians everywhere and High School
history classes.
THE MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH by Benjamin Friedman in the HarvardScholar link
was a thought provoking read about the linkages between affective economic growth and
morality– and visa versa.
I believe he was arguing that a cultures adopted values directs the benefits of that cultures
economic growth and applications(without direct outside meddling). And that can become a
reinforcing feedback loop–for both the held values and values had about economic
growth.
Economic Growth is often compiled in numbers in Lamberts Water Cooler at least
weekly–however, like Inflation Stats, often a lot of critical things are not considered
in the compilation(gas price in inflation and happiness in economic growth–as two
simple i.e.)
imo, We need more progress in expanding the term Economic Growth beyond consumption and
production to be pertinent in 2019.
I think this is a really good analysis in that it comes to the conclusion that we need
more democracy; we are not democratically "liberal" at all. We were just hoodwinked for about
the last 50 years. We need to be socially democratic. It will bring an end to the obscene
inequalities we see and stabilize civilization. So the apotheosis of unregulated growth and
the free-range consumer is over. Tsk tsk. That was imposed on society by the mandate for
profits (which they never wanted to admit, but it depended entirely on demand). I guess the
consumer is headed for the bone yard of Idols. We will, by necessity, have something entirely
different. A form of social demand; a cooperative of some sort. Hanging on to old worn out
ideas is all that is left – kind of like nostalgia. Like the Donald pandering to
"business" by gutting the EPA now when manufacturing has been decimated and methods of
mitigating pollution are a market in themselves. Trump is just campaigning like an old fool;
but it's probably working.
Finally, an article on Neolib Capitalism that a 5th-grader can grasp – maybe granny
too. I already shared it with a dozen friends (ironically – most with doctorates as the
choir can never be too big).
Now let's all rise and sing a rousing chorus of Dude Where's My Democracy.
After reading about the failure of the F.D.A. to regulate pharma and protect us, after
witnessing our military going into losing war after losing stalemate, after seeing
homelessness explode, drug use, the failure of schools supposedly controlled by the
Department of Education, an eroding environment, etc.
At what point do citizens stop voluntarily paying taxes and complying with federal
laws?
After the collapse of NHS care, after the oversubsciption of our local schools by a factor
of n, after there being no police in the streets to curb the harassment rowdiness and
burglary, after a complete collapse of democracy following people's vote for liberty from
shackles of giant EU squid, after the horrific waste of local councils monies on sucking up
to the terror of minorities (racial, ethnic, sexual), after our own councils ramming the
extreme numbers of noninvited imported alien population down the throats of hitherto
taxpaying funders of the target occupation environment, and so on, can I have a separate TV
station to tell you, the only thing left for the sitting target taxpayers paying for all this
largesse, abuse, and outright extortion is indeed to abandon any of the previously normal
concepts of tax, duty and bills payments, and let the local and state governments get into
the costly business of corralling each and every hitherto low lying fruit taxpayer, and
forcing monies out of them at a great expense to the target and the enforcer.
Read all the way through and never encountered the names Reagan or Thatcher. As the
principal enablers of the financial / economic disaster called the Washington Consensus,
their names should be right up there. We need an annual festival with bonfires and fireworks
when we can burn the rogues in effigy.
The author is right that prolonged peace allows power to concentrate. He does not indicate
the end result that Rome and Constantinople experienced when deprived citizens declined to
fight for the empire and the Goths / Crusaders were able to take over. We study Greek and
Roman history in school but somehow its relevance to our declining state means nothing to
us.
I've always been a huge fan of the Haynes Guides . A finer series of "how-to" books
has never been published.
Gratified to read the phrase "carrying capacity" in a political discussion. One of the
central drivers of elite power and asset hoarding is the perception of scarcity and the
compulsion to ration (i.e. cut-off supplies of "nice things" to the proles and dusky-hued
people).
Looking forward to the Haynes Guide to Eating the Rich .
https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2343&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2019%2F09%2Fdude-wheres-my-democracy.html
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Legitimate Government
Recently,
Foa & Mounk argued that many citizens in supposed advanced democracies have become
rather disillusioned with the workings of the political system in their nation. There is good
reason to suppose the current political economic paradigm is skewed against the people.
So-called democratic deficits exist in the USA and elsewhere . In
the UK, for example, the electorate disapprove and have disapproved of
four decades of tax and welfare and
privatisation policies – yet are apparently powerless to influence these
policies.
As politicians and the donors who support them become less responsive to voters' wishes it
is hardly surprising many, perhaps the majority, of the populace will
view government as illegitimate . In consequence, voters seem increasingly inclined to
elect (so-called) populist leaders, political outsiders who may change
the rules in favour of the people .
The Left and the Right
Legitimate government, so Abraham Lincoln observes, is that which
does for a community that which the community cannot do (or cannot do so well) for themselves.
With this it is difficult to disagree. However, political theory differs on who might make up
that community.
Broadly speaking, those
on the (so-called) economic "right" argue government should enact policy for the benefit of
those who own the nation, while those (so-called) economic "left" consider policy should
prioritise the interests of citizens. By definition, therefore, capitalist governments will
take up positions on the right – particularly in nations, such as the UK, which are increasingly
owned by foreign interests . Conversely democratically accountable governments must take
positions economically to the left, prioritising the preferences of citizens.
Universal Adult Suffrage
At the dawn of democracy, only the wealthy could vote. Thus, there was less conflict between
the aspirations of the powerful and of voters. Following the extension to the adult population
of the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th century, politicians became answerable to
a wider range of stakeholders.
In particular, from the middle of the 20th century until the late 1970s, legitimate
democratic governments held markets to account in the interests of the demos. An increasingly
affluent society facilitated profit making opportunities and thus economies grew; the interests
of capital and citizens coincided.
In response, to preserve or increase their own income growth, elites are motivated to argue
for the
"freeing" of markets . Rather than markets being held accountable to citizens through
democratic governance, it was suggested that holding governments (and through them the
citizenry) to account through reliance on market forces would facilitate a
return to economic growth.
The Washington Consensus
The economic paradigm which promotes the small state and reliance on market forces is
generally known as neo-liberalism, or the Washington Consensus . Under
neo-liberalism, the state does little more than maintain the rights of ownership and internal
and external security through criminal justice and armed services – notwithstanding,
the
state may bail out financial services if they require public aid. In the UK and the USA
politicians from both main parties adopted this point of view, often in sincere, if misguided,
belief in its validity. Thus, neo-liberalism maintains the appearance of democracy, in that
citizens may vote for political leaders, but limits the range of policies on offer to those
which are acceptable to markets – or rather, those who command market forces.
"... Corporate media polls are fake. There is no effin' way that Biden is or ever was the "front runner" for the D Party nomination. His entire candidacy is fake, so obviously contrived -- just like Hillary's -- it's a wonder that the DNC and their corporate propagandists ever believed they could get away with it. ..."
"... All their "arguments" in favor of Biden are nothing more than cover stories being laid out in advance for the purpose of validating the contrived result they are dead set on producing. Even their cover stories are goddamn coverups! ..."
Corporate media polls are fake. There is no effin' way that Biden is or ever was the "front runner" for
the D Party nomination. His entire candidacy is fake, so obviously contrived -- just like Hillary's -- it's a wonder that the DNC
and their corporate propagandists ever believed they could get away with it.
All their "arguments" in favor of Biden are nothing more than cover stories being laid out in advance for the purpose of validating
the contrived result they are dead set on producing. Even their cover stories are goddamn coverups!
The "polls" are fake. Corporate media outlets -- aka Ministries of Propaganda -- fabricate them out of whole cloth and then babble
insensately about "electability" and "inevitability," and about how the senile hack Biden is "the only one" who can beat the shitgibbon
chump, blah blah blah. The whole goddamn charade is so effin' obvious, a 3 year-old could see through it.
Come on Murca! Aren't you tired of being lied to and manipulated and robbed day after day? The fascist ratbastards in the R and
D Parties are first rate dumbasses who can't even tell believable lies anymore.
The DNC nomination will go to the candidate most likely to support the desires of the wealthy, those who own and run the country,
not to one of that group who will attempt to upset that apple cart, if elected President. That makes Joe a shoe-in and all he
has to do is not collapse as in falling to the floor requiring he be carried off by ambulance attendants, on stage, during a debate.
That selecting Joe out of that group will cause great concern among the Democratic voters such that they might just not vote
thereby throwing the election to Trump is of little concern to the DNC executive. If by some miracle Joe does become President
no harm will come to the interests of the wealthy so win or lose, it is the same win win result in the end.
"... Any honest Eisenhower Republican would be a lot better than Clinton or Obama (although still capitalist and imperialist). I am worried, however, about the palling around with HRC and it seems to me that she is (willingly or unknowingly) being used as a firebreak to prevent voters from moving to Bernie. ..."
Essentially, Toback argues that Warren's project is to somehow hoodwink us into believing that she is an opponent of neoliberalism
when in reality she is committed to legitimating neoliberalism. For Warren, neoliberalism is simply really 2 legit 2 quit (I'll spare
you the MC Hammer video).
Still, while stark differences between Sanders, Biden and the rest seem obvious to most, when it comes to Elizabeth Warren,
many on the alleged left have taken to collapsing distinctions. They argue that Warren's just as, or even more progressive, equal
but a woman and therefore better, not quite as good but still a fundamental shift to the left, or at the very least, a serious
opponent of neoliberalism. Some have even fantasized that Sanders and Warren function as allies, despite the obvious fact that
they are, you know Running against each other.
All of these claims obscure the fundamental truth that Sanders and Warren are different in kind, not degree. Warren has always
been a market-first neoliberal and nothing she's doing now suggests deviation. Despite her barrage of plans and recent adoption
of left rhetorical shibboleths like "grassroots movements" and "structural change," Warren remains a neoliberal legitimization
machine. Anybody who's serious about amending and expanding the social contract and/or preserving the habitability of the planet
needs to oppose her candidacy now.
Toback nicely weaves together and systematically presents pretty much all the analysis I've seen here at C99%. It's well worth
reading as is the David Harvey interview linked above.
And for some icing on the cake, Toback quotes some lyrics from the splendid Leonard Cohen song 'Democracy':
"It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat." -- Leonard Cohen
might be someone I could support. She said all the right things. That was all I had to judge by. So I took a wait and see.
I have always been able to see the reality of actions that differ from words. Hers don't match. It's far better that she lacks
Obama's charisma and has shown who she is before she's sitting in Trump's chair.
might be someone I could support. She said all the right things. That was all I had to judge by. So I took a wait and see.
I have always been able to see the reality of actions that differ from words. Hers don't match. It's far better that she lacks
Obama's charisma and has shown who she is before she's sitting in Trump's chair.
@orlbucfan
I can sympathize with being weary of theory, but I think it's important to try to be precise in discerning a politician's ideological
underpinnings. And I think there really is a full, expanding, and even oscillating spectrum of ideologies at play.
It seems to me that fascists would more accurately be characterized as "corporate rightwingers. As fed up as I am with Warren's
phony baloney, I don't think she's a fascist or a corporate rightwinger.
Consider Harvey's portrayal of the liberal/neoliberal divide:
In liberal theory, the role of the state is minimal (a "night-watchman" state with laissez faire policies). In neo-liberalism
it is accepted that the state play an active role in promoting technological changes and endless capital accumulation through
the promotion of commodification and monetisation of everything along with the formation of powerful institutions (such as
Central Banks and the International Monetary Fund) and the rebuilding of mental conceptions of the world in favor of neoliberal
freedoms.
#3
I can sympathize with being weary of theory, but I think it's important to try to be precise in discerning a politician's ideological
underpinnings. And I think there really is a full, expanding, and even oscillating spectrum of ideologies at play.
It seems to me that fascists would more accurately be characterized as "corporate rightwingers. As fed up as I am with Warren's
phony baloney, I don't think she's a fascist or a corporate rightwinger.
Consider Harvey's portrayal of the liberal/neoliberal divide:
In liberal theory, the role of the state is minimal (a "night-watchman" state with laissez faire policies). In neo-liberalism
it is accepted that the state play an active role in promoting technological changes and endless capital accumulation through
the promotion of commodification and monetisation of everything along with the formation of powerful institutions (such
as Central Banks and the International Monetary Fund) and the rebuilding of mental conceptions of the world in favor of
neoliberal freedoms.
#3
I can sympathize with being weary of theory, but I think it's important to try to be precise in discerning a politician's ideological
underpinnings. And I think there really is a full, expanding, and even oscillating spectrum of ideologies at play.
It seems to me that fascists would more accurately be characterized as "corporate rightwingers. As fed up as I am with Warren's
phony baloney, I don't think she's a fascist or a corporate rightwinger.
Consider Harvey's portrayal of the liberal/neoliberal divide:
In liberal theory, the role of the state is minimal (a "night-watchman" state with laissez faire policies). In neo-liberalism
it is accepted that the state play an active role in promoting technological changes and endless capital accumulation through
the promotion of commodification and monetisation of everything along with the formation of powerful institutions (such
as Central Banks and the International Monetary Fund) and the rebuilding of mental conceptions of the world in favor of
neoliberal freedoms.
over toward Obama. I don't think she's to the left of him. Then again, I'm not really sure how much of what she says I believe.
A lot of it seems mushy and ill-defined (what is "access to healthcare?"), and she certainly isn't consistent in her support for
MFA. For that matter, how can you take large donations from the people who put us where we are if you intend to change the system
they created? Does that mean that the multi-millionaires and billionaires don't like the system they created? That they see its
destructiveness and now, finally, want to head it off? That's the only logical way you can put together "I'm going to change the
system" and "I'm going to take large donations from people who built, maintain, and profit from the system." Since I've seen no
evidence that the "smart money," or any other money, is interested in changing the system, I'd have to reject this hypothesis.
So what am I left with? I'm left with guessing that Warren is another one of those "all we need to do is tweak the system a
little" types--but if that's the case, she's not going to solve global warming, the health care crisis, the economic crisis, the
collapse of wages, the destruction of basic human rights, the destruction--or distortion--of the rule of law, or the endless wars.
All those things have been put in place by the people she wants to take lots of money from. And take it in the dark, too. Spiffing.
She was an outspoken opponent of the TPP in 2015 before she could be seen reasonably as posturing for a Presidential run. The
TPP is the essence of neoliberalism.
I have seen her as an Eisenhower Republican and therefore to the left of the Democratic leadership. I think the Consumer Protection
Agency was an attempt at moderating some of the worst effects of unrestrained capitalism.
Any honest Eisenhower Republican would be a lot better than Clinton or Obama (although still capitalist and imperialist).
I am worried, however, about the palling around with HRC and it seems to me that she is (willingly or unknowingly) being used
as a firebreak to prevent voters from moving to Bernie.
slippery...just like Clinton (Bill I mean). And don't get me started on this whole palling around with Hillary crap. I mean
really Liz?
The fact that Smolenkov purchased house on his name excludes his "extraction" to the USA. He probably legally emigrated
amazing some serious money in Russia
Notable quotes:
"... [Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments, which he turns over to the CIA. ..."
"... The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny he is being paid by US taxpayers. ..."
"... The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed. ..."
"... This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov. ..."
"... The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.' ..."
"... Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that much to the dossier. ..."
"... His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists. ..."
"... Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind 'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics' produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations. ..."
"... Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his 'anti-Borgist' agenda. ..."
A flood of news in the last 24 hours regarding Russiagate. I am referring specifically to
reports that the CIA ex-filtrated Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry
bureaucrat who reportedly hooked himself on the coat-tails of Yuri Ushakov, who was Ambassador
to the US from 1999 through 2008. He was recruited by the CIA (i.e., asked to collect
information and pass it to the U.S. Government via his or her case officer) at sometime during
this period. Smolenkov is being portrayed as a supposedly "sensitive" source. But if you read
either the
Washington Post or
New York Times accounts of this event there is not a lot of meat on this hamburger.
Regardless of the quality of his reporting, Smolenkov is the kind of recruited source that
looks good on paper and helps a CIA case officer get promoted but adds little to actual U.S.
intelligence on Russia. If you understood the CIA culture you would immediately recognize that
a case officer (CIA terminology for the operations officer tasked with identifying and
recruiting human sources) gets rewarded by recruiting persons who ostensibly will have access
to information the CIA has identified as a priority target. In this case, we're talking about
possible access to Vladimir Putin.
If you take time to read both articles you will quickly see that the real purpose of this
"information operation" is to paint Donald Trump as a security threat that must be stopped.
This is conveniently timed to assist Jerry Nadler's mission impossible to secure Trump's
impeachment. But I think there is another dynamic at play--these competing explanations for
what prompted the exfiltration of this CIA asset say more about the incompetence of Barack
Obama and his intel chiefs. John Brennan and Jim Clapper in particular.
A former intelligence officer and friend summarized the various press accounts as the
follows and offered his own insights in a note I received this morning:
[Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing
administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov
photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all
truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative
staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything
dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by
Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments,
which he turns over to the CIA.
The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John
Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin
is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or
exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny
he is being paid by US taxpayers.
The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications
channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal
way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is
accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a
knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed.
This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts
briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking
most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the
National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would
normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked
the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and
balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually
prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov.
There is public evidence that Brennan not only cooked the books but that the leaks of this
supposedly "sensitive" intelligence occurred when he was Director and lying Jim Clapper was
Director of National Intelligence. If Oleg Smolenkov was really such a terrific source of
intel, then where are the reports? It is one thing to keep such reports close hold when the
source is still in place. But he has been out of danger for more than two years. Those reports
should have been shared with the Senate and House Intelligence committees. If there was actual
solid intelligence in those reports that corroborated the Steele Dossier, then that information
would have been leaked and widely circulated. This is Sherlock Holmes dog that did not
bark.Then we have the odd fact that this guy's name is all over the press and he is buying real
estate in true name. What the hell!! If the CIA genuinely believed that Mr. Smolenkov was in
danger he would not be walking around doing real estate deals in true name. In fact, the
sources for both the Washington Post and NY Times pieces push the propaganda that Smolenkov is
a sure fire target for a Russian retaliatory hit. Really? Then why publish his name and confirm
his location.
That leaves me with the alternative explanation--Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being
trotted out by Brennan to try to provide public pressure to prevent the disclosure of
intelligence that will show that the CIA and the NSA were coordinating and operating with
British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald Trump and members of his campaign.
I want you to take a close look at the two pieces on this exfiltration (i.e., Washington
Post and NY Times) and note the significant differences
REASON FOR THE EXFILTRATION :
Let's start with the Washington Post:
The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when
President Trump
revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and
ambassador, said the current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to
discuss the sensitive operation.
What was the information that Trump revealed? He was discussing intel that Israel passed
regarding ISIS in Syria. (See the Washington Post story
here .) Why would he talk to the Russians about that? Because every day, at least once a
day, U.S. and Russian military authorities are sharing intelligence with one another in a phone
call that originates from the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center (aka CAOC) at the Al Udeid
Air Force Base in Qatar. Trump's conversation not only was appropriate but fully within his
right to do so as Commander-in-Chief.
What the hell does this have to do with a sensitive source in Moscow? NOTHING!! Red
Herring.
The NY Times account is more detailed and damning of Obama instead of Trump:
But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with
unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.'s Kremlin
sources.
C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to
extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first
refused, citing family concerns -- prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing
doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness.
But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant
agreed. . . .
The decision to extract the informant was driven "in part" because of concerns that Mr.
Trump and his administration had mishandled delicate intelligence, CNN reported. But former
intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the
source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency's
sources alone was the impetus for the extraction. . . .
But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office,
first in formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence
officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public
release in January 2017. News agencies, including NBC, began reporting around that time about
Mr. Putin's involvement in the election sabotage and on the C.I.A.'s possible sources for the
assessment.
Trump played no role whatsoever in releasing information that allegedly compromised this
so-called "golden boy" of Russian intelligence. The NY Times account makes it very clear that
the release of information while Obama was President, not Trump, is what put the source in
danger. Who leaked that information?
WHAT DID THE SOURCE KNOW AND WHAT DID HE TELL US?
But how valuable was this source really? What did he provide that was so enlightening? On
this point the New York Times and Washington Post are more in sync.
First the NY Times:
The Moscow informant was instrumental to the C.I.A.'s most explosive conclusion about
Russia's interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it
himself . As the American government's best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr.
Putin, the source was also key to the C.I.A.'s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald
J. Trump's election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee
.
The Washington Post provides a more fulsome account:
U.S. officials had been concerned that Russian sources could be at risk of exposure as early
as the fall of 2016, when the Obama administration first confirmed that Russia had stolen and
publicly disclosed emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary
Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.
In October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence said in a joint statement that intelligence agencies were "confident that
the Russian Government directed" the hacking campaign. . . .
In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously
laid the blame on the Kremlin, concluding that "Putin ordered an influence campaign" and that
Russia's goal was to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm Clinton's chances
of winning.
"That's a pretty remarkable intelligence community product -- much more specific than what
you normally see," one U.S. official said. "It's very expected that potential U.S. intelligence
assets in Russia would be under a higher level of scrutiny by their own intelligence
services."
Sounds official. But there is no actual forensic or documentary evidence (by that I mean
actual corroborating intelligence reports) to back up these claims by our oxymoronically
christened intelligence community.
Vladimir Putin ordered the hack? Where is the report? It is either in a piece of intercepted
electronics communication and/or in a report derived from information provided by Mr.
Smolenkov. Where is it? Why has that not been shared in public? Don't have to worry about
exposing the source now. He is already in the open. What did he report? Answer--no direct
evidence.
Then there is the lie that the Russians hacked the DNC. They did not. Bill Binney, a former
Technical Director of the NSA, and I have written on this subject previously (
see here ) and there is no truth to this claim. Let me put it simply--if the DNC had been
hacked by the Russians using spearphising (this is claimed in the Robert Mueller report) then
the NSA would have collected those messages and would be able to show they were transferred to
the Russians. That did not happen.
This kind of chaotic leaking about an old intel op is symptomatic of panic. CIA is already
officially denying key parts of the story. My money is on John Brennan and Jim Clapper as the
likely impetus for these reports. They are hoping to paint Trump as a national security threat
and distract from the upcoming revelations from the DOJ Inspector General report on the FISA
warrants and, more threatening, the decisions that Prosecutor John Durham will take in deciding
to indict those who attempted to launch a coup against Donald Trump, a legitimately elected
President of the United States.
As I told LJ yesterday while he was writing this piece I have a slightly different theory
of this matter. It is true that CIA suffered for a long time from a dearth of talent in the
business of recruiting and running foreign clandestine HUMINT assets. This was caused by a
focus by several CIA Directors on technical collection means rather than espionage. This
policy drove many skilled case officers into retirement but the situation has much improved
in the last decade and it must be remembered that an agency only needs a few skilled case
officers with the right access to human targets to acquire some very fine and useful well
placed foreign agents (spies). IMO it is likely that CIA has/had several well placed Russian
assets in Moscow of whom Smolenkov was probably the least useful and the most expendable. It
may well be that Brennan was using the chicken feed provided by Smolenkov to fuel the
conspiracy run by him and Clapper against Trump's campaign and presidency, but Brennan left
office and then the CIA under other management was faced with the problem of a Russian
government which was told in the US press by implication that either the US had deep
penetrations of Russian diplomatic and intelligence communications or that there were deep
penetration moles in Moscow. that being the case it seems likely to me that the Russians
would have been beating the bushes looking for the moles. In that situation the CIA may have
decided to exfiltrate Smolenkov and his wife while leaving enough clues along the way that
would have indicated that he might have been THE MOLE. People do not need a lot of
encouragement to accept thoughts that they want to believe. A point in favor of this theory
is that once CIA had him in the States they quickly lost interest in him, terminated their
relationship with him and paid him his back pay and showed him the door. No new identity, no
resettlement, he was given none of that. Finding himself alone in a strange land, Smolenkov
then bought a house in the suburbs of Washington in HIS OWN NAME. Say what? That would not
have happened if CIA had maintained some sort of relationship with him. And then... someone
in CIA leaked the story of the exfiltration as movie plot to "a former senior intelligence
officer" who gives sit to Sciutto at CNN. Why would they do that? IMO they would have though
that having the story appear in the media would reinfocer Smolenkov's importance in Russian
minds. Well, pilgrims, Clapper fits the bill as the "former blah, blah". He is an employee of
CNN. CNN hates Trump and they quickly broadcast the story far and away. Unfortunately for CNN
the story immediately began to disintegrate even in the eyes of the NY Times. The
Smolenkov/Brennan affair will undoubtedly be part of the road that leads to doom for Brennan
and Clapper but the possible CIA story is equally interesting.
Sir;
The fact that Mr. Smolenkov is out and about in his new home in the West shows that he is a
small fish. As you say, if he was really in danger, he would be living somewhere in the West
now under a new name and maybe a new face. The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax
security to happen is a sign of how unimportant he is. Unless, my inner cynic prompts, he is
destined to become one of the "honoured dead," perhaps by a false flag 'liquidation.'
How low will Clapper and Brennan et. al. go?
Thanks for keeping this matter front and centre.
So the son of Our Man in Havana went to Moscow. It would make a decent movies if it weren't
for the damage Brennan and company have done to us. Obama, of course, knew nothing......
I have lost hope that anyone--especially Brennan and Clapper--will be held accountable for
their attempt to "launch a coup" (as you put it).
Since their coup attempt ultimately failed, most people will be wanting just to move
on.
As an unimportant citizen liveing in a fly-over state, I feel very angry that my tax
dollars were wasted on these many government hearings and enormously expensive investigations
rather than on actually on governing and improving the governing of our country.
The least we should be able to expect is that people who live off our tax dollars should
be held accountable for all that wasted expense and for the lack of actual governing going on
in The House and The Senate. So many problems that need the attention of our elected
representative and Senators were ignored while elected representatives and representatives
got to capture the spotlight and try to become "media stars" while accomplishing nothing.
I also feel terrible that men have been sent to prison for seemingly nothing and have
their lives ruined for nothing but the chance of some to grand stand and claim they are
really doing the jobs they were sent to do. So many people with no real sense of honor or of
what is right and what is wrong.
Thanks, Larry. You have been consistently one of the good guys. (And I bet you are happy
now that Yosemite Sam Bolton is no longer advising the POTUS.)
"The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax security to happen is a sign of how unimportant
he is."
It indicates to me that he and any handlers believe that the Russians are OK with it. That
could be for various reasons. But relying on Russian tolerance because he is a "small fish"
seems incredibly trusting. Neither fled agents nor their handlers are known for their
trusting natures. They have had some reasons stronger than that for their unconcern. Whether
those reasons will survive publicity remains to be seen.
Are those CIA agents as stupid, naive & incompetent as you paint them to be?
If that's the case our country is in real danger! You are. Pro Trump
and, you are basically defending him, but Putin do own Donald Trump,whether you like it or
not!
My question is: why did they push this report now? Any way you cut it, the Times and Post are
just providing some trivia and drivel. Without substance, they can accomplish nothing and
substance has been what's been missing all along.
I doubt that Democrats, having been burned once, are eager to explore Brennan's smoke and
mirrors again. It's never been a big concern to voters. And unless Brennan & Co. can do
better than this superficial stuff, voters are never going to be concerned.
Maybe the Times and Post just felt sorry for Brennan, who's been off barking at the moon
for years now.
...Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being trotted out by Brennan to try to provide
public pressure to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that will show that the CIA and the
NSA were coordinating and operating with British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald
Trump and members of his campaign...
Well said. Thank you for following this closely and shining the light! You are an amazing
American patriot, Mr. Larry C. Johnson. A glass in your honor!
IMO this scenario is the most plausible, Thanks for the sanity check. That said, given the
desperation by these Sorcerer's Apprentices, I would be on the lookout for Mr. Smolenkov lest
he be 'Skirpal-ed' in the coming weeks.
This whole story convinces now more than ever before that there is a high level spy/mole in
the us administration and intelligence community.The only question is it spying for russia or
china or both.Just a beautiful thing to watch.Those knickers,must surely be in a knot by
now.
Even rocketman had a giggle.
How many CIA Assets have been exposed..Tortured and Murdered During The Barrack Obama
Reign...In May..2014 HE Paid a Surprise Visit to Afghanastan..His White House Bureau Chief
Sent out an email to Reporters with a List of Who would meet With President Obama..It
Contained the NAME of the CIA...Chief of Station in Kabul...Now that is REAL MESSY..
Having been away from base, I have not been able to comment on some very fascinating
recent posts.
Both your recent pieces, and Robert Willman's most helpful update on the state of play
relating to the unraveling of the frame-up against Michael Flynn, have provided a lot to chew
over.
Among other things, they have made me think further about the 302s recording the
interviews with Bruce Ohr produced by Joseph Pientka – a character about whom I think
we need to know more.
On reflection, I think that the picture that emerges of Ohr as an incurious and gullible
nitwit, swallowing whole bucket loads of 'horse manure' fed him by Christopher Steele and
Glenn Simpson, may be a carefully – indeed maybe cunningly – crafted fiction.
The interpretation your former intelligence officer friend puts on the Smolenkov affair,
and also some of what Sidney Powell has to say in the ''Motion to Compel' on behalf of Flynn,
both 'mesh' with what I have long suspected.
The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the
proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.'
Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of
its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that
much to the dossier.
His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a
farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support
of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists.
Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind
'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics'
produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think
essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations.
They are likely to have been responses, first, to the realisation that material leaked
from the DNC was going to be published by WikiLeaks, and then the discovery, probably
significantly later, that the source was Seth Rich, and his subsequent murder.
Although the operation to divert responsibility to the Russians which then became
necessary was strikingly successful, it did not have the expected result of saving Hillary
Clinton from defeat.
What I then think may have emerged was a two-pronged strategy.
Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a
conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his
'anti-Borgist' agenda.
In different ways, both the framing of Flynn, and the final memorandum in the dossier,
dated 13 December 2016, were part of this strategy.
Also required however was another 'insurance policy' – which was what the Bruce Ohr
302s were intended to provide.
The purpose of this was to have 'evidence' in place, should the first prong of the
strategy run into problems, to sustain the case that people in the FBI and DOJ, and Bruce and
Nellie Ohr in particular, were not co-conspirators with Steele and Simpson, but their
gullible dupes.
This brings me to an irony. Some people have tried to replace the 'narrative' in which
Steele was an heroic exposer of a Russian plot to destroy American democracy by an
alternative in which he was the gullible 'patsy' of just such a plot.
In fact there is one strand, and one strand only, in the dossier which smells strongly to
me of FSB-orchestrated disinformation.
Some of the material on Russian cyber operations, including critically the suggestions
about the involvement of Aleksej Gubarev and his company XBT which provoked legal action by
these against BuzzFeed and Steele, look to me as though they could come from sources in the
FSB.
But, if this is so, the likely conduit is not through Steele, but from FSB to FBI cyber
people.
How precisely this worked is unclear, but I cannot quite get rid of the suspicion that
Major Dmitri Dokuchaev just might be serving out his sentence for treason in a comfortable
flat somewhere above the Black Sea. Indeed, I can imagine a lecture to FSB trainees on how to
make 'patsies' of people like the Ohrs.
If this is so, however, it mat also be the case that these are attempting to make
'patsies' of Steele and Simpson.
"... So, this fully-spun story, apparently a mix of fact and fiction, arises at this moment to prop up the Russia-leaked-email hoax? ..."
"... If that's the case, does that mean this story's "authors" release it now to keep at least part of the Russia hoax alive as the Flynn case plods toward charges being dropped or because the Concord case is turning into a cluster f*k? Maybe someone is worried about the DNC-insider-leaked-email story breaking out? We need to talk about Rich? ..."
"... if I am wrong in supposing that a senior Chekist would never, as a question of policy, have been allowed a passport for foreign travel for him and his family. ..."
"... If Oleg Smolenkov reported allegedly "valuable" insider information about Russia's interference in US elections, as they say first hand, then why did Mueller's investigation fail? ..."
"... The New York Times story resurrects the Russia collusion hoax. This time the proof comes from Oleg Smolenkov. The story is identical to what the Steele dossier claimed: Putin personally directed a campaign to interfere in the US presidential elections. ..."
"... Every part of Steele narrative has already been shown to be a hoax and a fabrication. What proves that the Steele dossier is a work of fiction is that it is written from a fly-on-the-wall point of view. Only a person who was sitting in the same room with Putin when he had secret meetings could have written it. So how many moles did the West have sitting on Putin's desk? It seems like the CIA mole and Steele's secret source are one and the same source. But if Oleg Smolenkov was CIA's most tightly guarded secret, how did the information end up in Steele's dossier? ..."
"... Larry Johnson just posted about this on SST, and his take seems much more plausible: Desperation on the part of Clapper and his cabal as the chickens are coming home to roost. This story is chock full of holes, and the media hackery is disintegrating under its own weight. ..."
"... Perhaps someone should advise Smolenskov to stay away from park benches after eating seafood and to not touch doorknob's etc. ..."
"... "For those curious about what's going on with this bizarre Russia 'spy' story: Burr/Durham know Steele was fed obvious disinformation, they know who originated it, they know who peddled it, and it's just a matter of rounding up the whole network." ..."
"... In his third entry, he poses the following question: "So the only two unanswered questions about this particular pre-emptive leak campaign from the usual Russia hoax suspects are 1) why now, and 2) what specific event or official revelation are they trying to get ahead of?" ..."
"... Why the CIA would allow such a spy, once extradited, to live under his real name is beyond me. ..."
"... Because this man has nothing to do with "spies", "secrets" and "special services". He is an ordinary civilian, a former official from Russia. Many Russian ex- lives in abroad, including high-ranking persons. Smolenkov of course had no access to any "secrets", and had no access to entourage of the Russian president. ..."
"... That's the end of Smolenkov's anonymous quiet comfortable lifesyle. It doesn't send out a very reassuring message - that the CIA can publicly expose someone it considers a very useful asset. There must be a good reason why they threw Smolenkov under the bus in that way. ..."
"... It must be a very nice house. A 3-ish acre lot in that neighborhood has an assessment of $140k for the land. But the assessment for improvements for this house is over $900k while others in the neighborhood are more in the $600k range. I was looking at the aerial photos and trying to pick out what seem to be other nice houses, including ones with swimming pools which this one lacks, and which also have big garages (this one has 4 car garage apparently), but couldn't find a neighbor above an assessment in the $600k's. ..."
"... The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister. ..."
"... My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity. ..."
"... Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence. It seems to me the poisoning fits better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't be so incompetent, also goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned it as false flag. ..."
"... Joe Mifsud and Claire Smith of MI6, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, especially FBI special agent Joseph Pientka plus that BIG shot FBI agent (who's name I forget) are the names to remember. Why aren't Misud and Smith extradited to face inquiry? ..."
"... So what is emerging? is Mueller due in court to prosecute the Russian ad agency that has fully shirt fronted him? Is Flynn business about to upend a steaming pot of turds over Mueller and other heads. Is Seth Rich about to be posthumously knighted by some New York monarch for his role in smashing the HRC cart in public? Or is Julian Assange about to be put through more torture for being a journalist and publisher? ..."
And then there is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention
from someone or someones who remain(s) in place. The open purchase of a house in the outer
suburbs of Washington by the extracted would seem to support the possibility that this is
all a diversion. The narrative continues that "a former senior intelligence official" told
Sciutto, an Obama man, at CNN of all this. Clapper is "a former senior intelligence
official" and a CNN "contributor" (employee) is he not? He is dumb enough to have had this
story planted on him.
Double games, triple games ... Spies are so confusing ...
thanks b... i agree about your comment on pls comment - double / triple and etc games can be
played with spies... what seems clear to me is that some in the cia-msm want to frame trump..
this one feel apart fairly quickly... the frame up of russia over skripal has never been
addressed by the usa.. in fact, most folks - using ew as an example - are still drinking the
russia done it koolaid 24/7..
james , Sep 10 2019 18:14 utc |
3casey , Sep 10 2019 18:18 utc |
4
So, this fully-spun story, apparently a mix of fact and fiction, arises at this moment to
prop up the Russia-leaked-email hoax?
If that's the case, does that mean this story's "authors" release it now to keep at least
part of the Russia hoax alive as the Flynn case plods toward charges being dropped or because
the Concord case is turning into a cluster f*k? Maybe someone is worried about the
DNC-insider-leaked-email story breaking out? We need to talk about Rich?
Funny about Lang and his crew. So much practical experience and yet they would make an
interesting case study of extreme psychological compartmentalization as a means of
denial.
Lucky Oleg & Antonina. In Oz a 760 square metre house used be known as having an area of
81 squares (8,172 square feet. In well-maintained condition such a 3-storey house anywhere in
Oz would cost between A$2.5 million and A$3.5 million. Being in AmeriKKA Oleg's house
probably has a basement too. That's another $150,000 minimum if it's damp-proof and
ventilated.
Nice networking by 4 BigLie Media outlets to make certain Russia knows where this man and his
family reside. Maybe it's for an Outlaw US Empire sequel to MI-6's Novochock BigLie to be
sprung as the election heats up. If I were the Smolenskovs, I'd demand an immediate identity
change, sell ASAP and move to Idaho.
If Skripal could live safely under his own name I guess this guy could too. It just makes it
easier for the US to get him in their own time.
I don't really see this guy served any purpose until he was outed. Just a late effort to
pretend that Russiagate had any credibility.
I wish that there was a resident Russian on this site, as there is on Craig Murray's.
That person could then tell me if I am wrong in supposing that a senior Chekist would
never, as a question of policy, have been allowed a passport for foreign travel for him and
his family.
If Oleg Smolenkov reported allegedly "valuable" insider information about Russia's
interference in US elections, as they say first hand, then why did Mueller's investigation
fail?
The New York Times story resurrects the
Russia collusion hoax. This time the proof comes from Oleg Smolenkov. The story is identical
to what the Steele dossier claimed: Putin personally directed a campaign to interfere in the
US presidential elections.
Every part of Steele narrative has already been shown to be a hoax and a fabrication. What
proves that the Steele dossier is a work of fiction is that it is written from a
fly-on-the-wall point of view. Only a person who was sitting in the same room with Putin when
he had secret meetings could have written it. So how many moles did the West have sitting on
Putin's desk? It seems like the CIA mole and Steele's secret source are one and the same
source. But if Oleg Smolenkov was CIA's most tightly guarded secret, how did the information
end up in Steele's dossier?
Larry Johnson just posted about this on SST, and his take seems much more plausible:
Desperation on the part of Clapper and his cabal as the chickens are coming home to roost.
This story is chock full of holes, and the media hackery is disintegrating under its own
weight.
> Obama administration .... Russia had stolen .... Democratic National Committee and .....
John Podesta.
So we have to allege that Podesta's laptop between naked underage girls photos had list of
CIA secret agents in Russian government? What else rid it contain and where did Podesta stole
those lists?
Same question about Paki-managed DNC server. Was managing CIA agents in foreign
governments outsourced to DNC or what?
"Once in the lifetime of yer townfolk! F..en circus! Imbecile clowns! Degenerate tamers!
Deformed strongmen! Dysfunctional acrobats! Don't miss out!"
@2
Diversion is one of the three possibilities that I can think of:
1) clan wars within US special services, particularly in view of the 2020 elections.
2) diversion (as suggested by col. Pat Lang)
3) preparation of the ground to make this guy a "sacrificial lamb" like Scripal, to avoid
any new rapprochement between the US and Russia after the end of the Muller report.
@11 roy g.. this is what i said @3 "what seems clear to me is that some in the cia-msm want
to frame trump.. this one feel apart fairly quickly..." for others who want to read larry
johnsons latest at sst
here...
Interesting
Tweet thread by a Sean M Davis has 5 entries and almost 1000 retweets beginning with
this:
"For those curious about what's going on with this bizarre Russia 'spy' story: Burr/Durham
know Steele was fed obvious disinformation, they know who originated it, they know who
peddled it, and it's just a matter of rounding up the whole network."
In his third entry, he poses the following question: "So the only two unanswered questions about this particular pre-emptive leak campaign from
the usual Russia hoax suspects are 1) why now, and 2) what specific event or official
revelation are they trying to get ahead of?"
The easy answer is the story itself is enough of a distraction as the 1000 retweets
show.
I tend to agree with Larry Johnson (at Pat Lang's) that this guy wasn't that useful back
then. He might have become more useful, had he stayed at the Kremlin and rose further up the
ladder, granted; or Obama's top guys assumed he wouldn't and it wasn't an issue to risk to
burn him.
I tend to agree with Larry Johnson (at Pat Lang's) that this guy wasn't that useful back
then. He might have become more useful, had he stayed at the Kremlin and rose further up the
ladder, granted; or Obama's top guys assumed he wouldn't and it wasn't an issue to risk to
burn him.
This whole story is entirely in the spirit of Hollywood comics.
I had a good laugh when I saw the news about the "valuable spy successfully extracted from
Russia".
Here are some reasons why this is fake/disinformation:
1) The news was published by CNN. I think there's no need to explain whether it is worth taking seriously the "sensations"
published by news outlets with a reputation like CNN.
2) Sorry, but you must be a complete idiot (in the medical sense) to openly declare in the
media that you had a "very valuable spy" in the immediate circle of the president of the
Russian Federation (or any other country). Just because in this way you, by your own hands,
are giving your opponent the reason to "strengthen control", conduct checks and identify
those [other] people who might be able to work for you for a long time and be useful. When this really takes place in real life (the presence of a spy of the highest rank,
close to the head of state), then this becomes public only after many years/decades, when the
'Top Secret' stamp is removed from the documents, you know.
3) V.Putin is a former intelligence officer. To put it mildly, it is very naive to assume
that the presence of an "American spy" (close to Putin) would not be known to a person with
Putin's experience/knowledge/capacity.
4) To be a spy, a member of the inner circle of the President of Russia (or any other
country) and not to be exposed, one need to have extraordinary abilities and competencies.
This is the highest class. In recent years, it seems only the lazy one did not notice and did
not note the monstrous degradation of the American political class. These people do not know
how to behave in a civilized society, do not have the traditions and culture of diplomacy and
communication. The situation is similar in the American defense industry. With this level of decline in the competence of the American elite (political, military,
etc.), to assume that they have such a ultra-high-class spy is at least very strange.
5) The fact that the "valuable spy" in the inner circle of the Russian president is pure
CNN fiction is confirmed in practice. What I mean:
- If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy" and had access to "secrets," it's rather
strange that he didn't tell the CIA, for example, about the Crimean operation of the Russian
Federation in 2014. Russia's actions then began for the United States (and not only for the
United States, by the way) a complete surprise. This is some really strange "valuable spy"
who did not know anything about the intentions and actions of the Russian leadership in the
spring of 2014.
- If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy," and had access to "secrets," the fact that
he knew nothing and did not tell the CIA about Russia's plans to launch the Syrian campaign
in September 2015 looks unusually strange. Just to remind that the actions of Russia then
became a complete surprise for the United States. They did not know anything about this and
did not expect such a development of events. Within a month before the official start of the
Syrian campaign, Russia transferred equipment and weapons to Syria. This remained a secret
for all intelligence services in the world, no one noticed anything. Even Israel, located in
close proximity to Syria, made a "discovery" about the presence of the Russian military there
only 2 days before the start of Russia's actions in the SAR. A rather strange "valuable spy"
who was completely ignorant of Russia's plans/actions in the Syrian direction.
- If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy" and had access to "secrets", it is very
strange that he did not know anything and did not inform the CIA about the development by
Russia of the latest weapons presented by President Putin in the spring of 2018. The
presentation of the latest models of Russian weapons was a real shock for the United States,
and I remember that at first the Americans, smiling, called all this "cartoons." Now they no
longer laugh. The development of these weapons was carried out for many years. It's somehow
strange that a "very valuable spy" never found out about it.
6) Serious Russian experts unequivocally spoke out that all this was fake and that
Smolenkov certainly could not be a spy. In particular, Armen Gasparyan, one of the leading Russian political scientists,
historian, writer (incidentally, who wrote several books on intelligence), spoke quite fully
about this in his recent commentary .
Why the CIA would allow such a spy, once extradited, to live under his real name is
beyond me.
Because this man has nothing to do with "spies", "secrets" and "special services". He is
an ordinary civilian, a former official from Russia. Many Russian ex- lives in abroad,
including high-ranking persons. Smolenkov of course had no access to any "secrets", and had
no access to entourage of the Russian president.
An attempt to present Smolenkov as a "valuable spy" from exactly the same series as the
clumsy attempt by the British government to introduce two Russian civilians (Ruslan Boshirov
and Alexander Petrov) as "GRU agents".
It is hardly reasonable to take this seriously.
That's the end of Smolenkov's anonymous quiet comfortable lifesyle. It doesn't send out a
very reassuring message - that the CIA can publicly expose someone it considers a very useful
asset. There must be a good reason why they threw Smolenkov under the bus in that way.
This guy could not possibly be what the CIS and media are presenting to be. Living under his
own name in Virginia? Could it be any simpler to find him? The Russians do have search
engines, too.
B may be right that this is a double or triple play, but find it hard to see the benefits to
pretending to have had a deep mole in the Kremlin. I also find it implausible that any
Russsian diplomat who has been stationed in DC would not be viewed as potentially
compromised. It would be relatively simple to feed him bullshit and see what filters into DC.
Many thoughtful comments here. My take, as a fan of Le Carre and Mad Magazine's Spy vs Spy
cartoon, is that USA's spy was discovered and turned. He was dismissed, employed somewhere
close by, and fed chicken feed for his CIA masters. When they realized he was a failure, the
CIA got him and his family out with the possible object of turning him into a propaganda
subject. Of course he would have to die first, but CIA could make it look like the Russians
did it.
I'm generally interested in how spies are referred to in corporate media stories.
For instance, we were told constantly that Skirpal was a 'Russian Spy'. This ran contrary
to the normal usage, which would have referred to a British Spy within the Russian government
as a 'British Spy'. If that signaled a general change in language, then Solemenkov, would
also be referred to as a Russian Spy and not as an American Spy. He shares with Skirpal
having a Russian nationality, while he was spying for the Americans. Of course, when the
propagandists are going for an emotional reaction, they can be relied on to use whichever
helps tilt the story in their direction.
Historically, spy agencies aren't really known for their great humanity in pulling out a spy
who is in a useful position just because they fear for that spy's safety. The more common
course of action for Spy Bosses is to keep the spy in place, keep pushing for more, more,
more information from the spy, before perhaps holding a brief moment of silence over their
spy ending up in prison.
Maybe it's for an Outlaw US Empire sequel to MI-6's Novochock BigLie to be sprung as the
election heats up.
That's what I thought as well. Why would the MSM hype a spy other than establishing his
persona in the public eye, to be followed by some event later? Either he's a double agent and
they will kill him and blame it on Russia, or he is not a double agent and they will use him
to announce some "strong evidence" of Trump–Russia connection.
Part of the intention of this farce is to give the CIA and the CIA News Network (CNN) the
opportunity to pretend that they are not knotted together like mating dogs (I leave it up to
the reader to guess which one is the bitch).
1. Smolenkov was the source of the Steele Report, in other words he received a substantial
payment to come up with fictional "dirt" on Trump.
2. With all the publicity about the Steele report, Brennan/Obama/etc. were scared (and
with good reason) that the Russians would figure out that Smolenkov was the source and would
then make a grand show of his confessing to how he had made everything up at the request of
US/UK intelligence agencies.
3. Therefore he was extricated for a very good reason (if you are Obama/Brennan, that
is).
4. His extrication is now being used as an anti-Trump weapon, but also as a pre-emptive
measure to reduce the fallout if (or when) reports emerge that Smolenkov was the source for
Steele.
Be interesting to know what was occurring if Smolenkov was the source for the Steele
report.
Whatever information he was sending, that he just left on holidays makes me think Russian
intel were on the ball and had started feeding him a bit of disinformation.
I don't expect the US--and by US I mean the Current Oligarchy--to save anyone, while
Russia is very busy trying to save its current and future populace--the differences being
quite extreme. Since the US isn't intent on saving anyone, it wants to ensure its populace
thinks other governments act the same way toward their populaces so the US populace doesn't
get any ideas about saving itself from its own viscous government. Busting that narrative is
what keeps us busy--There IS an alternative.
From digging around on the property site (from the link).
It must be a very nice house. A 3-ish acre lot in that neighborhood has an assessment of
$140k for the land. But the assessment for improvements for this house is over $900k while
others in the neighborhood are more in the $600k range. I was looking at the aerial photos
and trying to pick out what seem to be other nice houses, including ones with swimming pools
which this one lacks, and which also have big garages (this one has 4 car garage apparently),
but couldn't find a neighbor above an assessment in the $600k's.
The neighborhood as a whole has had its valuations decline in the 2018 biannual
assessment. Not sure why, but maybe the neighborhood of 20 year old mansions isn't as hot as
some newer developments. The last previous lowering of assessment values occurred during the
Great-Not-A-Depression in the 2008 revaluations. Note, the land is not considered to have
lower values, but all of the homes on the street have had the assessments of the improvements
on the property lowered in the last reassessments.
Hard to tell much about the selling price from neighboring properties. Many of the
neighbors bought their homes direct from the construction company back in the early years of
the century. So not too many direct compares for homes bought in 2018.
A point that appears to have missed by several is that an aide to an aide to the foreign
minister is not likely to have access to Putin's super-top-secret plans to use a few thousand
dollars worth of utube and twit ads to change the course of multi-billion dollar American
election, nor would he have access to information that might be used to blackmail a potential
foreign leader. Both would be closely held secrets and apparently way above his pay grade.
Often the FM wouldn't know of either, and both operations would be compartmentalized into a
close team Putin can trust.
The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the
style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they
know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little
power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned
to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister.
My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means
he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's
anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because
he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his
own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in
the USG is setting him up with a fake identity.
House likely bought by CIA and annual upkeep--taxes etc.--also paid by them.
MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely
contributor to the Steele Dossier given the overall web of established connections--that was
most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA, although CIA was
involved in Russiagate Cover-up.
In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged
spy? Aside from the UNSC vote debacle on Libya, I see nothing but a string of successes,
although the Ukraine Coup wasn't debauched. IMO, Outlaw US Empire policy toward Russia has
failed spectacularly, and it is within the US government where I'd expect to find well placed
spies.
@35 turner.. no.. and no one here at moa believes anything out of the western msm either...
see @ 29 william gruff comment for more meaningful lingo on the set up..
Here's a tough problem for a counter-intelligence agent. Find the source of info for a
fictional report.
Normally, after a link, one avenue of investigation would be to check who had access to
the leaked information. But, if the report is completely fictional, then there is no list of
people who had access to information that didn't exist. Everyone or no one had equal access
to the non-existent information. The Tailor of Moscow had the same access to the non-existent
information as did Putin's closest personal aide. Who done it?
Ingérence russe :la CIA disposait d'une source haut-placée au Kremlin.
Russian collusion: CIA had high placed source at the Kremlin.
A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about
it. Really, when a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be
nigh.
Evidence-free accusations of Russian meddling. Now with extra sauce.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was
deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to
strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling.
The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that
Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used.
The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the
officials said.
Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News.
What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show
corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image
that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,"
the official said.
Notice the source is spies working for US Allies. Remember that the NSA did not sign off on the Russian interference/hacking because they
were concerned that too much critical info rested on intelligence from a single foreign
country.
Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence.
It seems to me the poisoning fits better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with
Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't be so incompetent, also
goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned
it as false flag.
Notice how we have some sources saying concern grew after the Trump Putin meeting, where
supposedly Trump gave Israeli intelligence to Putin on Syria, I think they were concerned
Trump would have no problem revealing a spy for another government, much like he was free
with foreign intelligence.
I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect
the real source, who is working for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is
possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016, Deputy Chief of Staff
of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the
foreign policy of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia.
Just out of curiousity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have
to exclude this from his report? The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check.The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have already noticed that he has done a runner. Check.
What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that starts with: "we know
the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being
relayed to us by an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and
now living in the USA".
I call it a red herring, and I bet this sucker has been fully set up. Publicly listed address
and all the indicators are that he is held in reserve to throw to the dogs whenever the
action gets too close to the mongrel perpetrators.
Joe Mifsud and Claire Smith of MI6, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, especially FBI special
agent Joseph Pientka plus that BIG shot FBI agent (who's name I forget) are the names to
remember. Why aren't Misud and Smith extradited to face inquiry?
So what is emerging? is Mueller due in court to prosecute the Russian ad agency that has
fully shirt fronted him? Is Flynn business about to upend a steaming pot of turds over
Mueller and other heads. Is Seth Rich about to be posthumously knighted by some New York
monarch for his role in smashing the HRC cart in public? Or is Julian Assange about to be put
through more torture for being a journalist and publisher?
This poor Russian sod is a patsy for the vicious deep state game that now needs to prey on
him and deliver his carcass to the howling mob and so distract them again. This Friday's
quiet press releases might hold a clue.
This guy will probably be making the rounds on CNN and cable news promoting the Steele
dossier and the Russian collusion hoax as its complete disintegration is now fully evident.
Offer up some turds on a plate, dress it up with a pinch a parsley and the truth will be
avoided.
The whole 2 year media storm of lies on Russian collusion will be avoided by offering up
another turd on a plate. This guy will pull down a few million and the media will never admit
their false reporting.
It would seem that a great deal has certainly changed at the CIA since 2003 when Valerie
Plame was revealed as a spy by a newspaper journalist who was given the information about her
during a phone conversation with someone close to the White House at the time, apparently to
punish her ambassador husband Joseph Wilson for going to Niger to verify if that country had
exported uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Then there was shock and anger at the time that
the cover of a CIA operative had been blown.
Now the CIA doesn't even bother to give Smolenkov and his family new identities and
biographies to explain their living in Washington DC, and even co-operates with the outgoing
Obama administration in 2016 in risking the exposure of one of its own to try to stop Donald
Trump from ensconcing himself in the White House.
Something certainly has changed in the culture of the CIA: while it was always a political
animal, it is becoming an extremely ideological one as well.
The idea that this could be a fake spy is interesting.
Sabine wrote:
fuck are you guys not tired of this bullshit kabuki theatre that you get fed daily in order
to keep you amused and busy?
Only speaking for myself I ignore almost all of it (and actively treat it as propaganda,
deception, and manipulation) and take a lot of breaks. I test the waters (or sewage) from
time to time but I don't expect much and have no right to expect anything either.
However despite such sentiments the last decade seems like it has been an improvement
although too many people (and probably me as well) are searching for "replacements" to
failures when maybe there shouldn't be any: any false choice requires at least two wrong
answers but there could be any number .
In Bulgaria is a spy scandal too.
Reschetnikov is banned for ten years to visit Bulgaria. A reporter from NYT has tried to
interview him before steps are take in Bulgaria to investigate the case. The officials say
the Russians wanted to divert Bulgaria to the asia-project and that money-laundering was used
to finance subversive activities. The case started on 9.09 2019. Today the parliament heard
the statements of the agencies. Nothing new they sayed
Sounds fishy, the whole thing. Of course, when everyone is lying about everything while they
are pretending to fight with each other, it may well get a bit convoluted. CIA outing thrir
own dude on their own propaganda outlet is quite strange though. Also, their dude just
trotting about using his real name (in a publicly listed mansion no less),... ehh... Who
knows...
Of course, they could be trying to 'put him on the spot' to use him for yet another
propaganda push (whether he wants to play along, or not). But, again, the whole thing seems a
bit strange.
i would caution people here on patrick lang's views on this issue. remember he is an
existensialist american "patriot" who stop at nothing and will approve of any warcrime to
held up the mighty american empire. Look at patrick lang's history , he is ex intelligence
and thus never left the "services" even when he is "retired".
Pat lang's hate toward those who criticize american empire is legendary.. just look at his
own comments on SST.
another one to watch is patrick lang's friend called TTG which also US intelligence and it
is not unknown for this guy to post or inject nonsense narrative on SST especially on
intelligence matters concerning russia.
The posts that seems clean of US narrative lies seem to come from Publius Tacitus and
Walrus. But then again never take off your mandatory antipropaganda shield especially on SST
owned by ex spook who love the american empire and military trashing of the world
The following rumor (through sputniknews.com) is sort of educational even if it should
turn out to not be true (its Boolean value is essentially irrelevant which is interesting as
a separate matter as well):
Trump mistrusts spies etc .
It wasn't just shock. Scooter Libby, Cheney's (?) Chief of Staff, broke a federal law when
he exposed Valerie Palme as a CIA operative. He served part of a prison sentence for this.
Joseph Wilson verified that Saddam Hussein did not buy yellow cake. After his report was
ignored, he wrote an article about his findings. I remember reading it in the International
Herald Tribune. It put the WMD narrative in doubt.
These idiots don't hire themselves. The problem is Trump. It doesn't matter whether Bolton
(or Pompeo, or Hook, or Abrams) is in or out as long as Trump himself is in the White
House.
That realization has turned my 2016 protest vote for Trump into a 2020 protest vote for
Elizabeth Warren. The underlying principle is be the same, voting yet again for the lesser
of two evils.
"... The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for anything, never found anything and never wrote anything. ..."
"... The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired result: Republicans lost the House. ..."
"... Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor. ..."
Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to
suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This
too is not believable, as I pointed out previously .
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young
Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation
against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)
But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear,
by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be
because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a pro-détente
foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be
Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been
initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.
So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful
reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being
overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not.
... ... ...
It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal
investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly
bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the
mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US
intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable,
and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.
There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First and
foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not
about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in
Russiagate.) At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be
asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and
would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.
"former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion."
Let me unpack that for you, esteemed professor: RM was "special counsel" in name only. The
real boss was Andrew Weissman. The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for
anything, never found anything and never wrote anything.
The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid
term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired
result: Republicans lost the House.
Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation
set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of
President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor.
Last I checked, Kansas and Nebraska are neighbors and share much the same fate.
Thomas Franks book: "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of
America" extensively documents how Democrats abandoned Kansas, his home state, and paved the
way for conservatives just like they paved the way for Trump nationally.
Of course, Thomas Franks is one of those writers who challenges the conventional liberal
narrative, embraced by Democratic elites and Paul Krugman. Questioning the shallow Democratic
narrative also outrages gullibles like EMichael and kurt.
It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American
presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump
that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election
Oh, I can think of one, and it absolutely isn't mere allegation: every one of those pimps
at the State and Federal level colludes with Tel Aviv every ******* day. They get their
marching orders from a foreign country whose 'dual citizens' even infest every branch
of our government and at every level.
Marxism-Leninism today is opposed by bourgeois ideology. The state ideology of the ruling
class of the US bourgeoisie is militant Zionism.
Modern Zionism is an extremely nationalist, racist ideology, it is politics and practice
that express the interests of the big Jewish bourgeoisie. The main content of modern Zionism
is militant chauvinism, racism, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism, the aim is to conquer
world domination and assert the so-called New World Order.
Fidel Castro, noted that at the end of World War II, which the peoples were waging against
fascism, a new government arose that imposed the current absolutist and tough order.
WHAT is this new, parallel power and its "elite core"?
The top-level parallel secret government, or real, parallel power, its "elite core" -
these are Jewish bankers and industrialists, members of the 60 families that govern the
United States, openly located on Capitol Hill in full view of the White House, US Congress on
Downing Street 10 (and in the British Parliament). These are the servants of the World
Government and the New World Order. Or, the new Fascism!
ANSWER: It came from the top. Obama. Obama was to be Hillary's pick for SC Justice by a
planned post Obama RBG retirement. It is the only plausible explanation for the coup and for
why an aging, terminally ill Justice would risk her Seat for nomination by a Republican
administration.
RBG is pragmatic as much as she is tenacious. And handing her seat gambled like that in an
election year was not a risk she would have taken given both her age and her health.
Her ideology would not have risked that except for one reason: To have that hallowed seat
pass to a former President, the first Black President, and one with an ideology almost
identical to her own plus an easy confirmation given Obama's experience in Constitutional
law.
When Trump came up in the poles and Hillary's star looked to be dimming about July of 2016
(the 4th to be specific) (when they breach loaded her like an oat bag into the back of that
iconic SUV on national TV) Plan B was officially rolled out, Obama rolled it out and an FBI
official would later boast both of Obama's intimate knowledge of the plan and that this was
to be the backup plan should the election favor Trumps win.
Textual evidence by those running the both the FISA warrants and the planting of spies
into Trumps campaign all point to the Commander in Chief being both briefed but also
directing at the very last minute and unprecedented Executive Order allowing all of the
Intelligence Agencies full intra-agency access to all mutual intelligence.
They thought they could seed the collusion early, and if it didn't take, overturn the
election early with an impeachment following the certain dirt that they overwhelmingly knew
Mueller would find on Trump.
Trump, he had to be dirty. Look at anyone in the media and who was as rich as he was...
just look at the women he's dated...
Inspite of rabid Obama staffers in the White House leaking and outing those under
investigation and especially at the State Department then Mueller's Gang of 13 Clinton
supporting prosecutors along with the top leaders in the now mutually cooperative
Intelligence Cabal the 35 million dollars and 2 years of probing and intimidation of
witnesses couldn't produce a single slab of sidewalk with the DNA evidence that Trump had
actually spit on it. They couldn't find it or anything.
And now its all coming out....
Interesting to note that the best chance for Obama to reclaim the motive for the Coup is
that Biden has already said that he will nominate Obama, who by his truest actions as the
Traitor in Chief, to the Supreme Court if elected.
That's why Obama orchestrated the Coup so that he could sit in the highest Chair of
Government and influence it more than he could as President... for the rest of his life.
Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence
agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?
Have you seen Barr charge anyone with a crime? Has Barr given Durham the power to charge
anyone with a crime? Barr is just the Deep State's cleanup man.
Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence
agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?
Have you seen Barr charge anyone with a crime? Has Barr given Durham the power to charge
anyone with a crime? Barr is just the Deep State's cleanup man.
Well, the wish-thinking of the products of incest like Steverino999 aside - the
*evidence* is essentially non-existent.
Clapper's DNI report, which deliberately used hand-picked analysts from only 3 agencies, a
report which relied on Ukrainian and Clinton-linked CrowdStrike for image analysis, since the
feds NEVER SEIZED AND EXAMINED THE ******* SERVER - (or interviewed Assange, or Binney, or
Murray) is not only NOT proof, and NOT even credible evidence... it is in fact evidence of
a deliberate effort to fudge intel to both 1) blame Russia Russia Russia (too white, and
Christian, and not totally controlled by the usual suspects , you see)
and denigrate Trump's election win.
The idea that our democracy is threatened by clickbait ads (or seeing the corruption of
The Establishment's candidate) is preposterous and depends on people receptively watching
their (((television))) and not giving a moment's thought as to how or why an ad that somehow
changes someone's vote, to the extent it ever happened, isnt what democracy is.
If the complaint is 'they were lies' and leaving aside the
truth of the clickbait lie, the MSM by that standard is the most guilt of election
'meddling' given their lies and omissions that were all designed to propel Al Qaeda-arming,
charity-robbing, inveterate crook Hillary Clinton into office.
You should never believe a thing, sinply because you want it to be true.
I will change my mind when someone presents something approaching credible evidence that
the DNC was hacked by Russia, and that but-for seeing Hillary's corruption (did the media
actually ever really cover the content of the emails? ) Americans would have voted for her
more...
And that's essentially the argument: Americans learned what a piece of **** Hillary is and
so didnt vote for her, so they were brainwashed by a foreign state.
It is ******* absurd, and relies on 1) ignorance, 2) stupidity, and 3) motivated
reasoning.
@Johnny Fingers: You present an excellent overview of Russiagate, especially the total
lack of evidence that the DNC leaks originated with Russia. Thank you!
Do you know how much the United States has funded Israel since 1949? These many billions
are no longer calculable! American taxpayers are very kind and rich. And this is not only
money, it is the supply of food products, economic assistance and weapons.
And how many American young men died in the Middle East defending the interests of
Israel?
IF America actually defended itself as Israel does, there would be no need to Press 2 for
Spanish (much less Press 1 for English as a 2nd language in New Delhi.)
Israel does more for American interests in the Middle East than the reverse.
What if there was active spying on a Presidential campaign by a outgoing administration to
aid a candidate preferred? What if every lever available was pulled to cover up, minimize and
excuse actual violations of Federal law by the outgoing administration to aid that same
candidate. What if, somehow, out of nowhere, the opposition candidate overcame the odds and
won triggering the outgoing administration to set up a foreign policy mess ( accusing Russia
of _______ and throwing a bunch of them out of the US less than a month before the new
President takes office ).
Then, the same outgoing aperachiks of the departing administration go about framing the
new President, leaking and acting in a seditious manner to undermine and ultimately even
overthrow the new President. A coup... sedition... by the permanent political class within
the CIA, State, FBI and DOJ. Oh, and the national press corps..... IN ON IT up to their
eyeballs and willing participants.
The cost of the Russiagate hoax By Thomas Lifson The media that promoted the hoax
originally generated by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party
are in full denial mode. They don't merely ignore their role, they defend it.
The intelligence agencies went off the reservation to cover up years of illegal spying and
surveillance of US citizens by the Obama administration as they accumulated the info needed
to "influence" people. To prove me wrong, you must prove that Admiral Mike Rogers is a
liar.
Why? Money. The slush funds of foreign aid, foundations, think tanks and big donor money.
Billions were at stake. Think Biden, Gore, Clinton, Obama and almost every prominent
politician you can name. All rich beyond our deplorable dreams.
I'd say, not only money... but these folks believe their own book. They live that elitist
BS globalist " right side of history " **** and are ideologues. They are all intermarried to
other career folks in the DC / NYC pool and they and everyone they hang out with are wealthy
because of it and they actually can't imagine what the hell has happened to their setup.
Much better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the
Senate,
Well Prof. Cohen normally would agree with you. But given the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence is run by a Democratic hack like Warner, who tried to get in direct contact with
dossier author Steele "without a paper trail", his aide Wolff was leaking to his underaged
lover at the NYT, and a RINO like Burr who would be happy if Trump were impeached for
sedition or something else, so don't hold your breath.
When MuleHer said he never heard of Fusion GPS during the Congressional hearings, everyone
knew the $50 million Russia Gate "investigation" was a complete farce.
Shameful Barr has not indicted anyone. Confirms how corrupt the system is and why so many
Americans are disillusioned.
Simple question... What more can one possibly know about something that did not exist?
Answer? Nothing.
Period... end of discussion. Move on to topics of importance such as the largest
sex/pedophile/blackmail/treason/spy scandal in recorded history with Jeffrey Epstein and his
Maxwell/Mossad darlings. ALL of our energies and concern must be poured into matters such as
these... for if we do not, our doom is sealed.
But but but...Trump is still nothing more than a Zionist puppet.
Yeah, that makes so much sense, given that just about all of Congress is in their pocket
but the political establishment still hates his guts AND he has managed to deescalate
conflicts in the region.
Did we use Syria as an excuse to openly engage Russia?
Have we staged troops in Taiwan?
Have we started a hot war via Eastern Europe?
Did we oust Assad?
Did we bomb Iran?
PS **** you. Obama and Hillary went to town in the Middle East leaving Trump to clean it
up, proposing a pragmatic and non-psychopath-neocon approach to dealing with adversaries from
campaign days until the present time. At a minimum, not ramping up existing conflicts counts
as a deescalation in my book. I do believe you are the idiot.
... then everything changed. And after it changed, Mueller released his report saying:
"Trump is not guilty after all!" So, what changed? Trump changed.
Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops
in Syria within 30 days. But instead of withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of
trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels on the
ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border,
and the US hasn't lifted a finger to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under
the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing up its
defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do
a complete about-face?
The same thing happened in Korea. For a while it looked like Trump was serious about
cutting a deal with Kim Jong un. But then, sometime after the first summit, he began to
backpeddle. at the Hanoi Summit, Trump blindsided Kim by making demands that had never even
been previously discussed. Kim was told that the North must destroy all of its chemical and
biological weapons as well as its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs before the
US will take reciprocal steps. In other words, Trump demanded that Kim completely and
irreversibly disarm with the feint hope that the US would eventually lift sanctions.
Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was
the point, because the foreign policy establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime
change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change all that?
Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of
the past"?
Yes, that was Trump's campaign promise. So, what happened?
There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the
Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's
genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring
up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to
break with tradition and "stop toppling regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every
turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized.
Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in
Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon, he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda.
Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife' is on
the loose.
Is that why Mueller let Trump off the hook? Was there a quid pro quo: "You follow our
foreign policy directives and we'll make Mueller disappear? It sure looks like it.
But but but...Trump is a nothing more than a Zionist puppet.
Yeah, that makes so much sense, given that just about all of Congress is in their pocket
but the political establishment still hates his guts AND he has managed to deescalate
conflicts in the region.
Absolutely damn right, most haven't a clue about the MOAB that's coming down on these
treasonous anti-American bitchez.
This network to take down our dear POTUS spans worldwide, they're be hell to pay once the
unredacted FISA warrants/302's are released for public view, the IG report, Huber
investigation and Durham the 'prosecutor' burp up undeniable indictments and prosecutions for
sedition, treason and crimes against humanity.
Uranium 1, Weiner laptop, Clinton emails, Clinton Foundation, Epstein perv's with names
big names, will be blown wide open making many people ill hearing and seeing the nature of
who and what these massively corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, corporate dignitaries, have
been involved with. Many are resigning, both dems, repubs, ceo's, why, because (((they)))
know what's coming and the DS is full blown panic, just look at their lapdog MSM going
thoroughly crazy. Indeed, they're doing everything they can to take down Trump hoping to save
themselves from the HAMMER, NO DEALS, even the those in the press will be indicted for
conspiracy and attempted coup to take down a standing President.
Elizabeth Warren Stands Out at New Hampshire Democratic
Party Convention https://nyti.ms/2POixCr
NYT - Katie Glueck - September 7
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s backers roared supportive slogans and banged on
drums as they camped outside Southern New Hampshire University Arena. Backers of Senator
Elizabeth Warren marched as part of a jazz-inflected brass band. A fan of Senator Amy
Klobuchar admonished passers-by to consider electability, and banners associated with Senator
Bernie Sanders that highlighted his own standing in the polls appeared aimed at drawing a
contrast with Mr. Biden.
The New Hampshire Democratic Party State Convention drew 19 of the presidential candidates
and some of the state's most committed party activists -- including more than 1,200 delegates
-- to its gathering here Saturday, offering an early test of campaign organization and
enthusiasm in a contest that is traditionally a must-win for candidates from neighboring
states.
This cycle, that includes Mr. Sanders of Vermont, who won New Hampshire by a wide margin
in 2016, and Ms. Warren of Massachusetts, whose ground game is often regarded as the most
extensive in a contest that party officials describe as still fluid -- though Ms. Warren
received the most enthusiastic reception of the day, with an opening standing ovation that
stretched on for nearly two minutes.
Her supporters wielded inflatable noise makers and she received thunderous applause
throughout her address.
"There is a lot at stake and people are scared," she said. "But we can't choose a
candidate we don't believe in because we're scared."
It's a version of a line that Ms. Warren has deployed before, though it took on new
significance when she deployed it Saturday, days before she faces off against Mr. Biden for
the first time on the debate stage.
While many voters feel warmly toward Mr. Biden, some have also cited the perception that
he is the most electable candidate in the race, rather than displaying outright enthusiasm
for his campaign.
"There's that sense of, we know who Joe is and we trust him," said former State Senator
Sylvia Larsen, the former New Hampshire Senate president. "There's still a little bit of
people still looking around to say, 'Well, O.K., so what else is out there? Where are the
voices? Who else might be a voice?'"
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, was the first of the presidential contenders to
speak, and he received a polite though hardly raucous reception as attendees trickled into
the arena, which was not yet full on Saturday morning.
Mr. Biden has led in most polls here since entering the race -- though the surveys have
been relatively few. He is focused on blue-collar voters, moderates and other Democrats who
believe his more centrist brand offers the most promising path to defeating Mr. Trump, in
contrast to the more progressive coalitions Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders are working to
build.
On the ground, Mr. Sanders's supporters challenged the notion that Mr. Biden is the only
candidate well positioned to defeat Mr. Trump.
"Bernie beats Trump," read one banner hanging in the arena. Outside, another banner
affixed to a pro-Sanders tent read, "In poll after poll after poll Bernie BEATS Trump."
Mr. Sanders received frequent applause throughout his speech and his supporters -- who
appeared dispersed throughout the arena -- greeted many of his remarks with loud whoops.
"Together, we will make Donald Trump a one-term president," he said. "But frankly,
frankly, it is not enough just to defeat Trump. We must do much, much more. We must finally
create a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just the one percent."
In a sign of organizational strength, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., was also a
prominent presence at the convention: He had a large cheering contingent that punctuated his
address with rounds of applause. Flush with a field-leading fund-raising haul, his campaign
has significantly expanded its presence in New Hampshire, and has announced the opening of 12
new offices in the state.
Senator Kamala Harris of California had a visible support section, too -- her fans wore
bright yellow T-shirts -- and she also received applause and cheers.
Yet Ms. Harris's standing in the polls has slipped over the summer, and party leaders here
say she does not have the same footprint in the state as some of the other contenders.
Perhaps reflecting those dynamics -- and a lunchtime-hour speaking slot -- her ability to
excite the room was at times uneven.
"Everybody else and the pundits can ride polls; I'm not on that roller coaster," she told
reporters after her speech. "I am working hard, we are steady, I don't get high with the
polls, I don't go low with the polls."
Senator Cory Booker, too, found himself brushing off the polls when speaking to reporters
after giving an energetic speech that resonated in the room. His candidacy has mystified some
veteran New Hampshire Democrats who note his relatively stagnant poll numbers despite
extensive on-the-ground campaign organization, endorsements and an ability to deliver a fiery
speech.
Certainly, the convention is an imperfect test of the state of the New Hampshire primary.
It's a window into the mood of the most plugged-in activists, but isn't necessarily
representative of the entire electorate that will turn out on Primary Day -- and it also drew
attendees from out of state, from places including Massachusetts, New Jersey and even, in at
least one case, California. ...
Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than
three years.
Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or
approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington,
was proven not to be true .
Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic
Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper.
This was also proven to be not true.
The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that
wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is
revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
FBI agent Pientka became the
"DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to
testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since
his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would
hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having
done exactly that in another case their
office has been prosecuting .
The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian
troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.
Then, in a
filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge
Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had
for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this
key evidence for more than a year.
It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.
What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence
from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to
hand over everything they had?
It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught
engaging in gross misconduct.
Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him
the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.
A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the
hook.
And they're not getting off the hook.
Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial
misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use
better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled "
License to Lie: Exposing
Corruption in the Department of Justice ."
Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from
Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued
an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.
Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a
serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.
If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not
only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael
Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the
same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they
are willing to break the rules? Tags
We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors'
team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a
start.
On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.
c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential
Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the
Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss
what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that
call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT
official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on
the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed
that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to
escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN
called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only
respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with
the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his
call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or
about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating
that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that
time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him
that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone
call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential
Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S.
Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our
FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is
slowly being revealed.
Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup
against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off
as truth.
The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were
PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.
Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient.
He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party
and its owner, as it may be....
Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why
after Obie bailed.
Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards
Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by
Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as
cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot
that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to
believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.
This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.
People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.
Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the
truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who
put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.
I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they
do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already
demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?
Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray
will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it.
Never cooperate with them!
flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from
invasion... that's his major crime.
I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they
do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's
like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...
Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?
Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or
Bob Mueller?
Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government
pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, &
Mossad.
Barr: CIA operative
It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone
out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.
Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael
Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno
(1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.
Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting
in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA
operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of
Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy
(Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s
“legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s
longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines,
and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy
assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden
Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA
abuses.
Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean
opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice
presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief
Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of
the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the
legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure
or arrest.
In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal
organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr
would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use
Justice Department power to escape punishment.
Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes,
including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all
crimes of state committed by Bush
Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate
world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies.
In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law
firm Kirkland
& Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John
Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys.
K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt
Romney’s Bain Capital.
A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the
Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.
there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and
proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...
we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american
pedostate.
and that, what they master, they don't want to do.
if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...
In comparison with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, Warren is huge progress even with her warts and all.
Notable quotes:
"... the DNC is already gaming polls, cherry-picking which are "official" for their 2% threshhold. MSNBC and other networks and pundits also cherry-pick. Or even simply outright lie if the poll doesn't match what they want it to. ..."
"... Polling should either be eliminated or held to MUCH more consistent and much more scientific standards. (demographics, prediction analysis, neutral rather than leading questions, standardized formats, etc.) Until then they're simply more and more useless as predictors of the real poll, the primaries or general. ..."
"... The difference no is, that countries like Canada, the U.S., Australia, UK, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and with the AfD Germany are either as fascist, or more fascist than ever before. Once again, Russia is hyped up to be the eternal arch enemy of 'Western fascist values', 'freedom and democracy'. How much more difficult would it be today to round up resistance against a fascist axis that is hellbent to march again Russia? ..."
"... Sure, Trudeau is nothing but a bag of lukewarm air, but he employs hard core fascists in his cabinet – paid for by the Canadian people. ..."
"... History will look at the Sanders Warren debacle in the same way it must look now at the theft of the nomination of Henry A. Wallace in favor of the person that had no whatsoever second thoughts about dropping two nukes on an enemy that had already succumbed to the Soviet forces. Henry A. Wallace would heve never dropped these nukes. He was a staunch supporter of the 'common man'. All his policies reflected that. He was a presidential nominee for, of and by the people. ..."
"... To all the mindless party members of the Democratic fascist party: if you repeat history by allowing for the second time to install a puppet of the fascist powers in the U.S., you bear the full responsibilty for the dropping of the next nukes. ..."
"... The difference between Sanders and Wallace is a painful one. Wallace fought against the theft of his nomination with all he got. Subsequently, he realized that the 'Democratic' party would never allow for a person with integrity and the well being of the people at heart to win any nomination. He would have won the following presidency as a third party nominee – Trumann however knew how to prevent that. ..."
"... Much of what is sickening about the US as an imperial power today was present well before 1944 – indeed was present during the 19th century when the US made colonies of Hawaii and the Philippines in the 1890s, and occupied Haiti in 1915 (?), not leaving that country until the 1930s. ..."
"... Forgive me for saying so, but is a party of working folks really supposed to be grovelling for favours from billionaires? ..."
"... I think Gabbard is as authentic a new voice as i have ever seen in the DNC. She may well make it as an independent. Would Sanders? ..."
"... I'd say if a Gabbard/Paul grassroots campaign run by the Sanders 'momentum' network got their act together the USA may finally mature into a proper democracy not owned by their neolib con artistes. ..."
"... America where democracy has been extinguished and their increasingly paranoid voters are under the mistaken belief that yet another talking head can return them to a fair and impartial existence. ..."
"... Too late. Money is king and those that have most want more. The sideshow of elections produces the performing clowns such as Trump, Obama, Bush etc.all spouting the same vacuous promises on behalf of their wealthy benefactors. No real choice or change and an illusion of caring for the welfare of their citizenry. Listen carefully to the clowns, it's the sound of money talking. ..."
So: the rise of Elizabeth Warren gives the billionaires a 'progressive' candidate who might either win the
nomination or else at least split progressive voters during the primaries (between Sanders and Warren) and thus give
the nomination to Buttigieg, who is their first choice (especially since both Biden and Harris have been faltering so
badly of late).
I feel like any analysis that even mentions polls is guesswork, because nowadays polls are almost
entirely useless. In that they aren't accurately measuring people who are actually going to go to
open/semi-open or even closed primaries, and caucuses. The cohort of likely voters is different from
the cohort who bothers to pick up a phone call from an unknown (polling) number. Or make it through a
whole poll. Or do any online polls. Or have a reachable phone # at all.
Plus the fact that the DNC is already gaming polls, cherry-picking which are "official" for their
2% threshhold. MSNBC and other networks and pundits also cherry-pick. Or even simply outright lie if
the poll doesn't match what they want it to.
Polling should either be eliminated or held to MUCH more consistent and much more scientific
standards. (demographics, prediction analysis, neutral rather than leading questions, standardized
formats, etc.) Until then they're simply more and more useless as predictors of the real poll, the
primaries or general.
I liked the article other than that though.
mark
"Vote for me, I'm gay!"
"Vote for me, I'm a Red Indian!"
Daniel Rich
Do these 'Democratic Party billionaires ' have names and further affiliations?
Could it be that most of these 'Democratic Party billionaires ' favor the Apartheid State?
Hmmmmm?
George Cornell
David Bradley's The Atlanticmagazine headlined on August 26th, "Elizabeth Warren Manages to Woo the
Democratic Establishment". Wooing in American politics = betraying your principles, cutting deals,
bending to the wishes of the powerful, and all round submissive boot-licking.
Roberto
That would be describing successful politics in any country at any time in history.
An unsuccessful politician would do the inverse of what you list. For those with good memories,
let's try to name some.
George Cornell
Not everyone would agree with that definition of success, but you are quite right.
wardropper
Voice in the "Emperor's New Clothes" story:
"Why don't we just ban all financial support of presidential candidates? – I thought this was supposed
to be about the person best qualified and best suited to run the country "
HEY! Somebody shut that
child up right now, will you!
The significance of Sanders is this: if he wins the nomination he will have done so by leading an
insurrectionary movement, not only within the Democratic Party but in US society itself. He simply
cannot win otherwise. And if he wins the primaries it will have been in spite of the great mass of
money and Establishment influence having been mobilised against him.
In other words he is right to call his supporters a "revolution."
It is of course equally true of the Corbyn movement- any victories are immense defeats for both the
Establishment and its media. That, in itself is important.
And nowhere more than in Canada where the third and fourth parties- the NDP and the Greens- continue
to tack further and further to the right, trying to catch up with the rightward swing of the Liberal
Party -now close to full on neo-naziism- and the ultra right Tories.
Thank You for the link. While I am keenly aware of the untold history of WWII and the fact that
Hitler would have never gotten where he was from 1933-1941 without the propping up by both U.S. and
Zionist interests (mind the redundancy), eager to crush the perceived anti-capitalist behemoth
Soviet Union, I am wondering about the present re-run of the same story unfolding.
The difference
no is, that countries like Canada, the U.S., Australia, UK, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and with the
AfD Germany are either as fascist, or more fascist than ever before. Once again, Russia is hyped up
to be the eternal arch enemy of 'Western fascist values', 'freedom and democracy'. How much more
difficult would it be today to round up resistance against a fascist axis that is hellbent to march
again Russia?
Sure, Trudeau is nothing but a bag of lukewarm air, but he employs hard core fascists in his
cabinet – paid for by the Canadian people. The rest of the what goes for the 'value West' is more
of a disgrace than at any time before. These are the real dark ages, as I have stated before.
Nothing good can come from these psychopathic puppets in control of countries that ought to deserve
much better. Maybe, just maybe, the people of the countries in question should read Rudi Dutschke's
works about 'Extra Parliamentary Opposition' – for Dummies?
Until Turkey is able to produce S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems – it will buy weapons from Russia.
Turkey intends to buy from Russia additional S-400 air defense systems
While Bernie Sanders is no Henry A. Wallace by a long shot, Elizabeth Warren is the new Harry Trumann.
The Democrats are still the Democratic fascist Party of America and have their party base hypnotized
into believing that it has the well being of its voters on its mind.
That is of course a lie and
pure propaganda. And since the U.S. is the second most vulnerable nation to propaganda and fascism –
with Germany being the number one, in both the past and the present – the people that refuse to leave
the Democratic Fascist Party are remiscent of those people who kept following Hitler, even after it
had become clear that his 'party' would drive Germany into the abyss.
For the brownshirt-like followers of proven war criminals that both lead, or finance the 'party',
absolutely no crime is big enough that would warrant to turn their back on the fascist party.
History
will look at the Sanders Warren debacle in the same way it must look now at
the theft
of the nomination of Henry A. Wallace
in favor of the person that had no whatsoever second
thoughts about dropping two nukes on an enemy that had already succumbed to the Soviet forces. Henry
A. Wallace would heve never dropped these nukes. He was a staunch supporter of the 'common man'. All
his policies reflected that. He was a presidential nominee for, of and by the people.
That did not sit too well with the fascists and they stole the nomination from him. Present day
America has turned into this corrupt cesspool because of this stolen nomination. Everything that is
sickening about the U.S. today, started in 1944. All the surveillance, the mindcontrol, the cold war
and the transformation into a wannabe empire – they are all the result of this infamy by the hands of
the Democratic fascists.
To all the mindless party members of the Democratic fascist party: if you repeat history by
allowing for the second time to install a puppet of the fascist powers in the U.S., you bear the full
responsibilty for the dropping of the next nukes. Suffering from such deep sitting cognitive
dissonance, party members will find all kinds of excuses to prevent the truth from coming out. Just as
there was no war crime by Clinton and Obama sufficient enough to not cheer them like the greatest
baseball team ever. Leave the Democratic fascist party now, or have history piss on your graves.
Norcal
Very convincing argument and link, perfectly done. Thank you nottheonly1.
nottheonly1
Thank You, Norcal. It may be best to download these video clips, since they are all taken down
one after another based on 'copyright issues'.
The difference between Sanders and Wallace is a painful one. Wallace fought against the theft
of his nomination with all he got. Subsequently, he realized that the 'Democratic' party would
never allow for a person with integrity and the well being of the people at heart to win any
nomination. He would have won the following presidency as a third party nominee – Trumann
however knew how to prevent that. As the clip states, the American people only have to be
frightened and you can sell them their own demise on a golden platter. The ridicule and shaming
of those who want a third party can also be traced back to this time.
It is equally very disturbing that the owner class managed to brain wash the people into
accepting the use of 'oligarchs', 'billionaires', or 'donors' when in truth they are the real
fascists Henry Wallace had warned about. This must be reversed by all means available. People
must understand that the concerted use of these euphemisms will make it next to impossible to
accept what these persons really are and what their goals are.
Jen
Much of what is sickening about the US as an imperial power today was present well before 1944 –
indeed was present during the 19th century when the US made colonies of Hawaii and the Philippines
in the 1890s, and occupied Haiti in 1915 (?), not leaving that country until the 1930s. Of course
there was also the genocide of First Nations peoples through the theft of their lands, the wars
waged to force them onto reservations, and the massive slaughter of bison as a way of destroying
many indigenous cultures.
nottheonly1
Yes, but never before was the deliberate change of course towards fascism so blatant than with
the ouster of Wallace. This was the watershed moment that turned the U.S. into the greatest
threat for humanity. When You read about Wallace, You will find out that he generally wanted
reconcile with the Native Indian Nation. He wanted cooperation with the Soviet Union/Russians
for a lasting global peace and prosperity for everyone, not just a few American maggots. Present
day U.S. started at that real day of infamy.
Lysias
Wallace was also a big supporter of establishing Israel.
Seamus Padraig
So, whereas they would be able to deal with Warren, they wouldn't be able to deal with Sanders,
whose policy-record is remarkably progressive in all respects, and not only on domestic U.S.
matters.
Frankly, Bernie could be better on foreign policy. While he
did
vote against the Iraq War–I give him all due credit for that–he hasn't really opposed any of
Washington's other wars, coups and régime-change operations in recent memory. Oh: and Bernie, the
self-described socialist, once referred to Hugo Chavez as a "dead dictator". That being said, he would
still be preferable to the remaining flotsam in the today's Democrap Party.
Rhys Jaggar
Forgive me for saying so, but is a party of working folks really supposed to be grovelling for favours
from billionaires? The Republicans are supposed to be the party for the rich, not the Democrats .
And is not time for billionaires to be bumped off by politicians, not politicians bumped off by
billionaires?
A tad uncritical on Sanders, especially his foreign policies, but otherwise an excellent and closely
argued takedown of the risible but sadly widespread delusion that America is a democracy. Thanks Eric.
Wilmers31
Democracy itself does not say anything about quality of life, it's just a system. US democracy runs
on money. Most thing in life do – pretending it is otherwise, that's where the problem is.
Democracy is just the shell – if you fill it with sh1t it's bad; if you fill it with honey it's
sweet.
Biden is remote-controllable, he'd do as told – so of course big money would prefer him.
I've just the other day written
this piece on democracy
. The immediate context is
the fiasco re the UK Queen granting Boris Johnson's request to prorogue (temporarily dissolve)
parliament, but the issues run deeper and wider.
Dungroanin
I skimmed through and didn't spot one mention of Gabbard!
Seems as if she is being non-personed
and ignored as a viable candidate (much like JC has been over here).
There is a long way to that election yet. (The US, ours is finally within reach, unless some
wildebeast tramples in )
The DNC dirty tricks won't wash this time – perhaps its time to start reading and talking about
the nitty gritty of these leaked mails – if for nothing else for the bravery and ultimate sacrifice
of Seth Rich.
Well I'm already stretched perilous thin, DG, but will give it thought.
Meantime,
this piece from last week
by Katia Novella Miller, first of a two parts with second part to
follow on the same KBNB World News site, gives a precis of what Wikileaks showed the world.
The lack of mention of Gabbard is telling, as is the fact the Billionaire crowd (Rubinites) are
pushing for a candidate I ain't even heard of.
The fact remains, a Sanders – Gabbard ticket
against Trump is the preferable outcome for many observers on the Left.
Just as a reminder, neither Sanders & Gabbard are God like figures, in much the same way
Corbyn ain't, however, they are the best available at this juncture in time if we really want
some change, even if it is incremental.
Dungroanin
I think Gabbard is as authentic a new voice as i have ever seen in the DNC. She may well make
it as an independent. Would Sanders?
I read somewhere that the US electorate were self
identified as third Republican, Democrat and independent.
If they were given an independent ticket- not part of the two billionaire funded main
parties then enough may join the independent third from these.
I'd say if a Gabbard/Paul grassroots campaign run by the Sanders 'momentum' network got
their act together the USA may finally mature into a proper democracy not owned by their
neolib con artistes.
Grafter
America where democracy has been extinguished and their increasingly paranoid voters are under the
mistaken belief that yet another talking head can return them to a fair and impartial existence.
Too
late. Money is king and those that have most want more. The sideshow of elections produces the
performing clowns such as Trump, Obama, Bush etc.all spouting the same vacuous promises on behalf of
their wealthy benefactors. No real choice or change and an illusion of caring for the welfare of their
citizenry. Listen carefully to the clowns, it's the sound of money talking.
It is not vey clear for whom Epstein used to work. Mossad connection is just one hypothesis.
What sovereign state would allow compromising politician by a foreign intelligence service. This
just does not compute.
But the whole tone of discussion below clearly point to the crisis of legitimacy of
neoliberal elite. And Russiagate had shown that the elite cares about it and tried to patch the
cracks.
As Eric
Rasmusen writes: "Everybody, it seems, in New York society knew by 2000 that Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were corrupting teenage girls, but the press wouldn't cover it."
Likewise, everybody in New York society has long known that Larry Silverstein, who bought the
asbestos-riddled white elephant World Trade Center in July 2001 and immediately doubled the
insurance, is a mobbed-up friend of Netanyahu and a confessed participant in the controlled
demolition of Building 7 , from which he earned over 700 million insurance dollars on the
pretext that al-Qaeda had somehow brought it down. But the press won't cover that either.
The New York Times , America's newspaper of record, has the investigative talent and
resources to expose major corruption in New York. Why did the Times spend almost two
decades ignoring the all-too-obvious antics of Epstein and Silverstein? Why is it letting the
absurd tale of Epstein's alleged suicide stand? Why hasn't it used the work of Architects and
Engineers for 9/11 Truth -- including the brand-new University of Alaska study on the controlled
demolition of WTC-7 -- to expose the biggest scandal of the 21 st century, if
not all of American history?
The only conceivable answer is that The New York Times is somehow complicit in these
monstrous crimes. It must be protecting its friends in high places. So who are those friends,
and where are those high places?
One thing Epstein and Silverstein have in common, besides names ending in "-stein," is
alleged involvement in the illicit sex industry. Epstein's antics, or at least some of them,
are by now well-known. Not so for Silverstein, who apparently began his rags-to-9/11-riches
story as a pimp supplying prostitutes and nude dancers to the shadier venues of NYC, alongside
other illicit activities including "the heroin trade, money laundering
and New York Police corruption." All of this was exposed in a mid-1990s lawsuit. But good
luck finding any investigative reports in The New York Times .
Another Epstein-Silverstein connection is their relationships to major American Jewish
organizations. Even while he was allegedly pimping girls and running heroin, Larry Silverstein
served as president for United Jewish Appeal of New York. As for Epstein, he was the boy toy
and protégé of Les Wexner, co-founder of
the Mega Group of Jewish billionaires associated with the World Jewish Congress, the
Anti-Defamation League, and other pro-Israel groups. Indeed, there is no evidence that
"self-made billionaire" Epstein ever earned significant amounts of money; his only investment
"client" was Les Wexner. Epstein, a professional sexual blackmailer, used his supposed
billionaire status as a cover story. In fact, he was just an employee working for Wexner and
associated criminal/intelligence networks.
Which brings us to the third and most important Epstein-Silverstein similarity: They were
both close to the government of Israel. Jeffrey Epstein's handler was Ghislaine Maxwell,
daughter of Mossad super-spy Robert Maxwell; among his friends was Ehud Barak, who is currently
challenging Netanyahu for leadership of Israel. Larry Silverstein, too, has friends in high
Israeli places. According to Haaretz , Silverstein has "close ties with Netanyahu"
(speaking to him on the phone every weekend) as well as with Ehud Barak, "whom Silverstein in
the past offered a job as his representative in Israel" and who called Silverstein immediately
after 9/11.
We may reasonably surmise that both Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Silverstein have been carrying
on very important work on behalf of the state of Israel. And we may also surmise that this is
the reason The New York Times has been covering up the scandals associated with both
Israeli agents for almost two decades. The Times , though it pretends to be America's
newspaper of record, has always been Jewish-owned-and-operated. Its coverage has always been
grotesquely
distorted in favor of Israel . It has no interest in exposing the way Israel controls the
United States by blackmailing its leaders (Epstein) and staging a fake "Arab-Muslim attack on
America" (Silverstein). The awful truth is that The New York Times is part of the same
Jewish-Zionist "
we control America " network as Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Silverstein.
Epstein "Suicide" Illustrates Zionist Control of USA -- and the Decadence and Depravity
of Western Secularism
Since The New York Times and other mainstream media won't go there, let's reflect on
the facts and lessons of the Jeffrey Epstein suicide scandal -- a national disgrace that ought
to shock Americans into rethinking their worldviews in general, and their views on the official
myth of 9/11 in particular.
On Saturday, August 10, 2019, convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was allegedly
found dead in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City, one of
America's most corrupt prisons. The authorities claim Epstein hanged himself. But nobody, not
even the presstitutes of America's corporate propaganda media, convincingly pretends to believe
the official story.
Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile pimp to presidents and potentates. His job was recruiting
young girls for sex, then offering them to powerful men -- in settings outfitted with hidden
video cameras. When police raided his New York townhouse on July 6-7 2019 they found locked
safes full of pornographic pictures of underage girls, along with piles of compact discs
labeled "young (name of girl) + (name of VIP)." Epstein had been openly and brazenly carrying
on such activities for more than two decades, as reported throughout most of that period by
alternative media outlets including my own Truth Jihad Radio and False Flag Weekly News . (Even
before the 2016 elections, my audience knew that both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were
blackmailed clients of Jeffrey Epstein, that Clinton was a frequent flyer on Epstein's "Lolita
Express" private jet, and that Trump had been credibly accused in a lawsuit of joining Epstein
in the brutal rape of a 13-year-old, to whom Trump then allegedly issued death threats.) It was
only in the summer of 2019 that mainstream media and New York City prosecutors started talking
about what used to be consigned to the world of "conspiracy theories."
So who was Epstein working for? His primary employer was undoubtedly the Israeli Mossad and
its worldwide Zionist crime network. Epstein's handler was Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of
Mossad super-spy Robert Maxwell. According to sworn depositions, Ghislaine Maxwell recruited
underage girls for Epstein and oversaw his sex trafficking operations. As the New Yorker
reported August 16: "In court papers that were unsealed on August 9th, it was alleged that
Maxwell had been Epstein's central accomplice, first as his girlfriend, and, later, as his
trusted friend and procuress, grooming a steady stream of girls, some as young as fourteen,
coercing them to have sex with Epstein at his various residences around the world, and
occasionally participating in the sexual abuse herself." Alongside Maxwell, Epstein's other
Mossad handler was
Les Wexner, co-founder of the notorious Mega Group of billionaire Israeli spies , who
appears to have originally recruited the penniless Epstein and handed him a phony fortune so
Epstein could pose as a billionaire playboy.
Even after Epstein's shady "suicide" mega-Mossadnik Maxwell continued to flaunt her impunity
from American justice. She no doubt conspired to publicize the August 15 New York Post
photograph of herself smiling and looking "chillingly serene" at In-And-Out-Burger in Los
Angeles, reading The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of C.I.A. Operatives .
That nauseating photo inspired the New
Yorker to accuse her of having "gall" -- a euphemism for the Yiddish chutzpah , a quality
that flourishes in the overlapping Zionist and Kosher Nostra communities.
Maxwell and The New York Post , both Kosher Nostra/Mossad assets, were obviously
sending a message to the CIA: Don't mess with us or we will expose your complicity in these
scandalous crimes. That is the Mossad's standard operating procedure: Infiltrate and compromise
Western intelligence services in order to prevent them from interfering with the Zionists'
over-the-top atrocities. According to French historian
Laurent Guyénot's hypothesis, the CIA's false flag fake assassination attempt on
President John F. Kennedy, designed to be blamed on Cuba, was transformed by Mossad into a real
assassination -- and the CIA couldn't expose it due to its own complicity. (The motive: Stop
JFK from ending Israel's nuclear program.) The same scenario, Guyénot argues, explains
the anomalies of the Mohamed Merah affair
, the Charlie Hebdo killings, and the 9/11 false flag operation. It would not be surprising if
Zionist-infiltrated elements of the CIA were made complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual
blackmail activities, in order to protect Israel in the event Epstein had to be "burned" (which
is apparently what has finally occurred).
So what really happened to Epstein? Perhaps the most likely scenario is that the Kosher
Nostra, which owns New York in general and the mobbed-up MCC prison in particular, allowed the
Mossad to exfiltrate Epstein to Occupied Palestine, where he will be given a facelift, a
pension, a luxury suite overlooking the Mediterranean, and a steady stream of young sex slaves
(Israel is the world's capital of human trafficking, an honor it claimed from the Kosher Nostra
enclaves of Odessa after World War II). Once the media heat wave blows over, Epstein will
undoubtedly enjoy visits from his former Mossad handler Ghislaine Maxwell, his good friend Ehud
Barak, and various other Zionist VIPs. He may even offer fresh sex slaves to visiting American
congressmen.
This is not just a paranoid fantasy scenario. According to Eric
Rasmusen : "The Justice Dept. had better not have let Epstein's body be cremated. And
they'd better give us convincing evidence that it's his body. If I had $100 million to get out
of jail with, acquiring a corpse and bribing a few people to switch fingerprints and DNA
wouldn't be hard. I find it worrying that the government has not released proof that Epstein is
dead or a copy of the autopsy."
But didn't the alleged autopsy reportedly find broken neck bones that are more commonly
associated with strangulation murders than suicides? That controversy may have been scripted to
distract the public from
an insider report on 4chan , first published before the news of Epstein's "suicide" broke,
that Epstein had been "switched out" of MCC. If so, the body with the broken neck bones wasn't
Epstein's.
The Epstein affair (like 9/11) illustrates two critically important truths about Western
secularism: there is no truth, and there are no limits. A society that no longer believes in
God no longer believes in truth, since God is al-haqq, THE truth, without Whom the whole
notion of truth has no metaphysical basis. The postmodern philosophers understand this
perfectly well. They taught a whole generation of Western humanities scholars that truth is
merely a function of power: people accept something as "true" to the extent that they are
forced by power to accept it. So when the most powerful people in the world insist that three
enormous steel-frame skyscrapers were blown to smithereens by relatively modest office fires on
9/11, that absurd assertion becomes the official "truth" as constructed by such Western
institutions as governments, courts, media, and academia. Likewise, the assertion that Jeffrey
Epstein committed suicide under circumstances that render that assertion absurd will probably
become the official "truth" as recorded and promulgated by the West's ruling institutions, even
though nobody will ever really believe it.
Epstein's career as a shameless, openly-operating Mossad sexual blackmailer -- like the
in-your-face 9/11 coup -- also illustrates another core truth of Western secularism: If there
is no God, there are no limits (in this case, to human depravity and what it can get away
with). Or as Dostoevsky famously put it: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
Since God alone can establish metaphysically-grounded limits between what is permitted and what
is forbidden, a world without God will feature no such limits; in such a world Aleister
Crowley's satanic motto "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" becomes the one and
only commandment. In today's Godless West, why should men not "do what they wilt" and
indulge their libidos by raping young girls if they can get away with it? After all, all the
other sexual taboos are being broken, one by one. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality,
sadomasochism, gender-bending all of these have been transformed during my lifetime from crimes
and vices to "human rights" enjoyed by the most liberal and fashionable right-thinking Western
secularists. Even bestiality and necrophilia are poised to become normalized "sexual
identities" whose practitioners will soon be proudly marching in "bestiality pride" and
"necrophilia pride" parades. So why not normalize pedophilia and other forms of rape
perpetrated by the strong against the weak? And why not add torture and murder in service to
sexual gratification? After all, the secret bible of the sexual identity movement is the
collected works of the Marquis de Sade, the satanic prophet of sexual liberation, with whom the
liberal progressivist secular West is finally catching up. It will not be surprising if, just a
few years after the Jeffrey Epstein "suicide" is consigned to the memory hole, we will be
witnessing LGBTQBNPR parades, with the BNPR standing for bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia,
and rape. (It would have been LGBTQBNPRG, with the final G standing for Gropers like President
Trump, except that the G was already taken by the gays.) The P's, pioneers of pedophile pride
parades, will undoubtedly celebrate Jeffrey Epstein as an ahead-of-his-time misunderstood hero
who was unjustly persecuted on the basis of his unusual sexual orientation.
It is getting harder and harder to satirize the decadence and depravity of the secular West,
which insists on parodying itself with ever-increasing outlandishness. When the book on this
once-mighty civilization is written, and the ink is dry, readers will be astounded by the
limitless lies of the drunk-on-chutzpah psychopaths who ran it into the ground.
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought Lucky Larry only leased the WTC buildings rather than
actually purchased them. I think I have read that his investment was in the region of 150
mill for which he has recouped a whopping 4 bill.
Would you please answer a preliminary question before I put finishing this on my busy agenda?
You stake a fair bit of your credit on what you say about Larry Silverstein and insurance. My
present understanding is that the insurance cover for WTC 1 and 2 was increased as a routine
part of the financing deal he had made for a purchase which was only months old. Not true?
Not the full story? Convince us.
As to WTC 7 my understanding is that he had owned the building for some years and had not
recently increased the insurance. Not true? And when did any clause get into his WTC7
insurance contract which might have had some effect on inflating the payout?
“Trump had been credibly accused in a lawsuit of joining Epstein in the brutal rape of
a 13-year-old, to whom Trump then allegedly issued death threats.)”
The “Katie Johnson” case collapsed in 2016 when it was revealed that
“she” was in fact a middle-aged man, a stringer for the Jerry Springer show. Just
another Gloria Allred fraud.
“a society that no longer believes in god no longer believes in the truth, since god is
the truth….blah blah blah”
This is thin gruel indeed…..just silly platitudes from a muzzie convert. There are at
least 100 billion galaxies in the universe with each galaxy containing as many as 100 billion
stars. And there is no telling how many universes there are. Does anyone really believe
Barrett’s preferred deity takes a time out from running this vast empire to service
Barrett’s yearning for “truth”? Just goes to prove that humans will believe
almost any idea as long as it’s sufficiently idiotic.
“The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse
of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that
studied the collapse.”
“It is our conclusion based upon these findings that the collapse of WTC 7 was a
global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of all columns in the building and
not a progressive collapse involving the sequential failure of columns throughout the
building.”
Speaking of the truth v. parody I’d really rather work on the cause of
Epstein’s death –yes I think he’s dead– suicide or
strangulation ?
There are some things the Justice Dept. could do if they wanted to. Why they apparently
didn’t want to expose the corpse in greater detail, let media view the cell, have
correspondent(s) interview the ex- cellmate of Epstein, et.al just leads to suspicions.
This is something they should have to answer for . That includes AG Barr. Trump could make
it happen–like every thing else– if Barr says no. The President won’t.
Dostoyevsky with his “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”
overlooked the Jewish God who permits much more when it comes to Jewish gentile relations.
The Jewish God is not limited by the Kant’s First Moral Imperative. The Jewish
God’s moral laws are not universal. They are context dependent according to the
Leninist Who, whom rule.
Not so for Silverstein, who apparently began his rags-to-9/11-riches story as a pimp
supplying prostitutes and nude dancers to the shadier venues of NYC, alongside other
illicit activities including “the heroin trade, money laundering and New York
Police corruption.”
I would like to see more about the beginnings of Silverstein’s career.
Good work Kevin, Irrelevant exactly what Silverstein did in way of insurance.The FACT is
that WTC7 DID NOT FALL due to fires. Neither did WTC1 or 2. The 6 million dollar question
is ‘WHO put the ‘bang’ in the building?’ to bring them down, by
what ever means. Im in favour of nukes for 1 and 2.
Answer that! Why isnt Silverstein arrested? I think Kevin provided the answer in the
article..
I just stumbled onto your article from a link on reddit, r/epstein. You make some
convincing arguments. I was thrilled that you brought 9/11 into this – because the
Epstein “suicide” and how it is being covered reminds me so much of how I felt
after 9/11 and the run-up to the war. -But you lost me at the end with the stuff about
Godless secularism. I’ve read the bible and it is not the answer to what’s
wrong with the world.
Why did the Times spend almost two decades ignoring the all-too-obvious antics of
Epstein and Silverstein? Why is it letting the absurd tale of Epstein’s alleged
suicide stand?
One thing cannot be denied : Epstein was arrested, denied bail and jailed awaiting trail
on a Federal indictment for much the same offence he had pleaded guilty to a decade ago,
which did not involve even a single homicide yet made him universally reviled and in as
much trouble with the legal system as a man could be (almost certain never to get out
again). Epstein was in far more trouble that anyone of his financial resources has ever
been, but then that was for paying for sex acts with young teen girls.
What an awesomely impressive testament to the impunity enjoyed by the Jewish
elite Epstein is. It is no wonder that Larry Silverstein was insouciant about the risks of
a Jewish lightning fraud controlled demolition killing thousands of people in a building he
had just bought and increased the insurance coverage of. After all, it wasn’t
anything serious like paying for getting hundreds of handjobs from underage girls. And it
is not like someone like the Pizzagate nut that fired his AR15 into underground child
molestation complex beneath the Dems restaurant/pedophile centre would take all those WTC
deaths seriously enough to shoot at him just because of inevitable internet accusations of
mass murder. Mr Barrett, why don’t you step up and do it, thereby proving you
believe the things you say .
@NoseytheDuke Yes, he leased the World Trade Center buildings one and two from the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey. He built World Trade Center building seven, having
acquired a ground lease from Port Authority.
I can’t imagine why you ask this question in a public venue. I found the answer in
less than one minute on the internet.
I assume the insurance policies were for the present value of his net profits for the
duration of the leases.
I recall reading about this guy prior to the event. I believe it was USATODAY . He and a
silent partner had bought the complex with a down of 63million and had it insured for
7billion. I thought it odd that the port authority would let go of the property at the
time.
As the building deficiencies became known afterwards,my thoughts were along the line of
insurance fraud.
I came across a copy of the rand Corp “state of the world 2000” which
accurately describes the scenario and resulting culture of terror as “one possible
future “…. funny how it’s taken all these years to discover this
website.
Indeed, there is no evidence that “self-made billionaire” Epstein ever
earned significant amounts of money.
Good thing that Wexner is Jewish so we can discount the possibility that he was telling
the truth the other month when he said that Epstein stole vast amounts of Wexner money
Alongside Maxwell, Epstein’s other Mossad handler was Les Wexner, co-founder of
the notorious Mega Group of billionaire Israeli spies
Wexner and his fellow Mossad spy Maxwell leaving Virginia Roberts alive to repeatedly
sue them, and use the world”s media to accuse them of sexually abusing, trafficking,
pimping her out to VIPs, and fiming the trysts was a brilliant way to keep everything a
secret.
Mossad handler Ghislaine Maxwell, his good friend Ehud Barak, and various other
Zionist VIPs.
Yes, they are the greatest covert operatives ever.
Epstein’s crimes are simple breaches of etiquette when compared to Silverstein. I
believe the term “Silverstein valleys” has been used to describe the melted
granite discovered beneath the former towers, Silverstein grins widely in interviews, while
so many suffered horribly.
One might even consider the 9/11 deaths to be something of a “holocaust”.
Certainly one of the most evil human beings to have walked the Earth.
@Wizard of Oz Silverstein said he gave the okay for wtc 7 to be “pulled”.
The building was on fire at the time. Either someone wired it to be pulled while it was on
fire and already damaged or it was wired for demolition beforehand. The second scenario
seems a lot more likely. In that case all the insurance contract details are largely
irrelevant to the bigger picture.
The idea that the CIA is somehow independent of Mossad and that Mossad would have to warn
the CIA off of the Epstein matter is implausible to me. Guyenot’s hypothesis tends to
give cover to the CIA in the assassination of JFK by claiming that the CIA plot was set in
motion as some sort of attempt to control JFK and that it was hijacked into an actual
assassination by Mossad. That just isn’t credible.
It’s much more accurate to observe that the CIA was erected by the same zionists
who oversaw the creation of Israel and later the forming of Mossad, and that the two
agencies have been joined at the hip ever since.
@WorkingClass Bad cop good cop. NYT is trying to destroy him . Israel says to him
:” send this , do this ,allow us to do this , increase this by this amount , and we
will make sure that in final analysis you don’t get hurt ”
Trump possibly knows that the only people who could hurt him is the Jewish people of power
.
Has NYT ever criticized Trump for relocating embassy , recognizing Golan, for allowing
Israel use Anerican resources to hit Syria or Gaza , for allowing Israel drag US into more
military involvement. for allowing Israel wage war against Gaza ,? Has NYT ever explored
the dynamics behind abrogation of JCPOA and application of more sanctions?
NYT has focused on Russia gate knowing in advance that it has no merit and no public
traction, Is it hurting Trump or itself ?
People with normal IQ would believe that Epstein killed himself, if the following took
place –
Media day and night asking questions about him from 360 degree of inquiries
1 why the surveillance video were not functioning despite the serious nature of the
charges against a man who could rat out a lot in court against powerful people
2 why the coroner initially thought that Epstein was murdered
3 how many guards and how many fell asleep?
4 who and why allowed the spin story around Epstein brilliance and high IQ build up over
the years ?
5 how does Epstein come to get linked to non -Jews people who have absolute loyalty to
Israel
6 how did Epstein get involved with Jewish leaders ?
7 How did Epstein continue to enjoy seat on Harvard and enjoy social celebrity status after
plea deal ?
8 Why did Wexner allow this man so much control over his asset ?
9 Media felt if terrorism were unique Muslim thing , why media is not alluding to the fact
that pedophilia is a unique Jewish thing ?
10 why the angle of Israel being sex slavery capital and Epstein being sex slave pimp not
being connected ?
11 how death in prison in foreign unfriendly countries often become causus celebre by US
media , politicians , NGO and US treasury – why not this death ?
@Fozzy Bear Not true. A respectable civil rights attorney, Lisa Bloom, handled Katie
Johnson’s case. Shortly before the scheduled press conference at which Johnson was to
appear publicly, she received multiple death threats: “Bloom said that her
firm’s website was hacked, that Anonymous had claimed responsibility, and that death
threats and a bomb threat came in afterwards.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/3/13501364/trump-rape-13-year-old-lawsuit-katie-johnson-allegation
Johnson folded because she was terrified (and perhaps paid off).
@Twodees Partain In “Body of Secrets” by James Bamford, a newspaper article
from the Truman era is referenced where the OSS, predecessor of the CIA, is described as
“a converted vault in Washington used as an office space for 5 or 6 Jews working to
protect our national secrets” (or similar wording).
Going from memory and gave away my copy of the book….. sorry for the vague
reference, but you can look it up.
@nsa An atheist like “nsa” must concede Dosteovsky’s point from his
novel The Possessed that even for the atheist the concept of God represents the collective
consciousness, highest principles, and ontological aspirations of believers. Given this
sense, “nsa’s” real animus is more than likely an atavistic hatred of
Christians and Muslims, probably for just being alive in his paranoid mind. What imbecility
when this clown cites a multiverse of universes that has no proof and less plausibility for
its existence than the tooth fairy. I’d also bet “nsa” speaks algebra,
too, like the recently deceased mathematical genius, Jeffrey Epstein.
What’s Mr. Wexner’s, Mega’s, and Mossad/CIA’s involvement?
That’s the real question trolls like “nsa” and the Dems and Republicans
alike are crapping in their pants we’ll find out. When evidence starts to cascade out
of their ability to spin or suppress it, things will get interesting. Meanwhile, Fox News
is still doing its best from what I can tell to run cover for 911, now extended to the
suspiciously related perps in the Epstein affair.
“The Epstein affair (like 9/11) illustrates two critically important truths about
Western secularism: there is no truth, and there are no limits. A society that no longer
believes in God no longer believes in truth…..”
“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national
consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state,
the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to
build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a
central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own
sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted
scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one
section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open
effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.”
More prophetic words were ever spoken or written by any of the statesmen of the
Twentieth Century than these, even though they themselves were insufficient to describe the
horrors that the Zionist state would bring upon the world if left unchecked- and its power
and influence have been unchecked since the 1960’s. The last time that the world
stood up to Zionist power in an appreciable way was during the Suez Crisis.
DOT.. Port loses claim for asbestos removal | Business Insurance https://www.businessinsurance.com › article
› ISSUE01 › port-loses-claim-… May 13, 2001 – The suit sought claim of the Port Authority’s huge cost
of removing asbestos from hundreds of properties ranging from the enormous World Trade
Center complex
DOT…Silverstein knew when he leased WTC 7 that he would have to pay out of pocket
for asbestos abatement removal in WTC 7, multiple millions, which is why the Port Authority
leased it so cheaply.
DOT…In May, 2000, a year before, signing the lease, he already had the design
drawn for a new WTC building. Silverstein had no plans to remove the asbestos as he already
had plans to replace it.
DOT… Larry Silverstein signs the lease just six weeks before the WTC’s twin
towers were brought to the ground by terrorists in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
DOT….After leasing the complex, Silverstein negotiated with 24 insurance
companies for a maximum coverage of $3.55 billion per catastrophic occurrence.
However, the agreements had not been finalized before 9/11.
DOT…..Silverstein tries to sue insurers for double the payout claiming 2
catastrophic occurrences because of 2 planes involved.
DOT….Silver loses that lawsuit but sues the air lines and settles for almost
another billion, $ 750,000,000.
Just another Jew insurance fire folks. He planned on tearing down WTC 7 to begin with.
The only missing DOT is who he hired to set the demolition explosives in WTC 7. Were they
imported from our ME ally?
While people do not agree of detail the main theme is common: government stories explaining
both 9/11 and Epstein death are not credible. And that government tried to create an "artificial
reality" to hide real events and real culprits.
Absence of credible information create fertile ground for creation of myths and rumors,
sometimes absurd. But that'a well known sociaological phenomenon studies by late Tamotsu Shibutani in the
context of WWII rumors ( Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor (1966)).
Now we can interpret famous quote of
William Casey "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American
public believes is false as an admission of the fact that the government can create artificial
reality" much like in film Matrix and due to thick smoke of propaganda people are simply unable
to discern the truth.
A foreign policy of "maximum pressure" and swagger: tawdry bribes, heavy-handed threats,
and complete failure ..now what group does this remind me of?
US State Dept Program Offers $15 Million to Iran Revolutionary Guards September 4,
2019
The US State Department has unveiled a new $15 million "reward program" for anyone who
provides information on the financial inner workings of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, in an
attempt to further disrupt them.
The program comes after the US declared the Revolutionary Guards "terrorists," but remains
very unusual, in as much as it targets an agency of a national government instead of just
some random militant group.
The Financial Times reports on the farce that is our government's Iran policy:
Four days before the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian tanker suspected of shipping oil
to Syria, the vessel's Indian captain received an unusual email from the top Iran official at
the Department of State.
"This is Brian Hook . . . I work for secretary of state Mike
Pompeo and serve as the US Representative for Iran," Mr Hook wrote to Akhilesh Kumar on
August 26, according to several emails seen by the Financial Times. "I am writing with good
news."
The "good news" was that the Trump administration was offering Mr Kumar several million
dollars to pilot the ship -- until recently known as the Grace 1 -- to a country that would
impound the vessel on behalf of the US. To make sure Mr Kumar did not mistake the email for a
scam, it included an official state department phone number.
The administration's Iran obsession has reached a point where they are now trying to bribe
people to act as pirates on their behalf. When the U.S. was blocked by a court in Gibraltar
from taking the ship, they sought to buy the loyalty of the captain in order to steal it.
Failing that, they resorted to their favorite tool of sanctions to punish the captain and his
crew for ignoring their illegitimate demand. The captain didn't respond to the first message,
so Hook persisted with his embarrassing scheme:
"With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age," Mr Hook wrote in
a second email to Mr Kumar that also included a warning. "If you choose not to take this easy
path, life will be much harder for you."
Many people have already mocked Hook's message for its resemblance to a Nigerian prince
e-mail scam, and I might add that he comes across here sounding like a B-movie gangster.
Hook's contact was not an isolated incident, but part of a series of e-mails and texts that
he has sent to various ships' captains in a vain effort to intimidate them into falling in
line with the administration's economic war. This is what comes of a foreign policy of
"maximum pressure" and swagger: tawdry bribes, heavy-handed threats, and complete
failure.
The Committee of 300 is an evolution of the British East Indies Company Council of 300. The
list personally last seen included many Windsors (Prince Andrew), Rothchilds, other Royals.
Some of the Americans included some now dead and other still living: George HW Bush, Bill
Clinton Tom Steyer, Al Gore, John Kerry, Netanyahu, lots of bankers, Woolsey (ex CIA),
journalists like Michael Bloomberg, Paul Krugman, activists and politians like Tony Blair,
now dead Zbigniew Brzezinski, CEOs Charles and Edgar Bronfman. The list is long and out of
date but these people control much of what goes on whether good or bad. Their hands are
everywhere doing good and maybe some of this bad stuff.
Given the facts a 10 year-old child could see that the official 911 explanation was totally
flawed. Just three of these facts are sufficient, the 'dancing Israelis', Silverstein
admitting to the 'pull (demolish) it' order and the collapse of steel-framed WTC 7 in
freefall despite not being hit. It is not hyperbole to say that America is a failed state
given that the known perpetrators were never even charged. ZOG indeed.
A respectable civil rights attorney, Lisa Bloom, handled Katie Johnson's case.
"Respectable"?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
You do realize that Lisa Bloom is the daughter of Glora Allred and defender of Harvey
Weinstein do you not?
You people are so desperate to try to link Trump to Epstein it's pathetic.
I suggest you go back to your gatekeeping nonsense of trying to discredit the 9/11 Truth
Movement by spreading misinformation about nukes in the towers.
This article stakes out much important ground of information and interpretation Kevin
Barrett. The essay resonates as a historic statement of some of our current predicaments.
What about the comparisons that might be made concerning the mysteries attending the
disappearing corpses of Osama bin Laden and Jeffrey Epstein. And according to Christopher
Ketcham, the release of the High Fivin' Urban Movers back to Israel was partially negotiated
by Alan Dershowitz who played a big role in defending Epstein over a long period.
@anon The ultimate "nutjob quackery" of 9/11 is Phillip Zelikow's 9/11 Commission Report,
a document that stands as a testimony and marker signifying the USA's descent into a mad
hatter's imperium of lies. legend and illusion.
It is getting harder and harder to satirize the decadence and depravity of the secular
West, which insists on parodying itself with ever-increasing outlandishness. When the book
on this once-mighty civilization is written, and the ink is dry, readers will be astounded
by the limitless lies of the drunk-on-chutzpah psychopaths who ran it into the ground
@Kevin Barrett Adding to Junior's comment, I quit reading after you wrote of "credible
accusations" of Mr. Trump being involved "in the brutal rape of a 13 year old." And feminist
shakedown artist Lisa Bloom, daughter of the even more infamous feminist shakedown artist G.
Allred, is your "credible source?" Bloom has about as much credibility as the sicko democrat
women who tried to derail Judge Kavanaugh.
Regardless of how much one might hate Trump (and I'm no Trump supporter) levelling such
unfounded accusations is journalistic malfeasance. Did we elect the Devil Incarnate? Mr.
Barrett, I'm done reading you.
The special relationship between the CIA and the Mossad was driven partly by the efforts of
CIA officer James Angleton . Philip Weiss in his article in Mondoweiss entitled "The goy and
the golem: James Angleton and the rise of Israel." states that Angleton's " greatest service
to Israel was his willingness no to say a word about the apparent diversion of highly
enriched plutonium from a plant in Western Pennsylvania to Israel's nascent nuclear program "
The same program which JFK tried to curtail which efforts may have led to his assassination .
a confessed participant in the controlled demolition of Building 7,
For the love of God, this is stupid. Larry Silverstein was talking about the Fire
Commander , for fuck's sake. The Fire Commander made the decision to pull the
firefighters out of the building because they could not put the fire out and were in
unnecessary danger. That's all he meant. There is not one word in this that has anything to
do with a controlled demolition whatsoever.
In order to believe what the 9/11 Douchers would have you believe about this comment, you
would have to believe that 1) Building 7 was wired for demolition beforehand; 2) That the NYC
Fire Commander somehow knew about this; 3) That the NYC Fire Commander was perfectly okay
with allowing his men to spend hours inside a burning building in which he knew that
explosive charges had already been rigged to blow; 4) That the NYC Fire Commander had the
authority to decide when the charges should be blown and had access to the master switch that
would blow them all; 5) That after 7 hours of attempting to fight the fire, the NYC Fire
Commander (who by now can be nothing but a full-fledged member of the conspiracy) decides,
after briefly consulting with Larry Silverstein, "Oh, the hell with this! Let's just blow up
the building now!", to which Larry Silverstein agrees; 6) That after spending 7 hours in a
burning building that had fires burning randomly throughout it and that had been struck by
multiple pieces of debris, all of the explosive charges and their detonators were still in
perfect working order; 7) That none of the firefighters extensively searching the building
for survivors happened to notice any of the pre-placed explosive charges nor thought it
necessary to report about such; 8) That the NYC Fire Commander then proceeds to "pull" the
building after presumably giving some other order for the men to evacuate, which order was
never recorded because the "pull" order must have meant "blow up the building"; 9) And that
Larry Silverstein, after being part of a massive conspiracy involving insurance fraud,
murder, and arson which, if exposed, would send him to a federal death sentence, just decides
to casually mention all of this in a television interview for all and sundry to see, but it
is only the 9/11 Douchers who pick up on the significance of it.
Does any of this sound remotely believable? Did anyone subscribing to this nonsense stop
to think about the context in which this conversation took place? Do any of you 9/11 Douchers
even care that you're being completely ridiculous and grasping at nonexistent straws in your
vain attempt to establish some sort of case for controlled demolition? Do you even care that
everybody can see that what you are saying makes no sense at all? It is perfectly
obvious that Larry Silverstein is NOT talking about controlled demolition here. To
believe otherwise would require you to literally be insane, to not understand the plain
meaning of words and to have no awareness of conversational contexts; yet not only have you
swallowed all of this, you have been beating the drum of this insanity for nearly 20
years.
There is no point in reasoning with an insane person. There is, however, the possibility
that you don't really believe what you are saying and are just flogging a hobbyhorse, in
which case it is you who are engaging in mendacious journalism and trafficking in
lies. In either case, you need to be silenced. Neither lies nor insanity have any "right" to
be uttered in the public square. You 9/11 Douchers are really the ones doing everything you
accuse the mainstream media of doing, and worse. You have become a danger to the public weal
and must be stopped. Your conspiratorial nonsense just isn't cute anymore.
The official stories about the Kennedy assassination, Epstein's death, and 9/11 are
clearly suspect. No one with the capacity for critical thinking can seriously deny this.
Which elements of these stories are true and which are false will never be resolved.
Because:
The mainstream media including Fox News have abdicated their mission as fact finders and
truth tellers. They peddle entertainment and sell ad space. Rachel Maddow foaming at the
mouth about Trump's pee tape and Hannity fulminating about FISA abuse are the same product,
simply aimed at different demographics.
Nothing in the above two paragraphs is even remotely novel. It's all been said before
twenty bazillion times.
Being a feminist or Democrat (or nonfeminist or Republican) is irrelevant to a person's
credibility. It's possible that Lisa Bloom was part of a conspiracy to invent a fictitious
Katy Johnson story, in which case Bloom is guilty of criminal fraud as well as civil libel.
That would be quite a risk for her to take, to say the least. It's also possible that she was
somehow duped by others, in which case they would be running the civil and criminal
liabilities, while she would just get disbarred for negligence.
The same is true of Johnson's attorney Thomas Meagher.
It is also possible that Johnson's story is at least roughly accurate. There is supporting
testimony from another Epstein victim.
If you set aside your prejudices about Democrats-Republicans, feminists-antifeminists,
Trump-Hillary, etc., and just look at what's been reported, you'll agree with me that the
allegations are credible (but of course unproven). If you suffer emotional blocks against
thinking such things about a President, as so many did when similar things were reported
about Bill Clinton, I sympathize but also urge you to get psychiatric treatment so you can
learn to face unpleasant facts and then get to work cleaning up this country.
The release of Prof. J. Leroy Hulsey report on the finite element analysis of the WTC7
collapse should be a big news.
But won't be.
Democracy works this way. The ruling elite, via the media, Hollywood, etc., tell the
people what to think, the people then vote according to the way they think.
So the truth of 9/11 will never be known to the majority unless we have a public statement
from George W. Bush acknowledging that he personally lit the fuse that set off the explosions
that brought WTC 7 down at free-fall
speed .
This is fortunate for the intrepid Dr. Hulsey* who would, presumably, otherwise have had
to be dispatched by a sudden heart attack, traffic accident, weight-lifting accident suicide
with a bullet to the back of the head. As it is, hardly anyone will ever know what he will
say or what it means.
* Fortunate also for those who so rashly advocate for truth here and elsewhere on the yet
to be fully controlled Internets.
Nicely done. Article will not be featured on front page NYT & discussed on TV.
There are many highlights in your article. This is one.
Epstein's career as a shameless, openly-operating Mossad sexual blackmailer -- like the
in-your-face 9/11 coup -- also illustrates another core truth of Western secularism: If
there is no God, there are no limits (in this case, to human depravity and what it can get
away with). Or as Dostoevsky famously put it: "If God does not exist, everything is
permitted."
Please consult the following papers about the CIA/Mossad crimes against humanity and their
pimps who pose as 'politicians' of the fake Western 'democracy' where Epstein was their agent
serving their interest as a PIMP.
{from being the work of a single political party, intelligence agency or country, the
power structure revealed by the network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal
enterprise that is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power,
wealth and control.}
"... Last Friday, August 30th, Sidney Powell filed a brief with the District Court in the District of Columbia laying out in exquisite detail the misconduct of the Mueller prosecutors, who have withheld exculpatory evidence. The document is still behind a pay wall (Pacer). But let me share with you some of the salient points of this filing: ..."
"... Likewise, the prosecutors did not produce evidence of Weissmann's and Ahmad's relationship and work with Bruce Ohr on transmitting the corrupt information to the FBI, and the numerous 302s resulting from the interviews of Bruce Ohr by the second agent. ..."
"... This case, involving Adam Lovinger, is related to issues involving Mr. Flynn, as Mr. Lovinger was wrongly charged (and secretly cleared) after blowing the whistle on the fraudulent payments to FBI/CIA/DOD operative Stefan Halper -- a central figure in the government's targeting and intelligence abuses of the last several years -- including against Mr. Flynn. ..."
"... Got that? The Mueller prosecutors lied about what the investigation of Mr. Lovinger concluded. He did NOT, repeat NOT, "yield any classified or sensitive information. " But Mueller's team of hacks, disgraceful pieces of excrement, took out the word, "NOT". ..."
"... How in the hell does Goldman know what is in those "transcripts"? He was told. ..."
"... But there is a broader, more important point--Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador was not illegal. It was not improper. He could discuss whatever he wanted to discuss as the incoming National Security Advisor for Donald Trump. This was a false claim by the Mueller Prosecutors. ..."
"... If the Mueller team, what is left of it, was confident of their position, they would not have leaked this story to the New York Times hack, Goldman. This is a sign of desperation and panic. ..."
"... Knowing what we know about Judge Sullivan, who is in charge of the Michael Flynn case, he is likely to be furious by this bald lying by Mueller's hacks. ..."
"... On another front of the Russiagate affair, per a Monsieur America Twitter thread, Loretta Lynch in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee has absolved herself of any involvement in the FISA warrant on Carter Page. https://twitter.com/MonsieurAmerica/status/1168885394269564928 ..."
"... Now the rats are throwing their subordinates under the sinking ship. Good to know the grandma AG had time to meet Hillary's husband on the tarmac but no time to be briefed about "foreign interference" in our election. I can't wait to hear Obama's excuse. ..."
"... Flynn may have been set up and lied to right and left, BUT... how did he get three stars? He comes across in this as a victim and a dummy. ..."
The short answer to the title of this article--YES!!
Michael Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, is a honey badger. If you do not know anything about honey badgers I encourage you
to watch the documentary, Honey Badgers, Master's of Mayhem . They tear
the testicles off of lions. And it sure looks like Ms. Powell is emasculating prosecutor Andrew Weisman.
Last Friday, August 30th, Sidney Powell filed a brief with the District Court in the District of Columbia laying out in exquisite
detail the misconduct of the Mueller prosecutors, who have withheld exculpatory evidence. The document is still behind a pay wall
(Pacer). But let me share with you some of the salient points of this filing:
The government's most stunning suppression of evidence is perhaps the text messages of Peter Srzok and Lisa Page. In July of 2017,
(now over two years ago), the Inspector General of the Department of Justice advised Special Counsel of the extreme bias in the now
infamous text messages of these two FBI employees. Mr. Van Grack did not produce a single text messages to the defense until March
13, 2018, when he gave them a link to then-publicly available messages.14
Mr. Van Grack and Ms. Ahmad, among other things, did not disclose that FBI Agent Strzok had been fired from the Special Counsel
team as its lead agent almost six months earlier because of his relationship with Deputy Director McCabe's Counsel -- who had also
been on the Special Counsel team -- and because of their text messages and conduct. One would think that more than a significant
subset of those messages had to have been shared by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice with Special Counsel to warrant
such a high-level and immediate personnel change.
Indeed, Ms. Page left the Department of Justice because of her conduct, and Agent Strzok was terminated from the FBI because of
it.
Likewise, the prosecutors did not produce evidence of Weissmann's and Ahmad's relationship and work with Bruce Ohr on transmitting
the corrupt information to the FBI, and the numerous 302s resulting from the interviews of Bruce Ohr by the second agent.
The Government's misconduct was not limited to General Flynn. Ms. Powell describes in detail how the Government lied in another
case related to General Flynn:
In yet another recent demonstration of egregious government misconduct, the government completely changed the meaning of exculpatory
information in a declassified version of a report -- by omitting the word "not." This case, involving Adam Lovinger, is related
to issues involving Mr. Flynn, as Mr. Lovinger was wrongly charged (and secretly cleared) after blowing the whistle on the fraudulent
payments to FBI/CIA/DOD operative Stefan Halper -- a central figure in the government's targeting and intelligence abuses of the
last several years -- including against Mr. Flynn.
Mr. Lovinger had been an analyst at the Pentagon for more than ten years when he was detailed to the White House at then-National
Security Advisor Flynn's request. Mr. Lovinger voiced concerns internally regarding the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment for prioritizing
academic reports (one of which was written by Stefan Halper) at the expense of real threat assessments. He was recalled to the Pentagon,
accused of mishandling sensitive information, stripped of his security clearance, and suspended. As it turned out, the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service conducted a thorough examination of his electronic devices, but "[a]gents found no evidence he leaked to the
press, as charged, or that he was a counterintelligence risk.
Even though the investigation exonerated Mr. Lovinger of these charges a full month before Mr. Lovinger's hearing, the government
did not reveal to Mr. Lovinger's attorneys that this investigation occurred.17 Even worse, the declassified version of the NCIS left
out a crucial "not". It read that the investigation "did yield any classified or sensitive information,"18 when the truth was the
investigation "did not yield any classified or sensitive information."19 The declassified version omitted the word "not."
Got that? The Mueller prosecutors lied about what the investigation of Mr. Lovinger concluded. He did NOT, repeat NOT, "yield
any classified or sensitive information. " But Mueller's team of hacks, disgraceful pieces of excrement, took out the word, "NOT".
Now here is where it gets interesting. Sidney Powell filed her document on Friday night (30 August). She also submitted a sealed
portion detailing how the Mueller team has lied about the evidence. I have seen one of the affidavits she filed. I will not say who
or what it contained other than to expose specific details how Michael Flynn's Fourth Amendment rights were violated. But the prosecutors
ran immediately to Adam Goldman of the New York Times as leaked this sealed information.
Adam wrote an article the same day and "reported" the following:
Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, the president's first national security adviser, escalated their attacks on prosecutors on Friday,
recycling unfounded conspiratorial accusations in a last-ditch bid to delay his sentencing in a case in which he has twice admitted
guilt.
The move could anger Emmet G. Sullivan, the federal judge who will sentence Mr. Flynn. The filings could magnify any doubts
by Judge Sullivan about whether Mr. Flynn truly accepts responsibility for his crime of lying to the F.B.I. and whether he fulfilled
his cooperation agreement with the government in one of the lingering cases brought by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller
III.
In a pair of filings, Mr. Flynn's lawyers made clear that they view him as a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, amplifying
right-wing theories about a so-called deep state of government bureaucrats working to undermine President Trump. The defense lawyers
accused prosecutors of engaging in "pernicious" conduct in Mr. Flynn's case, saying they had been "manipulating or controlling
the press to their advantage to extort that plea."
Yet, when you read the full filing by Ms. Powell, not a single "unfounded conspiratorial accusation" is discussed. The prosecutors
gave that protected information to Goldman.
Worse, the prosecutors gave Goldman information from the NSA intercepts of Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador.
So far, the Mueller team of miscreants have refused to turn over this material to Michael Flynn's lawyer. But they shared it with
Goldman, who wrote:
"We must have access to that information to represent our client consistently with his constitutional rights and our ethical
obligations," Mr. Flynn's lawyers wrote.
The classified transcripts of the calls make clear that the two men discussed sanctions at length and that Mr. Flynn was highly
unlikely to have forgotten those details when questioned by the F.B.I., several former United States officials familiar with the
documents have said. It was clear, the officials said, that sanctions were the only thing Mr. Flynn wanted to talk about with
Mr. Kislyak.
Mr. Flynn's lawyers also suggested in the filing that the government had exculpatory material, but it is not clear if they
consider the transcripts to be that material. Some conservatives have embraced a theory that Mr. Flynn's nonchalance in the F.B.I.
interview, which agents documented because it seemed at odds with how blatantly he was lying, was exonerating.
How in the hell does Goldman know what is in those "transcripts"? He was told.
But there is a broader, more important point--Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador was not illegal. It
was not improper. He could discuss whatever he wanted to discuss as the incoming National Security Advisor for Donald Trump. This
was a false claim by the Mueller Prosecutors.
If the Mueller team, what is left of it, was confident of their position, they would not have leaked this story to the New
York Times hack, Goldman. This is a sign of desperation and panic.
Knowing what we know about Judge Sullivan, who is in charge of the Michael Flynn case, he is likely to be furious by this
bald lying by Mueller's hacks.
Should be an interesting week ahead. Sidney Powell will probably be feasting on a heaping plate of prosecutor balls. Like the
Honey Badger, she is ripping them a new one.
They were incompetents. They should be sued for malpractice and disbarred. They helped serve up General Flynn and he trusted them.
That's now water under the bridge. Sidney Powell is a force to be reckoned with.
They might have been too scared of what Mueller would do to them if they put up a good case for Flynn.
I think the same thing happened to George Popadopoulos who had his lawyers roll over and play dead before Mueller.
You need to find Lawyers who are not afraid of the system, or are in bed with the system.
The "confession" they got Papadopolus to sign made no sense and almost looked like it had been altered after Papadopolus had already
signed his name. There were a series of very disjointed and irrelevant statements of facts, to which Papadopolus agreed they were
factual.
Then pow at the very end was basically a confession he had violated the Logan Act.
None of the prior statements supported this conclusion, but as the cherry on top of his "confession" was the claim he engaged
in policy level discussions with the very highest Russian higher ups while Obama was still President. (Was he ever in this role
- hard to remember?).
That always struck me as a very weird "confession - but there is was with Papadolopus's signature on it, and accepted by the
deep state investigating authorities.
This "confession" deserves a re-read in light of what we are learning now about the set-up and ambush mentality of the deep
state "investigators.
On another front of the Russiagate affair, per a Monsieur America Twitter thread, Loretta Lynch in testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee has absolved herself of any involvement in the FISA warrant on Carter Page.
https://twitter.com/MonsieurAmerica/status/1168885394269564928
Now the rats are throwing their subordinates under the sinking ship. Good to know the grandma AG had time to meet Hillary's
husband on the tarmac but no time to be briefed about "foreign interference" in our election. I can't wait to hear Obama's excuse.
Logically just doesn't make sense - it's almost as if the person editing the NCIS report decided he didn't like doing what he
asked to do and produced a piece of text that only really made sense with a "not" in it. Either that, or he was actually an idiot.
Flynn may have been set up and lied to right and left, BUT... how did he get three stars? He comes across in this as a victim
and a dummy.
He should have known that the FBI NEVER interviews people honestly. The agents told him that he didn't need a lawyer so he
didn't call one. That's just massive stupid.
Cops I know have told me to NEVER talk to police without a lawyer present. How come the former head of the DIA didn't know
that?
"... It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1 threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent accusation. ..."
"... Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? ..."
"... Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. ..."
"... Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began -- by whom, when, and why. ..."
"... Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? ..."
"... the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits. ..."
"... First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.) ..."
"... At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy. ..."
It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic
allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then
president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016
presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1
threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent
accusation.
Even leaving aside the misperception
that Russia is the primary threat to America in world affairs, no aspect of this allegation has
turned out to be true, as should have been evident from the outset. Major aspects of the now
infamous Steele Dossier, on which much of the allegation was based, were themselves not merely
"unverified" but plainly implausible.
Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of
international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or
control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning
anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the
election? Nonetheless, the American mainstream media and other important elements of the
US political establishment relied on Steele's allegations for nearly three years, even
heroizing him -- and some still do, explicitly or implicitly.
Not surprisingly, former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion"
between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. No credible evidence has been produced that
Russia's "interference" affected the result of the 2016 presidential election in any
significant way. Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital
Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than
President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the
reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.
Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political
life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for
Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed
people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began
-- by whom, when, and why.
Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to
suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This
too is not believable, as I pointed out previously .
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young
Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation
against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)
But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems
clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer
might be because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a
pro-détente foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive,
advocacy by a would-be Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in
the 20th century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and
Reagan.
So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful
reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being
overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not. Barr has already
leveled procedural charges against James Comey, head of the FBI under President Obama and
briefly under President Trump, but the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having
initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a
president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and
Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely
culprits.
The FBI is no longer the fearsome organization it once was and thus not hard to investigate,
as Barr has already shown. The others, particularly the CIA, are a different matter, and Barr
has suggested they are resisting. To investigate them, particularly the CIA, it seems, he has
brought in a veteran prosecutor-investigator, John Durham.
Which raises other questions. Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations
with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?
And can they really do so fully, given the resistance already apparent? Even if so, will Barr
make public their findings, however damning of the intelligence agencies they may be, or will
he classify them? And if the latter, will President Trump use his authority to declassify the
findings as the 2020 presidential election approaches in order to discredit the role of Obama's
presidency and its would-be heirs?
Equally important perhaps, how will mainstream media treat the Barr-Durham investigation and
its findings? Having driven the Russiagate narrative for so long and so misleadingly -- and
with liberals perhaps finding themselves in the incongruous position of defending rogue
intelligence agencies -- will they credit or seek to discredit the findings?
It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal
investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly
bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the
mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US
intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable,
and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.
There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First
and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not
about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in
Russiagate.)
At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked
about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would
do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host ofThe John Batchelor Show
. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com .
Stephen
F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New
York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book
War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback
and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now
in their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com .
"... What do all those "safe" candidates have in common? Oh, that's right- they all lost . ..."
"... So the more overtly neoliberal candidates are stalling or bailing, with the more progressive candidates (actually or putatively) -- Sanders and Warren -- sailing along. Is that some kind of surprise? ..."
Warren has the Acela corridor's backing and that has been expressed in some fawning
coverage from the likes of the WaPo and NYT. Krugman has hinted that she's his candidate as
well.
Unless something completely untoward happens, expect her to get great reviews in the next
debate.
I don't see how a classic Massachusetts liberal like Warren (to me she's very close to
Teddy K in her policy views ) motivates enough abstaining voters to beat Trump. Not enough
there, there.
Re the polls: Matt Taibbi recently wrote that if Biden lost ground Sanders would be the
likely gainer, since Bernie is the second choice for most Biden supporters. But it appears
Warren is benefiting as Biden slides.
Too bad. Still, maybe it's just the minority of Biden supporters who pick Warren as their
2nd choice who are bailing on Biden so far. Sanders may still gain if the more hard-core
Bidenites begin to leave.
As for Beto's plan to snatch our AK's and AR's, good for him for being so forthright. It's
a terrible idea, but one can appreciate the flat-out honesty.
" the enduring questions surrounding Biden's age and fitness for office may mean
Democrats will lack the "safe" choice they have had in the past, whether the candidate has
been former Vice President Al Gore in 2000, former U.S. Senator John Kerry in 2004 or
Clinton, the former U.S. senator and secretary of state, in 2008 and 2016."
What do all those "safe" candidates have in common? Oh, that's right- they all lost
.
That and they didn't upset the apple carts of the political consultants and the major
donors.
Funnily I think the author is missing several 'safe' candidates still in the running, all
of whom might secure the nomination on the second ballot depending on who the superdelegate
darling is. All of whom would probably be able to uphold that loss record of the safe
candidate.
I didn't click through to read if it was a joke, but I suspect "safe" for Team Blue types
means "a candidate who most assuredly won't be criticized by the Republicans."
Al Gore would blunt whining about the deficit. John Kerry was for a "stronger America."
Hillary was so qualified and had faced all arrows including machine gun fire in Serbia.
Yep, those moderate Republicans are going to eliminate the need for Team Blue elites to ever
have to worry about the poors again.
Right -- and none of them had the press openly speculating about a lack of cognitive
capacity, as is happening with the current "safe" candidate. That's what passes for "safe"
these days, I guess.
Also: "Biden's appeal wanes," Gillibrand crashes and burns, Harris "hasn't caught fire,"
and Black Lives Matter of South Bend calls for Buttigieg to resign as mayor. (What
language(s) will "Mayor Pete" give his resignation speech in, one wonders.)
So the more
overtly neoliberal candidates are stalling or bailing, with the more progressive candidates
(actually or putatively) -- Sanders and Warren -- sailing along. Is that some kind of
surprise?
I work for a law firm that represents Wall Street banks and I can tell you who they don't
like, and that is Sanders and Warren. They hate that Warren created the CFPB and blew the
whistle on Wells Fargo and all the other games being played by Wall Street banks. Therefore, I
will vote for either of them, Warren preferred.
The DCCC came under fire for implementing a
blacklist for any
organization that assisted any left-wing challenger to an incumbent corporate Democrat. This caused a lot of anger and backlash
on the left.
The DSCC saw this and thought
"We can do one better."
Before the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in a 2020 Senate race,
it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The
Intercept.
Andrew Romanoff, who is one of more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner's seat, told The Intercept
that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign citing pressure from the DSCC.
"They've made it clear to a number of the firms and individuals we tried to hire that they wouldn't get any business in
Washington or with the DSCC if they worked with me," Romanoff said. "It's been a well-orchestrated operation to blackball ragtag
grassroots teams."
At least five firms and 25 prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has raised more than
$1 million in individual contributions so far. "I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke to the staff prospects," he
said. "Pretty much everyone who checked in with the DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them."
Shameless, but not surprising.
I support a #GreenNewDeal
& #MedicareForAll . Those
priorities don't sit well with the party bosses & powerbrokers in Washington -- but I'm not running to represent them.
I'm running to represent the people of Colorado. They deserve a fair shot too.
https://t.co/oeitawXHA9
Just to be clear, there is no incumbent Democrat in this race.
The DSCC is simply blacklisting progressive groups - period. It doesn't stop at consultants.
Individuals connected to a handful of campaigns across the country said they've heard about interventions by national Democrats,
either in the form of the DSCC pressuring consultants not to work with progressive candidates, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer telling people not to run for office in the first place.
"First they came for the House candidates; now they're gonna come for the Senate candidates," said Heather Brewer, who is
managing the Senate campaign of New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a progressive who was snubbed by the
DSCC, which made an early endorsement of Ben Ray Luján, a member of House Democratic leadership. "It's not rocket science to
see where this is heading.
Getting back to Hickenlooper, the Democratic establishment has rushed to endorse him despite a
half dozen
women were already running for the seat.
The DSCC has also picked winners before the primaries in other important races.
Socialprogressive on Fri, 08/30/2019 - 1:59pm gjohnsit on Fri, 08/30/2019 - 2:14pm
In 2017, nearly two-thirds of the over 1,000 candidates the Working Families Party endorsed won their elections, including
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. Just last year, the party
helped install 457 candidates in local and statewide offices, out of the 820 candidates it endorsed across 38 states. The electoral
successes the party shared in 2018's blue wave have continued into 2019: Over the course of five months, their chosen candidates
were elected into more than 50 offices at local and municipal levels, including on city councils and school boards, in nine
states.
The organization in some ways serves as a complement to at least a wing of the Democratic Party: by focusing on nonpartisan
positions in local politics, the group has been able to install progressive officials on city councils and school boards, while
also helping increase voter turnout for both partisan and nonpartisan elections. As Bob Brady's reaction to Kendra Brooks demonstrates,
however, Democrats don't always see it that way.
"We should be seen as a welcoming force to build the Democratic Party toward 2020," Brooks, a small business owner and mother
of five, said in an interview last month. "It doesn't have to be 'either or,'" she continued. "It should be 'this and.' Like,
yes, the Democratic Party is the largest party here in Philadelphia. And why can't we have a strong independent base as well?
So we, together -- Democrats and independents -- can have a stronger base toward 2020."
The WFP is known for running independent progressive candidates that challenge corporate-friendly Democratic politics. Their
vision is to not only win races but organize around local and municipal elections, building capacity for the left to make gains
beyond Election Day. Their policy priorities include expanding workers' rights, opposing right-to-work laws, raising the minimum
wage, reforming drug scheduling and misdemeanor sentencing, and establishing paid family medical leave.
This may, or may not, be the case with your State, County or Local branches, but it is certainly the case for the National
Party and any organization whose initials begin with "D" and end with "C".
From Jacobin :
The DNC
Doesn't Want a Climate Debate for a Reason
The DNC has banned the Democratic presidential candidates from taking part in any debate on the most urgent issue of our
time: climate change. The party's fealty to plutocratic donors and centrist has-been politicians has never been more apparent.
.......................
While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether
hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to continue
to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by -- and depend on the continued
existence of -- the very rich, our planet's biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution through private jets
and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.) The finance class
does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich from destroying the
planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That's probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of a climate debate "dangerous."
One place to start looking for a historical analogy for the Democrats would be the Vichy regime in France between 1940 and
1942. The Vichy French were collaborators, agreeing on their own to (for instance) send France's Jews to Auschwitz to be exterminated.
The difference, of course, is that France was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, whereas the Democratic Party leadership appears
to have decided to steer the entire party into collaboration with the Republican Party on its very own, without any invasion or
anything of that sort.
Of course, the Vichy regime collapsed after the Allies took over the French colonies in North Africa in 1942, and from 1942
to 1944 the whole of France was ruled directly from Berlin. The Democrats, on the other hand, have yet to feel the sort of pressure
that would make them reveal their true colors and switch parties. On the other hand, there was a close call under Obama:
Yep, that's what they did. Good ole' Debbie Wasserman-Schultz bundled up the party contributions and sent them off to Obama
and to the second Clinton, leaving downticket races in the states high and dry. By the end of 2016 there were six states with
Democratic Party trifectas (Democratic governors ruling Democratic legislatures) and 26 states with Republican trifectas, even
though in membership terms the Republican Party was still a minority party.
This may, or may not, be the case with your State, County or Local branches, but it is certainly the case for the National
Party and any organization whose initials begin with "D" and end with "C".
From Jacobin :
The
DNC Doesn't Want a Climate Debate for a Reason
The DNC has banned the Democratic presidential candidates from taking part in any debate on the most urgent issue of
our time: climate change. The party's fealty to plutocratic donors and centrist has-been politicians has never been more
apparent.
.......................
While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether
hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to
continue to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by -- and depend on
the continued existence of -- the very rich, our planet's biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution
through private jets and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.)
The finance class does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich
from destroying the planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That's probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of
a climate debate "dangerous."
The Democrats, on the other hand, have yet to feel the sort of pressure that would make them reveal their true colors and switch
parties.
But since the 2016 rigged primary they've been exposing themselves more and more.
Remember
this
from 2018?
Our Revolution, the progressive group formed after Bernie Sanders's presidential run in 2016, just endorsed a Democrat who
found herself the subject of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attack ahead of Tuesday's Texas primary...
The DCCC took a square shot at Moser last week, publishing an opposition research memo on its website against Moser.
Now add in the blacklisting and the picture is almost complete.
One place to start looking for a historical analogy for the Democrats would be the Vichy regime in France between 1940 and
1942. The Vichy French were collaborators, agreeing on their own to (for instance) send France's Jews to Auschwitz to be exterminated.
The difference, of course, is that France was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, whereas the Democratic Party leadership appears
to have decided to steer the entire party into collaboration with the Republican Party on its very own, without any invasion
or anything of that sort.
Of course, the Vichy regime collapsed after the Allies took over the French colonies in North Africa in 1942, and from 1942
to 1944 the whole of France was ruled directly from Berlin. The Democrats, on the other hand, have yet to feel the sort of
pressure that would make them reveal their true colors and switch parties. On the other hand, there was a close call under
Obama:
Yep, that's what they did. Good ole' Debbie Wasserman-Schultz bundled up the party contributions and sent them off to Obama
and to the second Clinton, leaving downticket races in the states high and dry. By the end of 2016 there were six states with
Democratic Party trifectas (Democratic governors ruling Democratic legislatures) and 26 states with Republican trifectas, even
though in membership terms the Republican Party was still a minority party.
One place to start looking for a historical analogy for the Democrats would be the Vichy regime in France between 1940 and
1942. The Vichy French were collaborators, agreeing on their own to (for instance) send France's Jews to Auschwitz to be exterminated.
The difference, of course, is that France was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, whereas the Democratic Party leadership appears
to have decided to steer the entire party into collaboration with the Republican Party on its very own, without any invasion
or anything of that sort.
Of course, the Vichy regime collapsed after the Allies took over the French colonies in North Africa in 1942, and from 1942
to 1944 the whole of France was ruled directly from Berlin. The Democrats, on the other hand, have yet to feel the sort of
pressure that would make them reveal their true colors and switch parties. On the other hand, there was a close call under
Obama:
Yep, that's what they did. Good ole' Debbie Wasserman-Schultz bundled up the party contributions and sent them off to Obama
and to the second Clinton, leaving downticket races in the states high and dry. By the end of 2016 there were six states with
Democratic Party trifectas (Democratic governors ruling Democratic legislatures) and 26 states with Republican trifectas, even
though in membership terms the Republican Party was still a minority party.
This may, or may not, be the case with your State, County or Local branches, but it is certainly the case for the National
Party and any organization whose initials begin with "D" and end with "C".
From Jacobin :
The
DNC Doesn't Want a Climate Debate for a Reason
The DNC has banned the Democratic presidential candidates from taking part in any debate on the most urgent issue of
our time: climate change. The party's fealty to plutocratic donors and centrist has-been politicians has never been more
apparent.
.......................
While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether
hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to
continue to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by -- and depend on
the continued existence of -- the very rich, our planet's biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution
through private jets and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.)
The finance class does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich
from destroying the planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That's probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of
a climate debate "dangerous."
political consultant.
And I get hired by some leftie.
And I do my job.
I would never, ever get hired by an establishment Democrat.
EVER.
This is just an insidious, capitalistic freeze out of democracy. Lefties need to starve. We Democrats of Correct (Right) Thinking
make that happen every day, all day long.
But watching this unfold after 2016, I can't say I'm surprised. Of course they were going to sabotage progressive candidates.
The means may be news, but not the motivation.
But watching this unfold after 2016, I can't say I'm surprised. Of course they were going to sabotage progressive candidates.
The means may be news, but not the motivation.
Some do it with vinegar, some with honey, or, at least, a feint at honey:
Job offer from the Obama Administration
On September 27, 2009, Michael Riley of the Denver Post reported that Romanoff was offered a position in the Obama Administration
in exchange for not running for U.S. Senate against Michael Bennet.[21] According to Riley, Jim Messina, deputy Chief of Staff
to President Barack Obama, made a phone call to Romanoff offering him various positions in the Obama Administration, including
one at the United States Agency for International Development. Romanoff turned down the offer.[22]
Romanoff issued a statement on June 2, 2010, in which he confirmed that Messina had contacted him on September 11, 2009
and told him that President Obama was going to support Bennet in the Democratic primary. Romanoff told Messina that he would
be running anyway and Romanoff states, as reported by the Washington Post, that Messina "suggested three positions that might
be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these
positions." White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told the Post that "Mr. Romanoff was recommended to the White House
from Democrats in Colorado for a position in the administration. There were some initial conversations with him, but no job
was ever offered." Messina sent Romanoff job descriptions for three positions: an administrator for the Latin America and Caribbean
Bureau within USAID, the chief of the Office of Democracy and Governance within USAID, and the director of the U.S. Trade and
Development Agency.[23][24]
On June 10, 2010, KDVR reported that Bennet said he had known about the White House's offer to Romanoff.[25]
@HenryAWallace
Now I find out I was wrong. What a slick prick he was/is.
Some do it with vinegar, some with honey, or, at least, a feint at honey:
Job offer from the Obama Administration
On September 27, 2009, Michael Riley of the Denver Post reported that Romanoff was offered a position in the Obama Administration
in exchange for not running for U.S. Senate against Michael Bennet.[21] According to Riley, Jim Messina, deputy Chief of
Staff to President Barack Obama, made a phone call to Romanoff offering him various positions in the Obama Administration,
including one at the United States Agency for International Development. Romanoff turned down the offer.[22]
Romanoff issued a statement on June 2, 2010, in which he confirmed that Messina had contacted him on September 11, 2009
and told him that President Obama was going to support Bennet in the Democratic primary. Romanoff told Messina that he would
be running anyway and Romanoff states, as reported by the Washington Post, that Messina "suggested three positions that
might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any
of these positions." White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told the Post that "Mr. Romanoff was recommended to
the White House from Democrats in Colorado for a position in the administration. There were some initial conversations with
him, but no job was ever offered." Messina sent Romanoff job descriptions for three positions: an administrator for the
Latin America and Caribbean Bureau within USAID, the chief of the Office of Democracy and Governance within USAID, and the
director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.[23][24]
On June 10, 2010, KDVR reported that Bennet said he had known about the White House's offer to Romanoff.[25]
I somehow doubt that either was original with her, but I can't prove anything, so I'll give her the attribution:
One is "How's that hopey changey thing working out for you?"
(Could hardly be worse, but thanks for asking, Sarah.)
The other is WTF, as in the video below.
BTW, ever since I read that government had to spend a bundle changing the name of the Work Incentive Program for welfare parents,
I've known to check acronyms before putting anything out there or naming organizations. (Rejected a great name for a new political
party because the acronym was unfortunate: Great American Party.)
Apparently, though, none of the highly-paid geniuses in the White House or among Obama's independent contractor political advisors
knew to do that. Beggars the imagination, that does. After all, it's not as though the SOTU gets gone over with a fine tooth comb,
or gets a lot of media coverage or anything./s
Anyway, enjoy the WTF video (even though it's Sarah Palin's zinger):
We still aren't a very strong blue state despite recent elections. Not sure Romanoff was up to the task, wouldn't be at all
happy with Hickenlooper as a senator, he's like everything they accuse Democratic senators from CO of being, but in his case it's
true. Romanoff should have taken the job offer.
The top of the Democratic Party hasn't learned much from 16, and there aren't that many great candidates coming up through
the ranks.
BTW, I don't know if you read my post or the wiki article from which I quoted carefully: Whether or not any actual job offer
was made is controversial. At least, according to the Obama administration.
Bribing someone not to run against your boy? Not nice and maybe illegal. So they fudged. However, both Romanoff and Obama's
guy referred to it as an "offer." So, once again, we have shady Obama slithering around, relying on exact wording, etc.
We still aren't a very strong blue state despite recent elections. Not sure Romanoff was up to the task, wouldn't be at
all happy with Hickenlooper as a senator, he's like everything they accuse Democratic senators from CO of being, but in his
case it's true. Romanoff should have taken the job offer.
The top of the Democratic Party hasn't learned much from 16, and there aren't that many great candidates coming up through
the ranks.
"... A new opinion poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal last Sunday shows that 70% of Americans are "angry" because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren have also reflected on this sentiment during their campaigns. Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else." ..."
A new opinion poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal last Sunday shows that 70% of Americans are "angry" because
our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power. Both Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth
Warren have also reflected on this sentiment during their campaigns. Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system
designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks
dirt on everyone else."
A New York Times opinion article written by the political scientist Greg Weiner felt compelled to push back on this message, writing
a column with the title, The Shallow Cynicism of 'Everything Is Rigged'. In his column, Weiner basically makes the argument that
believing everything is corrupt and rigged is a cynical attitude with which it is possible to dismiss political opponents for being
a part of the corruption. In other words, the Sanders and Warren argument is a shortcut, according to Weiner, that avoids real political
debate.
Joining me now to discuss whether it makes sense to think of a political system as rigged and corrupt, and whether the cynical
attitude is justified, is someone who should know a thing or two about corruption: Bill Black. He is a white collar criminologist,
former financial regulator, and associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He's also the
author of the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Thanks for joining us again, Bill.
BILL BLACK: Thank you.
GREG WILPERT: As I mentioned that the outset, it seems that Sanders and Warren are in effect taking an open door, at least when
it comes to the American public. That is, almost everyone already believes that our political and economic system is rigged. Would
you agree with that sentiment that the system is corrupt and rigged for the rich and against pretty much everyone else but especially
the poor? What do you think?
BILL BLACK: One of the principal things I study is elite fraud, corruption and predation. The World Bank sent me to India for
months as an anti-corruption alleged expert type. And as a financial regulator, this is what I dealt with. This is what I researched.
This is a huge chunk of my life. So I wouldn't use the word, if I was being formal in an academic system, "the system." What I would
talk about is specific systems that are rigged, and they most assuredly are rigged.
Let me give you an example. One of the most important things that has transformed the world and made it vastly more criminogenic,
much more corrupt, is modern executive compensation. This is not an unusual position. This is actually the normal position now, even
among very conservative scholars, including the person who was the intellectual godfather of modern executive compensation, Michael
Jensen. He has admitted that he spawned unintentionally a monster because CEOs have rigged the compensation system. How do they do
that? Well, it starts even before you get hired as a CEO. This is amazing stuff. The standard thing you do as a powerful CEO is you
hire this guy, and he specializes in negotiating great deals for CEOs. His first demand, which is almost always given into, is that
the corporation pay his fee, not the CEO. On the other side of the table is somebody that the CEO is going to be the boss of negotiating
the other side. How hard is he going to negotiate against the guy that's going to be his boss? That's totally rigged.
Then the compensation committee hires compensation specialists who–again, even the most conservative economists agree it is a
completely rigged system. Because the only way they get work is if they give this extraordinary compensation. Then, everybody in
economics admits that there's a clear way you should run performance pay. It should be really long term. You get the big bucks only
after like 10 years of success. In reality, they're always incredibly short term. Why? Because it's vastly easier for the CEO to
rig the short-term reported earnings. What's the result of this? Accounting profession, criminology profession, economics profession,
law profession. We've all done studies and all of them say this perverse system of compensation causes CEOs to (a) cheat and (b)
to be extraordinarily short term in their perspective because it's easier to rig the short-term reported results. Even the most conservative
economists agree that's terrible for the economy.
What I've just gone through is a whole bunch of academic literature from over 40-plus years from top scholars in four different
fields. That's not cynicism. That's just plain facts if you understand the system. People like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders,
they didn't, as you say, kick open an open door. They made the open door. It's not like Elizabeth Warren started talking about this
six months ago when she started being a potential candidate. She has been saying this and explaining in detail how individual systems
are rigged in favor of the wealthy for at least 30 years of work. Bernie Sanders has been doing it for 45 years. This is what the
right, including the author of this piece who is an ultra-far right guy, fear the most. It's precisely what they fear, that Bernie
and Elizabeth are good at explaining how particular systems are rigged. They explain it in appropriate detail, but they're also good
in making it human. They talk the way humans talk as opposed to academics.
That's what the right fear is more than anything, that people will basically get woke. In this, it's being woke to how individual
systems have been rigged by the wealthy and powerful to create a sure thing to enrich them, usually at our direct expense.
GREG WILPERT: I think those are some very good examples. They're mostly from the realm of economics. I want to look at one from
the realm of politics, which specifically Weiner makes. He cites Sanders, who says that the rich literally buy elections, and Weiner
counters this by saying that, "It is difficult to identify instances in American history of an electoral majority wanting something
specific that it has not eventually gotten." That's a pretty amazing statement actually, I think, for him to say when you look at
the actual polls of what people want and what people get. He then also adds, "That's not possible to dupe the majority with advertising
all of the time." What's your response to that argument?
BILL BLACK: Well, actually, that's where he's trying to play economist, and he's particularly bad at economics. He was even worse
at economics than he is at political science, where his pitch, by the way is–I'm not overstating this–corruption is good. The real
problem with Senator Sanders and Senator Warren is that they're against corruption.
Can you fool many people? Answer: Yes. We have good statistics from people who actually study this as opposed to write op-eds
of this kind. In the great financial crisis, one of the most notorious of the predators that targeted blacks and Latinos–we actually
have statistics from New Century. And here's a particular scam. The loan broker gets paid more money the worse the deal he gets you,
the customer, and he gets paid by the bank. If he can get you to pay more than the market rate of interest, then he gets a kickback,
a literal kickback. In almost exactly half of the cases, New Century was able to get substantially above market interest rates, again,
targeted at blacks and Latinos.
We know that this kind of predatory approach can succeed, and it can succeed brilliantly. Look at cigarettes. Cigarettes, if you
use them as intended, they make you sick and they kill you. It wasn't that very long ago until a huge effort by pushback that the
tobacco companies, through a whole series of fake science and incredible amounts of ads that basically tried to associate if you
were male, that if you smoked, you'd have a lot of sex type of thing. It was really that crude. It was enormously successful with
people in getting them to do things that almost immediately made them sick and often actually killed them.
He's simply wrong empirically. You can see it in US death rates. You can see it in Hell, I'm overweight considerably. Americans
are enormously overweight because of the way we eat, which has everything to do with how marketing works in the United States, and
it's actually gotten so bad that it's reducing life expectancy in a number of groups in America. That's how incredibly effective
predatory practices are in rigging the system. That's again, two Nobel Laureates in economics have recently written about this. George
Akerlof and Shiller, both Nobel Laureates in economics, have written about this predation in a book for a general audience. It's
called Phishing with a P-H.
GREG WILPERT: I want to turn to the last point that Weiner makes about cynicism. He says that calling the system rigged is actually
a form of cynicism. And that cynicism, the belief that everything and everyone is bad or corrupt avoids real political arguments
because it tires everyone you disagree with as being a part of that corruption. Would you say, is the belief that the system is rigged
a form of cynicism? And if it is, wouldn't Weiner be right that cynicism avoids political debate?
BILL BLACK: He creates a straw man. No one has said that everything and everyone is corrupt. No one has said that if you disagree
with me, you are automatically corrupt. What they have given in considerable detail, like I gave as the first example, was here is
exactly how the system is rigged. Here are the empirical results of that rigging. This produces vast transfers of wealth to the powerful
and wealthy, and it comes at the expense of nearly everybody else. That is factual and that needs to be said. It needs to be said
that politicians that support this, and Weiner explicitly does that, says, we need to go back to a system that is more openly corrupt
and that if we have that system, the world will be better. That has no empirical basis. It's exactly the opposite. Corruption kills.
Corruption ruins economies.
The last thing in the world you want to do is what Weiner calls for, which he says, "We've got to stop applying morality to this
form of crime." In essence, he is channeling the godfather. "Tell the Don it wasn't personal. It was just business." There's nothing
really immoral in his view about bribing people. I'm sorry. I'm a Midwesterner. It wasn't cynicism. It was morality. He says you
can't compromise with corruption. I hope not. Compromising with corruption is precisely why we're in this situation where growth
rates have been cut in half, why wage growth has been cut by four-fifths, why blacks and Latinos during the great financial crisis
lost 60% to 80% of their wealth in college-educated households. That's why 70% of the public is increasingly woke on this subject.
GREG WILPERT: Well, we're going to leave it there. I was speaking to Bill Black, associate professor of economics and law at the
University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks again, Bill, for having joined us today.
BILL BLACK: Thank you.
GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.
Well, Sanders certainly knows that elections are rigged. But he's not quite right when he says that money does the rigging.
It would be more accurate to say that powerful people are powerful because they're criminals, and they're rich because they're
criminals.
Money is a side effect, not the driver. Specific example: Hillary and Bernie are in the same category of net worth, but Bernie
isn't powerful. The difference is that Bernie ISN'T willing to commit murder and blackmail to gain power.
> Hillary and Bernie are in the same category of net worth
Clinton's net worth (says Google) is $45 million; Sanders $2.5 million. So, an order of magnitude difference. I guess that
puts Sanders in the 1% category, but Clinton is much closer to the 0.1% category than Sanders.
There's also a billion-dollar foundation in the mix.
We had our choice of two New York billionaires in the last presidential election. How is this not accounted for? It's like
the bond market, the sheer weight carries its own momentum.
Very similar to CEO's. I may not own a private jet, but if the company does, and I control the company, I have the benefit
of a private jet. I don't need to own the penthouse to live in it.
"We came, we saw, he died. Tee hee hee!"
"Did it have anything to do with your visit?"
"I'm sure it did."
From a non-legal perspective at least, that makes her an accessory to murder, doesn't it?
Is it fair to say the entire system is rigged when enough interconnected parts of it are rigged that no matter where one turns,
one finds evidence of corruption? Because like it or not, that's where we are as a country.
Yes. And it is also fair to say, and has been said by lots of cynics over the centuries, that both democracy and capitalism
sow the seeds of their own destruction.
Burns me to see yet another "water is not wet" argument being foisted by the NYT, hard to imagine another reason the editorial
board pushed for this line *except* to protect the current corrupt one percenters who call their shots. Once Liz The Marionette
gets appointed we might get some fluff but the rot will persist, eventually rot becomes putrefaction and the polity dies. Gore
Vidal called America and Christianity "death cults".
"Due to technical difficulties, comments are unavailable"
Pisses me off that I gave the propaganda rag of note a click and didn't even get the joy of the comments section. I'm sure
there's some cynical reason why
The other thing is that the NYT runs this pretty indefensible piece by a guy who is a visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute. Just how often does NYT -- whose goal,
according to its
executive editor, "should be to understand different views" -- run a piece from anyone who is leftwing? What's the ratio of pro-establishment,
pro-Washington consensus pieces to those that are not? Glenn Greenwald
points out that the political spectrum at the NYT op-ed page "spans the small gap from establishment centrist Democrats
to establishment centrist Republicans." That, in itself, is consistent with the premise that the system is, indeed, rigged.
I think we have to drill down another level and ask ourselves a more fundamental question "why is cynicism necessarily bad
to begin with?" Black's response of parsing to individual systems as being corrupt is playing into the NYT authors trap, sort
to speak.
This NYT article is another version of the seemingly obligatory attribute of the american character; we must ultimately be
optimistic and have hope. Why is that useful? Or maybe more importantly, to whom is that useful? What is the point?
In my mind (and many a philosopher), cynicism is a very healthy, empowering response to a world whose institutional configuration
is such that it will to fuck you over whenever it is expedient to do so.
Furthermore, the act of voting lends legitimacy to an institution that is clearly not legitimate. The institution is very obviously
very corrupt. If you really want to change the "system" stop giving it legitimacy; i.e. be cynical, don't vote. The whole thing
is a ruse. Boycott it .
Some may say, in a desperate attempt to avoid being cynical, "well, the national level is corrupt but we need to increase engagement
at the community level via local elections ", or something like that. This is nothing more than rearranging the chairs on the
deck of the titanic. And collecting signature isn't going to help anymore than handing out buckets on the titanic would.
So, to answer my own rhetorical question above, "to whom is it useful to not be cynical?" It is useful to those who want things
to continue as they currently are.
So, be cynical. Don't vote. It is an empowering and healthy way to kinda say "fuck you" to the corrupt and not become corrupted
yourself by legitimizing it. The best part about it is that you don't have to do anything.
Viva la paz (Hows that for a non cynical salutation?)
Uh this sounds like the ultimate allowing things to continue as they currently are, do you really imagine the powers that be
are concerned about a low voting rate, and we have one, they don't care, they may even like it that way. Do you really imagine
they care about some phantom like perceived legitimacy? Where is the evidence of that?
Politicians do care about staying in office and will respond on some issues that will cost them enough votes to get booted
from office. But it has to be those particular issues in their own backyard; otherwise, they just kind of limp along with the
lip service collecting their paychecks.
IMO, it is sheer idiocy to not vote. If you are a voter, politicians will pay some attention to you at least. If you don't
vote, you don't even exist to them.
"I don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress," said Ocasio-Cortez.
"At minimum there should be a long wait period."
"If you are a member of Congress + leave, you shouldn't be allowed to turn right around&leverage your service for a lobbyist check.
I don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress."
–AOC, as reported by NakedCapitalism on May 31, 2019
I try to be despairing, but I can't keep up.
Attributed to a generation or two after Lily Tomlin's quote about cynicism.
Out of curiosity, would it be cynical to question that political scientist's grant funding or other sources of income? These
days, I feel inclined to look at what I'll call the Sinclair Rule* , added to Betteridge's, Godwin's and all those other, ahem,
modifications to what used to be an expectation that communication was more or less honest.
* Sinclair Rule, where you add a interpretive filter based on Upton's famous quote: It is difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
It's good to look at funding sources. But it's kind of a slander to those who must work for a living when assuming it's paychecks
(which we need to live in this system) that corrupt people.
If it's applied to the average working person, maybe it's often true, maybe it has a tendency to push in that direction, but
if you think there are no workers that realize the industry they are working in might be destructive, that they may be exploited
by such systems but have little choice etc. etc., come now there are working people who are politically aware and do see a larger
picture, they just don't have a lot of power to change it much of the time. Does the average working person's salary depend on
his not understanding though? No, of course not, it merely depends on him obeying. And obeying enough to keep a job, not always
understanding, is what a paycheck buys.
With all the evidence of everyday life (airplanes, drug prices, health insurance, Wall Street, CEO pay, the workforce changes
in the past 20 years if you've been working those years etc) this Greg better be careful as he might be seen as a Witch to be
hanged and burned in Salem, Ma a few hundred years ago.
It's cynical to say it's cynical to believe the system is corrupt.
Greg Weiner is cynic, and his is using his cynicism to dismiss the political arguments of people he disagrees with.
And just this week, I found out I couldn't even buy a car unless I'd be willing to sign a mandatory binding arbitration agreement.
I was ready to pay and sign all the paperwork, and they lay a document in front of me that reserves for the dealer the right to
seek any remedy against me if I harm the dealer (pay with bad check, become delinquent on loan, fail to provide clean title on
my trade); but forces me to accept mandatory binding arbitration, with damages limited to the value of the car, for anything the
dealer might do wrong.
It is not cynical at all when even car dealers now want a permission slip for any harm they might do to me.
Okay, a few more. We are literally facing the possibility of a mass extinction in large part because of dishonesty on the par
of oil companies, politicians, and people paid to make bad arguments.
"Assad (and by implication Assad's forces alone) killed 500,000 Syrians."
"Israel is just defending itself."
I can't squeeze the dishonesty about the war in Yemen into a short slogan, but I know from personal experience that getting
liberals to care when it was Obama's war was virtually impossible. Even under Trump it was hard, until Khashoggi's murder. On
the part of politicians and think tanks this was corruption by Saudi money. With ordinary people it was the usual partisan tribal
hypocrisy.
The motivator is "
Gap Psychology
," the human desire to distance oneself from those below (on any scale), and to come nearer to those above.
The rich are rich because the Gap below them is wide, and the wider the Gap, the richer they are .
And here is the important point: There are two ways the rich widen the Gap: Either gain more for themselves or make sure
those below have less.
That is why the rich promulgate the Big Lie that the federal government (and its agencies, Social Security and Medicare) is
running short of dollars. The rich want to make sure that those below them don't gain more, as that would narrow the Gap.
Negative sum game, where one wins but the other has to lose more so the party of the first part feels even better about winning.
There is an element of sadism, sociopathy and a few other behaviors that the current systems allow to be gamed even more profitably.
If you build it, or lobby to have it built, they will come multiple times.
A successful society should be responsive to both threats and opportunities. Any major problems to that society are assessed
and changes are made, usually begrudgingly, to adapt to the new situation. And this is where corruption comes into it. It short
circuits the signals that a society receives so that it ignores serious threats and elevates ones that are relatively minor but
which benefit a small segment of that society. If you want an example of this at work, back in 2016 you had about 40,000 Americans
dying to opioids each and every year which was considered only a background issue. But a major issue about that time was who gets
to use what toilets. Seriously. If it gets bad enough, a society gets overwhelmed by the problems that were ignored or were deferred
to a later time. And I regret to say that the UK is going to learn this lesson in spades.
'Sanders has said that we live in a "corrupt political system designed to protect the wealthy and the powerful." Warren said
it's a "rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."'
Yet the rest of the article focuses almost entirely on internal US shenanigans. When it comes to protecting wealth and power,
George Kennan hit the nail on the head in 1948, with "we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population.
This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the
object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us
to maintain this position of disparity." This, which has underpinned US policy ever since, may not be corrupt in the sense of
illegal, but it certainly seems corrupt in the sense of morally repugnant to me.
About Kennan's comment. That's interesting because no one questioned the word "wealth". Even tho' we had only 6.3% of the world's
population we had 50% of the wealth. The point of that comment had to be that we should "spread the wealth" and we did do just
that. Until we polluted the entire planet. I'd like some MMT person to take a long look at that attitude because it is so simplistic.
And not like George Kennan at all who was sophisticated to the bone. But that's just more proof of a bred-in-the-bone ignorance
about what money really is. In this case Kennan was talking about money, not wealth. He never asked Nepal for advice on gross
national happiness, etc. Nor did he calculate the enormous debt burden we would incur for our unregulated use and abuse of the
environment. That debt most certainly offsets any "wealth" that happened.
Approaching from the opposite direction, if someone were to say "I sincerely believe that the USA has the most open & honest
political system and the fairest economic system in human history" would you not think that person to be incredibly naive (or,
cynically, a liar)?
There has been, for at least the last couple of decades. a determined effort to do away with corruption – by defining it away.
"Citizens United" is perhaps the most glaring example but the effort is ongoing; that Weiner op-ed is a good current example.
What is cynical is everyone's response when point out that the system is corrupt. They all say " always has been, always will be so just deal with it ".
Strawmannirg has got to be the most cynical behavior in the world. Weiner is the cynic. I think Liz's "the system is rigged
" comment invites discussion. It is not a closed door at all. It is a plea for good capitalism. Which most people assume is possible.
It's time to define just what kind of capitalism will work and what it needs to continue to be, or finally become, a useful economic
ideology. High time.
Another thing. Look how irrational the world, which is now awash in money, has become over lack of liquidity. There's a big
push now to achieve an optimum flow of money by speeding up transaction time. The Fed is in the midst of designing a new real-time
digital payments system. A speedy accounting and record of everything. Which sounds like a very good idea.
But the predators are
busy keeping pace – witness the frantic grab by Facebook with Libra. Libra is cynical. To say the least. The whole thing a few
days ago on the design of Libra was frightening because Libra has not slowed down; it has filed it's private corporation papers
in Switzerland and is working toward a goal of becoming a private currency – backed by sovereign money no less! Twisted. So there's
a good discussion begging to be heard: The legitimate Federal Reserve v. Libra. The reason we are not having this discussion is
because the elite are hard-core cynics.
"... It also has Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, front-runners for the presidential nomination, who reject the neoliberal economic policies that the Democratic Party has been championing since the waning days of the Carter administration. ..."
"... In calling them front-runners, I haven't forgotten Joe Biden, still in the lead in most polls. It is just that I think that, after nearly three years of Trump, the candidacy of a doddering Clintonite doofus doesn't – and shouldn't -- merit serious consideration. I trust that this will become increasingly apparent even to the most dull-witted Democratic pundits, and of course to the vast majority of Democratic voters, as the election season unfolds. ..."
"... The better to defeat Trump and Trumpism next year, Sanders or Warren or whichever candidate finally gets the nod, along with the several rays of light in Congress – there are more of them than just the four that Trump would send back to "where they came from" -- will undoubtedly make common cause with corporate Democrats at a tactical level. ..."
With Trump acting out egregiously and mainstream Democrats in the House doing nothing more about it than talking up a storm, it
would be hard to imagine the public mood not shifting in ways that would force a turn for the better.
Thus, despite the best efforts of Democratic National Committee flacks at MSNBC, CNN, and, of course, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and, worst of all, PBS and NPR, the Democratic Party now has a "squad" with which its Pelosiite-Hoyerite-Schumerian
leadership must contend.
It also has Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, front-runners for the presidential nomination, who reject the neoliberal
economic policies that the Democratic Party has been championing since the waning days of the Carter administration.
In calling them front-runners, I haven't forgotten Joe Biden, still in the lead in most polls. It is just that I think that,
after nearly three years of Trump, the candidacy of a doddering Clintonite doofus doesn't – and shouldn't -- merit serious consideration.
I trust that this will become increasingly apparent even to the most dull-witted Democratic pundits, and of course to the vast majority
of Democratic voters, as the election season unfolds.
The better to defeat Trump and Trumpism next year, Sanders or Warren or whichever candidate finally gets the nod, along with
the several rays of light in Congress – there are more of them than just the four that Trump would send back to "where they came
from" -- will undoubtedly make common cause with corporate Democrats at a tactical level.
This is all to the good. Nevertheless, the time to start working to assure that it goes no deeper than that is already upon
us.
When the dust clears, it will become evident that the squad-like new guys and the leading Democrats of the past are not on the
same path; that the former want to reconstruct the Democratic Party in ways that will make it authentically progressive, while the
latter, wittingly or not, want to restore and bolster the Party that made Trump and Trumpism possible and even inevitable.
... ... ...
Could the Israel lobby be next? As Israeli politics veers ever farther to the right, its lobby's stranglehold over the Democratic
Party, though far from shot, is in plain decline -- as increasingly many American Jews, especially but not only millennials, lose
interest in the ethnocratic settler state, or find themselves embarrassed by it.
... ... ...
ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and
POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell)
as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is
In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the
Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy)
at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to
Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics
of Illusion (AK Press).
Strawmannirg has got to be the most cynical behavior in the world. Weiner is the cynic. I
think Liz's "the system is rigged " comment invites discussion. It is not a closed door at
all. It is a plea for good capitalism. Which most people assume is possible. It's time to
define just what kind of capitalism will work and what it needs to continue to be, or finally
become, a useful economic ideology. High time.
Burns me to see yet another "water is not wet" argument being foisted by the NYT, hard to
imagine another reason the editorial board pushed for this line *except* to protect the
current corrupt one percenters who call their shots. Once Liz The Marionette gets appointed
we might get some fluff but the rot will persist, eventually rot becomes putrefaction and the
polity dies. Gore Vidal called America and Christianity "death cults".
Donald Trump will be remembered as a humorous yet sad 4-year blip in the history of
America, where the People regrettably admit that this "entertainment age" was responsible for
their lack of judgement in 2016, and they learned that they shouldn't play games with
something as important to our country's honor and integrity as the office of the Presidency.
Fool me twice, shame on me.....
All true from both yourself and Paine/Plp except "Hard for the status quo to form a
consensus" which is inherently false based purely on semantics. The status quo must always be
a consensus of sorts or it would not be the status quo regardless of how sordid a sort of
consensus it represents. At the very least our status quo represents the effective majority
consensus of the political elite over matters of governing and simultaneously the effective
consensus of the governed to not overwhelmingly reject the majority consensus of the
political elite. This is not to say that the governed are happy about what they get, but if
they overwhelmingly rejected the political establishment then it would no longer be the
status quo political establishment. Elites learned since the Great Depression that if they
limited their abuse of the common man sufficiently then the combination of general public
apathy regarding politics and the bureaucracy along with the inherent fear of ordinary people
taking action to bring about uncertain change would forever preserve complete elite control
of government apparatus.
"... I have been for Tulsi because of her foreign policy and wanted her to be able to give voice to her position during the primary so as to move Bernie to improve his foreign policy positions and also the public. Tulsi was the one who quit the DNC during the 2016 primary over how Bernie was cheated, so is not afraid to stand up to power - and why they hate her ..."
"... I believe that the Democratic leadership does not want Tulsi in the debates because they do not want her to take out another candidate like she did in the second debate to Harris at -12% at around 5% now - not a top tier candidate now. ..."
"... They have given numerous hit job articles to Bernie, while all of Warrens - including today - are glowing. That should be a clue about Warren. Also in 2016 she sided with Hillary, not Bernie. ..."
Michael Tracey is the one that wrote the RCP article and also has a video on the topic.
He also does a great job calling out the Russiagate BS.
"Tulsi getting screwed by the DNC" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMMlQNidlQ&t=440s
There is only one more qualifying poll Monmouth ( tomorrow) before the debates and she
needs two more. Even though the she has qualified in numerous polls such as the Boston
Globe that are not allowed by the DNC. Yes they screwed her.
"It's Official--Tulsi to be Screwed Out of 3rd Debate!!" https://caucus99percent.com/content/its-official-tulsi-be-screwed-out-3rd-debate
I have been for Tulsi because of her foreign policy and wanted her to be able to
give voice to her position during the primary so as to move Bernie to improve his foreign
policy positions and also the public. Tulsi was the one who quit the DNC during the 2016
primary over how Bernie was cheated, so is not afraid to stand up to power - and why they
hate her .
I believe that the Democratic leadership does not want Tulsi in the debates because
they do not want her to take out another candidate like she did in the second debate to
Harris at -12% at around 5% now - not a top tier candidate now.
I am loving now how Bernie is taking on the corporate media and their BS to their
faces.
"Bernie Sanders took a well-deserved shot at The Washington Post this week, saying that
the Jeff Bezos-owned paper doesn't like him because he routinely goes after Amazon for the
horrible treatment of their workers. NBC wasn't too happy about this, and claimed that
Bernie was assaulting "the free press," and said his attacks were just like Trump's"
The powers that be really wanted Joe Biden, but it will become obvious in the coming
months that he has serious cognitive issues - ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Q0E2dzTJw
).
The only other viable candidate against Bernie is Warren , which it appears the elite
are falling in love with. Warren didn't become a Democrat until 2011 or when she was 62. In
the 90's Warren was on the side of Dow Chemical in the breast implant cases, helping to
reduce payouts to the victims. She will be like Obama - Hope and Change during the election
and Neoliberal when president. I read the NYTimes to see what the Oligarchs are up too.
They have given numerous hit job articles to Bernie, while all of Warrens -
including today - are glowing. That should be a clue about Warren. Also in 2016 she sided
with Hillary, not Bernie.
But EMichael has the chutzpah to declare categorically that voters don't care about
economic issues. What a rube!!!
As one famous Democrat said, "It's the economy, stupid." Nowadays Democrats can barely
utter the word 'economy' or broach kitchen table issues--corrupt, sclerotic, and
pathetic.
The choice in 2020: Trump, who voices many voters' concerns, vs. generic corrupt and
sclerotic Democrats who offer nothing, have no message, and a track record of shipping jobs
to China.
Since voting for Bill Clinton in 1992, I have voted third party except for once because I
could not vote for the lesser of two evils because either choice was evil.
Trump does not want a new trade deal with China. He wants to decouple the U.S.
economy from the future enemy.
That may well be what is going on here. Something between total insanity and managed
insanity. The next president will unravel all of this in a year or so of effort. That is what
is so damaging. No business can plan on what is next. No policy is long term.
This is pure Trumpian logic unhinged. Hit them twice as hard as they hit you. I would not
dare to guess who is winding him up and pointing him in this direction. Trump has had one of
his busiest weeks yet.
I see Elisabeth Warren's crowd sizes are getting very large. I will feel better when no
one shows up to a Trump rally. China has time to wait this out and the ability to raise some
chaos on their own to help undermine Trump.
I see Elisabeth Warren's crowd sizes are getting very large. I will feel better when no one
shows up to a Trump rally.
I sympathize, but Elizabeth Warren is terrible on foreign policy. When the IDF was
slaughtering civilians in Gaza in 2014 she pushed to release a few hundred million dollars to
"help" Israel "defend" itself. The MSM loves Warren. She is a neoliberal capitalist, liberal
interventionist and splits Sanders' vote.
In the recent Camp Kotok MMT discussion (recording for the public posted here https://soundcloud.com/user-529956811/mmt-discussion-raw
), two things stood out for me (believe both were stated by Samuel Rines @SamuelRines on
twitter):
– MMT is "inevitable" (although it is arguable whether his definition and understanding
is correct)
– Warren is the assumed democratic nominee (Bernie or anyone else was not mentioned at
all in ~30 min of this recording)
So, sounds like the FIRE sector is looking to get nice and comfortable while nominally
paying tribute to the plebeians (lest they revolt, that was intimated by above mentioned
Sam)
Yes, is way Warren is a connuation of "Trump tradition" in the USA politics: reling of hate
toward the neoliberalism establishment to get the most votes.
...in a piece
Warren wrote for Medium in which she (rightly) warned of "a precarious economy that is
built on debt -- both household debt and corporate debt." Notably missing was the national
debt, which amounts to around $182,900 per taxpayer and which Warren's policies would only
steepen. How exactly is a government flailing in red ink supposed to make the country solvent?
And what of the fact that some of the economy's woes -- student loan debt, for example -- were
themselves at least in part caused by federal interventions?
Those objections aside, it would be wrong to dismiss Warren as just another statist liberal.
She's deeper than that, first of all, having written extensively about economics, including
her book The Two-Income Trap . But more importantly, she's put her finger on something very
important in the American electorate. It's the same force that helped propel Donald Trump to
victory in 2016: a seething anger against goliath institutions that seem to prize profit and
power over the greater welfare. This is firmly in the tradition of most American populisms,
which have worried less about the size of government and more about gilded influence rendering
it inert.
Warren thus has a real claim to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, which is
deeply skeptical of corporate power. She could even try to out-populist Donald Trump. She's
already released more detailed policy proposals than any of her Democratic rivals, everything
from sledgehammering the rich with new taxes to canceling student debt to wielding antitrust
against big tech companies to subsidizing childcare. All this is chum to at least some of the
Democratic base (old-school sorts rather than the SJWs obsessed with race and gender), and as a
result, she's surged to either second or third place in the primary, depending on what poll you
check. She's even elicited praise from some conservative intellectuals, who view her as an
economic nationalist friendly to the family against the blackhearted forces of big.
America has been in a populist mood since the crash of 2008, yet in every presidential
election since then, there's been at least one distinctly plutocratic candidate in the race. In
2008, it was perennial Washingtonian John McCain. In 2012, it was former Bain Capital magnate
Mitt Romney. (The stupidest explanation for why Romney lost was always that tea party activists
dragged him down. Romney lost because he sounded like an imposter and looked like the guy who
fired your brother from that firm back in 1982.) And in 2016, it was, of course, Hillary
Clinton, whose candidacy is what happens when you feed a stock portfolio and a government
security clearance into a concentrate machine.
If Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic nomination next year, it will be the first time
since Bear Stearns exploded that both parties' candidates seem to reflect back the national
temperament. It will also pose a test for Warren herself. On one hand, her economic policies,
bad though they might be, stand a real chance of attracting voters, given their digestibility
and focus on relieving high costs of living. On the other hand -- this is where Fauxcahontas
comes back in -- a white woman claiming Indian status in order to teach at Harvard Law is
pretty much everything Americans hate about politically correct identity politics.
The question, then, is which image of Warren will stick: one is a balm to the country's
economic anxiety; the other is unacceptable to its cultural grievances. Right now we can only
speculate, though it seems certain that Trump will try to define her as the latter while much
of the media will intervene in the other direction.
Her entire political theory seems to have been that giant corporations should not be
allowed to utterly screw the common man. That is about it, and for this she is called a
commie radical. I like her, little afraid of foreign policy
Warren was born into a middle class family, Trump wasn't. Trump is playing the populist, he
has no idea what average Americans deal with.
Warren was raised on the family lore of having native ancestry and she does. Not much
but she does and that's all it takes to start family lore. Her Native American ancestor was
from around the time of the American Revolution and it's easy to see how that legend could
be passed down. There is no proof she ever benefited from this, she was just proud to have
Native American ancestry.
Funny how the RW is so outraged by this one thing. Maybe it would be better for her to
con people, lie and make stuff up nonstop like Trump. It seems a never ending blizzard of
lies and falsehoods renders one immune.
Let's remember that our only effective populist, in fact our only effective president, was
a rich patrician. FDR's roots went back to the Mayflower, yet he was able to break the
influence of the banks and give us 50 years of bubble-free prosperity. The only thing that
counts is GETTING THE WORK DONE.
Her economics aren't bad. She herself claims to be a capitalist, she just wants our massive
economy to also benefit regular folks instead of just the elites. And whatever economic
program she proposes is most likely further left than she thinks necessary because that's a
better negotiating position to start from. Remember every proposal has to go through both
branches of Congress to become law, and they will absolutely try to make everything more
pro-corporate because that is their donor base.
"And what of the fact that some of the economy's woes -- student loan debt, for example --
were themselves at least in part caused by federal
interventions?"
Mr. Purple might want to remind himself that 75% of federal student financial aid in the
1970's was in the form of grants, not loans, and that it was only after the intervention of
conservative Republican congressman Gerald "Jerry" Solomon and the Reagan Administration
that the mix of federal student financial aid was changed to be 75% loans and only 25%
grants. I believe the Congressman used to rail against free riding college students, which
is all well and good until one finds that the "free hand of the market" becomes warped by
so many people being in so much debt, and all of them being too small to save.
Democrats might want to ask Joe Biden about this, considering his support for
legislation that made it harder to discharge student debt in bankruptcy proceedings. They
might also ask Senator Warren about this subject.
Warren believed her family story. Trump, on the other hand, knew that his family was not
Swedish, but knowingly continued the lie for decades, including in "The Art of Deal " -
claimin his grandfather came "from Sweden as a child" (rather than dodging the draft in
Bavaria who made his fortune in red light districts of the Yukon territory before trying to
return to the Reich).
Warren made no money from her heritage claims, but the $413 million (in today's dollars)
given to Trump by his daddy was made by lying to Holocaust survivors in Brooklyn and Queens
who, understandably, did not want to rent property from a German.
Vanity Fair asked him in 1990 if he were not in fact of German origin. "Actually, it was
very difficult," Donald replied. "My father was not German; my father's parents were German
Swedish, and really sort of all over Europe and I was even thinking in the second edition
of putting more emphasis on other places because I was getting so many letters from Sweden:
Would I come over and speak to Parliament? Would I come meet with the president?"
This column was pretty much as I expected. It started out by rehashing all of the Fox News
talking points about Warren, without debunking those that were without merit.
After that it touched on Morning Joe's take on her, just to make it 'fair and
balanced'.
Then it acknowledged, briefly, that she has been correct in many areas. No comment on
how the CFPB recovered hundreds of millions of $$ from corporations that abused their power
or broke the law.
Then it mis-characterized the impact of her policies "sledgehammering the rich",
"economic policies, bad though they might be".
Dismiss Warren all you want. She could very well be the nominee, or the VP. She would
eviscerate Trump in a debate. Her knowledge of issues, facts and policies would show Trump
to be what he is. A narcissistic, idiotic, in-over-his-head clueless and dangerous buffoon.
I anticipate Trump would fall back on his favorite tropes. Pocahontas, socialist,
communist, and MAGA.
My opinion is that the average American is getting really tired of Trump's shtick. The
country is looking for somebody with real solutions to real problems. This reality tv star
act is getting pretty old....
Good article. Especially enjoyed this turn of phrase:
"And in 2016, it was, of course, Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is what happens when
you feed a stock portfolio and a government security clearance into a concentrate
machine."
Really enjoyable.
I don't think anyone is going to care about the pocahontas thing. This election will be
squarely about Trump. I think Warren is by far the best candidate the dems can bring out if
they want to beat him. A Warren/Buttigieg or a Warren/Tulsi ticket would likely be a
winner.
Bernie's a little too far to the left for Joe Lunchbucket, Joe Biden is a crooked
Hillary wannabe, Kamala Harris is unlikeable, and the rest won't rise out of the dust.
The whole business about her supposed Native American ancestry and whatever claims she made
will make no difference to anybody other than folks like Matt Purple who wouldn't support
her under any circumstances anyway.
Consider that the best-known advocate of the "Pocahontas" epithet is of course Donald
Trump, whose entire reputation is built on a foundation of bulls--t and flim-flam.
"Thus in retrospect was it the "Obama" in "Obamacare" that was the primary driver of
opposition from conservatives, only for their concerns over federal intrusion to mostly
disappear once Trump was at the controls."
No. What disappeared was the Individual Mandate. THAT was what rankled me...the
government can do whatever stupid thing they want as long as they don't try to force me
into it.
Backlash to neoliberalism fuels interest in national socialism ideology... and netional
socialist critique of financial oligarchy controlled "democratic states" was often poignant and
up to a point. Which doesn't means that the ideology itself was right.
However, as the people cannot spontaneously make and express their opinion on a mass scale,
the media comes to play a critical role in shaping public opinion: "The decisive question is:
Who enlightens the people? Who educates the people?" The answer is, of course,
the media. In this, Hitler's assessment is an exaggerated version of what Alexis de Tocqueville had
observed a century earlier in his classic work, Democracy in America :
When a large number of press organs manage to march along the same path, their influence
in the long run becomes almost irresistible, and public opinion, always struck upon the same
side, ends up giving way under their blows.
In Western democracies, Hitler claims: "Capital actually rules in these countries, that is,
nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth." Furthermore
"freedom" refers primarily to "economic freedom," which means the oligarchs' "freedom
from national control." In a classic self-reinforcing cycle, the rich and powerful get
richer and more powerful through influence over the political process. Today, this has
culminated in the existence of the notorious "1%" so demonized by Occupy Wall Street.
The oligarchs, according to Hitler, establish and control the media:
These capitalists create their own press and then speak of "freedom of the press." In
reality, every newspaper has a master and in every case this master is the capitalist, the
owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the
editor tries to write something other than what suits the master, he is outed the next day.
This press, which is the absolutely submissive and character slave of its owners, molds
public opinions.
Hitler also emphasizes the incestuous relations and purely cosmetic differences between
mainstream democratic political parties:
The difference between these parties is small, as it formerly was in Germany. You know
them of course, the old parties. They were always one and the same. In Britain matters are
usually so arranged so that families are divided up, one member being conservative, another
liberal, and a third belonging to the Labour Party. Actually all three sit together as
members of the family and decide upon their common attitude.
This cliquishness means that "on all essential matters . . . the parties are always in
agreement" and the difference between "Government" and "Opposition" is largely election-time
theatrics. This critique will resonate with those who fault the "Republicrats," the
"Westminster village," or indeed the various pro-EU parties for being largely
indistinguishable. This is often especially the case on foreign policy, Chomsky's area of
predilection.
Hitler goes on, with brutally effective sarcasm, to describe how it was in these democracies
where the people supposedly rule that there was the most inequality: "You might think that in
these countries of freedom and wealth, the people must have an unlimited degree of prosperity.
But no!" Britain not only controlled "one-sixth of the world" and the impoverished millions of
India, but itself had notoriously deep class divisions and suffering working classes. There was
a similar situation in France and the United States: "There is poverty – incredible
poverty – on one side and equally incredible wealth on the other." These democracies had
furthermore been unable to combat unemployment during the Great Depression, in contrast to
Germany's innovative economic policies.
Hitler then goes on to mock the Labour Party, which was participating in the government for
the duration of the war, for promising social welfare and holidays for the poor after the war:
"It is is remarkable that they should at last hit upon the idea that traveling should not be
something for millionaires alone, but for the people too." Hitlerite Germany, along with
Fascist Italy, had long pioneered the organization of mass tourism to the benefit of working
people. (Something which traditionalists like the Italian aristocrat Julius Evola bitterly
criticized them for.)
Ultimately, in the Western democracies "as is shown by their whole economic structure, the
selfishness of a relatively small stratum rules under the mask of democracy; the egoism of a
very small social class." Hitler concludes: "It is self-evident that where this democracy
rules, the people as such are not taken into consideration at all. The only thing that matters
is the existence a few hundred gigantic capitalists who own all the factories and their stock
and, through them, control the people."
... ... ...
In practice, Western liberal regimes' democratic pretensions are exaggerated. Various
studies have found that when elite and majority opinion clash, the American elite is over time
able to impose its policies onto the majority (examples of this include U.S. intervention in
both World Wars and mass Third World immigration since the 1960s, opposed by the people and
promoted by the elite)
... ... ...
In fact, all regimes have different elite factions and bureaucracies competing for power.
All regimes have a limited ideological spectrum of authorized opinion, a limited spectrum of
what can and cannot be discussed, criticized, or politically represented. This isn't to say
that liberal-democratic and openly authoritarian regimes are identical, but the distinction has
been exaggerated. I have known plenty of Westerners who, frothing at the mouth at any mention
of the "authoritarian" Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen, were quite happy to visit, do business,
or work in China, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, or Israel (the latter being a perfect
Jewish democracy but highly authoritarian towards the Palestinians). Westerners really are sick
in the head.
The liberals' claim to uphold freedom of thought and democracy will ring hollow to many: to
the Trump supporters and academics (such as Charles Murray) who were physically assaulted for
attending public events and to those fired or punished for their scientific beliefs (James
Watson, James Damore, Noah Carl).
What the ideal regime is surely depends on time and place. Jean-Baptiste Duchasseint, a
politician of the French Third Republic, had a point when he said: "I prefer a parliamentary
chamber than the antechamber of a dictator." Liberal-democracies allow for regular changeovers
of power, transparent feedback between society and government, and the cultivation of a habit
of give-and-take between citizens. But it would be equally dishonest to deny
liberal-democracy's leveling tendency, its unconscious (and thereby, dangerous) elitism and
authoritarianism (dangerous because unconscious), its difficulty in enforcing values, its
promotion of division among the citizenry, or, frequently, its failure to act in times of
emergency. The democrats claim they are entitled to undermine and destroy, whether by peaceful
or violent methods, every government on this Earth which they consider "undemocratic." This
strikes me as, at best, unwise and dangerous.
The question is not whether a society "really has" free speech or democracy. In the
absolute, these are impossible. The question is whether the particular spectrum of free
discussion and the particular values promoted by the society are, in fact, salutary for that
society. In China, unlike the West, you are not allowed to attack the government. Yet, I
understand that in China one is freer to discuss issues concerning Jews, race, and eugenics
than in the West. These issues, in fact, may be far more important to promoting a healthy
future for the human race than the superficial and divisive mudslinging of the West's
reality-TV democracies.W
Nice well written & researched thought provoking article by Guillaume Durocher.
Hitler most likely served the Zionist Bankers, as his "Night of the Longknives" –
1934, rid the Nazi movement of its anti-capitalist element.
Hitler did not effectively criticize Zionism or the ruinous financial system. He blamed
the Versailles Treaty for most of Germany's ills.
Noam Chomsky has had more serious political and economic analysis to offer over the
decades, than most any other American. He has authored more than 100 books.
Hitler and his movement led the German people into the trap (perhaps a Zionist trap), of
ruinous (to Europe), Imperialist Conflict, and in that, and in his racialist approach,
resembles Churchill, and the British Royal Family more than he could ever admit.
Strikingly, Hitler does not mention Jewish media ownership or influence at all,
At 3:21 in the archive.org video he refers to "das auserwählte Volk" (the chosen
people) which supposedly controls and directs all parties for its own interests.
Anyway, do you really think it's a good idea for modern nationalists to link themselves to
Hitler and the 3rd Reich (because many of your articles could be interpreted that way, as if
Hitler was some profound thinker who has to be read by every nationalist today)?
Yes, the man wasn't as stupid as is often claimed today, and some elements of Nazism are
certainly attractive if seen in isolation but the fact remains that Hitler, without any
really compelling necessity, initiated one of the most destructive wars in history and then
had his followers commit some of the worst mass murders ever.
The "revisionists" posting on UR may be able to ignore that, but most people won't.
In practice, Western liberal regimes' democratic pretensions are exaggerated. Various
studies have found that when elite and majority opinion clash, the American elite is over
time able to impose its policies onto the majority (examples of this include U.S.
intervention in both World Wars and mass Third World immigration since the 1960s, opposed
by the people and promoted by the elite).
That's it? "Western liberal regimes' democratic pretensions are exaggerated"?
There are differences in _every_ society between different groups, which include different
income levels. In the Western liberal regimes of the 1950s and 1960s, daily life was more or
less left alone, and it was quite possible to over-rule the rich. There was a 90% tax on
income over a fairly modest amount of income! As for the "American elite is over time able to
impose its policies onto the majority" it wasn't the rich who do that back then, nor is it
the rich who do it now. It's the Left, acquiesced to by the rich. The difference is that the
rich now rich with political sufferance, or perhaps because of politics, which was much less
the case back then.
In other words, the article as a deception from start to end. Minerva's owl flies at dusk
(you understand things when they're ending), and the deception becomes more obvious as our
current system fails.
Another one whitewashing Fascism to make it an acceptable ideology to save the white race.
The first edition killed 12 million Germans, twice as many Russians and many more millions of
other Europeans. What for? To make America great, perhaps
The author is unfurling his full colours; maybe grateful for Hitler's mercy on France?
Agree that the article is a very good one. Clever idea to compare Hitler with Chomsky,
"bien étonnés de se trouver ensemble." However, Hitler was certainly not
alone in his lucid criticism of "western democracy," nor is Chomsky the only lucid
post-Hitlerian critic of what is called democracy. Who does not recall Michael Parenti's
wonderful Democracy for the Few, from 1974?
As for Hitler being genuine, or intellectually honest in his criticism, better not even
ask. Like all major politicians, including FDR, the repulsive Churchill, Stalin e tutti
quanti, Hitler was a psychopath and a murderer. Anyone still nurturing romantic thoughts
on Hitler better read Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler. How Britain and America
Made the Third Reich (2005). Best proof that Preparata was absolutely right with his
richly documented book is the fact that his academic career was abruptly ended: no tenure for
dissidents, especially when they write books containing uncomfortable truths.
The only people allowed to tell "uncomfortable truths" are used-car salesmen and swindlers
such as Al Gore.
Adolf Hitler Speech: Löwenbräukeller Munich November 8 1940
When I came to power, I took over from a nation that was a democracy. Indeed, it is now
sometimes shown to the world as if one would be automatically ready to give everything to
the German nation if it were only a democracy. Yes, the German people was at that time a
democracy before us, and it has been plundered and squeezed dry. No. what does democracy or
authoritarian state mean for these international hyenas! That they are not at all
interested in. They are only interested in one thing: Is anyone willing to let themselves
be plundered? Yes or no? Is anyone stupid enough to keep quiet in the process? Yes or no?
And when a democracy is stupid enough to keep quiet, then it is good. And when an
authoritarian government declares: "You do not plunder our people any longer, neither from
inside nor from outside," then that is bad. If we, as a so-called authoritarian state,
which differs from the democracies by having the masses of the people behind it; if we as
an authoritarian state had also complied with all the sacrifices that the international
plutocrats encumbered us with; if I had said in 1933, "Esteemed Sirs in Geneva" or
"Esteemed Sirs," as far as I am concerned, somewhere else, "what would you have do? Aha, we
will immediately write it on the slate: 6 billion for 1933, 1934, 1935, all right we will
deliver. Is there anything else you would like? Yes, Sir we will also deliver that" Then
they would have said: "At last a sensible regime in Germany."
Western media is not "cooperative", they are owned.
JP Morgan famously bought up controlling interest in major newspapers in 1917 to prevent
significant media opposition to the US entering WWI. The Counsel on Foreign Relations was
created in the early 1920s to maintain control over the national dialog and they have ever
since. The CIA Project Mockingbird tightened control. Every presidential cabinet since is
saturated with CFR members. As a result most Americans are disastrously misinformed about
just about everything. 1984 happened decades before 1984.
@Hans Vogel Parenti's book is one of the few assigned college textbooks I still have on
my shelf. A classic that I rarely hear spoken of; I guess my liberal arts education wasn't
entirely wasted.
Extolling Hitler and/or the Nazis is, apart from anything else, totally counter-productive.
We can argue about the rewriting of history but the simple fact is that any association with
him/them is poisonous to the public mind.
What I took from the piece was that Hitler, despite being an evil bastard, was right about
some things. This shouldn't be surprising and isn't a defense of Nazism (which as a Christian
I have to regard as evil.) The fact that Hitler and Chomsky agree shows this isn't a defense
of Nazism.
@German_reader So called revisionists are bunch of morons. Hitler was, without lapsing
into moralizing, a very specific product of a very specific time, a charismatic leader of a
great humiliated nation during a deep crisis in all Western civilization (this includes
Russia, too).
Now, Europe & Europe-derived peoples face a completely different crisis (or various
crises), so that what Hitler was or wasn't is utterly irrelevant to our contemporary
condition & its challenges.
It does no good to try to defend Hitler, regardless of the many correct observations he made
over the years of his public life. He was as important a commentator as, say, Paul Krugman,
but his opinions will never overcome his actions. Comparing him to Krugman or Chomsky makes
an interesting debating point, but ultimately fails for lack of context.
If you are trying to argue that capitalist democracy, Anglo-American style, has grievous
flaws, you're going to have to show what they are and why they will lead to calamity. I'd say
we need a real discussion on federal budgeting insanity, for one, which threatens the
economic downfall of the West and, probably, of the universe, except maybe for Russia, which
has already suffered through its great downfall. How that connects to Anglo-American
democracy is simple: the British borrowed and made war around the world to its virtual
collapse and then had the great insight to be able, via FDR, to tie the prosperity of the
United States to its failures, until the great engine of prosperity that we once were comes
clanking to pieces.
The fascists weren't wrong on policy during peacetime, but were too optimistic about being
able to take over the world by war.
Both the liberal (Democratic) and conservative (Republican) wings of the U.S.
aristocracy hate and want to conquer Russia's Government. The real question now is whether
that fact will cause the book on this matter to be closed as being unprofitable for both
sides of the U.S. aristocracy; or, alternatively, which of those two sides will succeed in
skewering the other over this matter.
At the present stage, the Republican billionaires seem likelier to win if this internal
battle between the two teams of billionaires' political agents continues on. If they do,
and Trump wins re-election by having exposed the scandal of the Obama Administration's
having manufactured the fake Russiagate-Trump scandal, then Obama himself could end up
being convicted. However, if Trump loses -- as is widely expected -- then Obama is safe,
and Trump will likely be prosecuted on unassociated criminal charges.
To be President of the United States is now exceedingly dangerous. Of course,
assassination is the bigger danger; but, now, there will also be the danger of
imprisonment. A politician's selling out to billionaires in order to reach the top can
become especially risky when billionaires are at war against each other -- and not merely
against some foreign ('enemy') aristocracy. At this stage of American 'democracy', the
public are irrelevant. But the political battle might be even hotter than ever, without the
gloves, than when the public were the gloves.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of
acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the
more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking
going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the
limits put on the range of the debate."
Yes that quotation by Chomsky is exactly correct, and Chomsky is an expert in that
area.
He is a loyal servant of the oligarchs, the MIT intellectual who has devoted his life
to keeping the lid on acceptable debate but is silent on the most important event of the 21st
Century in order to serve his Zionist masters.
Any person who goes beyond that accepted level of debate is either ostracized, imprisoned
or assassinated.
Liberal-democracies allow for regular changeovers of power, transparent feedback between
society and government, and the cultivation of a habit of give-and-take between
citizens.
Except that is not true at all. All major Western countries today, UK, France, USA and
Germany, are ruled by an effective one-party state, stabilized and its agenda multiplied by
its media companies, often state owned, the agenda enforced by apparatschiks, secured by the
police force and internationalized physically with the military and with great propaganda by
the media-entertainment complex – today even effectively monopolized by US companies
like Google/YouTube and Facebook.
Whether you look at BREXIT, votes on an EU constitution, or the Donald Trump presidency:
what the majority of the people want is not important to the permanent ruling and owning
class.
The politicians and sanctioned talking-heads are there to deceive us. Obama und Trump are
two sides of the same coin: carefully crafted advertisement campaigns to secure the interests
and goals of the elite in the long run.
Progressiv interests first with Obama and now reactionary interests have been encorporated
as messages and propaganda to neuter both. Now the left talks about gender neutral toilets,
trans kids and pronouns, instead of stagnant wages for decades and a predatory elite. Just
like the right talks about Trump's tweets, Q and is lost in the media skinner-box and his
personality cult, while Trump himself broke every single point he campaigned on (Except those
that serve the 1% and Israel.) and is owned by the same lobby which produces the artificial
reality Trump cultists bought into.
Political-media theater was and is orchestrated, so the true core of power stays untouched
and stable: the very small capitalist class who owns 90% of the net wealth in the USA (it's
getting increasingly similar in Europe as it is being Americanized in the process of
globalization); the superordinate megacompanies; the military-industrial complex; Wall Street
and (Central) Banking; special interests and lobbies of which the Israeli-Jewish Lobby is the
strongest.
And the cultural totalitarianism of today and its artifical reality is superior to
that of the old physical dictatorships, because in mass-media democracy not only does the
subject believe himself to be free, because the tools of his own enslavement are not visible;
only in it the subject gives his own concession to his own subjugation by his vote. While all
paths to real change, revolution or revolt are as cut off from him as under Stalin or
Mao.
Well, if the idea is to spread the message, any mention or reference to Hitler will be
totally devastating in the public arena. It's like participating in a marathon run and start
off by cutting off your legs.
Just recently I saw some posts on facebook from someone local to me preaching about Nordic
brotherhood. He posted few pictures and all of them had Hitlers face somewhere in the
background. FB shut it down within hours
What's interesting is the same message could have been presented differently without much
effort. Sliding past FB filters for days or even weeks and possibly influenced some people in
the meantime. So I wonder who was actually behind it – my guess is either a complete
idiot or someone eager to vilify nationalism and people concerned with racial issues.
@Exile " . . . [I]f sources as divergent as Hitler and Chomsky agree on the flaws of
capitalism/neo=liberal democracy, it lends credibility to those criticisms . . .".
Exile, that's exactly how I read it.
Our political problems aren't that difficult to understand:
Democrats – Sell-out to crony capitalism and global capitalism. Offers an Identity
Politics Plantation for rent-seekers and legitimacy-seekers as political camouflage.
Republicans – Sell-out to crony capitalism and global capitalism. Offers a Freedom
and Opportunity Plantation as political camouflage.
As far as I can tell, we really don't have an American or Americanist politics that tells
me I ought to give a meaninful damn about my fellow citizens in the 'hood, the gated 'burbs,
and everywhere else because, fuckin' 'ey, they're my fellow Americans.
Durocher's not romanticizing or white-washing here, he's making a serious point: if
sources as divergent as Hitler and Chomsky agree on the flaws of capitalism/neo=liberal
democracy, it lends credibility to those criticisms and makes it harder to refute them by
ad hominem or accusations of bias on the part of the critics.
Lordy. _That_ is your argument? The big loser in WW II and an academic agree that US
society should be reorganized? Add in Pol Pot, Stalin, Marx, Trotsky, Putin, Mussolini, and
BLM, not to mention the Wobblies, if you like. The argument remains unconvincing. Peterson's
"first, demonstrate your competence by cleaning and organizing your room and then your home
and your affairs, _then_ try to re-make the world. None of the above, except perhaps Putin,
could have passed that test.
Q: Is Marxism a science or a philosophy?
A: Philosophy. If it were a science they'd have tried it out on dogs first.
@Miggle And how can there be "checks" when everything is "classified", and when Julian
Assange has to be murdered in a US prison but it will be made to look like suicide?
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of
acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the
more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking
going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the
limits put on the range of the debate. – Noam Chomsky"
COMMENT: Chomsky is talking about the Overton window: the range of ideas that "The Powers
That Be" (TPTB) will allow in public discussion.
EXAMPLES:
(1) Tucker Carson recently went outside the Overton window, when he said "white supremacy is
a hoax", then TPTB immediately "vacationed" him for political reeducation, and now he is
safely back within the window, rattling his cage on issues harmless to TPTB.
(2) The Controlled Protest Press (CPP) will often blame economic problems on the
Federal-Reserve making wrong moves, and suggest the right moves the Fed should make instead,
as the correct solution. But the CPP will never suggest that the correct solution is to end
the Fed and the private currency they issue, and to return the currency-issuing power to the
government, as required by the constitution (Article I Section 8). Because that's outside the
Overton window.
(3) The CPP will often complain about the government ignoring warning signs before the
9/11 attack, and botching their response after it happened. But the CPP will never suggest
the whole thing was an inside job to garner public support for bankers oil wars in the middle
east. Because that's outside the Overton window.
when elite and majority opinion clash, the American elite is over time able to impose
its policies onto the majority (examples of this include U.S. intervention in both World
Wars and mass Third World immigration since the 1960s, opposed by the people and promoted
by the elite).
@Professional Stranger CHOMSKY himself always stays within the Overton window, and makes
a show of it:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZrEDo9ChSdQ?feature=oembed
Chomsky goes beyond maintaining a strategic silence on 9/11, to inciting smear-campaigns
against skeptics of the official narrative of 9/11. He demeans "truthers": "Their lives are
no good Their lives are collapsing They are people at a loss Nothing makes any sense They
don't understand what an explanation is They think they are experts in physics and civil
engineering on the basis of one hour on the Internet."
I think you should ask the Slavic untermenschen; Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Byelorussians &
Ukranians what their experience of occupation by the Wehrmacht was like. Poland alone lost 5
million civilians with Ukraine losing a similar number.
To be President of the United States is now exceedingly dangerous. Of course,
assassination is the bigger danger; but, now, there will also be the danger of
imprisonment. A politician's selling out to billionaires in order to reach the top can
become especially risky when billionaires are at war against each other -- and not merely
against some foreign ('enemy') aristocracy.
Interesting concept. When the elites go after each other; that is when you know empire is
in rapid decline.
Other powers may just simply wait it out.
@JackOH You summed up very well the nature of the duopoly ruling the US for donkey's
years. Representative democracy is a licence for political power by a small clique over the
people. Obviously, both Fascism (Hitler) and Socialism (Marx) agree on that, but for
different reasons. And so does anyone with some basic understanding of how the political
process works.
But the article goes further than stating the obvious: the intention – in my mind
– is to show that, because Hitler and Chomsky are in agreement about the deception of
"democracy", then Fascism is a reputable ideology, so much so that Chomsky, by association,
gives his imprimatur to that perception. Durocher (a self-declared racist) is just another
purveyor of the Nazis' lies attempting to dress that ideology with respectable robes.
Nothing new there. Afterall Hitler also called his political party "Socialism", the term
stolen from the party he infiltrated for its popular appeal. As soon as he grabbed
dictatorial power he imprisoned the socialists.
@Biff Roman elites started to attack each other in 133 B.C., and the civil wars lasted a
century. The Roman Empire survived several centuries after that.
@Mikemikev Why not stick to discussing the ideas in the essay?
It is pathetic to fall back on the ad hominem "Hitler!" excuse for not engaging with the
ideas.
Perhaps Durocher is wrong in the ideas he attributes to Hitler.
For myself I have always found it interesting that the basic concept of "national"
"socialism" (let's just look at those words separately) seems to bear thinking over: A
socialism that is not a international system but is based on a nation. Obviously how you
define a nation is pretty important.
Interestingly, now the Jews/Zionists have defined themselves as a nation (whether or not
the citizens of this nation actually live in Israel). And the point of this nation certainly
appears to be to confer all of the benefits of citizenship in the nation only on that
nation's citizens and on no others. Many of the benefits of citizenship seem to be of a
socialist nature: quite a few freebies such as education, health care, vacations at the
seashore in special hotels, free housing (on land stolen from the natives), etc. etc. So,
this Jewish nation certainly seems to espouse a version of socialism that is nation-based.
I.e., national socialism.
@The_seventh_shape We'll see. Stalin asked "how many divisions does the Pope have?" The
Chair is still there, the Soviet Union is gone – God works in mysterious ways.
TURTLE in COMMENT 169: There is. or at least was, a professor in the Department of
Materials Science & Engineering at MIT, where Chomsky is Professor Emeritus of
Linguistics, who spoke out publicly regarding certain anomalies found in the debris of the
twin towers (not Building 7). Prof. Chomsky could have simply walked across campus and, no
doubt, gotten an audience with his fellow faculty member, had he chosen to do so.
Ridiculing the public statements of someone with actual expertise in a relevant field by
implying that none who have spoken out are qualified to do so is intellectually dishonest
in the extreme.
Chomsky is a fraud.
STRANGER: Agreed! There are also the 1500 architects and engineers at "Architects &
Engineers for 9/11 Truth" https://www.ae911truth.org/ who have spoken out, and who
are well qualified to do so. Same goes for Pilots for 9/11 Truth http://pilotsfor911truth.org/ .
Fascinating! I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky's Manufactured Consent quite a bit lately
due to the reckless deplatforming. As a "recovering anarchist," I sometimes wonder have I
moved right? Or has the left moved left? Thank you for writing!
Chomsky has valid critiques of US power and its use. He points out the evil done in the name
of the people re: capitalism (which benefits those who live off their capital. These people
travel the world in search of people to screw over and drop like bad habits. See – wood
and coal industries in West Virginia, USA.
That Israel is a ethno state is no coincidence, it is exactly the belonging to the group
which makes for a strong nation. All of "us" against all of "them". That Israel doesn't have
the mass influx of aliens as white European nations must suffer should be instructive. They
learned this from the NDSP as evidenced by the tactics of ghettoization on the Palestinians.
They even have the strange belief that walls work.
Civic nationalism makes a lotta sense, but one must feel connection to the land, the
people and the overarching nation of which they are a part. What multicultural gubbamint has
lasted without friction between its peoples and for how long? Most western nations are the
only ones with the multiculti death wish. Why do people migrate to hideous racist white
nations? Do they can gripe about whatever they want while living high on the hog, of
course!
Why don't people migrate to Israel, Japan, Cape Verde or Burundi? Because they either
don't let many "others" in by defacto law or nobody wants to go because of dejure common
sense.
They are afraid to admin that a color revolution was launched to depose Trump after the
elections of 2016. Essentially a coup d'état by intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of
Democratic Party.
Notable quotes:
"... The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA. ..."
"... The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . ..."
"... Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. ..."
"... The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. ..."
"... The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. ..."
"... The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump ..."
"... The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. ..."
"... Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed." ..."
As the Russiagate circus attempts to quietly disappear over the horizon, with Democrats
preferring to shift the anti-Trump narrative back to "racist", "white supremacist",
"xenophobe", and the mainstream media ready to squawk "recession"; the Trump administration may
have a few more cards up its sleeve before anyone claims the higher ground in this farce we
call an election campaign.
As
The Hill's John Solomon details, in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV
colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents
showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may
have done wrong in the Russia probe.
And while it's been almost a year since then, of feet-dragging and cajoling and
deep-state-fighting, we wonder, given Solomon's revelations below, if the president is getting
ready to play his 'Trump' card.
Here are the documents that
Solomon believes have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:
1.) Christopher
Steele 's confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau
parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers
met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my
sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with
Steele, such as the existence of the classified
Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery
if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his
ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National
Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under FOIA lawsuits
and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.
2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in
the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after
sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told,
including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had
Russia-related contacts at the CIA.
3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based
American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk,
worked as FBI sources . We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted
Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the
election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working
his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior
advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show
what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was
paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government's
Russia probe.
4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and
his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and
discussed with DOJ about using Steele's dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If
those concerns weren't shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major
repercussions.
5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these
documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or
captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI
undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked
Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that
statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be
another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.
6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified
briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer
of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the
documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as
having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren't initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI
irregularities.
7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I
wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every
claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the
claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet
rumors. Given Steele's own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before
Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI's final analysis of his credibility. A
document
I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele's information as only "minimally
corroborated" and the bureau's confidence in him as "medium."
9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of
four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special
counsel Robert
Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one
FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told
the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained
both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to
infiltrate Trump's orbit.
10.) Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S.
allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to
assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have
searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence . My sources
say these documents might help explain Attorney General Bill Barr's
recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and
counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is
unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."
These documents, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine
counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a
presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by
Democrats.
I disagree with Solomon. Nothing will "doom" the swamp unless the righteous few are
willing to indict, prosecute and carry out sentencing for the guilty. Exposing the guilty
accomplishes nothing, because anyone paying attention already knows of their crimes. Those
who want to believe lies will still believe them after the truth comes out.
It's ALL A WASTE OF TIME unless we follow through.
Does anyone see a pattern here after the 2009 Tea Party movement began?
2009 - Republicans: "If we win back the House, we can accomplish our agenda."
2011 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
After winning back the House)
2012 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2
YEARS After winning back the House)
2013 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
1 YEAR after winning back the House and the Senate)
2014 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
2 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2015 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
3 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2016 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
4 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2017 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 6 YEARS AGO and the Senate 4 YEARS AGO)
2018 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 7 YEARS AGO and the Senate 5 YEARS AGO)
2019 - John Solomon - "If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed"
I hate to say it, but I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, JOHN.
ALL WE HAVE HEARD OVER THE COURSE OF THIS DECADE IS "IF THIS HAPPENS...THEN THEY ARE
DOOMED / WE CAN ACCOMPLISH OUR AGENDA / YADDA YADDA YADDA.
WHEN THE FOLLOWING ARE FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON, THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE YOU:
CLINTONS
OBAMA
BIDEN
KERRY
BRENNAN
CLAPPER
COMEY
MCCABE
MUELLER
WEISSMAN
STRZOK
RICE
POWERS
LYNCH
YATES
ET AL
WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?
As if there's any major philosophical difference between the Librtads and Zionist
Cocksuckvatives.
Both sides use the .gov agencies to subvert and ignore the Constitution whenever possible.
Best example is WikiLeaks and how each party wished Assange would just go away when he
revealed damaging information about both sides on multiple occasions.
"... When Trump was first elected, I tried to calm down friends with advanced TDS, who expected Kristallnacht to be directed at their favorite brunch spots, by saying that "This is what empires in decline look like." ..."
"... In this sordid world, girls/women have absolutely no value ..."
"... Don't forget the young boys who get traded around like fudge recipes. Something quick on the Hollywood angle on bent dicks. It applies almost everywhere in America now: https://news.avclub.com/corey-feldman-made-a-documentary-about-sexual-abuse-he-1834310252 ..."
"... My reinterpretation of your comment would be; In this sordid world, people without power have absolutely no value. ..."
"... Epstein's World was tied in with Hollywood and Wall Street. Both are homoerotic paedophile havens. The world of the Vatican is tied in to Wall Street; it has it's own bank, the Instituto per le Opere de Religioni. ..."
"... As is true with the continued withholding of key documents in the JFK assassination, I believe that if the lousy reporting and official screwups in the Epstein case persist, it will be perfectly fine for the public to conclude and believe the absolute worst and act accordingly. ..."
"... Given the spotiness and inadequacy of reporting on the Epstein affair I wonder if an avenue for exploration might be that of a more direct involvement of media moguls and highly placed media staff in being serviced by Epstein i.e., the decision-makers regarding what gets covered and published are themselves subject to exposure, embarrassment, and other things that befall men caught in such matters. ..."
I can't add much to Yve's excellent post and the follow-up comments, except to say that the events of recent days and weeks
have made Pizzagate (as deranged as it was) into some kind of weird Jungian premonition which is to say, the s&#* is out of control.
When Trump was first elected, I tried to calm down friends with advanced TDS, who expected Kristallnacht to be directed
at their favorite brunch spots, by saying that "This is what empires in decline look like."
In regard to this sordid tale, I'm reminded of Robert Graves' (and the superb BBC TV version of) "I, Claudius."
My reinterpretation of your comment would be; In this sordid world, people without power have absolutely no value.
Otherwise, I'm with you all the way. Abuse is abuse. No other definition is logical.
Epstein's World was tied in with Hollywood and Wall Street. Both are homoerotic paedophile havens. The world of the Vatican
is tied in to Wall Street; it has it's own bank, the Instituto per le Opere de Religioni.
Who knows? Perhaps there will be some Prelates unearthed from the Lolita Express passenger log.
As is true with the continued withholding of key documents in the JFK assassination, I believe that if the lousy reporting
and official screwups in the Epstein case persist, it will be perfectly fine for the public to conclude and believe the absolute
worst and act accordingly.
Given the spotiness and inadequacy of reporting on the Epstein affair I wonder if an avenue for exploration might be that
of a more direct involvement of media moguls and highly placed media staff in being serviced by Epstein i.e., the decision-makers
regarding what gets covered and published are themselves subject to exposure, embarrassment, and other things that befall men
caught in such matters.
Who covers the press and roots out its secret malefactions? Rogue reporters? And who publishes them? Indeed!
"... "The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter ..."
"... Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness. ..."
"... Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script writers than anything else. ..."
President Trump slammed the "failing New York Times" on Sunday after leaked comments from executive editor Dean Baquet revealed
that the paper is pivoting from the Russia narrative (which he described as being "a little tiny bit flat-footed") to 'Trump is a
racist.'
"The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that
they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism
Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter, adding "'Journalism' has reached a new low in the history of our Country. It is nothing more
than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party. The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very
sick joke But the public is aware! The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke But the public
is aware!"
Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness.
Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script
writers than anything else. These pretend journalists have conjured up a narrative and it is all about repeat repeat repeat,
keeping that constant drip going into the vein of the Dem constituency. It's been going on for decades and the only people that
are too stupid to see it are the Dems themselves.
Obama didn't lead on race, either. In fact, Obama was largely missing in action: "The Obama
administration's civil rights record has been remarkably thin. In the first four years, the
administration did not file a single major employment discrimination, housing, or education
case, which are three traditional areas of civil rights enforcement. Additionally, in all of
these areas, the number of cases filed appears to be either at the same level as the George
W. Bush administration
In the other area of traditional civil rights enforcement, namely voting rights, the
administration has been active, particularly on the divisive issue of voter identification.
However, this activity all arose during the 2012 presidential campaign and seems quite likely
to have been related to, or motivated by, that campaign. The Obama administration has, in
fact, largely been absent on issues relating to redistricting, a traditional activity that
often implicates the preclearance mandate of the Department of Justice."
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1016&context=ijlse
The more you peel the onion, the more pathetic the Democratic leadership gets...
"Republican and representative democracy are interchangeable words..... What our big problem
is are the legacies of slavery like the EC, property tax based schools and the 2nd
Amendment..."
[Little "r" republican is a word with a meaning. Representative democracy is the euphemism
of choice by republicans. The US Senate and the related electoral college were concessions
from the larger more populous states to the little states (VT, NH, ME, RI, and DE. In the
1790 census VA had the largest population across the board, free white males of age, under
age free white males, free female, AND slaves. So, VA was making a concession to the
little... ]
[Also the 2nd Amendment was never intended by the Frames to mean anything like what the
NRA says it means. Even the NRA knows better themselves, but their political opposition has a
severe problem with facts and representing facts in a manner that leads to understanding and
consensus.]
There's a lot wrong here -- although Warren is a terrific story teller -- but it's really
too bad that Obama didn't say "accounting control fraud," instead of "predatory lending."
Although it's not clear that Warren would have understood him if he had.
You're damn right there's problems with Warren's Obama story: he does five minutes of
research about her career and focus before she arrives, makes sure to be backlit upon her
entrance, rings what comes across as a transparently canned bell and she swoons!
I get that that most people were taken in by that talented, fraudulent shapeshifter, but
this is painful to watch.
Isn't it interesting that the Democrats are only about a third of the country now, but
because they and the other rotten party have rigged our political system so no other parties
can emerge, that they essentially will determine who will go up against Trump? The Democratic
voters are just as lost as the politicians they vote for. Turnout is often low for primaries
within that party, in a party that only a third of the country identifies with, and there is
little chance that anyone will get a majority of voters. So, it is entirely possible that the
person chosen to go against Trump will have support of, what, 4-5% of the US electorate? And
if they are stupid enough to choose Biden, and they are, the general election will be Biden
vs Trump. The USSR at least ended in interesting ways. We're just going to vote in two
corrupt, out of touch and mentally declining frauds to throw hot garbage at each other, and
what is the left supposed to do? There will never be a better argument for a third party if
those two are the options given to us by the duds in the two major parties. I can't even
contemplate who Biden would choose as his VP, and possibly lock us into a decade of hell, and
then the environmental crisis hits.
It is not an issue in regards to difficulty, generally, it is the options people are given
and how often it is that the options people are given are net negatives regardless as to who
wins, and people realizing that what the general public wants is not reflected in policy.
Bernie is an exceptuon, and look at all the nonsense thrown at him, and all the undemocratic
means those in power use to maintain their power. I am not saying that justifies inactivity,
but it does help to explain it. But, lets say Biden or someone similar is chosen by Democrats
in the primaries. What percentage of the electorate, given all I mentioned, will have chosen
him?
If the US electorate allows 4-5% to decide, then they deserve who they get. It’s not
difficult to vote in a primary.
Depends where you live. If you live in most states and you want to vote in a Democratic
Party presidential primary, you have to be registered as a Democrat. Here in AZ I can vote for
every office except president by being a No Party Preference voter registrant. If I want to
vote against Joe Biden, I have to change my voter registration to “D”. Not gonna
happen.
“Here in California, owned and operated by the Democratic Party, voting for someone
other than the approved candidate could quickly get your vote “lost” or
“disqualified” and that is not mentioning the rigging of convention
delegates.”
This ultimately why Bernie is up against it. I think he has a real shot to win and am not
very concerned about the polls, he is doing well despite all that is aligned against him.
Palast showed what that rotten party did in 2016 in the primaries (it is entirely possible that
Bernie won the state or at least came even closer to winning), and you could include tons
since. My favorite was how they used superdelegates at the state level in California to get
Bauman to lead the state party, and he had to resign in shame. He was previously a pharma
lobbyist that was paid to lobby the state against bargaining down the price of drugs. Then
there is stuff like this:
As the DNC has argued in court though, they don’t have to run a fair primary and can
pick whoever those at the top of the party want, right? It would be amazing if someone within
the DNC and the state party here (I live in Southern California) would leak what they are
doing. Not expecting it, but it would be great.
True. However, if one is voting™ for
a non-corporatist candidate, getting
that vote counted has been problematic,
and I expect it to be more so in 2020:
'The senator had tough words for one of Joe Biden's signature laws'
by Gideon Resnick, Political Reporter...08.14.19...10:57AM ET
"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) suggested in an interview Tuesday evening that she would
seek the repeal of the 1994 crime bill -- a historic though highly controversial measure tied
closely to one of her closest competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It "needs to be changed, needs to be rolled back, needs to be repealed." Warren said of
the law, which has become widely bemoaned by criminal justice reform advocates for its
tough-on-crime measures, harsh sentencing guidelines, and general encouragement of the war on
drugs."...
"Biden just 1 point ahead of Warren in new weekly tracking poll"
By Julia Manchester...08/14/19...11:04 AM EDT
"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by just 1
point in a new Economist–YouGov weekly tracking poll.
Biden sits at 21 percent support in the survey, while Warren is close behind at 20
percent. The next candidate is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 16 percent support among
voters."...
Pennsylvania voters have very strong -- and mostly negative -- views about President
Donald Trump, and about half say they will vote against him no matter his opponent, according
to a new poll of registered voters across the state.
Over multiple questions and surveys, a clear portrait emerges of an electorate deeply
polarized over the president, with strongly held feelings on either side.
About half of voters had a "strongly unfavorable" opinion of the president, twice the
number who held a "strongly favorable" opinion.
And while the divisions among Democratic voters are real during this primary election,
especially across groups such as age, race, and income, the real divide is between the
parties and ideologies: Most Democrats, regardless of which candidate they support, say they
will vote against Trump no matter what. ...
MONACA, Pa. (AP) -- President Donald Trump sought to take credit Tuesday for the
construction of a major manufacturing facility in western Pennsylvania as he tries to
reinvigorate supporters in the Rust Belt towns who helped send him to the White House in
2016.
Trump visited Shell Oil Co.'s soon-to-be completed Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex,
which will turn the area's vast natural gas deposits into plastics. The facility, which
critics claim will become the largest air polluter in western Pennsylvania, is being built in
an area hungry for investment.
Speaking to a crowd of thousands of workers dressed in fluorescent orange-and-yellow
vests, Trump said, "This would have never happened without me and us."
In fact, Shell announced its plans to build the complex in 2012, when President Barack
Obama was in office.
A Shell spokesperson said employees were paid for their time attending Trump's
remarks.
Trump used the official White House event as an opportunity to assail his Democratic
rivals, saying, "I don't think they give a damn about Western Pennsylvania, do you?"
The focus is part of a continued push by the Trump administration to increase the
economy's dependence on fossil fuels in defiance of increasingly urgent warnings about
climate change. And it's an embrace of plastic at a time when much of the world is sounding
alarms over its impact.
"We don't need it from the Middle East anymore," Trump said of oil and natural gas,
calling the employees "the backbone of this country."
Trump's appeals to blue-collar workers helped him win Beaver County, where the plant is
located, by more than 18 percentage points in 2016, only to have voters turn to Democrats in
2018's midterm elections. In one of a series of defeats that led to Republicans' loss of the
House, voters sent Democrat Conor Lamb to Congress after the prosperity promised by Trump's
tax cuts failed to materialize.
Beaver County is still struggling to recover from the shuttering of steel plants in the
1980s that surged the unemployment rate to nearly 30%. Former mill towns like Aliquippa have
seen their populations shrink, while nearby Pittsburgh has lured major tech companies like
Google and Uber, fueling an economic renaissance in a city that reliably votes
Democratic.
Trump claimed that his steel and aluminum tariffs have saved those industries and that
they are now "thriving." a description that exaggerates the recovery of the steel
industry.
Trump also took credit for the addition of 600,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. Labor
Department figures show that roughly 500,000 factory jobs have been added under his
presidency. ...
(Apparently, workers' pay would be docked if they
did not attend; and they were advised to 'behave'.)
For what it is worth ( Not much), I have spoken to about a dozen people about Epstein's
death. Not one of them believes Epstein committed suicide. I asked a wide range of people
from small town mayors to Realtors to a commercial fisherman.
I have insufficient information to make a judgement, however I do consider it more likely
than not that Epstein was killed. My opinion is based on nothing more than 60 plus years of
paying attention to how things really work, it was a mighty convenient death.
"... This is doomed to dissolve. To a greater and significant degree, the public is finding true justice wanting, and thus holds no trust in Government, at All levels. ..."
Then you get a tame judge assigned (and that's nothing new, even Johnny Carson used to
joke "do you know how bad the economy is these days?" [sidekick] "no, Johnny, just how bad is
the economy?" "it's so bad, organised crime has had to lay off 5 judges this week ") to let
Epstein off with a slap on the wrist, a year at the Four Seasons low security penitentiary
and early release through time served.
Much simpler than any of the other notions and achieves exactly the same result (Epstein
is subject to "the full force of the law" but stays happily alive to tell the tale and keep
his finger off the Dead Mans Switch).
If you were in charge of all this, which solution would you try first? If you've ever
worked in a big, but incompetent, organisation (and if they're big, they're almost certainly
going to be incompetence personified), you wouldn't even need to ask yourself that
question.
This is doomed to dissolve. To a greater and significant degree, the public is finding
true justice wanting, and thus holds no trust in Government, at All levels.
But hey that's just conspiracy theory talk .. right ?
"How many other millionaires and billionaires were part of the illegal activities that he
was engaged in?" he asked. Even the BBC website has as its heading of a news story today "Jeffrey Epstein: Questions raised over financier's death."
"... And at no point will there be any of the damage limitation that a trial, requiring and weighing evidence, would have put on the mushrooming of charges, rumours and speculations which has been taking and will continue to take place. ..."
"... In realistic terms the damage to the system of a few outliers, like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew or Dershowitz being driven, red faced from public life, would be minimal. In fact it could easily be spun as am indication that the system worked and that, in the end, an obscure former masseur could be vindicated against Princes and ex-Presidents. ..."
The Epstein case is very simple: had a trial taken place-and proper trials are increasingly
rare in the USA, as the record of his Florida 'trial' shows- it had the potential of being
extremely embarrassing to a number of prominent and powerful people.
On the other hand, now that he is dead, there can be no limit to the enormous number of
allegations that can be made against him and them.
From the point of view of The Establishment, this death is far from convenient. It will
redound to the advantage of many individuals but in the long run it will contribute to an
increase in popular distrust of the entire system. And at no point will there be any of the
damage limitation that a trial, requiring and weighing evidence, would have put on the
mushrooming of charges, rumours and speculations which has been taking and will continue to
take place.
In realistic terms the damage to the system of a few outliers, like Bill Clinton, Prince
Andrew or Dershowitz being driven, red faced from public life, would be minimal. In fact it
could easily be spun as am indication that the system worked and that, in the end, an obscure
former masseur could be vindicated against Princes and ex-Presidents.
The danger is that this sordid but very routine 'scandal' will blot out real and important
matters that require public debate. How many US Presidents and English princes have not been
involved in the sort of things said to have been facilitated by Epstein? So far as Princes
go, I can think of none. And many of them, including future Kings, have done a lot worse
things than fuck teenage girls, though that has been routine for all who didn't prefer
boys.
It would be interesting to learn what lessons it is thought this affair should teach us?
Should the age of consent laws be revised to ban sexual relations between rich and poor? Or
to legislate against sexual partnerships involving an age differential of more than, say, ten
years?
Or should class society and the capitalist system, which commodifies everything and puts
the poor majority in positions in which they are vulnerable to prostitution, be abolished?
This would involve something a little more substantial than a lynch mob led by unprincipled,
loudmouth demagogues feeding off the obsessions and frustrations of the sexually
disfranchised.
These last we have had in America since the Pilgrim Fathers stumbled ashore, clutching
their Old Testaments angrily and looking for others to blame. And be punished.
As to the nonsense that Epstein has been spirited away, is not really dead and will, like
Merlin, one day return...that way madness lies.
"... I am just now reading David Martin's new book "The Assassination of James Forrestal", about a 1949 murder by the Zionists disguised as suicide. ..."
"... He can sit around with the Skripals and talk over old times. ..."
"... He probably became more of a liability and/or stepped on some toes higher up in the food chain. How many former Israeli prime ministers will attend his funeral? Ghislaine's lawyers will be happy, she was a victim of Epstein too. Poor child. ..."
"... Well said. Indeed, loss of trust in governments is key, and this event utterly destroys the little trust that remained. Other western governments have the same problem also. ..."
Reports are that he was 'found dead' at 7:30 am local time, he was supposedly on suicide
watch, he was a tremendously valuable witness, he could trade his testimony for leniency, a
lot of very important people were worried.
No one will believe that Epstein committed suicide voluntarily, I certainly don't.
Not extraditing. I am just now reading David Martin's new book "The Assassination of James Forrestal",
about a 1949 murder by the Zionists disguised as suicide.
He probably became more of a liability and/or stepped on some toes higher up in the food
chain.
How many former Israeli prime ministers will attend his funeral? Ghislaine's lawyers will be happy, she was a victim of Epstein too. Poor child.
Why would anyone watch House of Cards? The real life soap called American politics is way
more fun and interesting.
Make no mistake, Ghislaine will never be extradited by TPTB, for they are still designating
her a "Madame"; just a very naughty lady who was adept at pleasing her clients and her
"partner". Not a spy, not a slave trader, just an independent and shrewd Mommy of sorts. "
Lady Madame Ghislaine". A glamour girl to the end. And without a doubt she'll get the
same state funeral as her father when her time comes. That is, if Israel is still a state
when she kicks the bucket.
Jeffry Epstein suicided- makes it obvious, that the deep state mafia regime in control was
feeling intense heat, some one(s) important in the deep state decided overt killing a
prisoner in federal prison and trying to defuse the news and public' obvious disbelief in
cause and method, is worth killing him and divert and defuse the mess. For sure the names
that would have become public was going to destabilize the DC regime. In next few days before
the news is buried, we will see how MSM will divert the narrative, away from the names it is
trying to protect. For sure at one time he was "made" and one the "Goodfellas" .
kooshy , Aug 10 2019 14:40 utc |
18Lysander , Aug 10 2019 14:40 utc |
19
The only way his 'suicide' can be considered an actual suicide is if his handlers had so much
leverage over him that they could persuade that he (and any loved ones he might have) would
all be much better off if he did it himself than if he forces them to do it for him.
That's a possibility I suppose. But the idea that he did just because he couldn't handle
life anymore simply doesn't warrant any consideration at all.
I responded to Your last response to me on this thread:
The MoA Week In Review - OT 2019-45
It is the last entry on that thread. Just wanted to let You know.
-----
How convenient that Epstein is no longer in the perpetrator protection program. The
witness protection program was obviously never considered, or applied. Someone wrote that the
Epstein case proved that there are two justice systems in the US: one for the rich and one
for the suckers. Although that is not quite correct, as the one for the suckers must be
called Injustice System.
It also goes to show, that while people desperately attempt to change their 'elected
officials', they have no whatsoever control over the 'unelected officials'. Those decide over
the (In-)Justice system with impunity. How would the 'Supreme' Court look like if The
People would elect its members? Citizen United would have never happened? But that it did
- outside of any say of the population it affected the most - is one reason why the truth
about Epstein's Johns will never surface. How many of the supreme court justices visited
'penetrate-a-minor-girl island?
Correct. No evidence has yet to emerge. Your beliefs notwithstanding.
If I were Epstein I would have a powerful motive to commit suicide. And some may have
powerful motive to murder him. There is nothing yet to suggest her was murdered.
I cite this as an example of the disinformational slippery slope which in other contexts
leads to the election of Trump, for instance, or the passage of Brexit.
IOW, suicide is not the only form of self-inflicted self-harm.
That probably means he was just a really rich pervert whose luck ran out rather than a Mossad
or CIA asset tasked with collecting kompromat on influential people. A pampered twit
like Epstein, used to a life of luxury and leisure, in jail on a sex charge would be eaten
alive and quite possibly killed. I speculated after he was arrested that he would try to kill
himself if he faced a long stretch in jail and it looks like that's what happened. Of course
plenty of people will claim his suicide was faked etc. but unless they have credible evidence
to back that up I will go with 'Occam's razor' on this.
We live in a national security state run by criminals. Expecting justice from the legal
system is like expecting to elect a president who will drain the swamp. It is a democracy
theme park, where the levers and handles are not attached to anything.
Epstein's death - assuming he hasn't been "spirited" away to somewhere welcoming and
unwilling to extradite, ever, (I wonder which "country" that might be) - and its timing is
awfully convenient.
And the fact that he was supposedly on suicide watch after his "apparent" attempt some
days earlier gives one pause. Either the so-called suicide watch is really negligent and
Epstein was given/allowed both the "space" and the means (surely the means would, under
suicide watch, be rendered null?) or his death by *suicide* is questionable.
We forget that there are still other (((predators))) on the loose to include Polanski, Woody
Allen, and a list of others. I will not say that they are all jews because George Bush Sr,
was a known pedophile and he died at a ripe old age of 94 (and some people believe in
karma..yeah right). Of course he was also the head of the CIA and the Warren commission, so
he could afford to do what he did and get away with it. Don't believe me, check into the
Franklin Child Abuse scandal and this Washington Times article. http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/franklin.htm
Unless "We the People" take these predators down, they will continue to destroy
children.
Since hollywood is so bankrupt for ideas i wonder if someone will do a citizen kane type
story based on epistein, For those who dont know citizen kane was basically an unflattering
biography about a thinly veiled william randolph hurst expry (Hurst did everything possible
to try to kill the film when he heard about it). This might be the only way we get anything
close to even an approximation of what the truth was behind Epistein
div> Can't help but think about Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the "D.C.
Madam," was also suicided.
I especially like how his suicide was staged on a Friday evening when people wont be paying
that much attention. That has always been the best time for governments to release bad news
I wonder if they will do an autopsy, or maybe he will get "cremated" right away? If the
former, I'd say maybe he actually did kill himself, if the latter, definitely not. Of course
autopsies don't have to be accurate either. "Who gets the remains?" is another good question.
"Why the heck did he show up to get arrested like that?" is another one.
Wow!! Those suckers at the BBC manage NOT to mention Maxwell or Prince Andrew (ok... they are
mentioned in some of the links they give, but come one!!) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49306032
Epstein, never married, no acknowledeged children. Odd for someone who wanted to populate the
world with his progeny... someone suggested that now his estate(s) canbe freely searched. We
will see if this all goes away or if some pitbulls in Miami keep after others who have been
implicated. When the DC Madam was murdered/committed suicide every lead went dark and her
little black book disappeared as I recall...
lysias 11
I read that book last month! The official story still stands but the truth is out there. And
it was not surprising to see that any evidence contrary to the official story of a paranoid,
crazy man committing suicide didn't go anywhere.
I expect the Epstein story and its details to fade as well because many in power want it
to. It's been interesting to read of the ties between Bill Browder, Robert Maxwell, and
Jeffrey Epstein. Very shady dealings with so much submerged.
does this require elaboration? I read your linked Daily News article. I have spent some
time behind bars myself (although not for sex crimes I hasten to add) and while not in
possession of as lavish lifestyle as Epstein I would probably have a difficult time
tolerating much of the rest of my life spent in similar conditions.
And I get that Club Fed is a much better living environment than pre-trial holding cells
but only by degrees...and he was going to be held in pre-trial for a long time while
the press and alt media had a field day with his story.
The Clinton conection of course leads to all sorts of rightwing created conspiracy
theorues which Barflies too love to swarm all over like a fresh batch of dogshit on the
sidewalk.
Clinton likes/liked having sex with young, possible underage girls?
They all say they cut ties with Epstein 12 years ago when the charges first surfaced. And
yet, Epstein still got around and hobnobbed with the rich and shameless ever since then.
Epstein by all recent accounts wasn't actually "smart", just pathologically driven and
well-funded. Someone gave him a leg-up very early on; just an undeniable fact if you study
his bio. He would not have any incriminating evidence stored at his properties or in his
personal effects, it would've been funneled to whoever he was working for long ago. Point is,
he trusted his bosses. His brain, Ghislaine's brain; those are the only two places outside of
Tel Aviv that the info was still stored.
If he had prepared a dead man's switch, he would have pulled it years ago.
I find the Pavlovian reactions shown here by quite a number of people very painful to
witness.
Like there can be any doubt Epstein would have more than enough reason to kill himself.
A sexual marauder, a high-roller, the world's no. 1 pimp, probably an "Intelligence" asset
in a class of its own, a guy who knew none of the boundaries us mortals usually face
– confined to a tiny cell and prison life. With the prospect of having your sad and
perverse life dissected in court, of having to explain and justify your actions, of having
to go through harrowing witnesses' statements. Yeah, what's not to look forward to in
there?
Yours is by far the most Pavlovian reaction to this news. Or is it 'news'?
Let me get this straight for your to think about it. The guy has enough money to spend
after he gets out of jail. How any years would he get in a Justice system that was lenient in
the first place? Different folks now in the Justice Department? Let's say he would get five
years, no make it ten. I seriously doubt he wouldn't get parole after some time for exemplary
behavior. And he promised to not continue his crimes. Remember that it suffices to confess to
the public and apologize for what you did - for the evangelical faction to forgive you. Hell,
make that 'Christian faction'. He would sign a confidentiality agreement in exchange for his
life to those who would take it otherwise. Lots of money to use in a corrupted society.
Jeffrey Epstein would know that the average attention span of Americans is as long as the
trail of a shooting star in the night. Another mass shooting and "Who? Epstein? Never heard
of him."
It is you, who fits the findings of Pavlov quite well. However, from personal experience
at the Humane Society, I know that there is no dog that cannot be re-trained, or
re-conditioned to be a friendly doggie.
My first thought. In fact, I had this thought as soon as I heard of the first Epstein
suicide "attempt." I am sure I am not alone. Just when we thought we were going to see whose
names actually were in her little black book, she conveninetly disappears, and the little
black book slides down the memory hole.
Remember it was Reagan who said: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on
me.
Oh, yes, and Gary Webb supposedly also committed suicide. And a number of the JFK
witnesses who planned to come forward some years/decades after his death---poof! Heart attack
the day before the planned interrogation (see Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable).
Anyone who believes this new (and richly predicted) suicide story is a fool. Gimme an
effing break!
The guy was on "suicide watch"! That can only mean that the people in charge of this supposed
watch were the ones who administered the tiny shot (leaves no trace in the skin) that brought
about heart failure.
How convenient, just after Florida opened its own investigation into the original plea
arraignment that threatened to unseal Epstein's financial records. But just because Epstein's
no more doesn't mean the investigation should end; others in the DoJ broke the law then, not
Epstein. Plus, his operation was what's known as a "ring", a conspiracy, a racketeering
operation involving numerous others, some known, some not. I wonder what his will says?
The flaw in your argument is that Epstein wasn't getting out this time and he knew it.
He may have been killed and he may have killed himself precisely because of what is to
follow.
I believe like Karlof1 that the investigation should definitely continue because of what
is to follow and also now should include whether or not Epstein was "suicided".
And if Clinton or Prince Andrew or wtf is found guilty of sex crimes then he should rot in
jail too.
After all, Bill Cosby, white Amerikkka's favourite black father figure went to jail didn't
he? Although granted he is black and he is also forgotten at this point in the ever rushing
news cycle....but he is still behind bars, isn't he?
willie , Aug 10 2019 16:37 utc |
88DontBelieveEitherPr. , Aug 10 2019 16:41 utc |
89
To those who think "suicide watch" is some magical way to prevent suicide, and that his death
would imply some action by a third party to kill him, maybe i can shed some light on the
procedure, as it is handled in Germany (And very likely at least inspired from US
procedures):
1. The inmate does get a cell with a fellow inmate, so he is not alone, and is observed by
that inmate too.
2. Additionally, to normal security measures, the inmate gets taken away all things with
which he could harm himself
3. Wardens control the inmate visually in a pre determined interval of e.g. 15 minutes, 30
minutes, 60 minutes.
4. In special cases inmates are transferred into special cells with rubber walls and floors,
like one would think in a mental hospital (Gummizelle is the German term).
Now, in consequence:
1. When the other inmate does not look, sleeps or simply does not give a shit, this has no
effect
2. While belts, show laces and sharp things are removed, one can easily improvise a rope from
a piece of bed linen etc. to hand themselves on the water fountain or classically on the
window grille, jump from a double story bed head first breaking ones neck or bleeding
themselves, slitting the wrist to bleed to death (something sharp can always be found or
made, overdosing on drugs the inmate acquired from other inmates...
I myself have witnessed multiple people successfully kill themselves under suicide watch
in the pretty short times i myself was an inmate in a maximum security prison. And i myself
have been at times under suicide watch, and I know myself that if you want to do it, you got
plenty of options.
After some days you know how the system works, and have multiples options if you choose
so.
Plus, guards are always lazy, and cheat on the interval. E.g. checking only once an hour
instead of every 15 minutes.
But even the 15 minutes is plenty of time.
So him being on suice watch and still killing himself IS NO PROOF OF NOTHING.
That said, i dont exclude something like this.
Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he felt ashamed. Maybe not, and only had not the balls to
face what he did.
Maybe some told him it would be better for him, or that there are actually people he loved
and that he got threatened that those people would be hurt.
Who knows? Not we certainly.
IMHO it is TYPICALL for such people as him to commit suicide.
He may have some smarts concerning the rich and famous, but in a federal jail, he is
FUCKED.
EVERYONE WILL TRY TO GET A PIECE OF HIS ASS AND MONEY!
JUST LIKE EVERY FUCKING PEDO IN EVERY JAIL ON EARTH!
And no solitary confinement (Already gone on suicide watch, where he is at least in a 2 man
cell) can protect him.
Taking a shower, free time, sport, work, visiting waiting cell.. Countless times to get that
mofo, and put a shank to his dick.
A pedo is already done in prison, but a prominent pedo???
He killed himself to not get assfucked till it bleeds, to not have to get abused like he
abused.
He had no future, and he doing himself was realizing he played out.
As chance would have it, AOC appears to have a House of Representatives oversight role
with regard to Epstein's 'suicide' and is loudly demanding answers; she sounds a lot more
sceptical than you!
This is a good opportunity to show if she has substance. Let's see what she does!
One self-proclaimed corrections officer said on Reddit that Epstein's suicide should
never have been possible.
I'm a corrections officer. This should never have been possible. During the intake
process due to the nature of his crimes and being famous he should have already been on
special watch. Then after the first attempt he would have been in a special cell. He
would be in what we call a "pickle suit" it's a green suit that you can't tear or tie to
anything. His blankets would be the same material. He would only get hygiene products
under supervision. Only thing allowed in his cell would be a book and court papers. Then
we would be monitored more closely. This is a huge failing on the jail. I want a massive
investigation on how this was able to happen.
/div> The NYT this morning is reporting that it is not known if Epstein was
on a suicide watch. Clearly, he should have been after the recent incident in which he was
found unconscious and with injury marks around his neck. I think it is not at all unlikely that
he did commit suicide, but also that he was allowed or even aided in doing so.
The NYT this morning is reporting that it is not known if Epstein was on a suicide watch.
Clearly, he should have been after the recent incident in which he was found unconscious and
with injury marks around his neck. I think it is not at all unlikely that he did commit
suicide, but also that he was allowed or even aided in doing so.
It's probably too early to draw the curtains on the Epstein nothing-burger. It's not at all
clear to me that ANY of the under age women were pre-pubescent children. Bonking under age
females with breasts and pubic hair is known as Statutory Rape in most Western countries; the
assumption being that the bonkee is deemed to be too young to give Informed Consent to sex
with an adult male. If there's no allegation or evidence of coercion by the bonker then it's
not a hanging offense.
The mystery surrounding Epstein's rags to riches good fortune has not yet been fully
explained, although if it's true that he had charisma then he was probably capable of
seducing/ charming males as well as females.
IF he was running a honey-trap blackmail scam as a sole trader then he will fade from
History surrounded by a blizzard of "???". If on the other hand he was a "useful idiot"
running the scam on behalf, and for the benefit of, powerful people then one suspects that he
will have left a "dead man's letter" so that he'd have the last laugh.
A dead man's letter is only as good as the entity one trusts to ensure that it's
disseminated. WikiLeaks would be my top pick for a trustworthy publisher and The Swamp is
moving Heaven and Earth to keep Assange incommunicado until he can be suicided.
I think you are missing the fundamental issue regarding the circumstances of Epstein's
death, it is no longer Epstein's crimes and that of his co-conspirators, it is a systemic
loss of Trust in the government and political elites. The allegations against Epstein and his
associates were extremely serious, at the absolute minimum they involved major political and
economic figures involved in sex trafficking and the sexual abuse of minors, the worst
allegations were that foreign individuals or governments had gained compromising information
about these figures and used it subvert the government policies for their benefits. I do not
know if all of these allegations were, but at least some of these allegations involving
sexual abuse were truth (Epstein himself admitted as much when he took the original guilty
plea).
In re-arresting Epstein under new charges, the government itself also asserted that 1)
they believed Epstein committed other crimes and 2) they were reasonably likely to get a
conviction at a trial (prosecutors are not supposed to bring charges against people unless
they think they can get a conviction at trial). Again, I do not know if all of these
allegations were true, but in bring a case the government said that they believed that they
were. Lastly, in refusing to grant bail to Epstein, the government clearly and publicly took
on the responsibility of protecting Epstein from ALL THREATS (including himself, other
inmates, guards, health issues, everything) while he was in their custody.
The fact that Epstein, allegedly, tried to commit suicide a week ago and was then moved to
the highest level of care and security by the government where he then dies after "allegedly"
committing suicide is a huge, public and devastating failure of the government to fulfill
their obligations to society, the courts and even Epstein (that is assuming Epstein really is
dead). This is made all the worst by the fact that many, many people (Zerohedge, moon of
alabama, RT, infowars, the Duran among others) had stated their fears that Epstein would be
murdered in such a way by powerfully forces within the government and political elites, in
the eyes of these people, their concerns have been fully vindicated. By failing to fulfill
their obligations in such a public way, especially after being warned repeatedly by people
concerned about just such a situation unfolding, the US government has hugely discredited
itself and legitimized the believe that the US government and the political elite is deeply,
systematically corrupt.
Now, undoubtedly the US government and society will not be fatally undermined by a single
event such as this. But for the prior 30 years (at least), the US government and society seem
unable to generate successes for anyone except the top 1% and indeed seems openly hostile to
the very idea that government should ever create a benefit for anyone except the 1% or that
the political and economic elite should ever be held accountable for any failure or crimes
they commit (the 2001 tech bubble, the Iraq war, the 2008 financial crisis, Libya, Syria,
Iran, Venezuela and now the Epstein scandal). At some point a critical threshold will be
breeched and people will slowly stop believing in the various government narratives on events
and public policies. Many American already reject the US government's narrative on 9/11, the
Iraq war, Syria now some of them will add the Epstein episode to their list of disbelieved
narratives. Unless the US government reverses course and starts rebuilding it's legitimacy
and trust, this rejection of US government narratives will spread to the most fundamental
government narrative, that the US government is the legitimate government of the people. Once
that narrative is disbelieved by as little as 1/3 of the population, the US (as it currently
exists) is doomed. When will that happen, that's the $64 question although I personally
believe it will be within the next 20 years unless some reforming figure arises
Since he was certainly a spook it makes sense that he knew he had to commit suicide by
himself. Suicided, yes, but by his owners who dropped him. The guy still thought recently he
could be released on bail.
Now what about the many pages missing from the published documents?? and those pages where
she starts talking about some big guys and have a lot of black on the lines??
The details of Trump's only ride on an Epstein plane, from Florida to NY, he 'hitched a
ride' - no girls. It is curious, as Ilargi, no Trump fan, points out the MSM has never
bothered to report this, plus keeps on suggesting that Trump is involved with Epstein,
insinuating guilt by association (sex trafficking, pedophilia, prostitution, abuse,
blackmail, etc.) Publishing that photo of Epstein w. Trump and Maxwell, Melania, over and
over.
Giuffre (> recent doc release) confirms - Trump never flirted with her, she never saw
Trump involved with any girls. (see also dan 77)
The MSM goes so far as to not report court cases, witness testimony, legal conclusions,
etc. from the US judiciary (itself notoriously corrupt!) -> even the minor attempts to
uphold say, the first amendment / some small parts of the rule of law.. are ignored, hidden,
flatly denied..
Circe might accuse me of supporting Trump! - NO, no..no...
Posted by: donkeytale | Aug 10 2019 16:55 utc | 103
You know what, you are right... I can't say 100 percent what exactly happened but this has
to have everybody's BS detector on full alert.
As Posted by: Kadath | Aug 10 2019 17:01 utc | 106
"At some point a critical threshold will be breeched and people will slowly stop believing in
the various government narratives on events and public policies. Many American already reject
the US government's narrative on 9/11, the Iraq war, Syria now some of them will add the
Epstein episode to their list of disbelieved narratives. Unless the US government reverses
course and starts rebuilding it's legitimacy and trust, this rejection of US government
narratives will spread to the most fundamental government narrative, that the US government
is the legitimate government of the people. Once that narrative is disbelieved by as little
as 1/3 of the population, the US (as it currently exists) is doomed. "
The lies haven't got so blatant that the narrative managers are asking to disregard any
logic to believe their stories. This Epstein case I have personally been following since
2015. From all that I read of the guy, suicide doesn't seem like his way. Ratting everyone
else out seemed more his style. Thus I lean more on a hit job more than anything.
I didn't really know Jeffrey. He was like Boo Radley in the corner of the room. After I met
him, he became Jeffrey Epstein, he had no interest in me. He knew right out of the box who
the players were, the people who would stay out all night, people who had interests in
extracurricular objectives, and who the hitters were. That wasn't me." ... The Wall Street
names in the book range from the highly prominent to the obscure, and, for some unknown
reason, a disproportionate number of names of bankers in it worked once upon a time at
Lazard, my old firm.
Cohan dutifully records passing events in the outside world, such as the near-bankruptcy of
New York, which Mr Rohatyn averted, and various mergers and acquisitions. But the
interesting action was taking place in Lazard's allegedly dingy (they never seemed that bad
to me) offices in the Rockefeller Center, where the "great men" who advised big companies
plied their trade.
The emphasis was on the "men". Cohan records that partners from Meyer to Mr David-Weill
and Mr Rohatyn imported a French attitude to extramarital liaisons and the first women who
worked there as bankers were apparently propositioned constantly. One young woman is even
said to have been raped by two junior bankers, and according to Cohan's account the
bankers were eased out to avoid embarrassment.
But just because Epstein's no more doesn't mean the investigation should end
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 10 2019 16:11 utc | 78
This can't be stressed enough.
The Great US of A are absolutely FUCKEDUP. Remember what's at stake are proven and alleged
public order crimes, that it was not a victim that perished, that sex trafficking, of minors
or otherwise, are criminal organization type crimes. These crimes shall be prosecuted
under the law. Except there is no law to be under anymore.
We can all speculate on suicide vs "suicided" but in my opinion this is several degrees
below the bar, at this point I don't even think it matters that part of the discussion. I'm
slightly disappointed at today's comments, but since I can't myself bring up to par, I extend
it myself.
There isn't any hard evidence that Epstein was murdered, true. But if the death of the sole
named accused in arguably the most high profile case in decades, involving the most
well-connected elites, steeped foreign intelligence connections, in a federal prison, on
suicide watch, alone in a cell wearing a paper suit, with no shoelaces, under 24/7 watch
doesn't arose your suspicions, you are a special kind of obtuse. Suicide watch is designed
specifically to not allow what supposedly happened. At a minimum, it is a scandal in its own
right. But to happen to Epstein now, just as the trail was getting rolling, on Friday - the
day known to 'bury' stories, in a federal facility in Manhattan, is as fishy as fishy gets.
If you want to mock those who point that out, it reflects much more on your naivety than
anyone else's.
He wasn't just "bonking" underage women, he was trafficking them - internationally and on
a large scale. And he threatened them as well. These women were fearful.
If your daughter had been one of those "bonked", trafficked, and threatened at 15 or 16
years old maybe you wouldn't be so cavalier.
Furthermore, it's difficult to believe a wealthy person like Epstein would risk their
wealth and prestige so blatantly without some belief that they were protected. Many believe
that his protection came from Mega/Mossad. So the serial rapist was likely part of a criminal
conspiracy that was aided and abetted by a foreign government.
I used to think you had a functioning moral compass.
My BS detector has been bleeping almost non-stop since the US war on Serbia, as far as I'm
concern when the US makes an assertion they need to provide verifiable evidence to back up
their claims. my personal opinion is that Epstein didn't commit suicide, heck, I'm not even
sure if he's really dead but if he is dead, he was probably murdered.
Kadath @106 Well said. Indeed, loss of trust in governments is key, and this event utterly destroys the
little trust that remained. Other western governments have the same problem also.
Epstein was in custody of someone. Whether Epstien was "suicided" or his death was faked, in a functioning state that
someone would be brought to justice, and that would go up the chain of command until the highest culprit is found. But we live
in a system that is either a Banana Republic or a Mafia State
Had you given thought to: Banana Mafia State Democracy ?
Formerly T-Bear , Aug 11 2019 19:46 utc |
8james , Aug 11 2019 20:04 utc |
9
false choices and a
load of shite.. how is a crony capitalism, banana mafia run country supposed to be a sovereign state?? personally i can't
see it.. pat lang as usual is for the most part, off his rocker..sovereign state my ass..
FWIW New Eastern Outlook is running a story by Gordon Duff on Epstein's murder including citing Bill Richardson and plutonium
theft from USA stockpile. Messad gets a mention.
I put investigative journalism between quotation marks because the editors of the NYT probably already know who killed Epstein.
"Playing along" with the investigative narrative would be the more appropriate term.
Even the New York Times is reporting that 2 guards who were supposed to check on Epstein every 30 minutes since he was in "protective"
custody didn't do their rounds, or not all of their rounds, on Friday night into Saturday morning:
Mr. Epstein was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that
procedure was not followed that night, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.
Nothing to see here, move along, don't care that the doctors at Parkland said publicly and unambiguously that day that JFK
was shot from the front.
If you look at Epstein, he was a cog in the one of the largest White Slave trade endeavors for a country that begins with I and
ends in an L (or better known as Occupied Palestine). Israel has been noted for years to have one of the largest white slave sex
trade operations in the world. Bringing in young white Estonian, Latvian, and other eastern european white girls for jobs as maids,
nanny's, and other domestic help, until upon arrival their passports are taken and they have to work in brothels for 16 hours
a day to pay off fees the fends impose upon them. I could provide sources from the UN to other bodies but look it up yourself.
Epstein was only doing God's work for the chosenites.
Responding to several questions in the last open thread, I mentioned the fact that Epstein's case reflects the great amount of
corruption prevalent within the Outlaw US Empire, and it's that aspect of the case that might be used as a campaign issue, particularly
since Sanders is going to great lengths to point to the utterly corrupt and immoral nature of "health" insurance and Big Pharma.
That was exactly the line he presented on today's
Face The Nation program, despite the primary fccus being gun control:
"'The American people are sick and tired of powerful corporate interest determining what goes on in Washington,' Sanders said.
'You know that's whether it's the healthcare industry, whether it is the fossil fuel industry, whether it is the NRA.'"
The other important point Sanders made was the divisive nature of Trump's rhetoric--that becoming more divided now isn't in
the nation's best interest:
"He is creating the kind of divisiveness in this nation that is the last thing we should be doing."
Ah, but that's exactly what the Current Oligarchy wants done--create an ever more divisive nation such that solidarity--and
thus Movement Building--becomes ever harder to attain and realize.
Any NYT reporting on Epstein is meant as a distraction -- to cover up the facts.
The NYT is the elites' protector, it punches down instead of up.
The NYT 'revelations' about guards are a) punching down to protect elites and b) a distraction to protect elites.
The NYT is one of the Augean Stables.
IMO, it matters not whether Epstein's alive or dead. What matters is that a person like Epstein was able to become what Epstein
became, which was enabled through the great, vast cesspool of corruption that the global elite inhabit. Epstein ought to become
the Poster Boy for ridding the nation of government and elite corruption that affects every aspect of life here and everywhere.
As many have said, Billionaires ought not to exist--no one individual should have that much wealth and power. The thesis embodied
within
Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth (PDF) ought to be made into law such that it's ensured that those fortunate enough
to become well-off thanks to the public--directly or indirectly via government--return a great proportion of that wealth to their
benefactors. IMO, had such a law been in force, the corruption that enabled Epstein would have had a more difficult time doing
what it did.
Yes, there are other factors/actors involved that aided Epstein's racket. We have an excellent idea of who and what--China
has the proper solution for such corruption. Ridding the world of those factors/actors ought to be equivalent to the Quest for
The Grail.
At least comfort can come from knowing that the evil within Syria is currently being eradicated, and that additional evil plans
are being thwarted thanks to the Forces of Resistance.
"... Joe Biden is both sadly demented and deeply compromised to the Chinese Communist Party through his use of his office as VP to fund his son's investment fund with money from China's government owned and run central bank. His condition and his compromised state will keep him from the WH. ..."
"... Gabbart is the only person that seems rational and slightly honest. Harris traded sex for political advancement I understand why she would be a favorite. No moral or ethical standards willing to do anything for what she wants. Perfect useful idiot. ..."
Tulsi Gabbard is an exception to the subject of my title, but she is not going to be
nominated. I am currently contributing to her campaign as a tribute to a gallant lady.
Joe Biden is both sadly demented and deeply compromised to the Chinese Communist Party
through his use of his office as VP to fund his son's investment fund with money from China's
government owned and run central bank. His condition and his compromised state will keep him
from the WH.
They will both be irrelevant in the 2020 election as will as the Zombie candidates like
Bullock, Delaney, etc. i.e. the "moderates."
The rest of the pastiche of 2020 "Democrat" candidates are essentially Globalist advocates
of reduced US sovereignty as a step toward their "ideal" of a world socialist state in which
they will be part of the new Nomenklatura and will enjoy exemptions from the inevitable
shortages of everything resulting from universal "sharing" with the unfortunate masses who will
be proletarians engaged in slave labor or doing the gardening at the dachas of people like
Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Roarke and the like.
The barely hidden opposition by the leftist Democrats to border control is telling. The
leftist Democrats want to take down the SW border of the US until it is nothing but a line on
the map. They want to do that that in order to flood the country with illegals who can be voted
for Democrat majorities in states where they control the state governments. Remember, the
states run federal elections.
California is an example of dirty dealing intended to further rig election outcomes. Gavin
Newsom, the apparent present leader of the Sacramento cabal, has signed into law a statute
seeking to bar Trump from the ballot if he will not surrender his federal tax returns for
public inspection. Was the possibility of illegally voting millions of non-citizens by driver
licensing of illegals and their simultaneous voter-registration at the DMV not enough to ensure
victory? Thank god that a change in the number of presidential electors allotted to California
is not within the capability of the Sacramento cabal.
Americans and other people who will vote in 2020 will have a stark choice. Do you wish to
remain living in a sovereign state or do you wish to become a building bloc in a world
socialist empire?
Unfortunately the only choice available to the US sovereignty side will be Donald Trump, the
real estate hustler from New York City. Weld is not a serious candidate. pl
Both parties seem inclined to bring about "paradise on earth". To understand these
internationalists, I cite Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor conversation with Christ:
..."'So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy
kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what was offered Thee? There are three
powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of
these impotent rebels for their happiness those forces are miracle, mystery and authority.
Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing so. When the wise and dread
spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Thee, "If Thou wouldst know whether
Thou art the Son of God then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him
up lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art the Son of God
and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father." But Thou didst refuse and wouldst
not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course, Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak,
unruly race of men, are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in
making one movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have lost all Thy
faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against that earth which Thou didst come
to save. And the wise spirit that tempted Thee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are
there many like Thee? And couldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such
a temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great
moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonising spiritual difficulties,
cling only to the free verdict of the heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be
recorded in books, would be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and
Thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a miracle. But
Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so
much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will
create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft,
though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou didst not come
down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, "Come down from the
cross and we will believe that Thou art He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst
not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou
didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has
overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves,
of course, though rebellious by nature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed,
look upon them. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and baser by
nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou didst? By showing him so much
respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from
him- Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked
less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter. He
is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now rebelling against our power, and proud of
his rebellion? It is the pride of a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting
and barring out the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will cost them
dear. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organise a universal state. There have been
many great nations with great histories, but the more highly they were developed the more
unhappy they were, for they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide
union. The great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes over the
face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too were but the unconscious
expression of the same craving for universal unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's
purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who
can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken
the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh,
ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For
having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course, with
cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with
tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written,
"Mystery." But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou
art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all. And
besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary
waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the
warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee.
Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel
nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only
become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or
shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the
horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought,
and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such
marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy
themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and
unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes, you were right, you alone
possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!"
"'Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their
hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle. They will see that we do not change
the stones to bread, but in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands
than for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our
help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while since they have come
back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know
the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most
to blame for their not knowing it?-speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it astray on
unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will submit once more, and then it
will be once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures
such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou
didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are
weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of
all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to
the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our
being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of
thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow
fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as
ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song.
Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a
child's game, with children's songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin,
they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin.
We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that
we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon
ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who
have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We
shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have
children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient- and they will submit to
us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will
bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our
answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at
present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of
creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the
mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred
thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and
evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave
they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we
shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in
the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt
come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say
that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot who
sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame, that the weak
will rise up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her loathsome body.
But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who
have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up
before Thee and say: "Judge us if Thou canst and darest." Know that I fear Thee not. Know
that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized
the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy
elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting "to make up the number." But I awakened and
would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy
work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I
say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou
shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders
about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever
deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.'"*...
Dem candidate clown car is every bit as vile as the Gop clown car in 16.
Gabbart is the only person that seems rational and slightly honest. Harris traded sex for
political advancement I understand why she would be a favorite. No moral or ethical standards
willing to do anything for what she wants. Perfect useful idiot.
Given the overwhelming evidence of Mr. Epstein's connection to powerful US leaders as well
as, quite possibly, a foreign intelligence service, isn't it time for the American People to
demand a hard hitting, "leave no stone unturned" special prosecutor investigation ?
If this does not have all the earmarks of influence peddling in both our democracy and our
policy decisions , I cannot imagine what would.
"... Among the reasons why Biden, Sanders, and Warren will be difficult to topple from the top tier: a significant portion of their supporters say they have made up their minds about the race. ..."
"... This is especially the case with Sanders. Nearly half -- 48 percent -- of his supporters said they would definitely vote for him... ..."
A new poll out Tuesday on the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary shows the
outcome is anyone's guess between former vice president Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Beyond which candidate had what level of support in the first-in-the-nation presidential
primary -- scheduled for February 2020 -- a deeper dive into the Suffolk University/Boston
Globe poll provides a number of other big-picture takeaways.
The top tier is hard to crack
Biden, Sanders, and Warren are the only candidates with support in the double digits (21
percent, 17 percent, and 14 percent, respectively), and a closer read suggests that might not
change anytime soon. Much of this has to do with the fact that a significant portion of their
support is locked down. Nearly half of Sanders' and Biden's supporters in the poll say they
their mind is made up and they aren't looking at supporting anyone else in the field.
Something dramatic could occur, of course, but odds are that the status quo will remain for a
while.
Further, if there are big changes in the race, the poll found that Warren, not someone
else outside of the top three, is in the best position to benefit. Warren was the "second
choice" of 21 percent of respondents. No one else was even close to her in that category.
While Sanders has support locked down now, and Warren has the best potential to
grow , Biden, it appears, has his own lane of supporters that no other candidate is even
contesting. Biden's support is very strong among older voters, moderates, and union members.
For the most part, these voters aren't even looking at other options.
New Hampshire Democrats are moderate
For all the conversation about how far left the Democratic Party has moved in recent
years, the poll shows likely Democratic primary voters have not moved the same way. Yes, a
majority back the Green New Deal concept and Medicare for All, but more than 50 percent
describe themselves as either moderate, conservative, or very conservative. This is compared
with the 45 percent who say they are either liberal or very liberal. While this might seem
like a near tie, consider this survey polled likely Democratic voters -- the party's base --
which is the most liberal. ...
... In fourth place is Senator Kamala Harris of California at 8 percent, followed by South
Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 6 percent and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii at 3
percent.
Among the reasons why Biden, Sanders, and Warren will be difficult to topple from the
top tier: a significant portion of their supporters say they have made up their minds about
the race.
This is especially the case with Sanders. Nearly half -- 48 percent -- of his
supporters said they would definitely vote for him...
As has long been expected, the White House is preparing to release a new rule on Wednesday barring
government agencies from buying equipment or doing any kind of business with Chinese telecoms giant
Huawei - ratcheting up tensions between the world's two largest economies at an already precarious
time for the global economy.
The Trump administration is expected to release a rule Wednesday afternoon that bans agencies
from directly purchasing telecom, video surveillance equipment or services from Huawei.
The prohibition was mandated by Congress as part of a broader defense bill signed into law last
year.
"The administration has a strong commitment to defending our nation from foreign
adversaries, and will fully comply with Congress on the implementation of the prohibition of
Chinese telecom and video surveillance equipment, including Huawei equipment,"
said
Jacob Wood, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.
Per CNBC, the new rule is expected to take effect a week from Wednesday, and it applies not only
to Huawei, but also to a list of other telecom companies that have drawn security concerns, such as
ZTE and Hikvision.
The official said contractors will be able to seek waivers from individual federal agencies if
they believe their business with any of the targeted companies should be exempt from the rule.
Moreover, the new rule will also set a deadline of August 2020 for a broader ban
on
federal contractors doing business with Huawei and other firms.
The law passed by Congress is separate from the Trump Administration's own efforts to keep
Huawei in check.
The Commerce Department instigated the tensions between the US and China after it placed Huawei
on a blacklist that effectively bans the company from buying goods or doing any kind of business
with Huawei. A 90-day grace period that kept Huawei off the blacklist temporarily is now almost
over. And President Trump has apparently walked back his promised, made at the G-20 Summit in
Osaka, to ease the pressure on Huawei.
However, US chipmakers and tech firms can request waivers, and the CEOs of Google, Qualcomm,
Micron, Intel and others met with President Donald Trump at the White House last month and urged
the administration to issue those decisions quickly.
In an interview on CNBC, Huawei CSO Andy Purdy defended the company's track record, arguing that
European leaders in the UK and Germany had told their counterparts in the US that they had found no
evidence that Huawei was a security threat.
"We have tested the products of all vendors to international standards so that there's
trust through verification,"
Purdy said.
All Chinese government agencies
will be prohibited from buying CISCO and other American
telecommunications products. Furthermore, contractors dealing with
Chinese government agencies will also be so prohibited from buying
American telecom products.
America - population 329 million. Economic growth rate: 2.8%
China - population 1.4 billion. Economic growth rate: 6.5%
source:
Wikipedia
China is rapidly industrializing, and has the largest
manufacturing base in the world. The USA is already a mature
industrial economy, and since NAFTA has offshored most of its
manufacturing base. The USA leads the world in the design,
manufacture and export of weapons, but relies on coercive
political relationships (such as NATO) rather than the "free
market" to sell its overpriced and line of products to captive
satellite countries. China is rapidly expanding in the weapons
manufacturing sphere, as is Russia, and offer increasingly
competitive products at lower prices, and with fewer political
strings attached.
Something to think about before breastbeating and cheering
ourselves on.
Trump is getting the **** kicked out of him on CNBC and every
Financial media on the internet. When China dug in, that was the
end of the Trump bluff. For the first time, the absurd articles
about China losing are gone and now the new reality is that China
is going to squeeze the life out of Trump.
Huawei is just
another of Trump's wayward policies of getting Canadian poodles to
kidnap Huawei's founder's daughter. Nice dirty **** Trump. Women
already hate Trump this ices that cake.
Last week Huawei overtook Apple as the second largest smart
phone maker. Huawei announced it no longer had any dependence on
US manufacturers for 5G, another body blow to the blowhard.
Dozens of certifying agencies have no studied Huawei products
and have found zero instances of spyware or any instance of this
hardware being used for spying. In short, Trump and the NSA and
CIA look like a bunch of assholes. This will only accelerate
Huawei's 5G rollout.
Trump is being **** canned in every direction. The great part
of Trump von hitler's personality is that he knows his 10% Sept
Tariffs were essentially the end of his presidency, but is too
arrogant to reverse course. Instead, he is screaming at the Fed
for more loose money to support his bad policies. And he wants
more Farmer WELFARE. That dog don't hunt!
China is not going to roll over over for Trump. The financial
media is now tearing Trump a new ******* every hour. Markets are
not responding to Trump plunge team efforts. They continue to sell
off.
Where's the endgame they ask? This is the same deal as Trump
closing down the gov for nothing. Trumptards cheered as the orange
idiot painted himself in the corner and accomplished nothing. Not
one inch of wall has been constructed since Trump took office.
Trump floats on a raft of ********. Meanwhile Trump has a 20 year
history of hiring Illegals for Trump Organization. Total Fraud and
self dealer.
The GOP is now climbing the walls. Today Trump Screamed at the
Fed to reduce rates emergently and then said it had nothing to do
with China. Astonishing.
When China put an end to US Ag purchases effective immediately
they were basically saying they were tired of Trump's ********.
The farmer associations are turning on Trump round the clock.
Where is Trump? He's hiding out. But of course this has NOTHING to
do with China.
But here is Trump once again playing the phony national
Security card with Huawei when a dozen independent organizations
have published reports and cleared Huawei of the Trump
Administration's phony security claims.
Huawei Honor smartphones and tablets are really good. The top
models are even better than iPhones.
There were some Chinese
smartphones at Best Buy the last time I checked.
But I just bought the 128Gb Lenovo Zuk for $280 from Banggoog a
couple years ago when it was on sale. It's a little problematic to
update Android, but it works perfectly anyway. There is a forum
for Lenovo phones, though, with all answers.
Poland's state security agency arrested Huawei sales
director Wang Weijing and a Polish national over spying.
Dongfan Chung The 74-year-old former Boeing Co. engineer was
convicted in July of six counts of economic espionage and
other federal charges for keeping 300,000 pages of sensitive
papers in his home
Chi Mak He copied and sent sensitive documents on U.S.
Navy ships, submarines and weapons to China by courier.
Don't waste my time. A 20 second google search shows you
have no point, but the one on the top of your head.
Thus, Given the Chinese government's record on espionage,
"a good-faith assertion from Andy is not enough."
"In Huawei's
carrier business
, H1 sales revenue
reached CNY146.5 billion, with steady growth in production and
shipment of equipment for wireless networks, optical
transmission, data communications, IT, and related product
domains. To date, Huawei has secured 50 commercial 5G contracts
and has shipped more than 150,000 base stations to markets
around the world.
In Huawei's
enterprise business
, H1 sales revenue was
CNY31.6 billion. Huawei continues to enhance its ICT portfolio
across multiple domains, including cloud, artificial
intelligence, campus networks, data centers, Internet of
Things, and intelligent computing. It remains a trusted
supplier for government and utility customers, as well as
customers in commercial sectors like finance, transportation,
energy, and automobile.
In Huawei's
consumer business
, H1 sales revenue hit
CNY220.8 billion. Huawei's smartphone shipments (including
Honor phones) reached 118 million units, up
24% YoY
. The
company also saw rapid growth in its shipments of tablets, PCs,
and wearables. Huawei is beginning to scale its device
ecosystem to deliver a more seamless intelligent experience
across all major user scenarios. To date, the Huawei Mobile
Services ecosystem has more than 800,000 registered developers,
and 500 million users worldwide.
"Revenue grew fast up through May," said Liang. "Given the
foundation we laid in the first half of the year, we continue
to see growth even after we were added to the entity list.
That's not to say we don't have difficulties ahead. We do, and
they may affect the pace of our growth in the short term."
He added, "But we will stay the course. We are fully
confident in what the future holds, and we will continue
investing as planned – including a total of CNY120 billion in
R&D this year. We'll get through these challenges, and we're
confident that Huawei will enter a new stage of growth after
the worst of this is behind us."
WHAT A DUMB ****!: Thanks!!! That makes me 3 times
smarter than you because Huawei subcontractors do sell
Huawei products in the USA. You are an ignorant Asian
that should go back to his village and the one room
dirt floor hut... LOL
I'd be the first to say that I don't know everything about this
telecom but I will say this seems like a reasonable decision on
it's face for the US government not to put in Chinese
telecommunications equipment. Of course China is going to not like
it because with Hillary she just gave them direct access to damn
near anything through her email server.
While I am aware of Eric Zuesse being somewhat controversial to some people, I do concur with
his assessment of the party that should be stripped of the 'Democratic' prefix. There is
nothing democratic in this organization and its members are either willful stooges, or the
most gullible people on earth - responsible for heinous crimes against humanity under the
cover of 'humanitarian aid'.
To even consider to allow this organization to continue in its deception of the American
electorate, shows the deepest infiltration of foreign influence, for whom this deception is
not only natural, but also compulsive. You may have guessed it, it's not the Russians.
However, an article by the Strategic Culture Organization, linked to on MOA yesterday
The 'Special Relationship' is collapsing , goes even further. It makes obvious the unholy
filth that has been plaguing humanity for a very long time. And while some may find it
questionable, it turns out that the Queen does appear to be the longest sitting Fascist in
the history of mankind.
Sometimes it is necessary to connect the dots beyond personal beliefs in regards to the
real conspiracy against working people all over the world.
Remember all those lies Krugman, EMike and Kurt said about "Bernie Bros?" Well turns out they
are the out of touch elites, not Sanders supporters. They were projecting. Krugman won't even
go all in for Warren!!!
Sanders and Warren voters have astonishingly little in common
His backers are younger, make less money, have fewer degrees and are less engaged in
politics.
By HOLLY OTTERBEIN
07/12/2019 05:01 AM EDT
PHILADELPHIA -- Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are two of the most ideologically
aligned candidates in the Democratic primary -- both left-wing populists who rail against a
"rigged" economic system.
But the fellow enemies of the 1 percent have surprisingly different bases of support.
In poll after poll, Sanders appeals to lower-income and less-educated people; Warren beats
Sanders among those with postgraduate degrees. Sanders performs better with men, Warren with
women. Younger people who vote less frequently are more often in Sanders' camp; seniors who
follow politics closely generally prefer Warren.
Sanders also has won over more African Americans than Warren: He earns a greater share of
support from black voters than any candidate in the race except for Joe Biden, according to
the latest Morning Consult surveys.
For progressive activists, who are gathering this week in Philadelphia at the annual
Netroots Nation conference, it's both promising and a source of concern that the two leading
left-wingers in the primary attract such distinct fans. It demonstrates that a progressive
economic message can excite different parts of the electorate, but it also means that Sanders
and Warren likely need to expand their bases in order to win the Democratic nomination.
Put another way, if their voters could magically be aligned behind one or the other, it
would vastly increase the odds of a Democratic nominee on the left wing of the ideological
spectrum.
The fact that Warren and Sanders' bases don't perfectly overlap hasn't garnered much
public attention, but it's something very much on the minds of their aides and allies.
"It shows that the media does not base their perceptions on data that is publicly
available," said Ari Rabin-Havt, chief of staff to the Sanders campaign. "I think people
develop overly simplistic views of politics that presume that people who live in the real
world think the same way as elite media in D.C. and New York."
It's not a given that Sanders voters would flock to Warren, or vice versa, if one of them
left the race and endorsed the other. In Morning Consult, Reuters-Ipsos and Washington
Post-ABC News polls, more Sanders supporters name Biden as their second choice than Warren --
and a higher percentage of Warren voters pick Kamala Harris as their No. 2 than Sanders,
according to recent surveys.
Wes Bode, a retired contractor in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa,
illustrates the point: He said he likes that Sanders has "new ideas," such as free college
tuition, and recently attended one of his town halls in the state. But he's fond of Biden,
too, because he's "for the working man."
It might seem unusual that a voter's top picks for 2020 are the two candidates who best
represent the opposite poles of the Democratic Party. But a person like Bode is actually more
common than someone like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose favorites are Sanders and
Warren.
For Sanders, the need to grow his base is a problem that dates back to his 2016 run. He
failed to win the nomination that year in large part because he was unable to win over older
voters, especially older voters of color.
"Two places where Bernie has always struggled with is older voters and women to some
degree," said Mark Longabaugh, a top strategist to Sanders in 2016. "Warren is identifiably a
Democrat and runs as a Democrat, so I think many more establishment Democrats in the party
are more drawn to her -- whereas Bernie very intentionally ran for reelection as an
independent and identifies as an independent, and appeals to those who look inside the
Democratic Party and think it's not their thing."
During the 2020 campaign, Sanders' advisers have acknowledged that he needs to appeal more
to older voters, and he's recently been holding more intimate events in the early states that
tend to attract more senior crowds than his rallies do. His team is also trying hard to
expand the primary electorate by turning out infrequent voters.
Warren, meanwhile, is aggressively working to win African American support. Her allies
argue that her performance at events such as Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention
and the She the People conference show that she has room to grow among black voters.
"If you were looking to buy a rising stock, you would look at future market share and
indicators of strong fundamentals," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change
Campaign Committee, which backs Warren. "Elizabeth Warren has consistently connected on a gut
level with black audiences ... getting standing ovations after connecting her inspiring plans
to her personal story of struggle growing up poor in Oklahoma and being a single mom in
Texas."
Several Democratic operatives said they believe Warren has the ability to expand her base
to include black women in particular.
"She impressed 2,000 top women of color activists at [our conference]," said Aimee
Allison, founder of She the People. "Elizabeth Warren has deepened, sharpened and made racial
justice a grounding component of her policies."
A look at their poll numbers shows how distinct the pools of support for Sanders vs.
Warren are.
Twenty-two percent of Democratic primary voters who earn less than $50,000 annually
support Sanders, while 12 percent are for Warren, according to an average of the past four
weeks of Morning Consult polling. Of those without college degrees, 22 percent are behind
Sanders; 10 percent back Warren.
Roughly the same percentage of voters with bachelor's degrees -- 16 percent and 15
percent, respectively -- support Sanders and Warren. But among those with postgraduate
degrees, 12 percent are for Sanders and 19 percent are for Warren.
There's a similar split based on age, gender and interest in politics. Sanders wins more
than one-third of the 18- to 29-year-olds, while Warren gets 11 percent of them. Warren has
the support of 13 percent of those aged 30 to 44, 12 percent of those aged 45 to 54, and 13
percent of those aged both 55 to 64 and 65 and up. Sanders' support goes down as the age of
voters goes up: He is backed by 25 percent of 30- to 44-year-olds, 17 percent of 45- to
54-year-olds, 12 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds, and 8 percent of those 65 and older.
Twenty percent of men support Sanders and 11 percent support Warren; 18 percent of women
are behind Sanders and 14 percent are behind Warren.
Warren also performs best among voters who are "extremely interested" in politics (winning
17 percent of them), while Sanders is strongest among those who are "not at all interested"
(26 percent).
As for black voters, 19 percent are behind Sanders, while 9 percent support Warren.
With Biden still atop most polls, even after a widely panned performance at the first
Democratic debate, some progressives still fear that Warren and Sanders could divide the left
and hand the nomination to the former vice president.
"There's a lot of time left in this campaign," said Sean McElwee, co-founder of the
liberal think tank Data for Progress. "But one thing that's clear is that it's very important
for the left that we ensure that we don't split the field and allow someone like Joe Biden to
be the nominee."
"Elizabeth Warren on student loans: New bill would cancel debt for millions"
By Katie Lobosco, CNN...18 hrs ago
"Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is introducing a bill Tuesday that would cancel the
student loan debts of tens of millions of Americans, a plan she first proposed on the
campaign trail in April.
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is partnering with South Carolina Rep. James
Clyburn, also a Democrat, who will sponsor companion legislation in the House.
The bill would forgive $50,000 in student loans for Americans in households earning less
than $100,000 a year, resulting in immediate relief to more than an estimated 95% of the 45
million Americans with student debt.
For those earning more than $100,000, the bill would offer partial debt relief with the
amount getting gradually smaller until it phases out. Households that make more than $250,000
are not eligible for any debt relief.
Warren's campaign has said that she would pay for the debt relief -- as well as her plan
to make tuition free at public colleges -- with revenue from her proposed wealth tax. It
would assess a 2% tax on wealth above $50 million and a 3% tax on wealth above $1
billion.
The one-time debt cancellation could cost $640 billion, the campaign has said."...
Warren's campaign has said that she would pay for the debt relief -- as well as her plan
to make tuition free at public colleges -- with revenue from her proposed wealth tax. It
would assess a 2% tax on wealth above $50 million and a 3% tax on wealth above $1
billion.
The one-time debt cancellation could cost $640 billion, the campaign has said.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Democratic presidential hopeful, also has a student
debt cancellation proposal. But his goes further and would cancel all $1.6 trillion in
outstanding loan debt. There would be no eligibility limitations and it would be paid for
with a new tax on Wall Street speculation. Sanders has proposed making tuition free at public
colleges, as well.
As proposed, Warren's bill would ensure that the debt canceled would not be taxed as
income. Those borrowers with private loans would be allowed to convert them into federal
loans so that they could be forgiven. ...
When the United States government wants to raise money from individuals, its mode of
choice, for more than a century, has been to tax what people earn -- the income they receive
from work or investments.
But what if instead the government taxed the wealth you had accumulated?
That is the idea behind a policy Senator Elizabeth Warren has embraced in her presidential
campaign. It represents a more substantial rethinking of the federal government's approach to
taxation than anything a major presidential candidate has proposed in recent memory -- a new
wealth tax that would have enormous implications for inequality.
It would shift more of the burden of paying for government toward the families that have
accumulated fortunes in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. And over time, such
a tax would make it less likely that such fortunes develop.
What is the Warren plan?
Developed by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two University of California, Berkeley,
economists who are leading scholars of inequality, the proposal is to tax a family's wealth
above $50 million at 2 percent a year, with an additional surcharge of 1 percent on wealth
over $1 billion.
Mr. Saez and Mr. Zucman estimate that 75,000 households would owe such a tax, or about one
out of 1,700 American families.
A family worth $60 million would owe the federal government $200,000 in wealth tax, over
and above what they may owe on income from wages, dividends or interest payments.
If the estimates of his net worth are accurate, Mr. Buffett would owe the I.R.S. about
$2.5 billion a year, in addition to income or capital gains taxes. The Waltons would owe
about $1.3 billion each.
The tax would therefore chip away at the net worth of the extremely rich, especially if
they mainly hold investments with low returns, like bonds, or depreciating assets like
yachts.
It would work a little like the property tax that most cities and states impose on real
estate, an annual payment tied to the value of assets rather than income. But instead of
applying just to homes and land, it would apply to everything: fine art collections, yachts
and privately held businesses.
What are the arguments against it?
They are both philosophical and practical.
On the philosophical side, you can argue that people who have earned money, and paid
appropriate income tax on it, are entitled to the wealth they accumulate.
Moreover, the wealth that individual families accumulate under the current system is
arguably likelier to be put to work investing in large-scale projects that make the economy
stronger. They can invest in innovative companies, for example, or huge real estate projects,
in ways that small investors generally can't. ...
2016 was widely recognized as the year of "populism," more adequately described as the year
of revolt against the political Establishment -- in both Parties. The Democratic Primary in
2016 was a battle of progressive forces against the Democratic Establishment, and the battle
lines were clearly drawn. Those lines remain much the same as we approach 2020.
On the Progressive or Populist side were those who opposed the endless wars in the Middle
East, and on the Establishment side those who supported those long and bloody wars. On the
Progressive Side were those who supported badly needed domestic reforms, most notably Medicare
for All, which after all is a reform of almost 20% of the entire economy and a reform that has
to do with life itself. In contrast on the Establishment side were those who supported
ObamaCare, a device for leaving our health care to the tender mercies of the Insurance
behemoths with its ever increasing premiums and ever decreasing coverage.
In 2016 the pundits gave progressives little chance of success. Hillary Clinton was a
shoo-in, we were all assured by a horde of "reliable sources." And given the control that the
Clintonites exercised over the Democratic Party apparatus, there was little prospect of a
successful rebellion and every chance of having one's career badly damaged by opposing Party
elite. Summer soldiers and duplicitous candidates were not interested in challenging the
Establishment.
In 2016 Bernie Sanders was the only politician who was willing to take on the Establishment.
Although not technically a Democrat, he caucused with them and worked with them. And he was a
lifelong, reliable and ardent advocate for Medicare for All and a consistent opponent of the
endless wars. For these things he was prepared to do battle against overwhelming odds on the
chance that he might prevail and because from his grass roots contacts he sensed that a
rebellion was brewing.
In 2016 only one among the current crop of candidates followed Bernie, supported him and
joined him on the campaign trail -- Tulsi Gabbard. At the time she was a two term Congresswoman
and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), a career building position, from
which she would have to resign in order to support one of the candidates. Moreover, reports
said she bridled at the internal bias of the DNC in favor of Hillary. To express her
displeasure with the DNC and to support Bernie, she had to defy the Clinton Establishment,
which might even have terminated her political career. But she was a foe of the endless wars,
partly based on her own experience as a National Guard member who had been deployed to Iraq in
a medical unit and saw the ravages of war first hand. So she joined Bernie, introducing him at
many of his rallies and strengthening his antiwar message.
Bernie and Tulsi proved themselves in the defining battle of 2016. They let us know
unequivocally where they stand. And Bernie might well have won the nomination were he not
cheated out of it by the Establishment which continues to control the levers of power in the
Democratic Party to this day.
In 2016 these two stood in stark contrast to the other 2020 Democratic candidates. Let us
take one example of these others, Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the main stream media which
often refers to her as ideologically aligned to Bernie Sanders. Perhaps she is so aligned at
times -- at least in words; she is after all in favor of Medicare for All, although she hastens
to add that she is "open to other approaches." That qualifier is balm to the ears of the
Insurance behemoths. Translation: she has already surrendered before the battle has begun.
In 2016 a critical primary for Bernie was Masschusetts where Senator Warren wields
considerable influence. Clinton defeated Sanders there by a mere 1.5% whereas she had lost to
Obama there by 15% in 2008. Wikipedia has this to say of the
primary:
"Following the primary, Elizabeth Warren, the state's senior US senator, was widely
criticized by Sanders supporters online for her refusal to endorse him prior to the primary.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders have argued that an endorsement from Warren, whose political
positions were similar to that of Sanders's, and who was a frequent critic of Hillary Clinton
in the past, could have handed Massachusetts to him. "
One must conclude that either Warren does not genuinely share the views of Sanders or she is
loath to buck the Establishment and fight for those views. In either event she, and the others
who failed to back Bernie in 2016, are not made of the stuff that can win Medicare for All,
bring an end to the regime change wars and illegal sanctions of the last four or more
administrations, begin serious negotiations to end the existential nuclear peril, and address
the many other problems facing us and all of humanity.
“Bernie walked the walk”
When was that? The time he toured through Baltimore and called it a third world city while
assiduously not discussing how, why, and because of who it became so?
The way he openly sold out to Clinton and ducked into his new third manor house to avoid
being held to task for leaving his base out to dry the very moment they were ready to
seriously break ranks from the neolib political machine?
Is he walking the walk now as he tries to rationalize away his underpaying of his campaign
workers and cuts hours to minimize the costs of the 15 dollar floor price he demanded for
everyone other employer?
The man is a DNC stooge through and through.
And Tulsi being anti-war out of personal squeamishness doesn’t make up for the rest of
her painfully party-line-compliant platform, particularly when the Deep State has multiple
active avenues available to at the very least keep our military presence still existing
military presence trapped and held hostage. All the dove cooing in recorded world history
won’t hold up when, not if, Britain or France or whoever deliberately sinks another
navy vessel and drags her by the hair into another desert scrum.
@Tusk As with the 1960 Presidential Election, Hillary stole that election fair and
square. Had Sanders went full third party, it would’ve destroyed the Democrats
outright. Despite Clinton’s cheating, Bernie went ahead and bent the knee. Strangely
enough, Trump’s victory saved Sanders and his faction. Had Clinton won, she
would’ve purged the Sanders supporters relentlessly.
There is such a thing as a tactical retreat. Now he’s able to play again.
is that our “establishment elite” have failed the United States of
America.
How, you may ask ?
The answer is simple.
By defrauded us into multiple illegal wars of aggression they have bankrupted the entire
nation.
The iron fact is that because our “elites” lied us into illegal war we are now
22.5 trillion dollars in heinous debt.
Why is this okay ?
The answer is simple.
It is not okay, NOT AT ALL .
And it is not enough (anymore) to just demand we “end our wars”, Mr.
Walsh.
The cost in treasure has been too high and the burden on the US taxpayer too obscene.
Without demanding “accountability” from our elites, who lied us into this
catastrophe, our nation is most probably going under.
I say…. make them pay …”every penny”…. for the cost of
the wars they lied us into.
An initiative, like the “War fraud Accountability Act” (retroactive to 2002)
would do just that.
it would replenish the coffers of our nation with all the assets of the larcenous
profiteers who deceived us all….into heinous war debt.
As we witness the rise of China as the new global economic powerhouse, we can see first
hand how a nation can rise to immense wealth and global influence “precisely
because” it was never deceived by its “ruling class” into squandering all
its resources initiating and fighting endless criminal wars.
Just imagine where the USA would be today, had we chosen the same course.
Until Dems are willing to refuse to depend on Haim Saban’s “generous
donation” to the Dem candidate, none of their candidates will deserve to be the the
POTUS candidate. Ditto for the Republicans and their fetish with Shelly Adelson. Candidates
must kowtow to Israel or else there will be no dough for them and they might even be
challenged in their incumbencies next time around by ADL/AIPAC. Until we get rid of Israeli
money and political power, we are toast.
1)Both Sanders and Gabbard are onboard for going to war against Christian Russia over
Crimea..Sanders has gone so far as saying that a Military response against Russia is an
option if all else fails in getting Russia out of Crimea…
2)Both Sanders and Gabbard are waging a war of RACIAL EXTERMINATION against Working Class
Native Born White American Males….And that’s WHITE GENOCIDE!!!!
@Kronos Bernie “bent the knee” once and got to enjoy his lakeside home and
his wife protected from fraud prosecution after she stole money from People’s United
Bank for her college scam.
He is owned.
If Tulsi were a serious threat she would be neutralized one way or another.
“Progressives” are virtue signaling fools–the kleptocracy marches on and
laughs at them.
One has to wonder where Dems like Warren and their identity politics is taking the US.
Will everyone who even slightly disagrees with them be labeled a terrorist?
OK, obviously I need to weigh in on Elizabeth Warren's trade proposal. I've been a huge
fan of her plans so far. This one, not so much, although some of the critiques are overdone
1/
Last month, I released my economic patriotism agenda -- my commitment to fundamentally
changing the government's approach to the economy so that we put the interests of American
workers and families ahead of the interests of multinational corporations. I've already
released my ideas for applying economic patriotism to manufacturing and to Wall Street. This
is my plan for using economic patriotism to overhaul our approach to trade.
8:41 AM - 30 Jul 2019
The truth is that this would have been a bad and destructive plan if implemented in, say,
1980. At this point it's still problematic, but not disastrous (this is going to be a long
tweet storm) 2/
Background: the way we currently do trade negotiations is that professionals negotiate out
of public view, but with input from key business players. Then Congress gets an up or down
vote on the result 3/
This can sound like a process rigged in favor of special interests. But it was created by
FDR, and its actual intent was largely the opposite. It took away the ability of
Congresspeople to stuff trade bills with goodies for their donors and districts 4/
And while business interests certainly got a lot of input, it was set up in a way that set
different groups against each other -- exporters versus import-competing industries -- and
this served the interests of the general public 5/
Without this system we wouldn't have achieved the great opening of world markets after
World War II -- and that opening was a very good thing overall, especially for poor
countries, and helped promote peace 6/
So what has changed? The key point is that the system pretty much achieved its goals;
we're a low-tariff world. And that has had a peculiar consequence: these days "trade
negotiations" aren't mainly about trade, they're about intellectual property and regulation
7/
And it's not at all clear that such deals are actually good for the world, which is why I
was a soft opponent of TPP 8/
Not to keep you in suspense, I'm thumbs down. I don't think the proposal is likely to be
the terrible, worker-destroying pact some progressives assert, but it doesn't look like a
good thing either for the world or for the United States, and you have to wonder why the
Obama administration, in particular, would consider devoting any political capital to getting
this through.
So what Warren proposes is that we partially unravel the system FDR built, making trade
negotiations more transparent and giving Congress a bigger role in shaping the deals. This
sounds more democratic, but that's a bit deceiving 9/
Mainly it would substitute one kind of special interest distortion for another. That would
have been a clearly bad thing when trade deals were actually about trade. Today, I think it's
ambiguous 10/
Warren would also expand the criteria for trade policy to include a number of non-trade
goals, like labor rights and environmental protection. Here again there are arguments on both
sides 11/
On one side, the potential for abuse would be large -- we could be slapping tariffs on
countries for all kinds of reasons, turning trade policy into global power politics, which
would be really bas for smaller, weaker countries 12/
On the other hand, there are some cases where trade policy will almost surely have to be
used to enforce some common action. If we ever do act on climate change, carbon tariffs will
be needed to discipline free riders 13/
"President Obama on Sunday praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as
an 'extraordinary first step,' but he spoke out against a provision that would impose trade
penalties on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution."
And I also think the report gives a false impression of what this is about, making it seem
as if it's nothing but dirty politics...
Overall, this is the weakest Warren plan so far. (Still waiting to hear from her on health
care! Harris has taken point there, and done it well) But it's not bad enough to change the
verdict that she's the strongest contender on policy grounds 14/
He backs Harris's attempt to split difference on health care reform.
The problem with PK and Kurt and EMike is that if you don't deliver better services and
rising living standards - no matter the excuses we don't care about your excuses -
you're going to get more racism, demagogues like Trump and toxic politics.
The Dems's track record for the past 40 years is objectively awful. PK lives in a rich
man's bubble if he believes corporate trade has been good for humanity and peace.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) sparred Tuesday night
over her proposed "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons during the Democratic debate.
In defending the proposed policy, Warren argued for diplomatic and economic solutions to
conflict, saying "we should not be asking our military to take on jobs that do not have a
military solution."
But Bullock opposed that proposal, saying, "I don't want to turn around and say, 'Well,
Detroit has to be gone before we would ever use that.'"
Warren is the lead sponsor of the Senate version of a bill that would make it U.S. policy
not to use nuclear weapons first.
It has long been the policy of the United States that the country reserves the right to
launch a preemptive nuclear strike.
Former President Obama reportedly weighed changing the policy before leaving office, but
ultimately did not after advisers argued doing so could embolden adversaries.
Backers of a no first use policy argue it would improve U.S. national security by reducing
the risk of miscalculation while still allowing the United States to launch a nuclear strike
in response to an attack.
During the debate, Warren argued such a policy would "make the world safer."
"The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so
to the entire world," she said. "It reduces the likelihood that someone miscalculates,
someone misunderstands."
Bullock argued he wouldn't want to take the option off the table, but that there should be
negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons.
"Never, I hope, certainly in my term or anyone else would we really even get close to
pulling that trigger," he said. "Going from a position of strength, we should be negotiating
down so there aren't nuclear weapons. But drawing those lines in the sand at this point, I
wouldn't do."
Warren shot back that the world is closer to nuclear warfare after Trump's presidency,
which is seeing the end of a landmark arms control agreement with Russia, the development of
a low-yield submarine-launched warhead and the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear
agreement.
"We don't expand trust around the world by saying, 'you know, we might be the first one to
use a nuclear weapon,'" she said. "We have to have an announced policy that is one the entire
world can live with."
Bullock said he agreed on the need to return to nonproliferation standards but that
unpredictable enemies such as North Korea require keeping first use as an option.
"When so many crazy folks are getting closer to having a nuclear weapon, I don't want them
to think, 'I could strike this country,'" he said. "Part of the strength really is to
deter."
----
Long-standing US policy has been to lump chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons in a single
category. So, our guv'mint implicitly reserves the
right to respond to a chemical attack (say) with
nuclear weapons. This was how the US got het up
about Iraq's supposed 'weapons of mass destruction',
which is how the US lumps them together under
the heading 'CBN' weapons. Iraq certainly
had chemical weapons, possibly biological ones,
and much less plausibly a nuclear weapons program.
It was all about those mysterious 'aluminum tubes',
which supposedly could be used for uranium-enriching centrifuges. (Not these tubes,
apparently.)
But I digress. Suffice it to say, the US has
quite a few self-serving policies.
Now, the real question is, how much longer
do we want to have Mr Trump in control
of the nuclear football, as the nuke-
authorizing gadget is known?
The global smartphone bust is currently underway
(has been for some time) - but
there's a new, surprising trend that could highlight one reason why the Trump administration has
waged economic war against China.
First, let's start with the global smartphone shipment data
from the
International Data
Corporation
(IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
This new data details how worldwide smartphone shipments fell 2.3% in 2Q19 YoY. It also states
that smartphone manufacturers shipped 333.2 million phones in 2Q19, which was up 6.5% QoQ.
An escalating trade war between the US and China contributed to sharp declines in shipments in
both countries over the last year. However, the declines weren't nearly as severe as expected in
China over 1H19 versus 1H18, suggesting that three years of a smartphone bust in Asia could be
nearing a recovery phase. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) maintained solid momentum in 2Q
YoY, with shipments up 3% in the quarter fueled by Southeast Asia markets.
The surprising trend IDC detected is that Huawei surpassed Apple in 2Q19, making it the
first time in seven years that Samsung and Apple weren't the top smartphones manufactures in the
world.
Now it seems that a South Korea company [Samsung] and a Chinese company [Huawei] are the world
leaders in smartphone shipments, something that has irritated the Trump administration.
Samsung ranked No.1 with 75.5 million shipments in 2Q19, a 5.5% YoY increase. Huawei was No.2
with 58.7 million shipments in 2Q19, a 8.3% YoY jump. Apple was No.3 with 33.8 million shipments in
2Q19, a -18.2% YoY plunge.
1) Huawei announces a .6%
decline in shipments worldwide over the Q1 numbers.
2) Huawei announces an all-time high in domestic
operations that now take up 62% of its sales.
What do these two numbers hide?
That Huawei's shipments to the international market must have
suffered a considerable decline.
That the rise in sales in low-value Chinese phones doesn't
begin to offset the large drop in high-value developed world sales
except on a purely nominal numerical basis of numbers of phones
sold. The money isn't in the phones. It's in the plans. In fact,
China pioneered the idea of giving the phones away for free and
then making it all back on the gated connection plans.
But there's no way that one Chinese plan equals one western
plan in profitability back to the company, so buffing up the
domestic numbers at the expense of the cash cow numbers overseas
is ultimately not a good business strategy.
Plus of course Huawei can report any number it wants inside
China and nobody has any way of testing its veracity. They could
have shipped 20,000,000 phones to distributors on consignment and
then marked it up as sales.
It's still high-end, per se. But the price premium is no
longer justified because other companies have commoditized the
high-end features.
Frankly, the company was doomed the moment
Jobs died and the reins were turned over to Cook - an
accountant by training, who clearly has no futurist vision or
marketing skill whatsoever.
Jobs might have been a puffed up peacock, but he was a
master of creating the Reality Distortion Field.
There is one big problem that no one is talking about. The cell
phone market is over saturated! Practically everyone has got a
cell phone these days. It's like the auto industry. There has
been an over production 10 billion automobiles in the world for
7.2 billion people, of which half really can't afford to buy, much
less drive, or even have a place to park it. I have seen people
with 3 and 4 cell phones, but you only have 2 ears. How are more
cell phones going to help you? Even women don't multitask that
well.
The only thing that would make sales better on cell
phones is if you could combine the computing power of a Cray
computer into a roll-up tablet. Or, maybe a brain implant would
be even better.
Tim Cook: "When you step back and consider
Wearables and Services together two areas where we have
strategically invested in last several years, they now approach
the size of a Fortune 50 company."
"INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS," President Donald Trump tweeted in April, days before the
Justice Department released the Mueller report to the public.
Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have argued throughout the years-long
investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia that the entire probe began
based on shoddy intelligence and that federal law enforcement illegally spied on members of
the campaign.
But now that special counsel Robert Mueller's probe has concluded -- and Trump has a
particularly receptive attorney general running the Justice Department -- the push to
"investigate the investigators" has moved from rhetoric to reality.
There are several reviews of the Russia probe currently underway, both of which predate
Barr. They include one by the Justice Department's internal watchdog, whose findings are
expected in the coming weeks, and another inquiry overseen by Utah federal prosecutor John
Huber, which was prompted by Republican complaints about the Russia probe and the handling of
Hillary Clinton-related scandals.
Attorney General William Barr is also conducting his own inquiry. Barr tapped the US
attorney for Connecticut to help examine the origins of the Russia probe.
But media reports suggest the AG is closely invested in this process. And last week, the
president gave Barr's inquiry a substantial boost. At Barr's request, Trump signed a memo
ordering US intelligence agencies to cooperate with Barr and giving the AG sweeping powers to
declassify intelligence documents as part of his audit. ...
You mean the FISA warrant that happened a full 4 months prior to Steele Dossier even
existing? None of what you claim here makes sense unless you are trying to justify these (and
other) illegal acts by POTUS.
... Trump believes that everybody is a crook and views demands that he follow the law as
mere hypocrisy. Here he pivots immediately from his rage that he is being asked to comply
with basic ethical norms -- in this same interview Trump threatened to raise tariffs on
French wine, a move that would benefit Trump's own winery -- to insinuations that President
Obama probably committed financial crimes, too.
Trump's claim that Republicans never investigated Obama is especially bizarre. Congress
held eight separate investigations on Benghazi alone. The redundancy was deemed necessary
because conservatives simply refused to accept findings that no scandal had taken place.
Trump, reaching for evidence that Obama probably did something just as unethical as Trump
did, comes up with Obama's book. You can almost see the wheels turning in Trump's brain as he
tries to summon some damning piece of evidence about his predecessor. ...
None of this makes sense. The FISA warrant came after a Trump staffer drunkenly bragged about
getting info from Russia. This has already been investigated by the FBI. Hint: Hannity,
Levine, and Savage are propaganda mouthpieces. Stop listening to them.
Former FBI Director James Comey will avoid prosecution after illegally leaking personal memos in the hopes of instigating the
special counsel's investigation into the 2016 US election, as reported yesterday by
The Hill 's John Solomon and confirmed today by
Fox News .
According to Solomon, DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz referred Comey for possible prosecution under laws governing
the handling of classified information, however Attorney General William Barr has declined to prosecute - as the DOJ does not believe
they have enough evidence of Comey's intent to violate the law.
"Everyone at the DOJ involved in the decision said it wasn't a close call," an official told Fox News . "They all thought this
could not be prosecuted."
That said, it's important to note that this decision was the result of a 'carve-out' investigation separate of the IG probe on
FISA abuse .
This is NOT the Inspector General Michael Horowitz report on DOJ and FBI FISA abuse.
This is a carve-out.
...
From the outset it was reported and confirmed that U.S. Attorney John Huber was assigned to assist Inspector General Michael
Horowitz. Huber's job was to stand-by in case the IG carved out a particular concern, discovered during his investigation, that
might involve criminal conduct.
Earlier this week
Matt Whitaker said : "John Huber is reviewing anything related to Comey's memos and the like. "
Put the two data points together and what you realize is that during the OIG review of potential DOJ and FBI FISA abuse IG
Horowitz investigated the Comey Memo's and then passed that specific issue along to John Huber for DOJ review.
The IG criminal referral for the James Comey memo leaking was a carve-out sent to U.S. Attorney John Huber.
...
This is not the inspector general report on DOJ and FBI FISA abuse. This is an IG report carved out of the larger investigation.
-
Conservative Treehouse
In short, we will first see an IG report just covering Comey, with a more comprehensive report to follow on FISA abuse. _arrow
1
chunga , 2 minutes ago
Every day this gets a little more humiliating.
libertysghost , 2 minutes ago
So it has to be proven that the head of the FBI knew what the frikin laws were that he was violating?
Knowing the laws were not in his job description?
Aside from that not being a standard for determining prosecution for anyone else aside from Deep Staters, the claim is laughable
on its face. Did Comey's office (or Comey himself) ever provide evidence for the prosecution of ANY individual for ANYTHING where
they argued "intent" didn't matter? I'm 100% sure he did. So why is this hard to point out in showing that "intent" doesn't matter?
FFS...this is a scam. I was leery as soon as Trump handing over declassification to Barr. We will know who is involved in the
cover up by their response to this...in particular those claiming to be at the front lines of demanding consequences for the spying/coup.
Bavarian , 3 minutes ago
This was always small potatoes. FISA and the involvement in setting up the coup will involve the meat of his convictions anyway.
Anyone thinking he's walking isn't paying attention.
I am Groot , 5 minutes ago
Comey: Oh I'm sorry, I didn't mean to help throw a coup.
Barr: Ok, no problem, we won't charge you. We know it was just an accident. You're all good. You can go on CNN and rub everybody's
nose in it now
Real Estate Guru , 14 minutes ago
What makes you think that Comey didn't cut a deal with Barr to get the others, folks? Stay tuned!
You do the math.
I am Groot , 12 minutes ago
WHY THE **** WOULD BARR CUT A DEAL WITH ANY OF THOSE TREASONOUS ***** !
THEY ARE ALL GUILTY AS HELL ! ! !
Real Estate Guru , 11 minutes ago
I agree. But this fool might be naming Obama for all we know. That would be worth it, or Hillary.
Either way, he is going down on the FISA warrants. He signed off on them.
I am Groot , 8 minutes ago
Obama is fucked six ways to Sunday. They have the FBI text messages that prove he was directing all of this and was neck deep
in it.
spyware-free , 12 minutes ago
Then why not state that as the reason? There is enough evidence to prosecute. They could have at the least waited and added
the charge to future indictments instead of dismissing right away.
buckboy , 13 minutes ago
Prosecuting Comey by DOJ risks DOJ involvement and alike................just too many to protect.
TruthAbsolute , 13 minutes ago
haha the USA has a two tier justice system...You poor sick Patriots!
libertysghost , 21 minutes ago
Comey will walk and Trump will be impeached for "obstructing" an investigation into a non-existent crime, because he tried
to defend himself against the coup proclaiming his innocents.
If this happens...
Cabreado , 22 minutes ago
Maintaining some sense of optimism just got a little harder...
enough of this , 23 minutes ago
All those dire pronouncements by conservative pundits that Comey would be nailed for taking classified information home from
his office and releasing it to his friend, who in turn leaked it to the press was all ********. It turns out Comey could do it
with impunity and he knew he would skate because his deep-state pals at the DOJ would never indict him for doing so. Rigged justice
system = Rigged outcome.
SRV , 25 minutes ago
Flynn is facing 5 years for a clear FBI trap, after spying on everything he said in the WH... not a good start for Barr...
and if he's a plant, it's over.
Real Estate Guru , 20 minutes ago
Flynn is a Patriot. He is not going down. He has not even been sent anywhere. Relax. if they had him, he would be in jail by
now. He is like the invisible russians that Mueller convicted of nothing. They showed up by the way, and wanted to see the evidence...Mueller
just blew them off. Mueller is a shill for Weissmann, he is clueless, feeble, and doesnt know one damn thing. No sentencing of
anybody. Flynn is a hero, not a criminal. That tells you everything you need to know.
Real Estate Guru , 27 minutes ago
They have something far larger than this, and they don't want to lose the first case on him. Don't worry, the stuff that is
coming out on this guy will easily convict him within weeks. It will involve the FISA warrants.
- Hannity, Soloman
Stay tuned...much more to come Patriots!
LookAtMeme.com , 14 minutes ago
Who said that they have to charge Comey piecemeal starting with smaller charges and therefore it's best to let him skate on
those smaller charges? Prosecutors regularly load up charges against defendants.
RagaMuffin , 28 minutes ago
Unless he can be nailed on a larger charge, this is how the Swamp protects its own, particularly since intent is not the basis
of whether the law was broken?
Roger Rabbit , 23 minutes ago
He IS going to be nailed on a much bigger charge: FISA abuse. It's already well established he lied to the FISA court. Too
bad they are all Jesuit graduates though, hence why they've taken no corrective action, and never objected to what was obviously
FISA fraud.
LookAtMeme.com , 16 minutes ago
It's already well established by Comey's own congressional testimony that he purposely leaked FBI documents in order to prompt
an investigation of the President.
LookAtMeme.com , 5 minutes ago
If they intend to prosecute Comey for other crimes later then they don't have to "waste time" exonerating him now. They can
throw the entire ball of wax at him at a later date. The man admitted to congress that he leaked FBI documents in order to prompt
an investigation of the President. We all know this.
Ergo I.C. , 31 minutes ago
"... however Attorney General William Barr has declined to prosecute - as the DOJ does not believe they have enough evidence
of Comey's intent to violate the law."
WTH! FBI agents went to Comey's house a month after he was fired to pick up documents he was not suppose to have. Not enough
evidence to show intent my ***!
Who gives a monkeys? The real issue is that the selfish, disorientated and cowardly way the
Dems are conducting this race is handing Trump a winning platform for 2020.
After long hard thinking I have come to the sad conclusion that Trump is right and that he is
indeed a genius. He has achieved what he had set out to do. He has polarised the standard
bearer for democracy in the world. He has enriched himself and his family. He has broken
American society, possibly irreversibly. He has brought about change in the worlds economies.
He has also managed to set the debate and the stage to win in 2020. Now some may say he has
been an awful president, but looking at his strategy he has been highly successful. He may
not be what we want but he has certainly been better at feeling the pulse of America and
deciding which medicine to give. A truly evil genius indeed.
Sanders and Warren are the only two with some kind of personality. The others look like they
were created by lobbyists and corporate donors in a lab on a computer like Kelly Lebrock from
Weird Science.
The point about taxes going up is a red herring and a straw man argument. If you get
insurance through your employer, you pay anywhere from $300/month to $1200/month for yourself
and family. Through a Medicare for all plan, that payment would disappear. Yes, you'd pay
more in taxes to cover your health insurance, but it would likely be lower than private
insurance, a net gain, with better coverage, no deductible or co-pays. Even if it was the
same, it's still a wash. You're eliminating an expense for a tax. Plus, you're not paying for
some executive's perks and exorbitant salary.
Personally, I'd feel better paying $50,000-$75,000/year to a government administrator than
$10M-$20M/year + perks to a CEO.
Obama was simply being honest there. By any standard, Obama, both Clinton's, Gore (except for
climate change) and Biden are at best moderate Republicans. Each would qualify as being to
the right of Richard Nixon (leaving aside the issue of integrity).
In the case of Bill Clinton, Americans had not got woken to the fact that, while a little
less by Democrats, the middle class was nontheless being screwed by both parties. Obama's
rhetoric was enough cover to fool the public into thinking he would fight for real change.
Both Gore and especially Hillary showed what the public now thinks of "moderates". Bernie
Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren are the only chances to beat Trump in 2020.
Reparations for slavery, the elimination of private insurance, free health care for anyone
who overstays a visa or walks over from Mexico, and a crystal lady.
We are in trouble. My nightmare of a Trump re-election is more and more likely.
Warren and Sanders clearly demonstrated that a party wanting to win should nominate one of
them.
They enthralled the audience, and showed they possess a vision for the future that every
other Democratic candidate claims to eventually want, when there's time, maybe, perhaps if
they get a majority someday.
Clearly Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were the clear winners of the night! They shamed
the listless other candidates, none of whom exhibited a similar energy, excitement &
vision for the future of the country. Despite a definite veneer of displeasure by your
account, both the audience at the event, and those watching at home felt the excitement of
progressive proposals won the day.
When Sanders declared he's in favor of free healthcare and free education for illegal
immigrants there was -at best - muted criticism from the other candidates.
Most Americans are likely outraged by this suggestion and this will play in Trump's
favor.
It's obvious that John Delaney is simply a plant by Big Business (which has both the centrist
Democrats and all of Republicans in its pocket) to troll and derail the candidacy of
progressives Sanders and Warren. His sole function is to throw a monkey wrench in their path
and be a "nattering nabob of negativism" (to quote Agnew) regarding their policies. That's
all he does all day and all night, and the centrist-loving moderators and journalists love
giving him infinite time to do his damage
The answer is obvious: if you want your best shot at 86-ing the orange pestilence, then it
has to be Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren. You're not supposed to signal your vice-president
until after you've got the nomination, I know, but surely having Trump as president has
shredded all previous norms? Go now, right now, and say that it'll be you two. You can even
keep it open and say that you don't know who'll head the ticket but it will be Warren and
Sanders. That would crush all opposition and keep churning interesting as a guessing game.
Maybe Warren should head the ticket. I know that Sanders is very sharp and he plays
basketball but if he was president then he'd be asking for a second term and to get sworn in
when he's 83 and being in one's eighties might be too much of a psychological barrier. My
suggestion, though, would be it's Sanders/Warren but on the promise that Sanders will step
aside during his first term, after two years and one day (meaning that Warren could serve out
the rest of the term and still then run for two more terms under her own steam).
That would guarantee the first female president and so quieten down the phoney-baloney
identity politics drones; better, it would mean that the US would get an excellent leader in
Elizabeth Warren, no matter her bodily organs; it would pull together the Crooked H.
adherents and get them on side, if they truly care about getting female in there and if it
doesn't it will expose them as the phonies they are. And it would keep matters on policy,
when Trump is weak, rather than personalities, which is the territory on which Trump wants to
fight.
Warren: "We beat it by being the party of big structural change." The issue is whether
"regulation" is big enough and structural enough.
Sanders: "To stand with the working class* of American that for the last 45 years has been
decimated." Then the Canada bus trip. "We need a mass political movement. Take on the greed
and the corruption of the ruling class of this country." Plugs website.
Sanders was better; working the bus trip in was good.
NOTE *
Guardian paraphrase : "Bernie Sanders pledged to stand by the US middle class , recounting his recent trip to Canada to
emphasize the high price of insulin in America." Lol.
The allergy to the phrase "working class" is not accidental. They want as many Americans
as possible thinking they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
As someone who has spent most of my life in the working class, made it to the middle, got
knocked down again, and made my way back up to the middle again, there is most certainly a
difference.
When was the last time (if ever) that someone said the words "ruling class" in a
presidential debate? (I assume that Eugene Debs was never invited to any presidential
debate.)
Even that Bernie said "working class" won points with me. Typical of the Guardian to change
it to "middle class".
Williamson was impressive.
I liked that Warren showed fire and guts. Her policies would be a real change for the better,
especially if pushed farther. My real question about her is whether she would stand up to the
other side and fight to win.
For me, the biggest difference between Bernie and Warren is that I am starting to hope that
Warren would really fight, but I know Bernie would.
I like Bernie better, but I like Warren too, and I *DO* trust her to fight.
The big tell was when she went to Washington as a Senator and Larry Summers said don't
criticize us in public if you want to be part of the club, and she not only ignored that but
told on him publicly!
Two actually GOOD people! They were my dream team last night.
I agree. I'm highly skeptical of Warren delivering anything (especially a victory), and I
don't really trust her to try very hard to implement her plans. Watching her in this debate
opened a thin crack in my icy wall of distrust. I hope she proves me wrong.
Eh . Warren for all her sociopolitical baggage is a completely different animal to the
Blue Dog Corporatist DNC fundie or the Free Market Conservative slash Goat picked me to
administrate reality for everyone dilemma.
But yeah feel [tm] free [tm] to play curricular firing squad and then wonder why ones head
is sore from the effects of banging on an sacrilegious edifice .
I think a photo finish by Sanders and Warren, Buttigieg in the running followed by
Klobuchar, Beto fading, the centrists losing big, Williamson a dark horse coming up on the
outside.
By one key metric -- Google interest -- Marianne Willamson was the dominant figure of the debate. and that's tells a lot about
debate aorgnizers which are not interested in real political debase. Just interested in the debate as a political show. They
are too interested in promoted identity politics to devide the electorate, to allow discussion of really important for the
nation question such as rampant militarism.
Notable quotes:
"... A lot of liberals will love her for her quip, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running to the president of the United States to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for." ..."
"... Of course, she's celebrating one of the big problems in our political system -- no presidential candidate wants to acknowledge the limits of the power of the office, the presence of the opposition party, judicial review, the inherent difficulties of enacting sweeping changes through legislation, or the limit of government policy to solve problems in society. ..."
"... One of the reasons Americans are so cynical is that they've seen plenty of politicians come and go, with almost every one of them promising the moon and very few living up to the hype. ..."
A lot of liberals will love her for her quip, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of
running to the president of the United States to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for."
Of course, she's celebrating one of the big problems in our political system -- no presidential
candidate wants to acknowledge the limits of the power of the office, the presence of the opposition party,
judicial review, the inherent difficulties of enacting sweeping changes through legislation, or the limit of
government policy to solve problems in society.
One of the reasons Americans are so cynical is that they've seen plenty of politicians come and go, with
almost every one of them promising the moon and very few living up to the hype.
Advertisement
Warren shamelessly insisted that the government could pay for quality health care for every American -- and
illegal immigrants, too! -- just by raising taxes on billionaires and big corporations. Warren made clear
tonight that she's not going to let a little thing like fiscal reality get in between her and the nomination.
... ... ...
Tonight was another night where you could easily forget Amy Klobuchar was on stage. Back when Klobuchar's campaign was in the
nascent stage, people wondered how "Minnesota nice" would play on a national debate stage. We can now declare it boring,
predictable, and forgettable.
You want to start looking at the election laws which favout the Democrat/Republican duopoly.
The democrats are finished as a party of progress since their constitutional change with
super delegates etc. Also consider this analysis
"... I like Elizabeth Warren, I would vote for her, . Not fond of some of her foreign policy positions, and I don't like how worked up Trump gets her. Forget about Trump, lets here what you plan on doing with the presidency E. Warren! ..."
"... Biden and Harris are both IMO DNC monsters like Clinton who will get us into nuclear war due to a combination of excessive hubris and flat out neocon/neolib stupidity. ..."
"... Warren's okay but it's hard to get past her support for Hillary in 2016 and not for Sanders whose policies reflect hers. So for me, Sanders is still the best, Warren 2nd. However, Trump will destroy him with Socialist scaremongering. ..."
"... Biden is older and will not want war (with any country) complicating his Presidency, and may choose a VP ready to succeed him if he decides not to run for a second term. He will return to the JCPOA. I don't like Biden's ingratiation with Zionists, but the reality is that Biden and Trump will be the choices, so hold your nose, because it's Biden or war and further regime change ambitions with Trump and maybe even a manipulated Trump 3rd term using war as the excuse to prolong his mandate! ..."
"... Biden has no conception of giving up office. As to war he will be as ready to start wars as he was when he and Obama and Hillary were all part of the same administration. ..."
I like Elizabeth Warren, I would vote for her, . Not fond of some of her foreign policy positions, and I don't like how worked
up Trump gets her. Forget about Trump, lets here what you plan on doing with the presidency E. Warren!
In the primaries I will support Gabbard, I believe she is as real of an anti-war candidate as there is, not perfect, but it
is all relative.
Sanders would get my vote, too, although I do fear he is a bit of a "sheep-dog" but I'd give him a shot.
If not one of those candidates, oddly, I'll vote for Trump. Biden and Harris are both IMO DNC monsters like Clinton who will
get us into nuclear war due to a combination of excessive hubris and flat out neocon/neolib stupidity.
I see a repeat of the 2016 election on the horizon, with the DNC doubling down on idiocy and losing in a similar fashion. They
haven't learnt a thing from 2016 and think hyperventilating while screaming Trump, Trump, Trump is going to win the election.
Warren's okay but it's hard to get past her support for Hillary in 2016 and not for Sanders whose policies reflect hers. So
for me, Sanders is still the best, Warren 2nd. However, Trump will destroy him with Socialist scaremongering.
My bet is that the nominee will be Biden, because Biden can beat Trump in the election and Democrats, at the last minute, will
vote out of fear of running someone who might lose to Trump.
My feeling is that there will be war in Trump's second term. Trump will be much bolder and more fascist after getting another
mandate and having nothing to lose. Trump will be a war President having invested more than any other President on military hardware
and itching to show it off. He hasn't fired his hawks for a reason. He will be more full of himself and his own importance in
history. His Zionist financiers will get their money's worth in spades. His agenda will be more hostile on Iran and China and
he'll finish what he started in Venezuela. He will lose the detente with NK, and after the election, he will no longer give friendly
lip service to Russia especially on Syria and Venezuela and will expect Russia to go along with what he has planned for Iran.
Biden is older and will not want war (with any country) complicating his Presidency, and may choose a VP ready to succeed him
if he decides not to run for a second term. He will return to the JCPOA. I don't like Biden's ingratiation with Zionists, but
the reality is that Biden and Trump will be the choices, so hold your nose, because it's Biden or war and further regime change
ambitions with Trump and maybe even a manipulated Trump 3rd term using war as the excuse to prolong his mandate!
"My bet is that the nominee will be Biden, because Biden can beat Trump in the election and Democrats, at the last minute,
will vote out of fear of running someone who might lose to Trump....."
Biden is Hillary without the feminist support. No way that he could beat Trump.
"Biden is older and will not want war (with any country) complicating his Presidency, and may choose a VP ready to succeed
him if he decides not to run for a second term. .."
Biden has no conception of giving up office. As to war he will be as ready to start wars as he was when he and Obama and Hillary
were all part of the same administration.
There is only one Democrat, among the announced candidates, who can beat Trump and his name is Sanders.
The purpose of the "Clintonized" Democratic Party is to diffuse public dissent to neoliberal rule in an orderly fashion. The
militarization of US economy and society means that by joining the war coalition, the Democratic party doesn't have to win any presidential
elections to remain in power. Because military-industrial complex rules the country.
Yes Clinton neoliberals want to stay in control and derail Sanders, much like they did in 2016. Biden and Harris are Clinton faction
Trojan horses to accomplish that. But times changed and they might have to agree on Warren inread of Biden of Harris.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump fought the swamp, and the swamp won. Trump campaigned on ending our stupid pointless wars and spending that money on ourselves – and it looked at first like he might actually deliver (how RACIST of the man!) but not to worry, he is now surrounded by uber hawks and the defense industry dollars are continuing to flow. Which the Democrats are fine with. ..."
"... Trump campaigned on a populist platform, but once elected the only thing he really pushed for was a big juicy tax cut for himself and his billionaire buddies – which the Democrats are fine with (how come they can easily block attempts to stop the flow of cheap labor across the southern border, but not block massive giveaway tax cuts to the super rich? Because they have their priorities). ..."
"... So yeah, Trump is governing a lot like Hilary Clinton would have. ..."
"... I think it's much more likely that a Sanders victory would see the Clintonistas digging even further into the underbelly of the Democratic Party. There they would covertly and overtly sabotage Sanders, brief against him in the press and weaken, corrupt and hamstring any legislation that he proposes ..."
"... electing Sanders can not be the endgame, only the beginning. I think Nax is completely right that a Sanders win would bring on the full wrath of all its opponents. Then the real battle would begin. ..."
"... The notion that real change could happen in this country by winning an election or two is naive in the extreme. But that doesn't make it impossible. ..."
"... Lots of people hired by the Clintons, Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Cuomo, etc. will have to be defenestrated. Lose their public sector jobs, if not outright charged with crimes. No one must be left in a position to hurt you after the election. Anyone on the "other side" must lose all power or ability to damage you, except those too weak. These people can be turned and used by you; they can be kept in line with fear. But all the leaders must go. ..."
"... In order for Sanders to survive the onslaught that will surely come, he must have a jobs program ready to go on day one of his administration- and competent people committed to his cause ready to cary out the plan. ..."
"... Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways: ..."
"... i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power; ..."
"... (ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;" ..."
"... (iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders; ..."
"... iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its business party duopoly. ..."
"... It is not broken. It is fixed. Against us. ..."
"... Obama spent tens of trillions of dollars saving Wall Street – at the expense of Main Street – so that nothing got resolved about the problems that caused the crash in the first place. Trump's policies are doubling down on these problems so there is going to be a major disruption coming down the track. A major recession perhaps or maybe even worse. ..."
"... The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts. ..."
"... By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity" and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background. ..."
"... When this political theatre in the US finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard core imperialists who's time has reached its end. ..."
"... This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry ..."
"... By owning the means of production, the Oligarchs will be able to produce the machinery of oppression without the resort to 'money.' In revolutionary times, the most valuable commodity would be flying lead. ..."
"... Could that be why "our" three-letter agencies have been stocking up on that substance for awhile, now? ..."
"... " The purpose of the Democratic Party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion." ..."
"... Yes, this election is starting to remind me of 2004. High-up Dems, believing they're playing the long game, sacrifice the election to maintain standing with big biz donors. ..."
"... Sadly, when Sanders speaks of a "revolution", and when he is referred to as a revolutionary, while at the same time accepting that the Democratic Party is a Party of the top 10%, puts into context just how low the bar is for a political revolution in America. ..."
"... actual democracy is an impediment to those who wield power in today's America, and in that respect the class war continues to be waged, primarily through divisive social issues to divert our attention from the looting being done by and for the rich and the decline in opportunity and economic security for everyone else. ..."
"... the Democratic Party consultant class, I call them leeches, is fighting for its power at the expense of the party and the country. ..."
"... The DLC-type New Democrats (corporatists) have been working to destroy New Deal Democrats and policies as a force in the party. The New Deal Democrats brought in bank regulations, social security, medicare, the voting rights act, restraint on financial predation, and various economic protections for the little-guy and for Main Street businesses. ..."
"... The DLC Dems have brought deregulation of the banks and financial sector, an attempt to cut social security, expansion of prisons, tax cuts for corporations and the billionaires, the return of monopoly power, and the economic squeeze on Main Street businesses forced to compete with monopolies. ..."
That 2020 existential battle, of course, is always cast as between the Democrats and the Republicans.
But there's another existential battle going on, one that will occur before the main event -- the battle for control of the Democratic
Party. In the long run, that battle may turn out to be more important than the one that immediately follows it.
... ... ...
Before mainstream Democrats can begin the "existential battle" with the forces of Trump and Republicanism, they have to win the
existential battle against the force that wants to force change on their own party.
They're engaged in that battle today, and it seems almost all of the "liberal media," sensing the existential nature of the threat,
is helping them win it. Katie Halper, in a second perceptive piece on the media's obvious anti-Sanders bias, "
MSNBC's Anti-Sanders
Bias Is Getting Truly Ridiculous ," writes: "When MSNBC legal analyst Mimi Rocah (
7/21/19 ) said that Bernie Sanders 'made [her] skin crawl,'
though she 'can't even identify for you what exactly it is,' she was just expressing more overtly the
anti-Sanders bias that pervades the network."
... ... ...
MSNBC is clearly acting as a messaging arm of the Democratic Party mainstream in its battle with progressives in general and Sanders
in particular, and Zerlina Maxwell, who's been variously employed by that mainstream, from her work with Clinton to her work on MSNBC,
is an agent in that effort.
Let me repeat what Matt Taibbi wrote: " [Sanders'] election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing
everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector. "
Agreed. Trump fought the swamp, and the swamp won. Trump campaigned on ending our stupid pointless wars and spending that
money on ourselves – and it looked at first like he might actually deliver (how RACIST of the man!) but not to worry, he is now
surrounded by uber hawks and the defense industry dollars are continuing to flow. Which the Democrats are fine with.
Trump campaigned on enforcing the laws against illegal immigration and limiting legal immigration, but he's now pretty much
given up, the southern border is open full "Camp of the Saints" style and he's pushing for more legal 'guest' workers to satisfy
the corporate demands for cheap labor – and the Democrats are for this (though Sanders started to object back in 2015 before he
was beaten down).
Trump campaigned on a populist platform, but once elected the only thing he really pushed for was a big juicy tax cut for
himself and his billionaire buddies – which the Democrats are fine with (how come they can easily block attempts to stop the flow
of cheap labor across the southern border, but not block massive giveaway tax cuts to the super rich? Because they have their
priorities).
Soon I expect that Trump will propose massive regressive tax increases on the working class – which of course the Democrats
will be fine with ('to save the planet').
So yeah, Trump is governing a lot like Hilary Clinton would have.
And elections are pretty much pointless. Even if Sanders does win, he'll get beaten down faster even than Trump was.
I think people have a hard time with real inflection points. Most of life uses more short-term linear decision making. But
at inflection points we have multiple possibilities that turn into rather surprising turns of events, such as Brexit and Trump.
We still have people saying in the UK – "but they wouldn't do that!" The hell "they" won't. Norms are thrown out of the window
and people start realising how wide the options are. This is not positive or negative. Just change or transformation.
That is my philosophical way of agreeing with you! It is easy to point at the hostility of the mainstream media and DNC as
there being no way for Sanders to win. After all in 2004, look what the media and DNC did to Howard Dean. But people weren't dying
then like they are now. The "Great Recession" wasn't on anyone's radar. People felt rich, like everything would be fine. We are
not in that situation – the facts on the ground are so wildly different that the DNC and mainstream media will find it hard to
stay in control.
I think it's much more likely that a Sanders victory would see the Clintonistas digging even further into the underbelly
of the Democratic Party. There they would covertly and overtly sabotage Sanders, brief against him in the press and weaken, corrupt
and hamstring any legislation that he proposes.
If Sanders should win against Trump expect the establishment to go into full revolt. Capital strike, mass layoffs, federal
reserve hiking interest rates to induce a recession, a rotating cast of Democrats siding with Republicans to block legislation,
press comparing him to worse than Carter before he even takes office and vilifying him all day every day.
I wouldn't be shocked to see Israel and the Saudis generate a crisis in, for example, Iran so Sanders either bends the knee
to the neocons or gets to be portrayed as a cowardly failure for abandoning our 'allies' for the rest of his term.
You've just convinced me that the American Experiment is doomed. No one else but Sanders can pull America out of its long slow
death spiral and your litany of the tactics of subversion of his presidency is persuasive that even in the event of his electoral
victory, there will be no changing of the national direction.
I'm reading a series of essays by Morris Berman in his book "Are We There Yet". A lot of critics complain that he is too much
the pessimist, but he presents some good arguments, dark though they may be, that the American Experiment was doomed from the
start due to the inherent flaw of Every Man For Himself and its "get mine and the hell with everybody else" attitude that has
been a part of the experiment from the beginning.
He is absolutely right about one thing, we are a country strongly based on hustling for money as much or more than anything
else, and both Trump and the Clintons are classic examples of this, and why the country often gets the leaders it deserves.
That's why I believe that we need people like Sanders and Gabbard in the Oval Office. It is also why I believe that should
either end up even getting close, Nax is correct. Those with power in this country will not accept the results and will do whatever
is necessary to subvert them, and the Voter will buy that subversion hook, line, and sinker.
No. The point is that electing Sanders can not be the endgame, only the beginning. I think Nax is completely right that
a Sanders win would bring on the full wrath of all its opponents. Then the real battle would begin.
The notion that real change could happen in this country by winning an election or two is naive in the extreme. But that
doesn't make it impossible.
Lots of people hired by the Clintons, Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Cuomo, etc. will have to be defenestrated. Lose their public
sector jobs, if not outright charged with crimes. No one must be left in a position to hurt you after the election. Anyone on
the "other side" must lose all power or ability to damage you, except those too weak. These people can be turned and used by you;
they can be kept in line with fear. But all the leaders must go.
In order for Sanders to survive the onslaught that will surely come, he must have a jobs program ready to go on day one
of his administration- and competent people committed to his cause ready to cary out the plan.
The high ground is being able to express a new vision for the common good, 24/7, and do something to bring it about. You win
even if you suffer losses.
Without that, life in the USA will become very disruptive to say the least.
Mainstream Dems are performing their role very well. Most likely I am preaching to the choir. But anyways, here is a review
of Lance Selfa's book "Democrats: a critical history" by Paul Street :
Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have
been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways:
i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United
for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to
betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power;
(ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;"
(iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders;
iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its
business party duopoly.
Pretty bad optics on MSNBC's part being unable to do simple numbers and I can fully believe that their motto starts with the
words "This is who we are". Jimmy Dore has put out a few videos on how bad MSNBC has been towards Bernie and Progressives lately
so it is becoming pretty blatant. Just spitballing a loose theory here but perhaps the Democrats have decided on a "poisoned chalice"
strategy and do want not to win in 2020.
After 2008 the whole economy should have had a major re-set but Obama spent tens of trillions of dollars saving Wall Street
– at the expense of Main Street – so that nothing got resolved about the problems that caused the crash in the first place. Trump's
policies are doubling down on these problems so there is going to be a major disruption coming down the track. A major recession
perhaps or maybe even worse.
Point is that perhaps the Democrats have calculated that it would be best for them to leave the Republicans in power to own
this crash which will help them long term. And this explains why most of those democrat candidates look like they have fallen
out of a clown car. The ones capable of going head to head with Trump are sidelined while their weakest candidates are pushed
forward – people like Biden and Harris. Just a theory mind.
The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic
party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public
dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts.
By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity"
and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction
of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing
the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background.
I have little faith in my fellow citizens as the majority are too brainwashed to see the danger of this political theatre.
Most ignore politics, while those that do show an interest exercise that effort mainly by supporting whatever faction they belong.
Larger issues and connections between current events remain a mystery to them as a result.
Military defeat seems the only means to break this cycle. Democrats, being the fake peaceniks that they are, will be more than
happy to defer to their more authoritarian Republican counterparts when dealing with issues concerning war and peace. Look no
further than Tulsi Gabbard's treatment in the party. The question is really should the country continue down this Imperialist
path.
In one sense, economic recession will be the least of our problems in the future. When this political theatre in the US
finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that
the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard
core imperialists who's time has reached its end.
This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry.
By owning the means of production, the Oligarchs will be able to produce the machinery of oppression without the resort
to 'money.'
In revolutionary times, the most valuable commodity would be flying lead.
If the nation wishes true deliverance, not just from Trump and Republicans, but from the painful state that got Trump elected
in the first place, it will first have to believe in a savior.
No, no, no, no, no. No oooshy religion, which is part of what got us into this mess. Cities on a hill. The Exceptional Nation(tm).
Obligatory burbling of Amazing Grace. Assumptions that everyone is a Methodist. And after Deliverance, the U S of A will be magically
re-virginated (for the umpteenth time), pure and worthy of Manifest Destiny once again.
If you want to be saved, stick to your own church. Stop dragging it into the public sphere. This absurd and sloppy religious
language is part of the problem. At the very least it is kitsch. At its worst it leads us to bomb Muslim nations and engage in
"Crusades."
Other than that, the article makes some important points. In a year or so, there will be a lot of comments here on whether
or not to vote for the pre-failed Democratic candidate, once the Party dumps Bernie Sanders. There is no requirement of voting
for the Democrats, unless you truly do believe that they will bring the Deliverance (and untarnish your tarnished virtue). Vote
your conscience. Not who Nate Silver indicates.
Yes, this election is starting to remind me of 2004. High-up Dems, believing they're playing the long game, sacrifice the
election to maintain standing with big biz donors. The leading issue of the day (Iraq/GWOT/Patriot Act) was erased from mainstream
US politics and has been since. Don't for a minute think they won't do a similar thing now. Big donors don't particularly fear
Trump, nor a 6-3 conservative supreme court, nor a Bolton state dept, nor a racist DHS/ICE – those are not money issues for them.
Sadly, when Sanders speaks of a "revolution", and when he is referred to as a revolutionary, while at the same time accepting
that the Democratic Party is a Party of the top 10%, puts into context just how low the bar is for a political revolution in America.
The candidate who would fight and would govern for the 90% of Americans is a revolutionary.
The fact that it can be said as a given that neither major Party is being run specifically to serve the vast majority of our
country is itself an admission for that the class war begun by Reagan has been won, in more of a silent coup, and the rich have
control of our nation.
Sadly, actual democracy is an impediment to those who wield power in today's America, and in that respect the class war
continues to be waged, primarily through divisive social issues to divert our attention from the looting being done by and for
the rich and the decline in opportunity and economic security for everyone else.
Sanders is considered a revolutionary merely for stating the obvious, stating the truth. That is what makes him dangerous to
those that run the Democratic Party, and more broadly those who run this nation.
Sanders would do better to cast himself not as a revolutionary, but as a person of the people, with the belief that good government
does not favor the wants of the richest over the needs of our country. That is what makes him a threat. To the rich unseen who
hold power, to the Republican Party, and to some Democrats.
I agree with the thesis here, and confess to being puzzled by comments on LGM (for example) politics threads of the ilk "I'm
with Warren but am good with Buttigieg too," or "I'm with Sanders but am good with Harris, too," etc.
I love reading Taibbi, but in
his article , that quote, " Sanders is the revolutionary. His election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic
Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector ," should be the lede, and its buried
2/3 of the way down.
This primary season is about how the Democratic Party consultant class, I call them leeches, is fighting for its power
at the expense of the party and the country.
Yves writes: it is unfortunate that this struggle is being personified, as in too often treated by the media and political
operatives as being about Sanders.
I agree. Sanders represents the continuing New Deal-type policies. The DLC-type New Democrats (corporatists) have been
working to destroy New Deal Democrats and policies as a force in the party. The New Deal Democrats brought in bank regulations,
social security, medicare, the voting rights act, restraint on financial predation, and various economic protections for the little-guy
and for Main Street businesses.
The DLC Dems have brought deregulation of the banks and financial sector, an attempt to cut social security, expansion
of prisons, tax cuts for corporations and the billionaires, the return of monopoly power, and the economic squeeze on Main Street
businesses forced to compete with monopolies.
The MSM won't talk about any of the programmatic differences between the two sides. The MSM won't recognize the New Deal style
Democratic voters even exist; the New Deal wing voters are quickly labeled 'deplorable' instead voters with competing economic
policies to the current economic policies.
So, we're left with the MSM focusing on personalities to avoid talking about the real policy differences, imo.
When Bernie talks about a revolution, he explains how it must be from the grassroots, from the bottom up. If he manages to
get elected, his supporters have to make sure they get behind the politicians who also support him and, if they don't, get rid
of them.
Without continuing mass protests, nothing is going to happen. Other countries have figured this out but Americans remain clueless.
Warren's plan would overhaul the process by which the U.S. proposes, writes, finalizes and
enforces trade deals while imposing strict standards for any nation seeking or currently in a
free trade deal with the U.S.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a Medium post outlining the
extensive trade proposal, Warren said her approach to trade is centered on using the United
States' immense leverage to protect domestic industries and workers.
Warren argued U.S trade policy has ceded too much power to international corporations,
squandering the country's ability to defend its manufacturers, farmers and laborers.
"As President, I won't hand America's leverage to big corporations to use for their own
narrow purposes," Warren wrote. "We will engage in international trade -- but on our terms and
only when it benefits American families."
Trump has imposed more than $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, foreign steel and
aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines since taking office in 2017. The president has
used import taxes as leverage in trade talks and inducement for companies to produce goods in
the U.S., but manufacturing job gains and activity have faded throughout the year.
U.S. farmers and ranchers have also lost billions of dollars in foreign sales due to
retaliatory tariffs imposed on American agricultural goods.
Warren acknowledged that while tariffs "are an important tool, they are not by themselves a
long-term solution to our failed trade agenda and must be part of a broader strategy that this
Administration clearly lacks."
Warren said she instead would pursue deals and renegotiate current agreement to "force other
countries to raise the bar on everything from labor and environmental standards to
anti-corruption rules to access to medicine to tax enforcement."
To do so, Warren would expand the ability of Congress and noncorporate advocates to see and
shape trade deals as their being negotiated, not after they have been submitted to lawmakers
for approval
Warren proposed staffing trade advisory panels with a majority of representatives from labor
and environmental and consumer advocacy groups. She also called for special advisory panels for
consumers, rural areas and each region of the country, "so that critical voices are at the
table during negotiations."
Under Warren's plan, trade negotiators would be required to submit drafts of pending
agreements to Congress and submit them for public comment through the same process used by
federal regulators to propose and finalize rules.
Warren's plan also raises the bar for entry into a trade deal with the U.S. and seizes more
power for the federal government to enforce agreements.
Warren proposed a list of nine standards required of any country seeking a U.S. trade deal
including several international tax, climate and human rights treaties. She noted that the U.S.
"shamefully" does not comply with some of these standards, but would do so under her
presidency.
The plan also excludes any nation on the Treasury Department's currency manipulation
monitoring list from a potential U.S. trade deal. As of May, that list includes China, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
Nations in trade deals with the U.S. would also be required to support subsidies for green
energy, follow U.S. food inspection standards, pay a fee on goods produced using
"carbon-intensive" processes and agree to stricter anti-trust standards.
"... Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways: ..."
"... i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power; ..."
"... (ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;" ..."
"... (iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders; ..."
"... iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its business party duopoly. ..."
"... It is not broken. It is fixed. Against us. ..."
"... The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts. ..."
"... By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity" and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background. ..."
"... When this political theatre in the US finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard core imperialists who's time has reached its end. ..."
"... This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry ..."
Mainstream Dems are performing their role very well. Most likely I am preaching to the choir. But anyways, here is a review
of Lance Selfa's book "Democrats: a critical history" by Paul Street :
Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have
been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways:
i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United
for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to
betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power;
(ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;"
(iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders;
iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its
business party duopoly.
The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic
party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public
dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts.
By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity"
and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction
of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing
the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background.
I have little faith in my fellow citizens as the majority are too brainwashed to see the danger of this political theatre.
Most ignore politics, while those that do show an interest exercise that effort mainly by supporting whatever faction they belong.
Larger issues and connections between current events remain a mystery to them as a result.
Military defeat seems the only means to break this cycle. Democrats, being the fake peaceniks that they are, will be more than
happy to defer to their more authoritarian Republican counterparts when dealing with issues concerning war and peace. Look no
further than Tulsi Gabbard's treatment in the party. The question is really should the country continue down this Imperialist
path.
In one sense, economic recession will be the least of our problems in the future. When this political theatre in the US
finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that
the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard
core imperialists who's time has reached its end.
This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry.
"... That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows. ..."
"... *CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating Inside the U.S. ..."
"... That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is highly probable. ..."
"... For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that, for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties. ..."
"... Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects. ..."
"... Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands. There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told. ..."
"... As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over." ..."
"... The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death. ..."
"... Boy that Mueller has had a busy career hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he did or didn't do. ..."
"... Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone. ..."
"... In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. ..."
"... Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something on them? ..."
"... Epstein is the destruction of the Deep State. ..."
"... That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one. ..."
"... The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution ring. ..."
"... Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103 bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being sued by his lead investigator in that case. ..."
"... Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite, the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the hip ..."
"... partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world. ..."
"... The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union, along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services. ..."
"... The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities run by the two main communications intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS. ..."
"... Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then, three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations. ..."
"... For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief, to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized. ..."
"... Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations. ..."
"... Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree. ..."
"... There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars." ..."
That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation
has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows.
The real question is, why did the FBI wait for more than a decade to bust Epstein and Maxwell?
Epstein and Maxwell came to the attention of the FBI in 1996, when, curiously, the Bureau never acted on an accusation that
they had together sexually abused a 15 year old girl in a bedroom inside Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. Documents in a recent
law suit filed by an alleged victim, Maria Farmer, show that the FBI had been aware of Epstein and Maxwell's child abuse activities
in New York for at least a dozen years before Epstein was finally charged in 2008 with much-reduced Florida state offenses.
https://www.yourtango.com/2019323698/who-maria-farmer-latest-woman-accus...
Farmer claims she reported her sexual assault to New York police and the FBI in 1996. "To my knowledge, I was the first
person to report Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI," she wrote in her affidavit."
*CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating
Inside the U.S.
Previously, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, had for many years been known to have been involved in high-level espionage
in the United States, as detailed in a 2003 publication of the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Intelligence Officer's
Bookshelf . Therein, the CIA reviewer of a biography by British author Gordon Thomas acknowledged about Maxwell:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-pub...
That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is
highly probable.
For the deeper background to the Epstein-Maxwell multinational blackmail, coverup and kompromat operation, we have to
look at the events that led up to the 1991 death of Robert Maxwell. A summary of the Maxwell bio by its authors recounts:
British Publisher Robert Maxwell
Was Mossad Spy
By Gordon Thomas And Martin Dillon
The Mirror - UK
12-6-2002
[ . . .]
Eleven years after former Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell plunged from his luxury yacht to a watery grave, his death still
arouses intense interest.
Many different theories have circulated about what really happened on board the Lady Ghislaine that night in May 1991.
[ . . . ]
The Jewish millionaire and former Labour MP [born Ludvik Hoch
in Czechoslovakia] died the way he had lived - threatening.
He had threatened his wife. Threatened his children. Threatened the staff of this newspaper.
But finally he issued one threat too many - he threatened Mossad.
He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and
to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
On top of that he had built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to
funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around the globe.
Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable
appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.
He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador
to the Soviet Bloc. Mossad saw the advantage in that.
[ . . . ]
The more successful Maxwell became the more risks he took and the more dangerous he was to Mossad. At the same time, the
very public side of Maxwell, who then owned 400 companies, began to unwind.
He spent lavishly and lost money on deals. The more he lost, the more he tried to claw money from the banks. Then he saw
a way out of his problems.
He was approached by Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB. Spymaster and tycoon met in the utmost secrecy in the Kremlin.
Kryuchkov had an extraordinary proposal. He wanted Maxwell to help orchestrate the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist
Soviet leader. That would bring to an end a fledgling democracy and a return to the Cold War days.
In return, Maxwell's massive debts would be wiped out by a grateful Kryuchkov, who planned to replace Gorbachev. The KGB
chief wanted Maxwell to use the Lady Ghislaine, named after Maxwell's daughter, as a meeting place between the Russian plotters,
Mossad chiefs and Israel's top politicians.
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control. In return, Kryuchkov would
guarantee to free hundreds of thousands of Jews and dissidents in the Soviet republics.
Kryuchkov told Maxwell that he would be seen as a saviour of all those Jews. It was a proposal he could not refuse. But
when he put it to his Mossad controllers they were horrified. They said Israel would have no part in such a madcap plan.
For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that,
for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties.
Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he
was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally
unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects.
The group of Mossad plotters sensed, like Solomon, he could bring their temple tumbling down and cause incalculable harm
to Israel. The plan to kill him was prepared in the utmost secrecy. A four-man squad was briefed.
Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands.
There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told.
On the night of November 4, 1991, the Lady Ghislaine, one of the world's biggest yachts, was at sea.
[ . . . ]
As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."
The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading
forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these
reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death.
Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon are authors of The Assassination of Robert Maxwell: Israel's Super Spy, published by Robson
Books.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked. The
answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its several
operators to let it all end too soon.
leap out at me as suggesting how Epstein connects to much bigger subjects. First is the assertion that Maxwell was
... teaching them how to funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around
the globe.
This area of trafficking and money laundering directly connects to Mueller and his essential exoneration of
HSBC .
The other quotation that suggests the importance of money laundering is here:
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control.
The life's work of
Antony Sutton at Stanford's Hoover Institution shows that American industry was ALWAYS controlling communism as well as Soviet
industrial development, and that a trend toward social democracy, represented by Gorbachev, would have put an end to that control.
@Linda Wood his money laundering and blackmailing activities. While the review confirms that Robert Maxwell was for decades
a major Mossad agent actively setting up operations and cover in the United States and the UK, I can only surmise that the spreading
political influence of Eastern European organized crime networks and child honey traps are things that the Agency didn't want
to discuss publicly in 2003.
As for Mueller, let's not forget that he was FBI Director and before that the head of the Criminal Division at Main Justice
at the time that global "black finance" grew along with the catastrophic spread of multinational crime and terrorism. BCCI, Iran-Contra,
9/11, and the rise of transnational Oligarchs happened on his watch. As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the United States
at the time, it is hard to imagine anyone more responsibility for the ultimate consequences than Robert Mueller. There is perhaps
someone who bears ultimate responsibility, the President who appointed Mueller: George Herbert Walker Bush and his lesser son,
Shrub, who promoted him.
... wouldn't you assume that this entire affair is an ongoing Mossad operation, which may or may not have concluded? The US
IC is just another operative inside the envelope, but Mossad owns the assets and the intellectual property. I think we could assume
that some of this is automated and Mossad has ongoing leverage still in play.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked.
The answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its
several operators to let it all end too soon.
.
Mossad's legendary blackmail traps ensnared even high-level deep state authorities and made them pliable. The recent history
of United States foreign policy is an enigma that can only be solved when that assumption is inserted. Once the assumption is
in place, it opens like a Pandora's box. Don't you find that to be the case?
In a recent investigation I presented the case that British banking and financial giant HSBC conspired with banking institutions
with documented links to terrorist financing, including those responsible for helping bankroll the 9/11 attacks.
SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2012
Black Dossier: HSBC & Terrorist Finance
Moral equivalencies abound. After all, when American secret state agencies manage drug flows or direct terrorist proxies
to attack official enemies it's not quite the same as battling terror or crime.
Pounding home that point, a new report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused HSBC of exposing "the
U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money
laundering (AML) controls."
That 335-page report, "U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History," (large
pdf file available
here ) was issued after a year-long Senate investigation zeroed-in on the bank's U.S. affiliate, HSBC Bank USA, N.A., better
known as HBUS.
Drilling down, we learned that amongst the "services" offered by HSBC subsidiaries and correspondent banks were sweet deals
with financial entities with terrorist ties; the transportation of billions of dollars in cash by plane and armored car through
their London Banknotes division; the clearing of sequentially-numbered travelers checks through dodgy Cayman Islands accounts
for Mexican drug lords and Russian mafiosi.
From richly-appointed suites at Canary Wharf, London, the bank's "smartest guys in the room" handed some of the most violent
gangsters on earth the financial wherewithal to organize their respective industries: global crime.
A case in point. In 2008 alone the Senate revealed that the bank's Cayman Islands branch handled some 50,000 client accounts
(all without benefit of offices or staff on Grand Cayman, mind you), yet still managed to ship some $7 billion (£10.9bn) in
cash from Mexico into the U.S. Now that's creative accounting!...
@Linda Wood HSBC, huh--there must be some clever name for it, which deserves no research.
what an eloquent article you presented. Brief but right on target. It isn't just sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now it is drugs
- money -sexual perversion--and perhaps worse? Rumors are flying about what video on the Weiner laptop showed. It is strictly
heresay, but a core of folks seem to believe the suspicions are possible.
snoopydawg on Thu, 07/11/2019 - 8:48pm
Boy that Mueller has had a busy career
hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his
cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia
cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he
did or didn't do.
Acosta is saying that if he hadn't made the plea deal then Epstein would never have served any time in
prison. Well he actually only slept there since he got to leave every day for work and then there's the massages he got after
his busy day at work. But there were more than 80 pages that the Feds wrote on his escapades so I think that story he told congress
is true. Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he
is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin
and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something
on them?
Great information! The more I learn the more I need a shower.
is how I've been feeling all week from reading about this, just more and more demoralized when I think about the depravation
of our so-called "leadership." What is it that we're supposed to think of as the new normal after this behavior?
That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before
it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one.
The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the
National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before
he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution
ring.
Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103
bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being
sued by his lead investigator in that case.
Because researchers in our biological weapons labs went public with what they were doing, and where such research was being
done in the U.S., we learned the CIA was one of several outfits doing biological weapons research.
But Mueller exonerated all of them, including the CIA, with no explanation and only focused on a lone vaccine researcher at
the Army lab when journalists began to ask why no one had been indicted after seven years of investigation, at which point the
FBI attempted to harass the suspect into committing suicide.
Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite,
the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the
hip.
partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and
Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari
Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational
terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance
of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world.
This "dark alliance" assumed a political and economic life of its own beyond its original intent to counter communist movements.
By the Vietnam War, Agency operators were running most of the heroin trade in the world through proprietary airlines, banks and
logistics companies. In the mid-1970s, CIA Director Bush expanded privatization with Saudi funding in his Safari Club deal that
eventually morphed into Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks
that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union,
along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs
that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services.
Multinational honey trap operations such as Maxwell-Epstein & Co. are an inevitable and continuing part of this privatization
and criminalization of intelligence that stretches back to the days of Tom Braden and Cord Meyer handing out stacks of greenbacks
to Mafiosi on the Corsican Docks.
The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities
run by the two main communications intelligence agencies.
"Honey-trap; a great option. Very successful, when it works" (GCHQ, UK training program slide)
Without quoting the whole thing (which is worth a read):
Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course
and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just
buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because
they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS.
There's no need to invoke the Mafia/Russia/Mossad/CIA/etc, that's just needlessly overfitting.
Except such an operation would be quite attractive to intelligence services. Maybe they were in on the ground floor, maybe
they made Epstein an offer he couldn't refuse once they heard about it.
Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then,
three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations.
For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual
going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief,
to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized.
Steiber is considered the father of modern espionage. His methods were vastly influential, and he attracted students from London,
St. Petersburg to Tokyo. Each put their own national spin on the science of sexual blackmail. As for the Japanese, they are among
the most interesting and innovative in their use of a parallel network of privatized intelligence services incorporating underworld
Yakuzi groups alongside conventional military intelligence units. Using compromise, they gained and maintained control over Imperial
Japan and its Colonies: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/03/15/eastern-peril/
To realize these divinely inspired ambitions, Japan needed a modern espionage system. Adopting the German model, Japanese
officials were sent to study under Wilhelm Stieber in the mid-1870s. Over the next decade Japan built up separate army and
naval intelligence services, each with an accompanying branch of secret military police (Kempeitai for the army and Tokeitai
for the navy). These latter organizations also provided an excellent counter-espionage service. However, where the Japanese
were unique was in the use of spies belonging to unofficial secret societies working alongside or independently of the official
intelligence agencies. These shadowy institutions were ultra-nationalist by nature, drawing their membership from a cross-section
of Japanese society, including the military, politics, industry and Yakuza underworld. Under ruthless leadership, their henchmen
would spy on, subvert and corrupt Japan's Far East neighbours.
For more on Steiber and his superior, von Hinckeldey, methods of international counter-insurgency, espionage, and political
policing included deception and a forerunner of today's internet surveillance:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/11/29/275653/-
While armies are essential to the maintenance of autocracy, the preservation of dynastic rule and the prevention of democracy
requires an effective secret police. The suppression of its middle-class constitutionalists [during the 1840s] was followed
by the expansion of the Prussian political police under Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey.
Appointed police president of Berlin in late 1848, Hinckeldey was an innovator of many of the features of modern systematic
political policing. Among the tactics that he introduced with his new police system in Berlin was the "Litfass columns". Named
for Ernst Litfass, Frederick William's court printer, he had dozens of these large poles erected in strategic spots around
Berlin. The public posting of political notices was then banned. By application to a state office for a waiver, however, the
columns could be used to display messages. The police dutifully recorded the names of all who had applied. A. Richie, Faust's
Metropolis: A History of Berlin, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998 at p.134.
LEGACY OF THE LITFASS COLUMNS: A similar ploy was later adopted by the People's Republic of China. In the mid-1980s, the
Communist authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing
could post political writings, initially, without being arrested. Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities
in other Chinese cities. For this apparent opening to democracy, the Deng regime much applauded, particularly by some in the
Reagan-Bush Administration, eager to legitimize the regime and its growing commercial ties with U.S. corporations. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters that followed the Tienamen Square massacre. The impression of anonymity and "freedom"
conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police to cast a wide net for identifying persons and
organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in the future.
Hinckeldey also founded the Police Union, the first recorded international network of counterrevolutionary police spies
in modern times. Primarily made up of police officers from Prussia and the German states, the Union operated throughout Europe,
Britain and in the United States. The Union was run by his deputy, the notorious police provocateur, Wilhelm Steiber, who would
later reorganize the Okhrana along similar lines. Internationally active from 1851-1866, the Police Union, according to Mathieu
Deflem, was "one of the first formal initiatives in industrial society to establish an organized police system across national
borders."13
I disagree with the Alternet view on this. See, this is the norm. A purely private sexual blackmail ring of any scale would
be the historical exception. It certainly wouldn't survive very long.
...authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing could
post political writings.... Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities in other Chinese cities. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters....
The impression of anonymity and "freedom" conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police
to cast a wide net for identifying persons and organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in
the future.
But why should one avoid the thought? If the situation looks like the people are going to lose the war for their minds, and
are unwilling to back a publisher like Assange who has given his all to try to empower them, why should anyone put themselves
at risk by expressing their opinions? It's a honeypot of our own making, just as Facebook is where people go to write their own
dossiers for the Authorities.
@Pluto's Republic an enemy of the status quo, you raise the calculated costs of the eventual crackdown, pushing back the
day of reckoning. Keep it up! Visible rebellion is the only defense of the people.
...from which to leverage access to the elite, Harvard University would be a top choice.
Jeffery Epstein actually entered the social salons of the elite through many doors. He was, of course, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations. One would have to be to rub shoulders with the political elite. From there he matriculated to the Trilateral
Commission becoming friendly with Harvard President, Larry Summers. **
Becoming a surprise mystery philanthropist at Harvard, with Summers help, was a booster rocket for Epstein. In the Havard Crimson , in
June 2003, Epstein's involvement with Harvard was celebrated.
People in the News: Jeffrey E. Epstein
Elusive financier Jeffrey E. Epstein donated $30 million this year to Harvard for the founding of a mathematical biology
and evolutionary dynamics program.
While the mathematics teacher turned magnate remained unknown to most people until he flew President Clinton, Kevin
Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa to explore the problems of AIDS and economic development facing the region, Epstein
has been a familiar face to many at Harvard for years.
Networking with the University's leading intellectuals, Epstein has spurred research through both discussions with and dollars
contributed to various faculty members.
Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky and Frankfurter Professor
of Law Alan M. Dershowitz are among Epstein's bevy of eminent friends that includes princes, presidents and Nobel
Prize winners.
Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral
Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations.
Epstein's collection of high-profile friends also includes newly-recruited professor Martin A. Nowak, who will run Harvard's
mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics program.
Like Kosslyn, Rosovsky and Dershowitz, Nowak praises Epstein's numerous relationships within the scientific community.
"I am amazed by the connections he has in the scientific world," Nowak says. "He knows an amazing number of scientists.
He knows everyone you can imagine."
Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing
the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree.
Yet, friends and beneficiaries say they do not see Epstein merely as a man with deep pockets, but as an intellectual equal.
Dershowitz says Epstein is "brilliant" and Kosslyn calls Epstein "one of the brightest people I've ever known."
Epstein's beneficiaries say they are particularly appreciative of the no-strings-attached approach Epstein takes with his
donations.
"He is one of the most pleasant philanthropists," Nowak says. "Unlike many people who support science, he supports science
without any conditions. There are not any disadvantages to associating with him."
Friends and associates say Harvard stands to benefit from its evolving relationship with Epstein.
"I hope that he will, over time, become one of the leading supporters of science at Harvard," Rosovsky writes in an e-mail.
__________________________________________
** A footnote on Larry Summers seems important here:
Harvard-trained economists have been running the US economy for a very long time, and continue to do so. Summers began his ascent
as a professor of economics at Harvard University, leaving shortly before Bill Clinton won the Presidency. He was clearly the
Neoliberal seed planted for the New American Century.
In 1993, Summers was appointed Undersecretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury
under the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political
mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury.
While working for the Clinton administration Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic
crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the Harvard
Institute for International Development and American-advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and
in the deregulation of the U.S financial system, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
At This Point the Ball is Passed to the Bush Team Republicans, while the Democrats Sit Back and Wait for 2008.
There's now a Treasury surplus to transfer to the wealthy, and the necessary deregulation for Wall Street empowerment is in
place. The Soviet era had ended and Russia is ended forever. The world is finally primed to be seized by the One Exceptional Power.
It's 2001, and we are standing on the threshold of the New American Century . Time to throw a flash-bang of chaos onto the world
stage and trigger the booming War Economy that will carry us directly to global control.
There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with
his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars."
Following the end of Clinton's term, Summers served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part
from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer,
and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a
"different availability of aptitude at the high end", and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization. Remarking upon
political correctness in institutions of higher education, Summers said in 2016:
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large
part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with
Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering
There is a great deal of absurd political correctness. Now, I'm somebody who believes very strongly in diversity, who
resists racism in all of its many incarnations, who thinks that there is a great deal that's unjust in American society
that needs to be combated, but it seems to be that there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of
ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses.
After his departure from Harvard, Summers cooled his jets on Wall Street, positioning himself to be called back into the game
when it was Team Democrat's turn in 2008.
Summers worked as a managing partner at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co., and as a freelance speaker at other financial institutions,
including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Summers rejoined public service during
the Obama administration, serving as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President
Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration's
response to the Great Recession.
Jeffery Epstein continued to weave himself into the fabric of government like a good psychopath would. He was by no means the
only one.
I wish conservatives would stop understating Fusion GPS. "Fusion GPS is the arm of the
Clinton Campaign that colluded with a foreign agent, Christopher Steele, to work with
Russians to obtain opposition research against Trump"
I think Mueller was laying the groundwork for his upcoming trial. His lawyers will use a
defense claiming he's old possible dementia or alzheimer's disease.
Republicans have known for a long time that Mueller was not competent and even they were
shocked at this hearing. Just think how Democrats must be feeling after building him up for
three years as Captain America....LMFAO!
We learned Mueller never interviewed anyone or wrote his report. Who did? And what did he
do for 2 1/2 years besides drink? Also Volume 2 is all speculation of " sources" aka MSM
propaganda. A FAKE report of a FAKE investigation based on a FAKE dossier! 3 years of FAKE
NEWS ON A FAKE CLAIM!!!
Robert Mueller wasn't in charge of his own investigation. He was told who to hire and then
did zero work. He was a figure head. Someone to give credibility to an attempted coup.
"... But Dean Baker, the co-founder of the liberal Centre for Economic and Policy Research, said that the increase in corporate debt has corresponded with higher profits and manageably low interest rates. "The idea that you're going to have this massive cascade of defaults - it's very hard to see," Baker said. ..."
"... Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Centre for American Progress, said that most predictions about recessions were wrong, not just those offered by politicians. ..."
"... But he interpreted Warren's essay as a broader warning about how Trump's efforts to support growth by curbing regulations and attacking government institutions might eventually be destructive ..."
"... With my total lack of understanding of world economics I predict a stock market crash sometime between May 2020 and October 2020 and a recession, including Australia (worse than the unofficial one we have really been in here in Australia for the last 10 years), over following few years. ..."
Elizabeth Warren became a household name thanks to her prescient warning of what became a global financial crisis.
Now she's staking her credentials on another forecast of fiscal trauma ahead. The Democratic presidential candidate published an
online essay this week saying that a rise in consumer and corporate debt is imperilling the longest expansion in US history.
"Whether
it's this year or next year, the odds of another economic downturn are high - and growing," Warren wrote.
Her prediction could help
her win over primary voters by tapping into anxieties about middle-class economic stability despite broad gains over the past decade.
But Warren's opponents could seize on her warning to undermine her credibility should a crash fail to materialise before next year's
election, and some economists sympathetic to her agenda say that - for the moment - her conclusion of a looming recession is overblown.
Recessions are notoriously difficult to forecast. Warren first warned in 2003 about subprime mortgage lending, yet it was roughly
five years later when the US housing market fully collapsed.
And although her dire forecast echoed in style some warnings made by
Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Warren hasn't aligned with him in portraying her potential election to the White
House as the only way to avert disaster. "I went through this back in the years before the 2008 crash, and no one wanted to listen.
So, here we are again," Warren said on Capitol Hill last week. "I'm trying to point out where the warning signs are. I hope
our regulators and Congress listen, make changes, and that the economy strengthens."
Even economists who like her prescription are skeptical about her diagnosis. Warren rooted her concerns about
the economy in a Federal Reserve report that found a 6.8 per cent increase in household debt over the past decade, allowing the Massachusetts
senator to write that American families are "taking on more debt than ever before." But that figure is not adjusted for inflation,
nor is it adjusted for population growth - and the number of US households has risen by 9.5 per cent during the same period, meaning
that Fed data also shows debt levels have fallen on a per capita basis.
"I don't see a huge bubble on the other side of household
debt that is going to savage people's assets," said Josh Bivens, director of research at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. At
the moment, families can afford their debt because of low interest rates, and that minimises the risks to the economy. American households
are devoting less than 10 per cent of their disposable income to debt service, down from roughly 13 per cent in 2008, according to
the Fed. This doesn't mean that Warren is wrong to conclude that families are burdened by student debt and childcare costs, just
that data suggests the debt produced by those expenses is unlikely to cause a downturn.
Part of Warren's forecast hinges on a spike
in interest rates that seems unlikely as most benchmark rates have declined since November. Warren has assembled a litany of proposals
aimed at bringing down household debt, through student loan forgiveness and affordable childcare availability as well as a housing
plan designed to lower rent costs. She touted her policy agenda - which has propelled her higher in the polls - as ways to avert
her predicted crash.
Warren's warning of a downturn is a somewhat unique maneuver for a presidential candidate. Past White House hopefuls have waited
for the downturns to start before capitalising on them. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, for example, on a post-recession
message summed up by then-adviser James Carville's edict to focus on "the economy, stupid."
Warren also warned this week that an increase in corporate borrowing could crush the economy.
But Dean Baker, the co-founder of the liberal Centre for Economic and Policy Research, said that the increase in corporate debt
has corresponded with higher profits and manageably low interest rates. "The idea that you're going to have this massive cascade
of defaults - it's very hard to see," Baker said.
While the US economy may not be entering into a recession, many economic forecasters say growth is still slowing because of global
and demographic pressures. Evidence of this has already caused Fed officials to signal that they plan to cut interest rates at their
meeting next week. Trump has repeatedly called for the Fed to make even steeper cuts to improve his economic track record.
Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Centre for American Progress, said that most predictions about recessions were wrong, not
just those offered by politicians.
But he interpreted Warren's essay as a broader warning about how Trump's efforts to support growth by curbing regulations and
attacking government institutions might eventually be destructive. "It's hard to say what a debt-driven problem would look like until
it happens," Madowitz said.
"I think it's also reasonable to elevate concern at the moment given how politicised Trump has made apolitical economic institutions
like the Fed. That's not a free lunch. It creates real risks, so it's more important than usual to think about what happens if things
go bump in the night."
AP Mick 8 hours ago
I really have no idea about economics - seriously the mechanics of world financing, where every country seems
to in debt baffles me. But if you look at the last 40 years or so - my adult life - there seems to be a stock market crash about
each 10 years and a recession in the USA about each 10 years. From memory, stock markets in 1987, 1997, 2008 (I suppose also dot
com stuff in around 1999/2000 as well). Recessions in the US in early 90's, early 2000's, 2009 into 2010's.
With my total lack of understanding of world economics I predict a stock market crash sometime between May 2020 and October 2020
and a recession, including Australia (worse than the unofficial one we have really been in here in Australia for the last 10 years),
over following few years.
I wonder how my predictions will stand up to the experts. Gillespie 8 hours ago No facts seem to be the hallmark of your post.
"Warren first warned in 2003 about subprime mortgage lending" shshus 10 hours ago The incoming economic meltdown in a insanely indebted
global ponzi scheme is a no brainer. Despite Trump's usual bombast, the US economy is hardly growing and manufacturing is already
in recession. The lunatic policies of central banks to offer free money at almost zero interest rates has caused a greed based credit
frenzy that is simply unsustainable. The coming economic collapse will be far worse as the trade wars between US and China and rest
of the world will simply compound the problem. Australia is particularly vulnerable in both economic and strategic terms. Time to
batten the hatches, rather than pile on more consumer debt.
"... He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions 48 times . ..."
"... That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points. ..."
"... While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion," moving the goalposts away from Hillary Clinton's detailed explanation of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help," obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort, George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged. ..."
"... No one who could be indicted was charged with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either. ..."
"... The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and hoping congressional Democrats would find them. ..."
"... Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party -- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing a modicum of outrage. ..."
"... With 95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp. ..."
"... The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here. ..."
"... The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But no, they threatened to subpoena him. ..."
"... Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared. ..."
"... With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out. ..."
"... One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments and staffing. ..."
"... The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power. ..."
"... Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly. ..."
"... 12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government. ..."
"... A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy. Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth. ..."
"... Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded. No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question. ..."
"... An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary. There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage. ..."
"... Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat. ..."
"... I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement. ..."
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference
in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) The late Sen.
Arlen Specter ended the drive to impeach Bill Clinton by invoking Scottish law and voting "not proven" in the 42rd president's Senate
trial. Democrats hope to begin the drive to impeach Donald Trump with a finding by special counsel Robert Mueller that the worst
allegations against the 45th president are not proven.
Even this task was made more difficult by the former FBI director and Trump-Russia investigator's unimpressive public congressional
testimony. Mueller had trouble identifying questioners. He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he
implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions
48 times .
The uber-competent G-man about whom liberals
sang Christmas carols was not on display Wednesday. "Mueller Time" gave way to Mr. Magoo.
A cursory glance at Politico 's homepage revealed the damage. "'Euphoria': White House, GOP exult after a flat Mueller
performance," blared the top headline. Another reads, "Bob Mueller is struggling." And another: "Impeachment drive slowed by Mueller's
troubles." Even the New York Times could only manage: "Mueller sticks to script but shows flashes of indignation."
"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years,"
fretted Barack Obama's man David Axelrod. "And he does not appear as sharp as he was then."
That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised
the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot
be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of
his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points.
But Democrats wanted much more. Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his summary, they have wanted to challenge his
framing of the report. His testimony, like that 448-page document, contained plenty of damning information. The bottom line -- that
Mueller could not prove a Trump-Russia conspiracy to swing the 2016 presidential election and lacks a convincing explanation for
his obstruction equivocation -- remains unchanged.
While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion,"
moving the goalposts away
from Hillary Clinton's
detailed explanation
of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help,"
obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the
Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort,
George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If
they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged.
If Justice Department regulations on presidential indictments did not prevent a finding of insufficient evidence to charge conspiracy,
why did these guidelines require Congress to make the final determination on obstruction? No one who could be indicted was charged
with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either.
The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's
use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this
amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and
hoping congressional Democrats would find them.
Both parties entered the hearings with a fundamental problem. For Republicans, how do you discredit Mueller for his negative
findings about the president while also affirming his failure to prove an election-related conspiracy as definitive? The Democrats'
dilemma was that they knew Trump had behaved badly in response to Russian election interference and the subsequent investigation,
but hoped Mueller would discover something worse. When he merely supplied color and a reliable narrator for what we largely already
knew, many Democrats wanted to pivot back to impeaching Trump over that unseemly behavior.
Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus
to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party
-- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among
the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing
a modicum of outrage.
You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House. Yet that case becomes harder to make when that is precisely what you have conditioned rank-and-file
Democrats to expect from the Mueller report. No dramatic reading of that report, least of all by a 74-year-old clearly no longer
accustomed to congressional testimony, will deliver on those expectations.
With
95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller
to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp.
I would say this is by far the most charitable interpretation of Mueller's testimony I've seen. He didn't want to talk about the
'Steele Dossier' ... the whole basis for the Russiagate farce, and then claimed he didn't know who GPS Fusion was ... the outfit
hired by Clinton to write the dossier in the first place. That this whole pile of rubbish was not laughed out of existence is
a tribute to the ability of the media (who hated Trump), to convince a large number of people of a preposterous fantasy.
He reminds me a little bit of my dad, and a little bit of Cato the Younger. But to his fellow Republicans--he's Mr. Magoo.
The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence
our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here.
Why haven't the Democrats been investigated for it?
Maybe because there's a little difference between hiring a private firm to do opposition research, and Russian military intelligence
stealing and releasing tens of thousands of private documents from one political party to help the other win the Presidency?
"You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House."
Even after the spectacle, and the grueling two years of media hype, nothing has moved the dial from those who hate Trump, and
those who are Trump supporters. The 2020 election may again come down to the electoral college system. We already know where voters
on the upper east coast and California stand. Major populations.
The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative
team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they
insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But
no, they threatened to subpoena him.
By all accounts, Mueller had a long a admirable career. Its disgusting that most people's memory of him and his legacy will
be of this last public embarrassing spectacle.
The Democratic Party has shown its complete lack of moral compass. When it comes to politics, anything goes, including the
destruction of people's lives. They even eat their own when its considered politically expedient. The Anita Hill hearings, Kavannah
hearings, me too movement, show me the man and the people around him, we'll find the crimes mentality. What's next? Murder? It
would not surprise me in the least.
Its clear now that the entire Russian collusion narrative was a set-up by the Democratic party. It was all about entrapment,
perjury traps, and selective media leaking.
The bottom line was, is, and always will be as follows: The Democrat Party expected their candidate to win in a cakewalk over
Trump. If she won we wouldn't have heard one word about these Russians (Oh, and by the way, do these "Russians" have names?).
It was Clinton's election to lose and she promptly went out and lost it! Period! End of story! In their eyes the candidate of
"The Deplorables" won and the Democrats are enraged--so enraged that since Election Day 2016 they have been doing all they can
do to delegitimize the election and Trump's status as POTUS. And all the while-- thanks to BOTH parties--the nation's infrastructure
steadily crumbles and the immigration crisis remains unresolved (to cite just two examples).
"On impeachment: Just imagine that Barak Obama had illegally spent $120,000 of his campaign cash for hush money to his prostitute.
What would happen?"--interguru
Democrats would rise in unison and begin shouting "It's only about sex!" And that time, they'd be correct.
Admit it, interguru, all the covering for Clinton that the Democrats conducted in order to yank his lying-under-oath balls
out of the fire rendered impotent their usual tactics of denigrate and defame.
Fine, but that has nothing to do with the russiagate conspiracy theory.
In fact, if Trump were really a puppet of Russia, they'd never let him commit an unforced error that pointless. Some money
could be funneled from any of a million sources, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared.
With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have
abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to
plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out.
Orwell wept.
One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take
the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who
bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments
and staffing.
The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and
Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and
the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power.
Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his
dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly.
What utter nonsense, unless you believe that "Russia" wrote the DNC emails, or that a clickbait troll farm (see paragraph 95 of
the IRA indictment if you don't believe me) that has no discernable connection tot he Russian government has some amazing influence
over gullible American voters.
12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never
amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as
part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge
also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government.
A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half
those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy.
Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent
on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth.
Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be
extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded.
No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question.
Russians didn't write the emails and Julian Assange is emphatic that Russia had nothing to do with them. Yet, no one in our
vast and vaunted intelligence community has bothered to interview him. As they say, a smart lawyer never asks a question if he
might not want to hear the answer.
Everything, all of it, is based on intel supplied by a cyber security firm on the DNC payroll. You can't make this shit up.
The other indictments are thoroughly unrelated to hacking or collusion by anybody, much less Russia.
Sen Specter did NOT "end the drive to impeach Bill Clinton", as the opening sentence of this article declares. The drive to impeach
Bill Clinton ended when the House passed articles of impeachment. That's right: Bill Clinton was actually impeached. No, he wasn't
"convicted" in his senate trial (thanks to Specter) and so wasn't removed from office. But he was, actually, impeached.
Good question for trivia buffs: Only one of these presidents was impeached: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Which one was it?
(Hint: Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.)
An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney
sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary.
There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage.
Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed
on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see
whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the
conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat.
I'm thinking the Democrats just wanted Mueller to give them the go ahead on impeachment... that way they could always blame it
on him if the ploy failed... Too bad they are such cowards that none of the want to sign their name to impeachment proceedings...
I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which
we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement.
I'll illustrate:
"If we had had confidence the President clearly committed a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
"If we had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
Can anybody tell me the legal difference between those two statements? I really don't see any. Also, what was fascinating about
Mr. Mueller's press conference was when he said this:
"These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.
Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
He actually paid indicted Russian nationals who will never stand trial in this country more constitutional lip service than
Trump. Absolutely gorgeous...
If the Democrats were using Mueller as their smoking gun to nail Trump it failed miserably. If they still want to impeach go ahead.
It guarantees Trump's reelection.
Mueller's investigation ended after all the subpoenas had been served, all the witnesses had been deposed, and all the evidence
analyzed. If, after that, he could not determine that the president had committed a crime, then, according to established jurisprudential
practice, the decision is that he is not guilty. It is singular that the 2 accusations, collusion and obstruction, were evaluated
differently.
In the case of conspiracy ("collusion") the final report says, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." In the case of obstruction
of justice, the final report says, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly
did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable
to reach that judgment."
So, in the case of conspiracy, the prosecutor had to prove that the President was guilty ("did not establish" conspiracy);
in the case of obstruction, they had to prove that he was innocent ("did not commit obstruction"). Why did different standards
apply to the two accusations?
Mueller said he didn't recommend that the grand jury indict the President for obstruction because one cannot indict a sitting
President. But the President either obstructed justice or he didn't. If he did, why didn't Mueller say so? He didn't have to recommend
as indictment in order to state a conclusion based on facts revealed in the investigation. What he appears to be saying is that
because he couldn't prove that the President did not commit obstruction, he would recommend that congress play impeachment politics
with the issue.
So, instead of a resolution of this matter, Mueller decided to bequeath to the nation a festering sore that, with that aid
of congressional Democrats, would continue to undermine the President's administration.
"... Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author a report or conduct an investigation. ..."
"... I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency, remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma? ..."
"... Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of 'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere. ..."
"... Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and they are using them more and more. No matter what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. ..."
A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so)
covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and 'at
least one government source' during an overseas conversation in 2016.
In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating)
evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant
applications , according to
Fox News , citing two sources familiar with the review.
"A source told Fox News that the "exculpatory evidence" included in the transcripts is
Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed "dirt" on
Clinton," according to the report.
And while Fox doesn't name the 'government source,' it's undoubtedly Australian diplomat and
Clinton ally Alexander Downer, who was "idiotic enough" to spy on Papadopoulos with his phone,
according to the former Trump aide.
But Papadopoulos did not only meet with Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with
Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who
went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in
London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper. He also told Fox News back
in May that he always suspected he was being recorded . Further, he tweeted during the
Mueller testimony about "recordings" of his meeting with Downer . -
Fox News
"These recordings have exculpatory evidence," one source told Fox , adding " It is
standard tradecraft to record conversations with someone like Papadopoulos -- especially when
they are overseas and there are no restrictions. "
The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and
Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts. One source told Fox News that Barr and
Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former
Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.
" I think it's the smoking gun ," the source said. -
Fox News
Also under review by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start
date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the
US election.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) first revealed the existence of transcripts documenting the
secretly recorded conversations earlier this year.
"If the bureau's going to send in an informant, the informant's going to be wired, and if
the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that," Gowdy said
on Fox News in May.
"Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But
they haven't been made public, and I think one, in particular ... has the potential to actually
persuade people," he continued, adding "Very little in this Russia probe I'm afraid is going to
persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these
transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it's ever made public. "
According to the report, the transcripts are currently classified - however President
Trump's May order to approve declassification at AG Barr's discretion means they may see the
light of day. And even if not, the declassification allowed Barr to barge in on DNI Director
Dan Coats' office and demand the files .
A source told Fox News that without the declassification order signed by Trump, Director
of National Intelligence Dan Coats was not going to give anyone access to the files -- over
concerns for protecting sources and methods. But another source told Fox News in May that
Coats, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, are all working
"collaboratively" with Barr and Durham on the review.
Barr and Durham are also trying to pinpoint the actual "start date" of the investigation,
according to a source. -
Fox News
As passionately laid out by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during this week's Mueller testimony, the
FBI officially opened the Russia investigation after Papadopoulos told Downer about a rumor
(told to him by Clinton Foundation member Joseph Mifsud) that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary
Clinton.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QC529hakU6U
That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to
intelligence agencies .
On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif.,
challenged former Special Counsel Mueller over when the investigation started.
"The FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July
31, 2016, but in fact, it began before that," Nunes said. "In June 2016, before the
investigation was officially opened, Trump campaign associates Carter Page and Stephen Miller
were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July 2016. Your office,
however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting these Trump associates to the
symposium." -
Fox News
"Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started," said
Jordan on Wednesday, adding "Here's the good news -- that's exactly what Bill Barr is doing and
thank goodness for that."
For what it's worth, I think the whole thing started w/Her campaign, in particular:
Podesta (means, motive and opportunity). I think it began as a cheating strategy and
snowballed into a coup; many ppl involved... Trump won (Thank G--!) and they've been trying
to cover their tracks ever since
Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author
a report or conduct an investigation.
We are seeing a spectacular display of an ill advised poorly thought out conspiracy to
take Trump down...
No one is really looking at why the desperation to get Hillary in, remember Cuntlery
herself stated that if Trump were to be elected "we will all hang"
I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of
Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency,
remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would
also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and
the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got
nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma?
Why the desperation to obliterate the server with bleach bit, and hammer pound the
phones?
Suddenly "enhanced interrogation" makes a whole lot more sense... Lets see how the tough marine remembers his training. As for Mifsud, he will likely instantly remember his past life as a canary the moment he's
shown a fuckin phone book...
Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of
'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere.
Becoming pretty clear at this point that the ***** that perpetrated this treason have
pretty much already played out every option
Yes that's right Cuntlery...your time is coming Bitch. At what point do they just punt for the good of the country and accept guilt quietly. Nadler and Schiff keep pushing it, will go very badly after Horowitz report
Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and
they are using them more and more. No matter
what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. With unending driveby
complicity it always buys at least a few weeks or gets them to the next news cycle where they
feel safe again. Complex criminality wreaks of the company.
Alexander Downer is a the classic groomed fwit who was given a path to power so he could
be controlled. He was the national leader of the opposition but was such a *** he was unelectable and
dumped. Most cartoonists in Australia depict him in fishnet stockings. The usual *** of his generation who could never come out (like Mcron). Quite effeminate
and in *** terms would be the bottom.
"That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to
intelligence agencies ."
The patriots already know that the entire Russia/Trump probe was just cover for illegal
spying that they were doing WITHOUT FISA approval. The Russia/Trump probe was going to be
their excuse.
it's fortuitous in any case as the great first cause of the last generation of government
malfeasance, 9-11, was investigated by mueller as head of the fbi for the bush
administration. it keeps that more in the public eye and mind. it let's people see that the
deep state is bipartisan: helps republican bush and democrat clinton. just as long as they
both help the likud mossad.
There's a LOT for which to blame Mueller. Whitey Bulger, Ruby Ridge, Pan Am flight 103
come immediately to mind. As for who wanted him so bad, I would hazard a guess it was all the
democrats on his "staff" who needed the cover of a "conservative republican". I know, hard to
say that with a straight face.
All we're doing is waiting for the fake "prosperity" to crumble, and the resulting
loss of credibility and legitimacy will follow like night follows day.
The citizenry of corrupt regimes ruled by self-serving elites tolerate this
oppressive misrule for one reason and only one reason: increasing prosperity, which
we can define as continual improvement in material well-being and financial security.
The legitimacy of every corrupt regime ruled by self-serving elites hangs on this
single thread: once prosperity fades, the legitimacy of the regime evaporates, as the
citizenry have no reason to tolerate their rapacious, predatory overlords.
A broken, unfair system will be tolerated as long as every participant feels
they're getting a few shreds of improvement. This is why there is such an enormous
push of propaganda touting "growth"; if the citizenry can be conned into believing that
their deteriorating well-being and security are actually "prosperity," then they will
continue to grant the status quo some measure of credibility and legitimacy.
When the gap between the propaganda and reality widens to the breaking point, the
regime loses its credibility and legitimacy. This manifests in a number of ways:
1. Nobody believes anything the state or its agencies reports as "fact": since it
misreported economic well-being and security to benefit the few at the expense of the
many, why believe anything official?
2. Increased lawlessness: since the Ruling Elites get away with virtually everything,
why we should we obey the laws?
3. Opting out: rather than become a target for the state's oppressive organs of
security , the safer path is to opt out : quit supporting a parasitic and
predatory Status Quo of corporations and the state with your labor, slip into the shadows
of the economy, avoid debt like the plague, get by on a fraction of your former
income.
4. Breakdown of Status Quo political parties: since all parties are bands of
self-serving thieves, what's the point of even nominal membership?
5. Increasing reliance on anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications, more
self-medication/drug use, and other manifestations of social stress and breakdown.
6. Those who can move away from crumbling high-tax cities, essentially giving up civic
hope for fair, affordable solutions to rising inequality and social disorder.
7. Increasing defaults and bankruptcies as households and enterprises no longer see
any other way out.
8. Increasing mockery of financial/corporate media parroting the propaganda that
"prosperity" is real and rising-- S&P 500 hits 3,000, we're all getting better in
every way, every day, etc.
Truth is the most essential form of capital, and once it has been squandered to
serve insiders, vested interests and Ruling Elites, the nation is morally, spiritually,
politically and financially bankrupt. All we're doing is waiting for the fake
"prosperity" to crumble, and the resulting loss of credibility and legitimacy will follow
like night follows day.
I'm glad Democrats are hanging their hat on the fact that a president can be indicted when
he's out of office for obstruction of justice. So they won't object when Barr indicts
Obama.
That bill alone makes Warren a viable candidate again, despite all her previous blunders. She is a courageous woman, that
Warren. And she might wipe the floor with the completely subservant to Israel lobby Trump. Who betrayed his electorate
in all major promises.
Notable quotes:
"... Not only would Warren's legislation prohibit some of the most destructive private equity activities, but it would end their ability to act as traditional asset managers, taking fees and incurring close to no risk if their investments go belly up. The bill takes the explicit and radical view that: ..."
"... Private funds should have a stake in the outcome of their investments, enjoying returns if those investments are successful but ab-1sorbing losses if those investments fail. ..."
"... Critics will say that Warren's bill has no chance of passing, which is currently true but misses the point. ..."
"... firms would share responsibility for the liabilities of companies under their control, including debt, legal judgments, and pension obligations to "better align the incentives of private equity firms and the companies they own." The bill, if enacted, would end the tax subsidy for excessive leverage and closes the carried interest loophole. ..."
"... The bill also seeks to ban dividends to investors for two years after a firm is acquired. Worker pay would be prioritized in the bankruptcy process, with guidelines intended to ensure affected employees are more likely to receive severance pay and pensions. It would also clarify gift cards are consumer deposits, ensuring their priority in bankruptcy proceedings. If enacted, private equity managers will be required to disclose fees, returns, and political expenditures. ..."
"... This is a bold set of proposals that targets abuses that hurt workers and investors. Most readers may not appreciate the significance of the two-year restriction on dividends. One return-goosing strategy that often leaves companies crippled or bankrupt in its wake is the "dividend recap" in which the acquired company takes on yet more debt for the purpose of paying a special dividend to its investors. Another strategy that Appelbaum and Batt have discussed at length is the "op co/prop co." Here the new owners take real estate owned by the company, sell it to a new entity with the former owner leasing it. The leases are typically set high so as to allow for the "prop co" to be sold at a richer price. This strategy is often a direct contributor to the death of businesses, since ones that own their real estate usually do so because they are in cyclical industries, and not having lease payments enables the to ride out bad times. The proceeds of sale of the real estate is usually dividended out to the investors, hence the dividend restriction would also pour cold water on this approach. ..."
"... However, there is precedent in private equity for recognizing joint and several liability of an investment fund for the obligations of its portfolio companies. In a case that winded its way through the federal courts until last year ( Sun Capital Partners III, LP v. New England Teamsters & Trucking Indus. Pension Fund ), the federal court held that Sun Capital Partners III was liable under ERISA, the federal pension law, for the unfunded pension obligations of Scott Brass, a portfolio company of that fund. The court's key finding was that Sun Capital played an active management role in Scott Brass and that its claim of passive investor status therefore should not be respected. ..."
"... Needless to say, private equity firms have worked hard to minimize their exposure to the Sun Capital decision, for example by avoiding purchasing companies with defined benefit pension plans. The Warren bill, however, is so broad in the sweep of liability it imposes that PE firms would be unlikely to be able to structure around it. It is hard to imagine the investors in private equity funds accepting liability for what could be enormous sums of unfunded pension liabilities ultimately flowing onto them. Either they would have to set up shell companies to fund their PE investments that could absorb the potential liability, or they would have to give up on the asset class. Either way, it would mean big changes to the industry and potentially a major contraction of it. ..."
"... I am surprised that Warren sought to make private equity funds responsible for the portfolio company debts by "joint and several liability". You can get to economically pretty much the same end by requiring the general partner and potentially also key employees to guarantee the debt and by preventing them from assigning or buying insurance to protect the guarantor from being liable. There is ample precedent for that for entrepreneurs. Small business corporate credit cards and nearly all small business loans require a personal guarantee. ..."
"... Warren's bill also has strong pro-investor provisions. It takes on the biggest feature of the ongoing investor scamming, which is the failure of PE managers to disclose to the investors all of the fees they receive from portfolio companies. The solution proposed by the bill to this problem is exceedingly straightforward, basically proclaiming, "Oh yeah, now you will have to disclose that." The bill also abolishes the ability of private equity managers to claim long term capital gains treatment on the 20 percent of fund profits that they receive, which is unrelated to the return on any capital that the private equity managers may happen to invest in a fund. ..."
"... We need a reparations movement for all those workers harmed by private equity. Seriously. ..."
"... It's so nice to see someone taking steps to protect the rights and compensation of the people actually doing the work at the companies and putting their interests first in case of bankruptcy. That those who worked hardest to make the company succeed were somehow the ones who took it in the shorts the worst has always struck me as a glaring inequity bordering on cruelty. ..."
Elizabeth Warren's
Stop Wall Street Looting Act , which is co-sponsored by Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal, seeks to
fundamentally alter the way private equity firms operate. While the likely impetus for Warren's bill was the spate of private-equity-induced
retail bankruptcies, with Toys 'R' Us particularly prominent, the bill addresses all the areas targeted by critics of private equity:
how it hurts workers and investors and short-changes the tax man, thus burdening taxpayers generally.
"... If you believe the US media if they just removed Putin, Russia would go back to being a good little puppet state just like under Yeltins. Which is a shockingly naïve way to look at international relations. ..."
"... It is not just Chinese but Asian in general. Watch several seasons of the Japanese cartoon "Gundam" and get back to me about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in it. ..."
"... People always suffer when they allow corrupt sociopaths to gain power. That is as true today as it was in Germany in 1930's and 40's. ..."
"... According to news reports since the moron in charge announced that he had signed an executive order 'blacklisting' Huawei, those lovely humans at Google are denying Huawei phones access to gmail and playstore. The android operating system is open source and still available to Huawei. ..."
"... Doubtless FB and M$ will follow suit. Getting rid of all the nasty stuff that spies on users 24/7/365 now means that Huawei phones have all the advantages with none of the disadvantages. ..."
"... In Games of Thrones, the good characters are regularly disembowled, choked and drowned to death. Or turn evil. The evil characters grow in power and menace and rarely perish. The overwhelming message is that all people and all power are evil. There is no good in the world or what good there is will be quickly stomped out. Resistance is useless. ..."
"... The main message is really that resistance is futile . If the powers that be can condition the contemporary (and naturally idealistic) Western youth to accept that hypothesis, any threat to their depredations and financial tyranny is rendered impotent. If resistance is futile, said youth will simply have to accept how things are and try to stay out of the way of tyrannical kings, rapacious queens, brutal captains of the guards and wanton dragons. I.e. sit down and shut up while HRC, John Bolton, John Brennan and James Clapper ruin the planet. ..."
"... In the US 33% supported unilateral action, 70% of congress voted for the unilateral military action ..."
"... Thomas Jefferson said: "I tremble for my countrymen because I know God is just..." ..."
"... "The powerful do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." ..."
"... The movies Hollywood produced are often telling psychological conflicts as the central story. Each character has a certain fixed attitude and the interacting of the characters create the story. It does not matter if the setting is in antic times or in the far future. In the end there are always the bad and the good guy slamming it out in a fistfight. ..."
"... The historic Chinese drama which I currently favor are based on sociological storytelling. As they develop the stories form their characters. Their attitudes change over time because the developing exterior circumstances push them into certain directions. Good becomes bad and again good. The persons change because they must, not because the are genetically defined. I find these kind of movies more interesting. ..."
"... The take away quote "Wang also reiterated the principled stand against the "long-arm jurisdiction" imposed by the United States." Empire is having its hand slapped back in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, ??? ..."
"... I see empire as a war junkie and they are starting to twitch in withdrawals which is dangerous but a necessary stage. Trumps latest tweets show that level of energy. The spinning plates of empire are not wowing the crowds like before.....what is plan Z? ..."
"... My own view is that, as with everything the US has done lately, it already lost the war before it even stepped into battle in the theater. ..."
"... Strangest thing of all that the US itself would do the forcing out of itself from the world's trust. ..."
"... As I've written previously, the political philosophers of the nascent USA thought they would have a Natural Aristocracy ( here and here ) somewhat based on a meritocratic system instead of the Old World's Inherited Aristocracy based on blood relations and closed to anyone not within a very small circle. Yet it was still an Aristocracy with all it inherent evils, and it is that vast assortment of evils the US citizenry has yet to overcome in its supposed--idealized--quest for self-government. ..."
"... If you are interested in watching a film with a sociological approach to telling a story and you are close to a cinema, Mike Leigh's "Peterloo" just started screening last Thursday in Australia. The film is an exploration of British society during the Regency period (in the early 19th century), the class attitudes and opinions prevalent then, and the conditions and events that led to 60,000 - 100,000 labouring class people gathering at St Peter's Field in Manchester in August 1819, and how it was viciously broken up by cavalry and foot soldiers acting on orders of the aristocracy. ..."
"... The culture I am immersed in (USA) is heavily weighted toward the dramatic and two dimensional. Simply put, mass perspective engineering is geared to over simplify and reinforce these views with media imprinting via hollywood, madison ave. etc. The lenses through which impressions from the "outside world" pass through engineered to give the desired results rather than expand consciousness or engender critical thinking. In short, we are breeding for weakness and gullibility. ..."
"... If it is Hollywood, then you can be certain the intention is to manipulate the younger generation to supporting and idolising their permanent wars. On the face of it, that indeed appears to be the case. ..."
" Why The Takedown Of Heinz-Christian Strache Will Strengthen The Right | Main May 19, 2019 The story in the
American Conservative is very weak: that "the Americans" have already won the war is just
due to the built-in superiority: the "land of the free" against "communist dictatorship"
(so everybody knows who has to win). Or, a variation, "free market" against "state-owned".
A typical statement of that article: "China views commercial relations with other
countries as an extension of the political conflict between Western democracies and itself
-- that is, an extension of war." -- a very defining element of the "American" character,
to project the own aggression onto others.
There was another opinion-piece somewhere, can't find it anymore, where the author
argued that hopefully that "trade-war" will do really good for the Chinese economy --
forget about the US, and develop the home market.
As I believe that the sanctions are a great gift to Russia, I also believe that this
"trade-war" is a (potential) great gift to China.
That was an interesting article on psychological vs sociological storytelling and it makes
a good companion piece when thinking about how the US media personalizes US geo-political
conflicts with the heads of rival state (Putin, Xi, Castro, Kim Jong-un, Khomeini,
Gaddafi).
If you believe the US media if they just removed Putin, Russia would go back to
being a good little puppet state just like under Yeltins. Which is a shockingly naïve
way to look at international relations. States have permanent interests and any competent
head of State will always represent those interests to the best of their ability. True, you
could overthrow the government and replace every senior government figure with a compliant
puppet (which the US always tries to do), but the permanent interests that arise from the
inhabitants of the State will always rise up and (re)assert themselves. When the State
leadership is bribed or threatened into ignoring or acting against these needs it
ultimately creates a failed State.
Even the US media seems to subconsciously understand this, when they talk of "overly
ambitious US goals of remaking societies", however, they never make the logical next step
of investigating why these States do not wish to be remade as per the US imagined ideal,
what the interests of these actually are and how diplomacy can resolve conflicts.
According
to the US media everything boils down to the US = good, anyone who disagrees with our
policies = bad and diplomacy is just a measure of how vulgar our threats are during talks.
I'm specifically thinking of the US Ambassador to Russia, John Huntsman's boast of a US
aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean as being 100,000 tons of diplomacy to Russia - of all
the ridiculous and stupid things to says to Russia when supposedly trying to "ease"
tensions (I still can't believe Huntsmen, former Ambassador to China under Obama, is
regarded a "serious" professional ambassador within the State departments when compared to
all the celebrity ambassadorships the US President for fundraiser).
It is not just Chinese but Asian in general. Watch several seasons of the Japanese
cartoon "Gundam" and get back to me about who the good guys are and who the bad guys
are in it.
The whole notion that the "good guys" and the "bad guys" are set in stone
is antithetical to any worldview founded in Buddhism/Confucianism, or influenced by the
same. Can you imagine western children's programming teaching ambiguity between good and
evil? That which is which depends upon the observer's perspective? This is the sort of
concept that few western people get exposed to until graduate level ethics and philosophy
courses.
Or maybe not. I have never seen a single episode of "Game of Thrones" and maybe
that delves into ethical complexities that typical western mass media avoids. I wouldn't
know. What I do know is that this moral and ethical complexity is something that most Asian
children are introduced to before they hit their teens.
Trump just tweeted "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never
threaten the United States again!". Needless to say, more ridiculousness, Trump is pretty
close to plagiarizing himself with his prior comments regarding North Korean "North Korean
Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the "Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times." Will
someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a
Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button
works!". I think Trump is getting desperate now waiting by the phone for the Iranians to
call him. Trump is certainly still smarting after the failed Venezuela coup and wants to
avoid a second embarrassing defeat, however I doubt the Iranians will care that much about
his latest threat by tweet.
GOT was jarring this season. In the penultimate episode, a dragon wreaks havoc on a western
capital city, brutally murdering most of its inhabitants.
It is impossible not to make the correlation of the dragon as China and kings landing
(The city) as Washington d.c.
From this one can glean that they were attempting to show the ascendancy of China and
the utter destruction of the U.S. With shades of gray thrown about as to if the people of
the city deserved to be burned alive and as to whether the dragon and its rider, China,
have become what they originally set out to vanquish. The old Nietzsche maxim...those who
fight with monsters...
It was indeed unsettling because there are no moral winners. It is well realised for
this reason but poorly written and produced in other aspects as noted above by other
posters.
"First published From Parameters, Summer 1997, pp. 4-14: US Army War College: "There will
be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple
conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the
headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more
decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our
economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of
killing."
"Excerpts From Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival':
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the
territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of
that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.
This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and
requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose
resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.
These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet
Union, and Southwest Asia.
There are three additional aspects to this objective: First, the U.S. must show the
leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of
convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a
more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.
Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the
advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking
to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the
mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role. An effective reconstitution capability is important here, since it implies
that a potential rival could not hope to quickly or easily gain a predominant military
position in the world."
... access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"
GOT is an allegory that explores the nature of power. If you see China's destruction of
Washington it says more about you than the show. Firebombing of Dresden might be a more apt
analogy.
People always suffer when they allow corrupt sociopaths to gain power. That is as true
today as it was in Germany in 1930's and 40's.
The complaints about poor writing are just fan sadness at unexpected horrors that
actually make sense for the show. Loose ends created by these horrors will likely be
resolved in the last episode tonight.
WJ @13 thanks for the link, I am eternally hopeful that this particular thread gets pulled
on until it unravels.
One of my distinct memories of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (I lived in NYC at the
time), was the trumpeting of the Post and other tabloids about 'the Dancing Arabs,' which
obviously fanned the flames of hatred towards the designated villains. Once it was revealed
that they were actually Israelis, then crickets until the whole thing was shoved down the
memory hole.
I'm going out today to buy a couple of Huawei 'phones'.
According to news reports since the moron in charge announced that he had signed an
executive order 'blacklisting' Huawei, those lovely humans at Google are denying Huawei
phones access to gmail and playstore. The android operating system is open source and still
available to Huawei.
Doubtless FB and M$ will follow suit. Getting rid of all the nasty stuff that spies on
users 24/7/365 now means that Huawei phones have all the advantages with none of the
disadvantages.
They put their own chips in newer models and I have no doubt will find enough bright
sparks to take over apps integration meaning that this divergence point will become a boon
not a hurdle. Even better a Huawei costs 60% of a comparable korean model and half the
price of the fbi backdoored american shit.
I really like thinking expressed by an un-named english politician in a Henry Jackson
Society report: ""Huawei has long been accused of espionage" – a claim repeatedly
denied by the firm – and notes that "while there are no definitely proven cases", a
precautionary principle should be adopted."
All politicians are crooks and liars, everybody says so, lets lock em all up right now,
no need for evidence or trial or any of that due process nonsense, the precautionary
principle should apply.
I have never seen a single episode of "Game of Thrones" and maybe that delves into
ethical complexities that typical western mass media avoids. I wouldn't know.
Having suffered through four seasons of Game of Thrones, after a degree in philology and
literature, I'd be happy to share my impressions with you. In Games of Thrones, the good
characters are regularly disembowled, choked and drowned to death. Or turn evil. The evil
characters grow in power and menace and rarely perish. The overwhelming message is that all
people and all power are evil. There is no good in the world or what good there is will be
quickly stomped out. Resistance is useless.
The main message is really that resistance is futile . If the powers that be can
condition the contemporary (and naturally idealistic) Western youth to accept that
hypothesis, any threat to their depredations and financial tyranny is rendered impotent. If
resistance is futile, said youth will simply have to accept how things are and try to stay
out of the way of tyrannical kings, rapacious queens, brutal captains of the guards and
wanton dragons. I.e. sit down and shut up while HRC, John Bolton, John Brennan and James
Clapper ruin the planet.
Despite impressive production values, excellent acting (for the most part) and majestic
locations, Game of Thrones is truly the most evil large scale creative work I've ever seen.
On a philosophical level, Game of Thrones has no redeeming features. At best an
impressionable mind might come away with a hedonist mindset, i.e. the traditional salve of
weak spirits, carpe diem .
PS. There's some very good comments at the tail end of the
Takedown of Heinz-Christian Strache including one of my own covering in some depth the
Austrian political background to this event. Worth revisiting if you only saw the early
comments.
Using populations per country from '03 we get the following conclusions:
of the 36 countries outside the US we get 33% of the world population where
less than 8% supported unilateral military action by American and her allies
and 57% supported under no circumstances
this list excludes 42 additional countries with another 40% of world population who have
had their governments overthrown or attempted to be overthrown by the US since WWII
In the US 33% supported unilateral action, 70% of congress voted for the unilateral
military action
Being that the invasion was illegal and unpopular, the Bush admin invented a 'coalition
of the willing to give the appearance of support.
The Trump admin needed to create a similar type of facade for the Venezuelan coup. Such
things are needed specifically because the move is so unpopular and illegal.
I suppose that is a valid theory. But as the viewer we know the motivations of Dany and
why in some small regard the people in King's Landing deserve a little roughing up.
Thomas Jefferson said: "I tremble for my countrymen because I know God is just..."
The difference here is that we judge Assad even though we don't see what he is truly
doing.
Here we see what Dany has done, mass slaughter, and think to ourselves...we kinda had it
coming.
Concerning your take on GoT: Isn't this really the thesis of Thucydides through and
through reflected in GoT almost to a T?
"The powerful do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." GoT is not disturbing to be nihilistic and shocking. It is holding up a mirror to
history. But the quality of the show has declined since they have come to the end of the road in
adapting the source material. The show has overtaken the books.
The take away quote
"
As of the end of March, overseas investors bought a net of 1.77 trillion yuan (about 260.3
billion U.S. dollars) of bonds at the country's interbank bond market, up 31 percent from a
year earlier, and held 5.4 trillion yuan of yuan-denominated financial assets, up 19
percent year on year, according to the central bank.
"
What us peasants don't know is the extent to which China will let foreign investment
influence their socialistic ways. That said, China is the new empire, private or public is
yet to be determined but guess where all the "smart" money in the world is going? The money
movements are a giant sucking sound that will leave America under the global economic
bus.
Or not and China maintains its socialistic ways including projecting them around the
world.
The movies Hollywood produced are often telling psychological conflicts as the central
story. Each character has a certain fixed attitude and the interacting of the characters
create the story. It does not matter if the setting is in antic times or in the far
future. In the end there are always the bad and the good guy slamming it out in a
fistfight.
The historic Chinese drama which I currently favor are based on sociological
storytelling. As they develop the stories form their characters. Their attitudes change
over time because the developing exterior circumstances push them into certain
directions. Good becomes bad and again good. The persons change because they must, not
because the are genetically defined. I find these kind of movies more interesting.
That's the difference between materialism (marxism) and idealism (kantism, hegelianism
and noekantism). Besides, an idealist tv series helps selling more merch and doing more
sequels, hence the capitalist preference for idealism.
The take away quote
"Wang also reiterated the principled stand against the "long-arm jurisdiction" imposed by
the United States."
Empire is having its hand slapped back in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, ???
Where are they going to get their war on?
I see empire as a war junkie and they are starting to twitch in withdrawals which is
dangerous but a necessary stage. Trumps latest tweets show that level of energy. The
spinning plates of empire are not wowing the crowds like before.....what is plan Z?
Hot tip, GOT is just a movie. Please, no more psychological insights.
What fans really need, is some REAL WORLD justice, something that's noticeably missing
in today's world.
I agree that the American Conservative article was weak - as b obviously thought. It has
the US trade war against China completely wrong. I side with b in his hunch that China will
win. My own view is that, as with everything the US has done lately, it already lost the
war before it even stepped into battle in the theater.
And let's counter the author's point, in the weak article, that China needs the US trade
surplus more than the US needs the imports from China. The author says that China has no
way to substitute for exports to the US. There's abundant recent analysis on this, showing
the relatively small part of China's economy that hinges on this trade, but here's a good
Sputnik interview that illustrates how easily China can simply absorb goods into its own
domestic market:
"...we have our colossal domestic market, which has no competitors throughout the world.
Our consumer and innovation markets provide us with a large number of advantages and
room, giving China an opportunity to make a manoeuvre. Therefore, their blockage gives
China a chance to become even stronger. We must express our appreciation to our mentor,
Trump, for this, for this lesson and for forcing China to figure out how to withstand the
threats on its own."
The US used to be an important nation to do business with - commercial, diplomatic,
military. But as it has become "agreement incapable", nations are forced to replace it.
This takes a little time and readjustment, but then the change is permanent.
Strangest thing of all that the US itself would do the forcing out of itself from the
world's trust.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed regional developments, including efforts to
strengthen security and stability, in a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, the Saudi Media Ministry tweeted on Sunday.
"We want peace and stability in the region but we will not sit on our hands in light
of the continuing Iranian attack," Jubeir said. "The ball is in Iran's court and it is up
to Iran to determine what its fate will be."
He said the crew of an Iranian oil tanker that had been towed to Saudi Arabia early
this month after a request for help due to engine trouble were still in the kingdom
receiving the "necessary care". The crew are 24 Iranians and two Bangladeshis .
Is this a veiled threat on the lives of these crew members?
Re@ 51 James, well Sputniknews is reporting that the Saudi's claim that the Houthis are
planning to attack 300 critical infrastructure facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates in the coming weeks so that might be the instigating event your concerned
about
Thanks for your kudos! As I've written previously, the political philosophers of the
nascent USA thought they would have a Natural Aristocracy ( here and
here ) somewhat based on a meritocratic system instead of the Old World's Inherited
Aristocracy based on blood relations and closed to anyone not within a very small circle.
Yet it was still an Aristocracy with all it inherent evils, and it is that vast assortment
of evils the US citizenry has yet to overcome in its supposed--idealized--quest for
self-government.
Recall that George Washington was deemed safe to become the first
president because he could be trusted not to proclaim himself king --something often
forgotten by students of US History.
I've often lamented on the nature of the 1787 Constitution because it allows any POTUS
to become a king with almost zero hindrances on the power wielded. Sure, compared with
other systems of government at the time, the USA's was revolutionary, but only down to the
waist to borrow a phrase from Gilbert & Sullivan. Madison's theory, IMO, was--other
than being Aristocratic--okay until his most important check/balance was removed--that of
the "dueling oval office" where the losing POTUS candidate was awarded the
Vice-Presidency--imagine Hillary Clinton as Veep with Trump in the driver seat! IMO,
the
12th Amendment fatally wounded Madison's construction of a government that arrived at
great decisions based on a consensus of genuine national interests instead of partisanship.
Arguing that action is the great fault that must be corrected doesn't get much play
nowadays. Indeed, it's very difficult to debate Constitutional Reform given the engineered
political climate since the current situation suits the Ruling Oligarchy just fine.
I hope everyone had an opportunity to click the link I provided to the series of
paintings known as The Course of Empire . ICYMI, here it is again .
Please note which Empire's being copied and compare that with the predominant architectural
theme in the Outlaw US Empire's Imperium. Creditors ruled and eventually destroyed that
Empire. That's one historical lesson that's totally omitted from the historiography of the
USA.
By and large, we know what and where the problems are. The fundamental question is, will
we ever get the opportunity to fix them?
Their disadvantage is that they have to import energy. So they need export if they do
not wish to run a trade deficit.
They do not necessarily need the US for this though if they can trade in Yuan.
b, it is generally fund raising time during this time for some publishers (i.e.
counterpunch etc) and I would like to send you something as well. Can you please post the
payment information. Thanks.
If you are interested in watching a film with a sociological approach to telling a story
and you are close to a cinema, Mike Leigh's "Peterloo" just started screening last Thursday
in Australia. The film is an exploration of British society during the Regency period (in
the early 19th century), the class attitudes and opinions prevalent then, and the
conditions and events that led to 60,000 - 100,000 labouring class people gathering at St
Peter's Field in Manchester in August 1819, and how it was viciously broken up by cavalry
and foot soldiers acting on orders of the aristocracy.
The film is at least 150 minutes long and is a highly immersive experience. There is not
much plot in the Hollywood sense of the term. I believe reviews have been mixed with most
film critics complaining about the film being too long and boring. But if you are prepared
to watch a film that uses a sociological approach to telling a narrative, then you'll agree
with me that the film actually isn't long enough.
Very interesting studies and the ideas that they might spawn. The near parallels of the
micro and macro as well as the flow patterns.
The culture I am immersed in (USA) is heavily weighted toward the dramatic and two
dimensional. Simply put, mass perspective engineering is geared to over simplify and
reinforce these views with media imprinting via hollywood, madison ave. etc. The lenses
through which impressions from the "outside world" pass through engineered to give the
desired results rather than expand consciousness or engender critical thinking. In short,
we are breeding for weakness and gullibility.
In regard to large scale dynamics resembling the physics of things like the laws of
thermodynamics, I am wondering if phenomena like those alluded to above might be engulfed
and influenced by these kinds of natural patterns. So for example: Looking past the drama
of sanctions, trade wars, and good guys vs. bad guys, wont the large scale movements caused
by these things begin to move according to a kind of physics?
I keep wondering what the result of this latest round of economic warfare will lead to.
If the USA continues to sanction, embargo and blockade (at the behest of banking cartels?)
will this not cause a mass exodus from dollar reserves, SWIFT, BIS and the like? I hear all
sorts of opinions, bushels of dis-info and I'm mostly at a loss as to what to think. We are
clearly nearing the end of the Bretton-Woods era so a reset is in order. The USA is a mere
6% of the world population and some would say at the end of it's due date as far an being
an "international influencer".
So if they and their EU poodles go ahead and sanction every nation who refuses to bend
the knee what's stopping these nations from simply bypassing these decrees and going about
their business? I get the sense that this is already happening quietly. Russia, China and
various partner nations are creating alternatives in many forms, be they interweb servers,
financial networks, OBOR, SCO and more I have never heard of.
Perhaps the ratcheting up of tensions could also be swept up in the turbulence of
thermodynamics? If sanctions become embargoes and then blockades, what happens to the
"compressions ratios in the Straits of Hormuz?
Well, I've come across a few advertisements, but I always thought it was some kind of
children's video game. I cannot imagine why anyone other than a socially stunted and
mis-developed American or Americanised adolescent could want to watch such infantile
deranged garbage.
If it is Hollywood, then you can be certain the intention is to manipulate the younger
generation to supporting and idolising their permanent wars. On the face of it, that indeed
appears to be the case.
That Time Warren Cheered Trump. Well, this was disappointing... Elizabeth Warren stands up
and applauds Trump's promise that "America will never be a socialist country." https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=416898935744430
"The Epstein story touches everywhere, discredits American justice, American media, reaches into the White House, perhaps through
numerous occupants and eventually settles in, a continuing mystery, still protected by a controlled media as it leads us to not
one but 20 billionaires, a secret society tied to Epstein, that represents the power of Israel over the governments of the US,
Britain and Canada."
"What is the real story? First of all, sex with children is nothing new in America. Child sex was the norm when the Pilgrims
landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620 and little changed other than it becoming a convenient tool to smear political opponents.
For two centuries, girls as young as 12 were regularly married off, sometimes forcibly, to men as old as 70 while others were
sold into slavery to work in the mills or join the endless hordes serving in America's brothels."
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of ..."
"... Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate ..."
his
Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had -- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans
and Democrats. That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of
Russiagate, a vital subject
I, too, have explored .
As Barr explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a
counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that
Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more,
Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary
focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this
was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just
destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony,
Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate
itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political
history.
More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York
Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political
newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former
intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of Congress such as Adam Schiff, both
papers went into outrage mode.
The Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on
the intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign
had been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the
2016 Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example,
Lee Smith's reporting .)
Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers
warned ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical
power: choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously
damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the
Times ' three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's
investigation
by declaring that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful
investigation aimed at understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American
election." Considering what is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the
Times ' coverage and the agencies' conduct. (In the Post , see coverage by
Toluse Olorunnipa and
Shane Harris .)
Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens
in the Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the
real story is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the
defeated Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and
divisiveness' in the country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord
and divisiveness" in America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still
refusing to accept the legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?
Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News,
for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and the
Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once
traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and
thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential
candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be
due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of
former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What,
as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)
Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think
about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate
allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional
candidates raising funds by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller
regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some
Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the
infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused
in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying
that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion
also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same
"side.")
Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of
the White House and headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee,
as was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general,
William Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence
agencies subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be
yours.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host ofThe John Batchelor
Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com .William Barr, a
two-time attorney general who served at the CIA in the 1970s, would seem to be an ultimate
Washington insider. According to his Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had
-- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans and Democrats. That changed when Barr
announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I, too, have
explored .
As Barr
explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a
counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that
Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more,
Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary
focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this
was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just
destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony,
Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate
itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political
history.
More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York
Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political
newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former
intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of congress such as Adam Schiff, both
papers went into outrage mode. The
Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on the
intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign had
been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the 2016
Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example,
Lee Smith's reporting .)
Support Progressive Journalism
If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nation 's work.
Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers warned
ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical power:
choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously damaging
to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the Times '
three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's investigation by
declaring
that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful investigation aimed at
understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American election." Considering what
is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the Times ' coverage and
the agencies' conduct. (Writing for the Post , see coverage
by Toluse Olorunnipa and
Shane Harris .)
Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens in the
Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the real story
is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the defeated
Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and divisiveness' in the
country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord and divisiveness" in
America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still refusing to accept the
legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?
Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News,
for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and
Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once
traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and
thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential
candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be
due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of
former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What,
as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)
Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think
about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate
allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional
candidates fund-raising by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller
regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some
Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the
infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused
in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying
that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion
also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same "side.")
Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of
the White House headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee, as
was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general, William
Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence agencies
subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be yours.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host of The John Batchelor Show .
Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com . Ad PolicyStephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a
professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin
& Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook
edition.
Looks like Warren weakness is her inability to distinguish between key issues and periferal
issues.
While her program is good and is the only one that calls for "structural change" (which is
really needed as neoliberalism outlived its usefulness) it mixes apple and oranges. One thing
is to stop neoliberal transformation of the society and the other is restitution for black
slaves. In the latter case why not to Indians ?
I'd argue that Warren's newly tight and coherent story, in which her life's arc tracks the
country's, is contributing to her rise, in part because it protects her against other stories
-- the nasty ones told by her opponents, first, and then echoed by the media doubters
influenced by her opponents. Her big national-stage debut came when she
tangled with Barack Obama's administration over bank bailouts, then set up the powerhouse
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). But she was dismissed as too polarizing, even by
some Democrats, and was passed over to run it. In 2012, Massachusetts's Scott Brown mocked Warren as
"the Professor," a know-it-all Harvard schoolmarm, before she beat him to take his Senate seat.
After that, Donald Trump began
trashing her as "Pocahontas" in the wake of a controversy on the campaign trail about her
mother's rumored Native American roots. And Warren scored an own goal with a video that announced
she had "confirmed" her Native heritage with a DNA test, a claim that ignored the brutal
history of blood-quantum requirements and genetic pseudoscience in the construction of
race.
When she announced her presidential run this year, some national political reporters
raised
questions about her likability
, finding new ways to compare
her to Hillary Clinton, another female candidate widely dismissed as unlikable. A month into
Warren's campaign, it seemed the media was poised to Clintonize her off the primary stage. But
it turned out she had a plan for that, too.
I n the tale that is captivating crowds on the campaign trail, Warren is not a professor or
a political star but a hardscrabble Oklahoma "late-in-life baby" or, as her mother called her,
"the surprise." Her elder brothers had joined the military; she was the last one at home, just
a middle-schooler when her father had the massive heart attack that would cost him his job. "I
remember the day we lost the station wagon," she tells crowds, lowering her voice. "I learned
the words 'mortgage' and 'foreclosure' " listening to her parents talk when they thought
she was asleep, she recalls. One day she walked in on her mother in her bedroom, crying and
saying over and over, " 'We are not going to lose this house.' She was 50 years old,"
Warren adds, "had never worked outside the home, and she was terrified."
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This part of the story has been a Warren staple for years: Her mother put on her best dress
and her high heels and walked down to a Sears, where she got a minimum-wage job. Warren got a
private lesson from her mother's sacrifice -- "You do what you have to to take care of those
you love" -- and a political one, too. "That minimum-wage job saved our house, and it saved our
family." In the 1960s, she says, "a minimum-wage job could support a family of three. Now the
minimum wage can't keep a momma and a baby out of poverty."
That's Act I of Warren's story and of the disappearing American middle class whose
collective story her family's arc symbolizes. In Act II, she walks the crowd through her early
career, including some personal choices that turned her path rockier: early marriage, dropping
out of college. But her focus now is on what made it possible for her to rise from the working
class. Warren tells us how she went back to school and got her teaching certificate at a public
university, then went to law school at another public university. Both cost only a few hundred
dollars in tuition a year. She always ends with a crowd-pleaser: "My daddy ended up as a
janitor, but his baby daughter got the opportunity to become a public-school teacher, a law
professor, a US senator, and run for president!"
Warren has honed this story since her 2012 Senate campaign. Remember her "Nobody in this
country got rich on his own" speech ? It was an explanation of how the
elite amassed wealth thanks to government investments in roads, schools, energy, and police
protection, which drew more than 1 million views on YouTube. Over the years, she has become the
best explainer of the way the US government, sometime around 1980, flipped from building the
middle class to protecting the wealthy. Her 2014 book, A Fighting Chance , explains how
Warren (once a Republican, like two of her brothers) saw her own family's struggle in the
stories of those families whose bankruptcies she studied as a lawyer -- families she once
thought might have been slackers. Starting in 1989, with a book she cowrote on bankruptcy and
consumer credit, her writing has charted the way government policies turned against the middle
class and toward corporations. That research got her tapped by then–Senate majority
leader Harry Reid to oversee
the Troubled Assets Relief Program after the 2008 financial crash and made her a
favorite on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart . Starting in the mid-2000s, she
publicly clashed with prominent Democrats,
including Biden , a senator at the time, over bankruptcy reforms, and later with
then–Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner over the bank bailouts.
Sanders, of course, has a story too, about a government that works for the "millionaires and
billionaires." But he has a hard time connecting his family's stories of struggle to his
policies. After his first few campaign events, he ditched the details about growing up poor in
Brooklyn. In early June, he returned to his personal story in a New York Timesop-ed .
W arren preaches the need for "big structural change" so often that a crowd chanted the
phrase back at her during a speech in San Francisco the first weekend in June. Then she gets
specific. In Act III of her stump speech, she lays out her dizzying array of plans. But by then
they're not dizzying, because she has anchored them to her life and the lives of her listeners.
The rapport she develops with her audience, sharing her tragedies and disappointments --
questionable choices and all -- makes her bold policy pitches feel believable. She starts with
her proposed wealth tax: two cents on every dollar of your worth after $50 million, which she
says would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. (She has also proposed a 7 percent surtax on
corporate profits above $100 million.)
Warren sells the tax with a vivid, effective comparison. "How many of you own a home?" she
asks. At most of her stops in Iowa, it was roughly half the crowd. "Well, you already pay a
wealth tax on your major asset. You pay a property tax, right?" People start nodding. "I just
want to make sure we're also taxing the diamonds, the Rembrandts, the yachts, and the stock
portfolios." Nobody in those Iowa crowds seemed to have a problem with that.
Then she lays out the shocking fact that
people in the top 1 percent pay roughly 3.2 percent of their wealth in taxes, while the bottom
99 percent pay 7.4 percent.
That "big structural change" would pay for the items on Warren's agenda -- the programs that
would rebuild the opportunity ladder to the middle class -- that have become her signature:
free technical school or two- or four-year public college; at least partial loan forgiveness
for 95 percent of those with student debt; universal child care and prekindergarten, with costs
capped at 7 percent of family income; and a pay hike for child-care workers.
"Big structural change" would also include strengthening unions and giving workers 40
percent of the seats on corporate boards. Warren promises to break up Big Tech and Big Finance.
She calls for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote and vows to push to
overturn Citizens United . To those who say it's too much, she ends every public event
the same way: "What do you think they said to the abolitionists? 'Too hard!' To the suffragists
fighting to get women the right to vote? 'Too hard!' To the foot soldiers of the civil-rights
movement, to the activists who wanted equal marriage? 'Give up now!' " But none of them
gave up, she adds, and she won't either. Closing that way, she got a standing ovation at every
event I attended.
R ecently, Warren has incorporated into her pitch the stark differences between what
mid-20th-century government offered to black and white Americans. This wasn't always the case.
After a speech she
delivered at the Roosevelt Institute in 2015, I heard black audience members complain about her
whitewashed version of the era when government built the (white) middle class. Many black
workers were ineligible for Social Security; the GI Bill didn't prohibit racial
discrimination ; and federal loan guarantees systematically excluded black home buyers and
black neighborhoods. "I love Elizabeth, but those stories about the '50s drive me crazy," one
black progressive said.
The critiques must have made their way to Warren. Ta-Nehisi Coates recently
toldThe New Yorker that after his influential Atlanticessay
"The Case for Reparations" appeared five years ago, the Massachusetts senator asked to meet
with him. "She had read it. She was deeply serious, and she had questions." Now, when Warren
talks about the New Deal, she is quick to mention the ways African Americans were shut out. Her
fortunes on the campaign trail brightened after April's She the People forum in Houston, where she joined eight
other candidates in talking to what the group's founder, Aimee Allison, calls "the real
Democratic base": women of color, many from the South. California's Kamala Harris, only the
second African-American woman ever elected to the US Senate, might have had the edge coming in,
but Warren surprised the crowd. "She walked in to polite applause and walked out to a standing
ovation," Allison said, after the candidate impressed the crowd with policies to address black
maternal-health disparities, the black-white wealth gap, pay inequity, and more.
G Jutson says:
July 4, 2019 at 1:00 pm
Well here we are in the circular firing squad Obama warned us about. Sander's fan boys vs.
Warren women. Sanders has been our voice in DC on the issues for a generation. He has changed
the debate. Thank you Bernie. Now a Capitalist that wants to really reform it can be a viable
candidate. Warren is that person. We supported Sanders last time to help us get to this
stage. Time to pass the baton to someone that can beat Trump. After the Sept. debates I
expect The Nation to endorse Warren and to still hear grumbling from those that think moving
on from candidate Bernie somehow means unfaithfulness to his/our message .
Kenneth Viste says: June 27, 2019 at 5:52 am
I would like to hear her talk about free college as an investment in people rather than an
expense. Educated people earn more and therefore pay more taxes than uneducated so it pays to
educate the populous to the highest level possible.
Jim Dickinson says: June 26, 2019 at 7:11 pm
Warren gets it and IMO is probably the best Democratic candidate of the bunch. Biden does
not get it and I get depressed seeing him poll above Warren with his tired corporate ideas
from the past.
I have a different take on her not being progressive enough. Her progressive politics are
grounded in reality and not in the pie in the sky dreams of Sanders, et al. The US is a
massively regressive nation and proposing doing everything at once, including a total revamp
of our healthcare system is simply unrealistic.
That was my problem with Sanders, who's ideas I agree with. There is no way in hell to
make the US into a progressive dream in one election - NONE.
I too dream of a progressive US that most likely goes well beyond what most people
envision. But I also have watched those dreams collapse many, many times in the past when we
reach too far. I hope that we can make important but obtainable changes which might make the
great unwashed masses see who cares about them and who does not.
I hope that she does well because she has a plan for many of the ills of this nation. The
US could certainly use some coherent plans after the chaos and insanity of the Trump years.
Arguing about who was the best Democratic candidate in 2016 helped put this schmuck in office
and I hope that we don't go down that path again.
Caleb Melamed says: June 26, 2019 at 2:13 pm
I had a misunderstanding about one key aspect of Warren's political history. I had always
thought that she was neutral in 2016 between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. On CNN this
morning, a news clip showed that Warren in fact endorsed Hillary Clinton publicly, shouting
"I'm with her," BEFORE Sanders withdrew from the race. This action had the effect of
weakening Sanders' bargaining position vis a vis Clinton once he actually withdrew. Clinton
proceeded to treat Sanders and his movement like a dish rag. I am now less ready to support
Warren in any way.
Robert Andrews says: June 26, 2019 at 12:17 pm
I have three main reasons I do not want Senator Warren nominate which are:
Not going all out for a single payer healthcare system. This is a massive problem with
Warren. With her starting out by moving certain groups to Medicare is sketchy at best. Which
groups would be graced first? I am sure whoever is left behind will be thrilled. Is Warren
going to expand Medicare so that supplemental coverages will not be needed anymore? Crying
about going too far too fast is a losing attitude. You go after the most powerful lobby in
the country full bore if you want any kind of real and lasting changes.
With Warren's positions and actions with foreign policy this statement is striking, "Once
Warren's foreign policy record is scrutinized, her status as a progressive champion starts to
wither. While Warren is not on the far right of Democratic politics on war and peace, she
also is not a progressive -- nor a leader -- and has failed to use her powerful position on
the Senate Armed Services Committee to challenge the status quo" - Sarah Lazare. She is the
web editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent journalism for
publications including The Intercept, The Nation, and Tom Dispatch. She tweets at
@sarahlazare.
Lastly, the stench with selling off her integrity with receiving corporate donations again
if nominated is overpowering.
For reference, she was a registered Republican until the mid 1990's.
Joan Walsh, why don't you give congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard any presence with your
articles? Her level of integrity out shines any other female candidate and Gabbard's
positions and actions are progressive. I don't want to hear that she isn't a major player,
because you have included Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Gabbard's media blackout has been
dramatic, thank you for your contribution with it also.
Robert Andrews says: June 27, 2019 at 8:29 am
I was impressed with Warren on the debate, especially since she finally opened her arms to
a single payer healthcare system.
Caleb Melamed says: June 26, 2019 at 2:35 pm
Gabbard is playing a very important role in this race, whatever her numbers (which are
probably higher than those being reported and are sure to go up after tonight). In some ways,
her position in 2020 resembles that of Sanders in 2016--the progressive outlier, specifically
on issues relating to the U.S. policy of endless war. Gabbard makes Sanders look more
mainstream by comparison on this issue (though their difference is more one of emphasis than
substance), making it much harder for the DNC establishment to demonize and ostracize
Sanders. (Third Way really, really wants to stop Sanders--they have called him an
"existential threat.") Gabbard's important role in this respect is one reason the DNC and its
factotums are expending such effort on sliming her.
By the way, Nation, you have now reprinted my first comment to this article five (5)
times!
Clark Shanahan says: June 26, 2019 at 1:19 pm
Tulsi,
Our most eloquent anti-military-interventionism candidate, hands down.
Richard Phelps says: June 26, 2019 at 1:29 pm
Unfortunately EW doesn't beat Trump past the margin of error in all the polls I have seen.
Bernie does in most. The other scary factor is how so many neoliberals are now talking nice
about her. They want anyone but the true, consistent progressive, Bernie. And her backing
away from putting us on a human path on health care, like so many other countries, is
foreboding of a sellout to the health insurance companies, a group focused on profits over
health care for our citizens. A group with no redeeming social value. 40,000+ people die each
year due to lack of medical care, so the company executives can have their 8 figure salaries
and golden parachutes when they retire. Also don't forget they are adamantly anti union.
Where is Warren's fervor to ride our country of this leach on society? PS I donated $250 to
her last Senate campaign. I like her. She is just not what we need to stop the final stages
of oligarchic take over, where so much of our resources are wasted on the Pentagon and
unnecessary wars and black opps. It is not Bernie or bust, it is Bernie or oligarchy!!!
Walter Pewen says: June 27, 2019 at 10:52 am
Frankly, having family from Oklahoma I'd say Warren IS a progressive. Start reading
backwards and you will find out.
Clark Shanahan says: June 26, 2019 at 1:24 pm
You certainly shall never see her call out AIPAC.
She has since tried to shift her posture.. but, her original take was lamentable.
You really need to give Hillary responsibility for her loss, Andy
Also, to Obama, who sold control of the DNC over to Clinton Inc in Sept, 2015.
I'll vote for Warren, of course.
Sadly, with our endless wars and our rogue state Israel, Ms Warren is way too deferential;
seemingly hopeless.
Walter Pewen says: June 28, 2019 at 11:22 am
I don't want to vote for Biden. And if he gets the nomination I probably won't. And I've
voted the ticket since 1976. I DO NOT like Joe Biden. Contrary to the media mind fuck we are
getting in this era. And I'll wager a LOT of people don't like him. He is a dick.
Karin Eckvall says: June 26, 2019 at 10:50 am
Well-done article Ms. Walsh. Walter, I want to vote for her but can't because although she
has plans to deal with the waste and corruption at the Pentagon, she has not renounced our
endless militarism, our establishment-endorsed mission to police the world and to change
regimes whenever we feel like it.
The extent of Israeli spying directed against the United States is a huge story that is
only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that
aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for
Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.
Last week I wrote about how
Israeli spies operating more-or-less freely in the U.S. are rarely interfered with, much less arrested and prosecuted, because there
is an unwillingness on the part of upper echelons of government to do so. I cited the case of Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood
movie producer who had a secret life that included stealing restricted technology in the United States to enable development of
Israel's nuclear weapons program, something that was very much against U.S. interests. Milchan was involved in a number of other
thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state, so much so that his work as a movie producer was actually reported to
be less lucrative than his work as a spy and black-market arms merchant, for which he operated on a commission basis.
That Milchan has never been arrested by the United States government or even questioned about his illegal activity, which was
well known to the authorities, is just one more manifestation of the effectiveness of Jewish power in Washington, but a far more
compelling case involving possible espionage with major political manifestations has just re-surfaced. I am referring to Jeffrey
Epstein, the billionaire Wall Street "financier" who has been arrested and charged with operating a "vast" network of underage girls
for sex, operating out of his mansions in New York City and Florida as well as his private island in the Caribbean, referred to
by visitors as "Orgy Island." Among other high-value associates, it is claimed that Epstein was particularly close to Bill Clinton,
who flew dozens of times on Epstein's private 727.
Alex Acosta (L) Jeffrey Epstein (R)
Epstein was arrested on July 8th after indictment
by a federal grand jury in New York. It was more than a decade after Alexander Acosta, the top federal prosecutor in Miami, who
is now President Trump's secretary of labor, accepted a plea bargain involving similar allegations regarding
pedophilia
that was not shared with the accusers prior to being finalized in court. There were reportedly hundreds of victims, some 35 of whom
were identified, but Acosta deliberately denied the two actual plaintiffs their day in court to testify before sentencing.
Acosta's intervention meant that Epstein avoided both a public trial and a possible federal prison sentence, instead serving
only 13 months of an 18-month sentence in the almost-no-security Palm Beach County Jail on charges of soliciting prostitution in
Florida. While in custody, he was permitted to leave jail for sixteen hours six days a week to work in his office.
Epstein's crimes were carried out in his $56 million
Manhattan mansion and in his oceanside villa in Palm Beach Florida. Both residences were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones
in the bedrooms, which Epstein reportedly used to record sexual encounters between his high-profile guests and his underage girls,
many of whom came from poor backgrounds, who were recruited by procurers to engage in what was euphemistically described as "massages"
for money. Epstein apparently hardly made any effort to conceal what he was up to: his airplane was called the "Lolita Express."
The Democrats are calling for an investigation of the Epstein affair, as well as the resignation of Acosta, but they might well
wind up regretting their demands. Trump, the real target of the Acosta fury, apparently did not know about the details of the plea
bargain that ended the Epstein court case. Bill and Hillary Clinton were, however, very close associates of Epstein. Bill, who flew
on the "Lolita Express"
at least 26 times , could plausibly be implicated in the pedophilia given his track record and relative lack of conventional
morals. On many of the trips, Bill refused Secret Service escorts, who would have been witnesses of any misbehavior. On
one lengthy trip
to Africa in 2002, Bill and Jeffrey were accompanied by accused pedophile actor Kevin Spacey and a number of young girls, scantily
clad "employees" identified only as "massage." Epstein was also a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation and was present at
the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010.
With an election year coming up, the Democrats would hardly want the public to be reminded of Bill's exploits, but one has to
wonder where and how deep the investigation might go. There is also a possible Donald Trump angle. Though Donald may not have been
a frequent flyer on the "Lolita Express," he certainly moved in the same circles as the Clintons and Epstein in New York and Palm
Beach, plus he is by his own words roughly as amoral as Bill Clinton. In June 2016, one
Katie Johnson filed lawsuit in
New York claiming she had been repeatedly raped by Trump at an Epstein gathering in 1993 when she was 13 years old. In a 2002
New York Magazineinterview
Trump said "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy he's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful
women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Selective inquiries into wrongdoing to include intense finger pointing are the name of the game in Washington, and the affaire
Epstein also has all the hallmarks of a major espionage case, possibly tied to Israel. Unless Epstein is an extremely sick pedophile
who enjoys watching films of other men screwing twelve-year-old girls the whole filming procedure smacks of a sophisticated intelligence
service compiling material to blackmail prominent politicians and other public figures. Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most
cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal. It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That
is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do.
That Epstein was perceived as being intelligence-linked was made clear
in Acosta's comments when being
cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked "Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?" "Acosta
had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he'd had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He'd cut the non-prosecution
deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had 'been told' to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. 'I was told Epstein
belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.'"
Questions about Epstein's wealth also suggest a connection with a secretive government agency with deep pockets. The New York
Timesreports that
"Exactly what his money management operation did was cloaked in secrecy, as were most of the names of whomever he did it for. He
claimed to work for a number of billionaires, but the only known major client was Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of several
retail chains, including The Limited."
But whose intelligence service? CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive
to acquire an agent like Epstein. That leaves Israel, which would have been eager to have a stable of high-level agents of influence
in Europe and the United States. Epstein's contact with the Israeli intelligence service may have plausibly come through his associations
with Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the
daughter of Robert Maxwell , who
died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan
in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After
his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized
: "He has done more for Israel than can today be said"
Trump (left) with Robert Maxwell (right) at an event
Epstein kept a black
book identifying many of his social contacts, which is now in the hands of investigators. It included fourteen personal phone
numbers belonging to Donald Trump, including ex-wife Ivana, daughter Ivanka and current wife Melania. It also included Prince Bandar
of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Jon Huntsman, Senator Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, David Koch, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, John Kerry,
George Mitchell, David Rockefeller, Richard Branson, Michael Bloomfield, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Elizabeth, Saudi King Salman and
Edward de Rothschild.
Mossad would have exploited Epstein's contacts, arranging their cooperation by having Epstein wining and dining them while flying
them off to exotic locations, providing them with women and entertainment. If they refused to cooperate, it would be time for blackmail,
photos and videos of the sex with underage women.
It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes. One can
expect that efforts will be made to protect top politicians like Clinton and Trump and to avoid any examination of a possible Israeli
role. That is the normal practice, witness the 9/11 Report and the Mueller investigation, both of which eschewed any inquiry into
what Israel might have been up to. But this time, if it was indeed an Israeli operation, it might prove difficult to cover up the
story since the pedophile aspect of it has unleashed considerable public anger from all across the political spectrum.
Senator Chuck Schumer , self-described
as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns
out that Israel is a major part of the story.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected]
aanirfan.blogspot.com in an article entitled " Epstein , Trump, 9/11 ' has identified Epstein's links not only to Mossad
but to his business relationships with CIA controlled airlines and perhaps to the false flag attacks on 9/11 .According to Aangirfan
, Epstein is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. The CIA and Mossad have strong
ties resulting from the efforts , according to the Wall Street Journal no less, of former CIA chiefs William Casey and James
Angleton . As Acosta has confirmed , Epstein has links to "intelligence " .
The presence of Ghislaine Maxwell is proof of Mossad's ownership of Epstein's kompromat operation. Ghislaine's father, Robert
Maxwell, created the Neva network -- a consortium of technology companies, banks, and Russian and Bulgarian organized crime
networks -- for his Mossad masters. Keeping up the family business, Ghislaine was running Epstein for the Israelis.
Speculation or scenario: the highest levels of the CIA and Mossad have been closely allied since the late 1940s (see especially
the role of James Angleton) and are pursuing common strategic objectives.
The New York Post remarked in March 2000:
"Epstein is an enigmatic figure. Rumors abound -- including wild ones about a career in the Mossad and, contrarily, the CIA."
Perhaps Epstein has been sponsored, funded, directed and protected by both agencies working in combination.
"Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal.
It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do."
But would not a single intelligence agency typically target and trap one isolated person, not a whole set of interconnected
people? That is, this is more like the way the P2 lodge worked in Italy, that is, a society.
With all the mystery surrounding how Epstein obtained such great wealth, I can't help but think it may be a global money
laundering operation connected to the global drug trade.
Books have been written about the CIA's involvement in cocaine and heroin distribution. Whether it's HW Bush and Iran Contra(cocaine)
and Bill Clinton with Mena, AR airport complicity in same or the explosion in poppy (HW's nickname just a coincidence ) production
in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, drugs seem to connect all these dots and more.
And, let's not forget the Israeli "Art Student" operation that targeted DEA offices.
A way for Epstein to get out from under this with the CUFI crowd might be to point out Mary, mother of Jesus, was pregnant
out of wedlock at 14 so what's the big deal?
NYT and Bloomberg have been writing about the mysterious source of Epstein's wealth. Epstein's hedge fund is established
offshore and has a hush-hush list of "clients". He was once sued by a guy named Michael Stroll who said he lost all $450k of
his money investing with Epstein, and he told an interviewer that everyone thought Epstein "was some kind of genius, but I never
saw any genius, and I never saw him work. Anyone that wealthy would have to work 26 hours a day, Epstein played 26 hours a day."
Bloomberg estimated that at best his net worth is $77m, which obviously is not enough to support his lavish lifestyle with 12
homes, a private island, private jet, 15 cars.
Epstein was "let go" by Bear Sterns because of his involvement in an insider trading case involving Edgar Bronfman, whose
firm Seagram was in a hostile takeover bid of another firm. Bronfman, former president of World Jewish Congress, and his two
daughters are investors in NXIVM which was recently charged with sex trafficking and other corruptions. Bronfman and Les Wexner,
the single largest investor in Epstein's "hedge fund", were co-founders of the Zionist org. Mega. All these people are in one
way or another connected with Israel.
I suspect Epstein and Bronfman were in fact running an international sex trafficking-racketeering ring on behalf of Mossad.
That would explain his mysterious source of wealth. His little black book is rumored to include 1,500 names of who's who in
politics, business and arts, and includes royalty, several foreign presidents and a famous prime minister.
Acosta needs to show some integrity and resign. But of course, if he had any, he would never have signed that plea bargain
to begin with.
First Mueller, now Epstein, two chances for Barr to turn the Deep State inside out, upside down once and for all. Will he
do it? I have my doubts. William Barr's father, Donald Barr, was the one who recruited Jeffrey Epstein, a two time college dropout,
to be a calculus and physics teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in NYC when he was the headmaster there. Donald Barr,
born Jewish but "converted" to Catholicism, was later ousted by a group of "progressive" parents at Dalton for being too conservative.
But he was the one who gave Epstein the foot in the door. From there he got to teach the son of Bear Stern's CEO Ace Greenberg,
and was recruited by the latter to work at Bear Sterns.
I wouldn't count out the CIA here. It is telling that one of Epstein's havens was overseas, several of them. These are locations
where the CIA could legally operate. After collecting dirt, they could then funnel some of it selectively to the Israelis for
distribution so the CIA could maintain plausible deniability while having a wall of separation between themselves and the Mossad-picked
third party that leaked the info.
In fact, this is the most plausible scenario; it fits with everything we know: 1) "intelligence" reportedly told Acosta to
back off 2) Epstein has been linked to the CIA 3) some of these locations were overseas, giving the CIA a legal justification
for spying 4) these were largely American politicians and American allies 5) the CIA reportedly threatened Trump when he came
into office by implying they would leak stuff on him: the Micheal Wolfe book, Fire and Fury I believe it was, related a story
of Trump being pressured to set up a meeting with the CIA where he'd speak to them and, essentially, pledge loyalty to them
because they would be his enemies otherwise (that's treason, btw); Trump dutifully complied 6) Epstein's mysterious wealth and
property management would have attracted CIA attention long ago, meaning they should have been aware of this unless they helped
set it up, including the guy's fake wealth (a front to get close to the powerful) anyone got a tax return for this guy?
This smells like CIA-Mossad joint op. If it were solely Mossad, the CIA should have stepped in and broken up this guy's little
operation considering his targets. They should have followed up by either eliminating Epstein as a message to Mossad not to
leak any of their dirt or threatened Epstein with punishment if he leaked or continued his activities. Tellingly, they covered
for the guy.
Also, does this sorry state of affairs make it more likely that Trump will "Wag the Dog" on Iran? Would the Epstein arrest
have even happened if Trump had done Bibi's bidding and attacked Iran when the False Flag of the drone shoot down had been teed
up for him like a driver smacking a golf ball. Conspiracy Theories is all we have left in the crumbling Empire of Lust and Greed.
Perhaps I'm just paranoid.
Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state
One of many apparently.
The scum described here was rewarded with becoming the mayor of Jerusalem.
We've been involved in everything we've been asked to do [re Israel].
[Dad] went and he bought all of the equipment from the plant. It ended up being shipped to Israel. Because you know at
that time, there was a complete embargo from the United States, and what little [the Israelis] got– well Most of what
they got were smuggled in.Most of them were illegal, all the arms. That's what Teddy Kollek did. That was his job before
he became a mayor [of Jerusalem]. He was a master smuggler. And he was good. Oh was he good! [laughter]
The honey trap is one of the most powerful (and legitimate) ways to compromise public officials, including heads of state.
Epstein is almost certainly Mossad.
This has been the talk and pretty obvious conclusion now for some time. Of COURSE Epstein was/is a MOSSAD asset if not agent.
What's more his usefullness to them isn't over yet, especially if Trump is one of the names he has.
I think if Trump caves next false flag and has a go at Iran, it will imply that Trump is dirty and Epstein can prove it.
I'm saying MOSSAD could be behind Epstein going down now as it makes his blakmail potential an imperitive. Hopefully Trump is
clean and there are indications he is. If not then he just lost any ability to resist whatever the zippers now want of him.
The sort of influence Zionist "Israel" needs to wield and does requires exactly such an interconnected and multilayered stable
of highly placed assets. Redundancy built in and how else do you think they manage to control so much AND avoid accountability?
They cast a wide net. But you knew that I think.
@Tired
of Not Winning deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had "been told" to back off, that Epstein was above his pay
grade. "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," he told his interviewers'
#4 Offshore Tax Schemes / Money Laundering
Deutsche Bank seems to be the Gordian Knot of financial filth and corruption. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank's 'special
services department' same as Trump and Kushner ..same Deutsche bank as already fined for money laundering.
Possible Epstein and whoever was behind him engaged in all of these. If congress is going to question Acosta .first question
should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence.
That 2002 New York piece Phil mentioned has some great tid-bits:
For more than ten years, he's been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously
deceased media titan Robert Maxwell
He is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Indicative of globalism, Zionism and Jewish group interest.
those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit.
Obviously a falsely contrived reason, wonder what the deal was here
"I invest in people – be it politics or science. It's what I do," he has said to friends. And his latest prize addition
is the former president [Bill Clinton].
Certainly suggestive of an intelligence operative mindset.
Before Clinton, Epstein's rare appearances in the gossip columns tended to be speculation as to the true nature of his
relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. While they are still friends, the English tabloids have postulated that Maxwell has
longed for a more permanent pairing and that for undetermined reasons Epstein has not reciprocated in kind. "It's a mysterious
relationship that they have," says society journalist David Patrick Columbia. "In one way, they are soul mates, yet they
are hardly companions anymore. It's a nice conventional relationship, where they serve each other's purposes."
Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein's, lent a little pizzazz
to the lower-profile Epstein. Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian
ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew.
Another interpretation is that his combination with Ghislaine was bringing a bit too much public attention to Epstein and
his activities and therefore it was decided to let things die down a bit.
in 1976, he dropped everything and reported to work at Bear Stearns, where he started off as a junior assistant to a
floor trader at the American Stock Exchange. His ascent was rapid.
At the time, options trading was an arcane and dimly understood field, just beginning to take off. To trade options,
one had to value them, and to value them, one needed to be able to master such abstruse mathematical confections as the
Black-Scholes option-pricing model. For Epstein, breaking down such models was pure sport, and within just a few years he
had his own stable of clients. "He was not your conventional broker saying 'Buy IBM' or 'Sell Xerox,' " says Bear Stearns
CEO Jimmy Cayne. "Given his mathematical background, we put him in our special-products division, where he would advise
our wealthier clients on the tax implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax-advantageous transactions.
He is a very smart guy and has become a very important client for the firm as well."
In 1980, Epstein made partner, but he had left the firm by 1981. Working in a bureaucracy was not for him
Obviously, important facts are being left out. He is a talented options analyst but they have him advising clients on investment
structures to save taxes? Why wouldn't they put him on principal trades for Bear if he was such an options whiz?
And why did he leave? Trading firms are notoriously NOT bureaucracies, and anyone with a talent for making money, especially
in the early 80s, would find few fetters. Whole story not given here.
In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business
today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion
or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting
clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those
with $1 billion–plus.
Getting clients in asset management is a cut-throat business. But Epstein did not even have to make a pretense of competing
for business?
His firm would be different, too. He was not here just to offer investment advice; he saw himself as the financial architect
of every aspect of his client's wealth – from investments to philanthropy to tax planning to security to assuaging the guilt
and burdens that large sums of inherited wealth can bring on.
the conditions for investing with Epstein were steep: He would take total control of the billion dollars, charge a flat
fee, and assume power of attorney to do whatever he thought was necessary to advance his client's financial cause. And he
remained true to the $1 billion entry fee. According to people who know him, if you were worth $700 million and felt the
need for the services of Epstein and Co., you would receive a not-so-polite no-thank-you from Epstein.
Minimum $1b invested, no track record by the asset manager, and he claims the clients give him carte blanche? This is not
normal wealth management.
Turning down giant new stakes just because they fall short of $1b? Nonsense. The name of the game on the buy side on Wall
Street is size, because that gives you negotiating power with the sell side.
Epstein runs a lean operation, and those close to him say that his actual staff – based here in Manhattan at the Villard
House (home to Le Cirque); New Albany, Ohio; and St. Thomas, where he reincorporated his company seven years ago (now called
Financial Trust Co.) – numbers around 150 and is purely administrative. When it comes to putting these billions to work
in the markets, it is Epstein himself making all the investment calls – there are no analysts or portfolio managers, just
twenty accountants to keep the wheels greased and a bevy of assistants – many of them conspicuously attractive young women
– to organize his hectic life. So assuming, conservatively, a fee of .5 percent (he takes no commissions or percentages)
on $15 billion, that makes for a management fee of $75 million a year straight into Jeff Epstein's pocket.
Epstein makes all the daily investment decisions on $15b, yet no one on the sell side knows him? In other words Epstein does
not invest in new issues. But new issues are the gravy for making money on the buy side – think IPO discount. This is not normal
asset management.
some have speculated that Wexner is the primary source of Epstein's lavish life – but friends leap to his defense. "Let
me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein has other clients besides Wexner. I know because some of them are my clients," says noted m&a
lawyer Dennis Block of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. "I sent him a $500 million client a few years ago and he wouldn't
take him. Said the account was too small. Both the client and I were amazed. But that's Jeffrey."
You can always trust the word of an M&A lawyer. They would never mislead anyone for advantage.
he found himself spending there [in Santa Fe], talking elementary particle physics with his friend Murray Gell-Mann,
a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and co-chair of the science board at the Santa Fe Institute.
his covey of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends $20 million a year on them
Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1972 and now presides over the Neurosciences Institute
in La Jolla. "Jeff is extraordinary in his ability to pick up on quantitative relations," says Edelman. "He came to see
us recently. He is concerned with this basic question: Is it true that the brain is not a computer? He is very quick."
Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard. Epstein flew up to Kosslyn's laboratory in Cambridge this year to witness
an experiment that Kosslyn was conducting and Epstein was funding. Namely: Is it true that certain Tibetan monks are capable
of holding a distinct mental image in their minds for twenty minutes straight?
Epstein has a particularly close relationship with Martin Nowak, an Austrian biology and mathematics professor who heads
the theoretical-biology program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Nowak is examining how game theory can
be used to answer some of the basic evolutionary questions – e.g., why, in our Darwinian society, does altruistic behavior
exist?
Danny Hillis, an MIT-educated computer scientist whose company, Thinking Machines, was at the forefront of the supercomputing
world in the eighties, and who used to run R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering
An intelligence operative would certainly have no interest in cultivating, buying or blackmailing scientists in the fields
of nuclear physics, controlling human behavior or supercomputers!
And by the way, the need to explain "altruism" in terms of game theory is a tip-off that Epstein and Nowak have no spiritual
life and cannot comprehend of it in other people. No surprise to find "do what thou wilt" as his guiding principle.
Strangely enough, given his scientific obsessions, he is a computer-phobe and does not use e-mail.
Before taking a big position, Epstein will usually fly to the country in question. He recently spent a week in Germany
meeting with various government officials and financial types, and he has a trip to Brazil coming up in the next few weeks.
On all of these trips, he flies alone in his commercial-jet-size 727.
Friends of Epstein say he is horrified at the recent swell of media attention around him
He has never granted a formal interview, and did not offer one to this magazine, nor has his picture appeared in any
publication.
The final straws. If he's not an intelligence operative, he's doing everything he can to give that impression!
He "flies alone." LOL! Poor Jeffrey, he so ronery!
When Bob Maxwell died at sea or disappeared it turned out that he had used or stolen every penny of ALL the pensions of his
employees .which were never recovered. After her father was given a state funeral in Israel (not England where he and his family
lived and worked) there followed a 2 year court case in which his 6 children were finally excused from any responsibility for
these pensions, despite inheriting his money and two of them working in his companies.
And now Ghislaine turns up as a US socialite, multi-decade pedophile procurer and international human trafficker. Nice family
.nice values! ...
Since the Little SAINT James pedo-island
that was allegedly owned by Jeffery Epstein did not have an airport (the closest one being
Curil E King airport in St. Thomas (about ten miles away)) that
means the 'guests' would either have to take a boat trip or a helicopter trip. Since Little SAINT James does have a
clearly marked helicopter landing site at the north central east part of the island (when viewed on google maps in satellite
view) one would suspect that is how these so-called 'guests' arrived at this pedo-island.
Those activities are not mutually exclusive. It could be #5: All of the above. We all know how Mossad operates. Nothing is
beyond them. The end justifies the means.
Acosta is a distraction .and possibly innocent since he did what he was told which was to go easy on an intelligence asset.
Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.
Senator Chuck Schumer, self-described as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of
Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns out that Israel is a major part of the story.
Schumer would already have been tipped of if is was an Israeli operation. It's an anti Trump thing.
The fact that the case has been moved to the Southern District of New York validates your cynicism.
Has the Only Democracy in the Middle East decided to sacrifice Epstein (he can be sprung later, his jig was up anyway) so
that an Epstein circus can replace Russiagate?
From renfro, the following great point:
"If congress is going to question Acosta .first question should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence."
, renfro! Thanks & my respect.
Because I have special enthusiasm for renfro's advice to "Congress," such will not fly with "congress."
Quote: "It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes."
Reply: We'll get a glistening kabuki show, with lots of wailing [walls], thunder and lightening, twists and turns, but, in
the end [as this case will go on and on – Harvey Weinstein, anyone?] people will forget about it.
I fear that this is all rapidly turning into a modified limited hangout. A whole lot of dirt will be inconclusively exposed
and, even though everyone will have a pretty good idea of what happened, there won't be enough will to do anything about it.
The caveat will be when the financial system finally implodes. A horde of jobless and desperate people will rapidly lose
their patience for being governed by a bunch of incompetent pedophile oligarchs, but until then everyone will just go with the
flow.
@Rabbitnexus
ut it looks more like a millionaire club. Intelligence agencies prefer to use secretaries and other less visible people as spies.
I would look for some association of friends of Israel, something that has lots of money, wants lots of power, spies on people,
both enemies and friends, and has some special love for Israel.
I maybe wrong, but this does not seem to me to be a single intelligence agency of any country. It operates in an age old
method of a secret society, like mafia or masons. It is neither mafia nor masons, but some that especially likes to help Israel
and probably created it. I guess there are such friends of Israel organizations, several.
In social science it is often assumed that people are selfish. The attempt to show that altruism contributes positively to
the prospects for survival and reproduction is important in defeating the presumption of underlying selfishness. It's not a
very deep idea. If ten people carry a gene that causes one of them to throw himself on a hand-grenade, thereby saving the other
nine, that gives the gene a better chance of being passed along than if the grenade goes off and most or all of the carriers
are killed. If interested, see the book Evolution of the Social Contract by Brian Skyrms.
First a question: who says the telephone numbers were the sort only an intimate or ultimate insider would have? Queen Elizabeth's
would surely have had to be the Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham or Balmoral switchboard.
Then there is what a sleazy or dangerous guy like Epstein might be expected to do, namely toss in a whole lot of names (with
or without true up to date direct line numbers) to confuse and provide diversion and cover. Cute though isn't that he was supposed
still to be using an old fashioned address book in the 21st Century rather than an encrypted or at least password protected
smartphone.
The Palm Beach mansion Epstein owned was rigged with hidden cameras in some of the guest bedrooms according to an article
I read a couple of years back.
Im glad we have forums like this so the word can get out: honeypot operations are not a thing of just the KGB/Cold War past,
but of the Soros/intel orgs/globalist/Establishment present.
Future politicians and wealthy businesspersons need to be aware of this. The Bible has a great old verse that goes something
like, "Be sure your sins will find you out".
"Pedophilia"? Has anyone accused Epstein of mistreating pre-pubescent girls? I don't think so. If Mr. Giraldi wants to deplore
what Epstein is accused of, fine. But don't try to confuse us by suggesting that he attacked children rather than underage teens.
@follyofwar
even Israel understand this would not be regime change business as usual.
U.S. war gamers for years have been saying there's no way the U.S. could significantly "win" the war. It would surely drive
gas prices way up, and wake up the American public, creating a probably insurmountable political problem for Trump. Israel is
liable to get pelted from all sides -- Hezbollah has promised to attack in the event of war, and there are probably ways of
striking from Syria and Iran. Then there are the wild cards of Russia and China. No one knows for sure what Putin would do if
Iran were attacked, but he could certainly turn Israel into a parking lot very quickly if he wanted to.
Well founded scepticism. Still, now we know the extent of what Bernie Madoff got away with perhaps someone who was clever
and charming and appealed to those who wouldn't have invested with Madoff just might have put together enough billion dollar
portfolios to be able, as long as he managed his tax affairs well to become very rich during the 80s. It would be interesting
to know how he handled the October 1988 melt down.
One aspect of this entire Epstein Talmudic child abuse saga that really p*sses me off is the active participation of the
IRS. It was the same with Madoff and Maxwell. None of these talmudic ponzi's could have gotten off the ground if these gangsters
had been correctly filing all the correct tax forms like all the other goy schmucks.
Since 2012, with the Statute of Limitations retroactively extended 3 years to a total of 6 years backwards to 2006, all undeclared
foreign bank accounts of US persons or green card holders on IRS FBAR forms (Foreign Bank Account Report), and since 2012 form
8948 (Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets), which is even more intrusive, face IRS penalties of 50% of the highest
annual balance, and many tax sinners have been forced to pay more in taxes than these bank accounts ever contained. This is
the tip of the iceberg compared to jewish charity and foundation and estate fraud.
Epstein supposedly was "gifted" the NY mansion from his "mentor" at the defunct and fraudulent money changer Bear Stearns
for what must have been more than 50 Million. Rick Wiles drilled down in detail into this gift on
Thursday .
These kinds of shenanigans, like flying "friends" around the world to your various child abuse temples in your private jets,
are taxable gifts. In fact double taxed, taxed first as income and second with the gift tax. The Lolita Express could never
be declared as a business expense either.
The entire rotten affair stinks on every level and it gets more putrid at every layer of talmudic control is peeled bank.
At each level more Jews and Zionists come wiggling out and scurrying off to disappear from social and dinosaur media. But also
as each layer gets peeled bank we get closer to the core, which with ever more certainty is ritual child sacrifice used for
talmudic control.
Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.
It's going to be difficult
Maurene Comey, one of the lead prosecutors who is handling the Epstein case, happens to be James Comey's daughter, the ex
FBI boss.
It remains to be seen if she will be giving Bill Clinton special treatment, just like her father gave to Hillary's "lock her
up".
Moreover, Judge Berman who preside the case, happens to be also a Clinton appointee (in 1998).
In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business
today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion
or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting
clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those
with $1 billion–plus.
The fly in the ointment of this carefully cultivated cover story:
"Statistics published in Forbes magazine's annual survey of America's billionaires expose this little known but shocking
reality. In 1982 there were 13 billionaires; in 1983 15″
There's no need for anything so crude as either the head of the CIA or FBI reporting directly to the Mossad when both agencies
are riddled from top to bottom with de facto Israeli espionage agents.
It's a Fool's Errand to think you can solve Epstein like a puzzle. Most, like Giraldi, are engaged in bias confirmation.
That isn't to say his speculations are entirely wrong but that we're all part of the play in one way or another.
In my view timing is rarely if ever coincidental. That seems glaringly obvious here. The Epstein scandal was resurrected
now for a reason. I suspect that like the Academic Admissions scandal the Permanent Government is throwing its weight around.
Warning (once again) that it can inflict casualties if exposing its 2016 malefactions is taken too far.
Weinstein served the same function -- with poor Meryl Streep the Sgt. Schultz headliner.
Put yourself in the mind of the various filth (e.g. Brennan) implicated in attempting to throw the election to Hillary and,
failing that, frame-up and destroy the duly elected POTUS. They think they're entitled to a pass given all they've turned a
blind eye to over the years.
Epstein's arrest strikes me as a shot across the bow in the context of the upcoming IG Report/Durham Investigation. I'm not
picking on Giraldi but all of his fans here should note he's been Mumble Mouth at best on those malefactions. Nor am I saying
that isn't the wise move for him.
The scandal that needs to be buried is that they built a global surveillance (and storage) apparatus, including of the American
people. There was widespread, systematic abuse of it during the Obama Administration ('000s of people). Whatever limitations
there were, effectively Mutually Assured Destruction with the establishment factions keeping an eye on each other, collapsed
as they all united to stop Trump.
Epstein, like Weinstein and the Academic Admissions scandal, is both distraction and a warning to the Governing and Business
Classes -- keep you heads down and mouths shut about these powerful intelligence/national security entities.
I generally think waiting to see how matters fall out is a very good idea. But when I read the information of Mr. Acosta's
interview, I sank a bit. Because it strongly suggested vested interest by the government – not to get to the truth.
That even the circus that usually comes to surround even credible cases will so muddy the waters as to avoid a rendering
of what actually took place.
And given how compromised the collusion matter is was or will continue to be – the stakes may be higher here such that muddying
the waters will be some relief for those involved.
Myth of brilliance has been created to explain origin of his wealth . But even that shit was not enough , more myths had
to be created like capacity of having brilliant discussions with Nobel laureate ( Physics) or with great educators , and with
world renowned economist .
I guess authorities can get away with saying what F lies they can say until it blows up on their faces . Jew thinks goym
are stupid , so tell them whatever come to mind like having a great autonomous brain that doesn't depend on education or training
or publicly visible job to figure out the finances , economy, hard computer , physical and cognitive sciences and earning millions
,
while busy with
1 taking nude picture and storing them in 3-4 different areas
2 ferrying big guns from 3 different continents to Orgy Islsnd
3 Getting their intimate information , charting them connecting them and storing them
4 having parties with semi nude girls but attended by celebrities
5 holding message parkour parties from girls procured from shanty , trailer park ,
6 having serial girl friends
– there are more .
Oh yeah!!! No wonder people under pressure , lack of information , from removal of connecting dots , undue respect for glory
money power , fear for being seen as ' naysayer ' or pessimist or low IQ uninformed , and fear of public ridicule can believe
or can feign to believe the wildest whoopers / lies/ plaint shit dished out by the upper echelon of the society .
( then we wonder why people believe in UFO , big foot ,
, personal angels , apparitions, or America is a force for good )
Epstein in my opinion is a mossad officer whose agenda is to compromise zio/US politicians for the benefit of Israel and
in this he is just one of many in the zio/US and in fact the zio/US gov is infested with dual Israeli citizens whose first and
only loyalty is to Israel.
Read the book Blood in the Water by Joan Mellen about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel and the US government to see
how intertwined the mossad and the CIA are and remember the joint Israeli and zio/US gov attack on the WTC on 911, the zionists
rule America!
"CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive to acquire an agent like
Epstein."
This is an assertion with nothing to back it up. The CIA, in particular, has every reason to use an 'Epstein' for its nefarious
purposes as it IS the deep state or at least a major part of it.
The CIA owns the drug trade in Afghanistan and Mena, Arkansas can easily be connected to CIA activities along with gun running
in Mexico. The CIA is the official criminal organization within the US gov't and it went rogue decades ago. It can afford to
have multiple 'Epstein' clones running around to make sure it can control the US political class to not investigate its activities
too closely.
The CIA and Israel are indistinguishable from each other. Israel runs US foreign policy via the CIA and their own Mossad.
Come on, Phil Giraldi. Do you believe in an independent American justice system? What a joke. It's corrupt to the bone. Weinstein,
Epstein, Maxwell, Adelson, Saban, Koch you name it, have America in their pocket like Sharon used to say. During a furious beef
between Sharon and Shimon Peres, Sharon turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do
this and will do that. I want to tell you something obvious, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people,
control America, and the Americans know it."
Could anyone but an intelligence agency get away with all of the following: 1) harassing witnesses (forcing their cars off
the road public highways), 2) searching the trash of police officers in an attempt to find dirt on the officers and 3) obtaining
a sweet heart plea bargain when the police had dozens of victims (who didn't even know each other) telling the exact same story
and ready to testify – as well as photos of nude adolescents seized in a search.
Who could have done such things and got away with it.
Epstein must have been an operative. The only question is: for whom did he work?
Gasp!!! Are you suggesting sweet, innocent Monica was blowing Slick Willie for reasons other than his taking advantage
of her?
In his book Gideon's Spies the late Welsh author Gordon Thomas claimed Mossad had tapes of the same for blackmail
reasons. However, this has never been confirmed.
Epstein will "cop a plea" and avoid a trial. That is certain.
A couple of things I'd like to ask the brilliant Epstein: Why did you engage in your nefarious sexual activity in New York
State and Florida? The "age of consent" in both states is 18. In New Jersey, PA and other states, it's 16. Now US federal law
prohibits sex between people 12 to 16 if one of the participants is 4 years or more older than the other. The law says "between"
not inclusive of 16. So 16 might be OK. That's young enough.
Also Jeffrey, why didn't you take your "Lolita Express" to Tel Aviv? It's legal in Israel and no one checks up of the actual
ages of the "working girls." And most are the tall blond/blue and slim types from Eastern Europe.
"Pedophile" is incorrect, as a commenter noted. The age cutoff is 13 for pedophilia. DSM-5. These escapades comprise different
serious felonies. However, the Epstein colleagues can rest easy, if Rush's instinct about prosecuting Hillary is correct. Rush
has said that prosecuting Hillary will not happen, because it would "roil" the nation. Same here. I expect to see a lot of MSM
passive voice, and intransitive verbs, but no roiling. "The car drove off the side of the bridge."
Asimov's father once wrote a book called "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man." Hmm .
More seriously, did it ever occur to you that someone might want to know your source before accepting your claim that Mueller
"supposedly classified Epstein as an informant"? Supposed by whom?? Eh????
believes Epstein allegedly preyed on Araoz when she was 14 because she was vulnerable.
"She had just transferred to a new school and didn't know anybody," attorney Kimberly Lerner said in an interview. "She
didn't have a father. Her mother was very poor. She was from a single-parent home. She was really struggling, and she wanted
to be a model and an actress. He absolutely preyed upon the most vulnerable."
@Lou123
n Ring' which supposedly was providing child prostitutes to high level US politicians who in turn were then being blackmailed
by the existence of surreptitious recordings having been made of these incidents by US intelligence agencies.
The below newspaper article explains what ultimately happened to the lead investigator of the case. Gary Caradori had been
hired by the Nebraska state legislature to find out what had actually transpired regarding the alleged Nebraska based ring.
Needless to say his investigation was unexpectedly 'cut short'.
What if .Acostoa is just a stooge, In fact he probably insisted on SOME jail time here. Otherwise the rest of the US "justice"
system could care less. Even NYC is complicit. It's a snow job of theater, this democracy is. It's a joke. It only looks like
a democracy on tv.
Mossad, CIA, FBI, MI5, who cares? All of these are criminal enterprises, just like the governments providing them cover and
"legitimacy".
Really interesting aspect of any elite in-fighting is that it exposes an "uncomfortable truth" that there is only one elite
running the show. That there is only Republicratic party, which regularly organizes (for the benefit of sheeple still believing
in "democracy") puppet shows called elections, where ostensibly Democrats battle Republicans. In fact, both are just two hands
of the same puppet master. That's why the same criminals are prominent at all "Republican" and "Democratic" functions.
The other thing that the story of that Epstein character clearly shows is that all those "respectable people" are nothing
more than rich criminals, and the only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.
@Talha
refully scripted to identify girls who could be vulnerable to manipulation, have a chaotic family life, need money, need social
connections for career advancement . The female procurer would report to Epstein and receive instructions to abandon or continue
to recruit the "candidate". A female procurer is used as she will not arouse suspicion in a young girl. These are simple techniques
that have been used for centuries worldwide. A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is
OK or not OK, and most importantly be an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets(being
overprotective merely makes her more vulnerable).
Meh. Get ready for a tidal wave of MSM articles talking about how the deranged, alt-right internet conspiracy theorists are
having a field day with the Epstein case, after which your average American moron will be programmed to just smirk and roll
his eyes whenever the facts touched on in this article are brought up.
Ms. Aroaz's father was deceased before she met the female procurer
Well, then I take back what I said – obviously can't blame a dead man for not being there.
A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is OK or not OK, and most importantly be
an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets
I don't know if Giraldi is a plant or not. However, the first law of understanding "intelligence agents" or ex spooks is
to always be suspicious of everyone. The group he belongs too seems legitimate enough but we have been set up before. I've be
reading Giraldi a long time and he has a similar "theme" in every piece but he also leaves small things out that should be in
his articles. The Devil is in the Details and man with his experience should be "Detailed Oriented."
He should know about Epstein and Muller and a few other things since this is the stock and trade of all intelligence agencies.
The interesting thing about this case is, the left wants it exposed because they think it'll take down Trump, the right wants
it exposed because they think it'll take down Bill Clinton. My guess is, more Dems will go down than Republicans. Trump was
a Democrat and a big supporter of Clintons and Chuck Schumer before he decided to run as a GOP in 2016. He could've gone either
way.
Sex scandals tend to plague the left, especially sexual perversions like porn, prostitution, child sex or gay sex. It's coz
the left is dominated by Jews who are prone to sexual perversion, and also because liberals believe feelings and passion trump
all, anything you do is not your fault as long as you are just following your feelings.
One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which
is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them. They
might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over. Epstein
could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll be the sacrificial
lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.
Republic asked the following critical question which should not be cast away:
"If Epstein worked for Mossad, why wasn't he tipped off in Paris not to return to the US?"
! Mossad deception is sophisticated & patterns of telling a lie upon another improved lie ar characteristic.
Also, Mossad's implemented practices/techniques are adaptable to circumstances which seem supportive of what dumb goyim consider
"justice served," but they actually benefit Israel.
A thought. I figure Epstein knew what fate awaited him prior to landing at Teterboro Airport tarmac.
Well, Giraldi did work there and would have heard people complaining about the presence and influence of Israeli spies. Colonel
Kiatowoski's book about the presence of Israeli spies in the Pentagon made it clear Pentagon personnel resented the Israeli
spies but could do nothing about it.
@Talha
ing to a recently divorced man whose x-wife hates him (nothing new), and who has two teenage daughters. The x has poisoned the
daughters against him, (nothing new), and because he was trying to be strident with his elder daughter vis-a-vis drugs, (nothing
new), he now is not allowed to have any contact with them via the skewed courts, (nothing new).
They're doing a Weimar regime redux. That was the apex of their heyday, when the children of Germany were their playthings,
and Berlin was a giant brothel- girls and boys for sale, especially the ones whose fathers had died in their holocaust
that was WWI.
@j2
has maybe 10 Israeli immigrants or American Jews who work for him. Each has 10-15 American Jews who can be called upon. So it's
a wide network.
You're right that clerks secretaries accountants have great access to information. But the Israeli system is widespread.
Plus, the information needn't always come from Jews.
It really does exist. There's an Israeli who hosts sabbath dinners in Los Angeles. He invites American Jews to be briefed
on what's going on in Israel. I'm positive he also recruits agents in place he spots at those dinners. Guests who have no access
to anything useful at least get to feel they're participating in the cause.
@AnonFromTN
he only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.
True. And this Epstein coverage is bringing out more nooks and crannies of how the really rich control systems for their
own benefit.
Like why was Epsteins tax rate on his NY mansion only 0.6% .why is Bill de Blasio tax rate on his mansion only 0.2% ..when
other NY'ers taxrate is 12%.
@ChuckOrloski
howed the original twelve members in indecent poses . At the entrance to the abbey, there was an inscription which read Fay
ce que voudras – do what thou wilt – a term which Aleister Crowley borrowed nearly 200 years later. "
Ben Franklin likely would have been a prominent visitor to Little St. James, just as he was to
West Wycombe in his day.
Thomas Paine too.
There is regular sex and "deviation", pornography, pedophilia
There is drugs, illegal and legal, hard and soft
Then there is finance, always pimping, always on exploitation, abuse of minors, as young as not yet born, globally, and to
be comitted legally. Pedophilia and drugs are soft core, barely leveling at the sock suspenders of our financiers.
A few hundred of the top tier Wall Street-ers belong in jail, as rats eating their own tail, they only can be administered
there. Starting with Mnuchin. Epstein should be let alone, so he can decoy a little longer, and await his turn, pecking order
obliges. Ah, the public sector, the ones with faces, real fungi are minding the dark.
Linked on this same site today, Michael Hudson, seems to attribute Empire and financial capitalism, debt, the demise of the
dollar, to Trump. ?. Of all men, another scripted clown gets the blame. The shredding is spoiling the carpet.
If unz.com is so willingly pointing out the third liners, as Maya sacrifices to the deities in the shades, then there you
have one more reason the rag is impervious to censorship.
Gardner's and retail store clerks have personal phone numbers of the rich and famous. For instance, clerks at high
end retail clothing stores are supposed to cultivate shoppers on a personal level so they can call them up with the great news
of items they'd like to buy.
Actors producers directors numbers and home addresses can be obtained from people who work at their agents accountants PR
and attorney offices
Police departments have access to all phone numbers. Most of the Find a Number websites don't have the private number of
celebrities. But there are plenty of people who can access all the cell phone records.
How to get away with blackmailing without blackmailing.
First, you need to recruit people in. Have lots of massive parties at your spacious home for wealthy men. Have lots of women
mostly teens and under aged.
Sooner or later there will be some mingling going on. Some billionaire will get handsy and end up in a room with a girl ..and
hidden cameras.
Epstein informs him later the girl was really 15, but offers him a nice, neat way to buy silence: a large allocation to his
hedge fund, which charges 5% ..with power of attorney for himself.
To ease the pain for the black mailee Epstein puts the money in something as safe as treasury notes or money market fund.
Then Epstein collects his 'fees' ..x millions on the interest from treasury notes or etc..
Soooo no traceable blackmail payoff checks or wire transfers from his fellow pedos.
Epstein may also try this on other important political figures, mayors, prosecutors, etc. He doesnt blackmail them to 'invest'
in his fund but has them in his pocket.
The evidence would probably be in a deposit box in his offshore Caribbean bank.
One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which
is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them.
They might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over.
Epstein could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll
be the sacrificial lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.
Just what I was going to write, but you got there first.
Thank you very much. pedophilia stops at the victims 13th birthday. Then it's various degrees of molestation of a minor .
It's usually 13 and 14, then 15. Then 16 and 17. In some states the age of consent is 16. Epstein's activities weren't just
molestation of minors. They were procuring for prostitution as well.
I have been meaning to ask this for a while, Dr. Giraldi, let’s say stuff you write about Israel is all true, you are ex-CIA,
then can we assume there are many like you or is that not the case? If that’s the case, then why none of them stand up and oppose?
Or are they too afraid of standing up for their country?
There are at least nine factions in the CIA concerning Israeli politics:
1. anti-Israel for emotional reasons (instinctive hostile feelings towards Jews, Judeophobia)
2. anti-Israel for ideological reasons (reasoned opposition towards Judaism and Zionism as doctrines)
3. anti-Israel for strategic reasons (bad for long-term American interests)
4. pro-Israel for emotional reasons (warm feelings towards Jews)
5. pro-Israel for ideological reasons (for instance, Christian Zionists)
6. pro-Israel for occult reasons (the world’s most powerful secret society mandates support as part of a grand mystical scheme)
7. pro-Israel for reasons of personal self-interest (issues concerning bribery, blackmail, careerism, etc.)
8. pro-Israel for strategic reasons (good for long-term American strategic interests)
9. pro-Israel for strategic reasons AND hostile to Jews (Jewish nationalists provide a counterweight to Jewish leftists in
the Diaspora, divide and conquer tactics)
Since the late 1940s, the pro-Israel factions in the CIA have easily dominated the anti-Israel (or Israel-skeptical) factions.
By the way, most CIA employees, including many high level employees, don't have a full understanding of what is going on
in the CIA, including knowledge of the most influential players and operations and their connections.
You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject
of Russiagate.
However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to
start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have
any chance of defeating Trump.
The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia
and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better
gift.
This debauchery is a part of the crisis of neoliberalism. It does increases the level of de-legitimization of neoliberal elite.
As one commenter pointed out: we need the names of scum, wealthy perverts from the United States who travelled to Epstein
island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.
Notable quotes:
"... This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside." ..."
"... The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes ..."
"... our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls ..."
"... This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther points out , there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably. ..."
"... Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed. ..."
"... Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to cannibalize herself circa 1789. ..."
"... Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the mere possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even come close to being properly redressed. ..."
"... This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump? Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground. ..."
"... Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals? ..."
"... If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia, which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP. ..."
"... The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. ..."
"... I applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings ..."
"... I don't think there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget. ..."
"... Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic. ..."
"... So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news. ..."
"... Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island". ..."
"... Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground. ..."
"... It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for). ..."
"... Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender. ..."
"... I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls. ..."
"... Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward. ..."
"... Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities, but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong on that, fry him ) ..."
Our elites cavorted with a pedophile, almost certainly aware of what he was up to. This is how revolutions begin.
Bill Clinton (Wikipedia Commons); Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain) and Donald Trump
(Gabe Skidmore /Flickr)
For once, I'm with New York Times writer Michelle Goldberg: Jeffrey Epstein is the ultimate symbol of plutocratic rot.
In her
latest column , Goldberg interviews Vicky Ward, who covered the 2003 revelations of Epstein's sex abuse for Vanity Fair
. Ward's editor, Graydon Carter, allegedly ran interference for the high-flying pervert, nixing her discussion with two women
who claimed to have been assaulted by Epstein. "He's sensitive about the young women," Carter explained to Ward.
This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and
just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to
Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside."
Back to Goldberg:
The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political
scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich
can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes. If it were fiction, it would be both too sordid and
too on-the-nose to be believable, like a season of "True Detective" penned by a doctrinaire Marxist.
Of course, Goldberg -- being a Democrat -- doesn't want us to think of this as a partisan scandal. Yet Nancy Pelosi's daughter
conspicuously tweeted that it's "quite likely
that some of our faves are implicated." We all know by now that President Bill Clinton was a
frequent flyer on the Lolita Express, Epstein's
private jet, which ferried wealthy perverts from the United States to his island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.
Still, a few Republicans will almost certainly be implicated, too. Now, look: I voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. If
I don't vote for him in 2020, it will be because I've lost faith in the whole democratic process and have moved to a hole in the
ground to live as a hobbit. Having said that, Trump is definitely tainted by Epstein. In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine
, the president called him a "terrific guy." "It
is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do," Trump said, "and many of them are on the younger side."
Don't pretend that's an innocent remark. It's like when Uncle Steve passes out face-down on the kitchen floor at the family Christmas
party and Uncle Bill says, "I guess that one likes to drink." We still love Uncle Steve, even if he does overdo it on the
fire water. And our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls. None of us is perfect, after all.
This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther
points out ,
there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably.
Remember how Democrats and centrist Republicans mocked conservatives for making such a stink about Monica Lewinsky's blue dress?
The media elite competed to see who could appear the most unfazed by the fact that our sax-playing president was getting a bit on
the side. "I mean, heh heh, I love my wife, but, heh, the 1950s called, man! They want their morality police back."
Well, look where that got us. Two confirmed adulterers have occupied the White House in living memory; both are now under fire
for cavorting with a child sex slaver on Orgy Island. Go ahead and act surprised, Renault.
♦♦♦
Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse
timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret
in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would
take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than
ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed.
Whew. Now I get why people become communists. Not the new-wave, gender-fluid, pink-haired Trots, of course. Nor the new far Left,
which condemns child predators like Epstein out one side of its mouth while
demanding
sympathy for pedophiles out the other.
No: I mean the old-fashioned, blue-collar, square-jawed Stalinists. I mean the guy with eight fingers and 12 kids who saw photos
of the annual Manhattan debutantes' ball, felt the rumble in his stomach, and figured he may as well eat the rich.
Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to
cannibalize herself circa 1789.
Nevertheless, those passions weren't illegitimate -- they were just misdirected. Only an Englishman like Edmund Burke could have
referred to the reign of Louis XIV as "the age of chivalry." Joseph de Maistre spoke for real French conservatives when he said
the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserved to be guillotined. The problem is, Maistre argued, there was no one more suitable to
succeed them.
Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted
with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the
mere
possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even
come close to being properly redressed.
"Us Democrats"??? This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump?
Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either
or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground.
The only question is whether or not those who participated in this apparent debauch will ever be brought to justice--so,
on that note--let the dissembling begin!
Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all
persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals?
You are as my grandfather told me repeatedly: "You are your associates & colleagues, their morality or lack thereof, will
in time infect you as well, despite all protests to the contrary; choose wisely."
If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia,
which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP.
In France, the generation of aristocrats and especially
the royal family who were guillotined were relatively conservative in their sexual habits compared to the bloodthirsty sexual
revolutionaries who murdered them. And the libertine aristocrats of Great Britain (I believe that's where the actual hellfire
club was from) led the war against Napoleon and the temporary victory of the old order which followed his defeat.
The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. Tribalism is alive and well. Wars,
diversity, erasing of our most cherished values, and a mainstream media that is in lockstep the rulers and those who see fit
to erase Freedom of Speech and make arbitrarily decisions as to what we can and cannot say. It is like living a bad dream.
I
applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings
It's the mainstream media that forced this into the light. The elites and the justice system did all they could to cover
it up, same as with the Catholic Church.
As for "our most cherished virtues", this has all been going on forever. Kings and courtiers, masters and slaves, the son
of the manor and the serving girls. Give me a break.
The only thing that is changing it is a shift in power to women.
"Paederasty" is better reserved for relationships between patrician
men, and boys, in which there was an expectation that the boy would
eventually approximate the social rank of his lover. Not to be applied
to a man running a little-girl brothel.
In UK thousands of girls were raped and nobody lost their job over it. Well, correction, people who tried to bring attention
to the horrific crimes happening lost their jobs or were prosecuted. After the scandal could no longer be contained and arrests
were finally made, there was no reckoning. No people marching in the streets, demanding heads of the goverment. I don't think
there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget.
Or might possibly be that upon examination, it became abundantly clear that the allegations were highly exaggerated as is
typically the case in these matters.
It might be a good idea to keep a clear head and hope that evidence "actual evidence" will determine events as opposed to
the salacious hysetria that usually surrounds these cases.
"...the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserve to be guillotined. The problem is...there is no one suitable to replace them."
100%. And I work as a psychiatric RN in a busy Emergency Room. Believe me, depravity in this country is not in the least
bit confined to 'elites'. They just make convenient scapegoats. I can tell you hundreds of stories. But conservatively, I would
estimate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of the women I care for were abused as children. And I have cared for literally thousands
of women over the years.
"This is how revolutions are born."
Not so fast. The French peasants were rioting over bread, not aristocratic decadence. In 21st Century America, no one is
starving. The poor in this country are obese, for Chr-sakes! And half the country is implicated in so-called 'aristocratic decadence',
through online porn.
And like John Lennon once wrote, "You say you want a revolution?" Be careful what you wish for...
Prosecutors will tiptoe around anything that puts them in an awkward position vis-a-vis the rich and powerful.
These are people that prosecutors want to owe you favors, and these are also people that can ruin the lives and career prospects
of law enforcement.
This explains why, to give instance, Comey engaged in comically tortured legal reasoning to justify not bringing charges
against HRC for servergate, when she would be cooling her heels in a SuperMax if she were a normie. According to conventional
wisdom, HRC was going to be the next president, already anointed practically, and that meant that she was someone that would
be in a position to do Comey big favors, and at the same time, someone that you did not want to make an enemy of.
Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly
corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic.
The Clintons, for example, have been getting away with sordid and even criminal behavior for a long time. It didn't stop
a major political party from putting one of them at the top of its presidential ticket only a few years ago nor a majority of
voters from pulling the lever for her.
In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry.
Check the record. Yeah, the Clintons are Exhibit A of the Real Problem. Anyway, there ain't gonna be a revolution, at least
not the kind that Michael Warren Davis warns of.
"In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry.
Check the record. "
The equivalent today would have been if Mueller's replacement spent a few more years 'investigating' Trump, only to set him
up with a perjury trap over whether or not he committed adultery.
This piece at the very least is not well researched hit piece on Trump but seems more to be a rabble rousing class warfare
type click bait filler. James Patterson reports that Trump kicked Epstein out of Maro-a-Lago 15 years ago after there were complaints
that he was abusive to women and more recently has said he is not a fan of Epstein. I've seen no evidence that Trump participated
in the abuse of underage girls with Epstein. Trump is no saint but sensationalizing this story and implicating Trump to sell
your copy is not journalism.
So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you
believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news.
And it was a comment made three years before the first known report to police about Epstein's behavior.
I read Trump's comment as Trump being Trump. Unless he is responding to a personal attack, Trump tends to layer on the compliments
and tries to speak positive about people.
Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island".
Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else
has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground.
The author throws around "revolution" so casually... The guillotine definitely needs a resurgence; unfortunately, it's not just the aristocracy that needs it; moreover, there
are still none better suited to take over after they chopping has stopped.
And throws without not even a thought but also without care to learn or now.
It is funny that American journo is now invoking Stalin's ghost, but.... Stalinists were COUNTER-revolutionaries.
And he says he is sure he knows who they felt?
.
Inflation, words means nothing today for journos, being merely a click-bait
It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk
and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for).
Also, Trump supposedly told a campaign aide that he barred Epstein. Perhaps that's true. Hard to know with this inveterate
liar.
Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a
Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would
do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender.
Now, should the Feds have interfered in a State case is a matter for another discussion. But Actosta's office did MORE than
what they should and everything they could with the evidence at the time.
As to Trump banning Epstein - it isn't "Trump told some aide", it is in the court records of the trial. Trump was subpoenaed
and talked voluntarily to the attorney for the girls. The attorney for the girls researched it and he says, and it is in the
court record, that Trump banned Epstein.
This is not a "Trump problem" as the media is trying to make it...this is a Dem problem.
I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the
women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And
he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls.
Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump
was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward.
THAT is your biggest clue that their claims are, as the judge recently said in dismissing one of these laughable cases, ""As
currently stated, the Complaint presents a political lawsuit, not a tort and wages lawsuit,"
Then, of course, the Trump lawyers just released a video of what happened that shows he gave her a peck on the cheek during
a conversation as he was leaving. She lied.
I think some conservative, maybe Rubio, needs to stand up and simply state they are going to lead on this, and then do so.
Simply go after anyone that is involved and make the casual nature of peoples knowledge of this kind of behavior into a something
that has to be repented of.
Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities,
but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong
on that, fry him )
For a republican leader to stand up as I am suggesting, would force the left to make a decision. Either abandon their current
attitudes towards sexual permissiveness, or defend them. Either way conservatives win.
That comment was from three years before Epstein was charged. But YOUNG does not mean TOO young, always, and Trump was obviously
speaking of what OTHERS say, not what he knew for a fact.
Davis--and many TAC readers--voted for Trump even though the then-candidate sexually assaulted women and got caught bragging
about it.
While I welcome conservatives to the #metoo era, it must be acknowledged that their "outrage" didn't come to life until they
could attach the dirty deeds to Bill Clinton and other "elites" (whatever that overused term means).
No, it came with Weinstein...who proved what Trump ACTUALLY said on the bus to be true. Not that HE, Trump, HAD grabbed women,
but that young women seeking fame would LET the rich and famous grab them. Shortly after we found out that this was true when
we found out about Weinstein and what those young starlets allowed. What people knew, all good Hollywood liberals and Dems,
and LET continue while accepting Weinstein's political contributions and working with him professionally.
Essentially Epstein run a brothel for influential politicians and other stars. Girls were paid so they were hired prostitutes.
That fact that he did it with impunity for so long suggest state sponsorship.
Notable quotes:
"... In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been reported , albeit not confirmed, that his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business, and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated. ..."
"... Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans. ..."
"... In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over. ..."
"... In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks. ..."
"... Hardly. It merely puts it into historical perspective. Epstein is but one of a long line of serial sexual predators through the ages. ..."
"... Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely to come from within the family. ..."
"... Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island" or "Pedo Island" by the locals. ..."
"... I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc. ..."
"... Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness." ..."
"... If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many more important people are involved than those we know. ..."
"... Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this isn't yet another part of the coup attempt. ..."
"... Trump also gave other evidence and information he had gleaned to prosecutors during the first Epstien trial. ..."
"... We should point this out as often as possible because liberal media is trying to smear Trump by including his name next to Epstien in every article. ..."
Jeffrey Epstein's trial may do what no other could: Bring populists and progressives together against predatory elites.
By JAMES P. PINKERTON •
July 10, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain)
The legal proceedings against financier Jeffrey Epstein are going to be spectacular. The sober-minded New York Times is
already running
headlines such as "Raid on Epstein's Mansion Uncovered Nude Photos of Girls," describing the victims as "minors, some as young
as 14." So, yes, this story is going to be, well, lit .
Epstein is the pluperfect "Great White Defendant," to borrow the phrase from Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.
In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up.
In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been
reported , albeit not confirmed, that
his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business,
and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated.
Which is to say, the Epstein case is shaping up as yet another lurid look at the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and powerful,
sure to boil the blood of populists on the right and class warriors on the left. In this same vein, one also thinks of the "Varsity
Blues" college admissions scandal, as well as the post-Harvey Weinstein #MeToo movement.
Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the
NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of
North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans.
In that NXIUM case, it's hard not to notice the similarity between "NXIUM" and "Nexum," which was the ancient Roman word for
personal debt bondage -- that is, a form of slavery.
The Romans, of course, were big on conquest and enslavement, and such aggression always had a sexual dimension, as has been the
case, of course, for all empires, everywhere. Thus we come to a consistent theme across human history, namely the importation of
pretty young things from the provinces for the lecherous benefit of the rich and powerful.
It's believed that Saint Gregory the Great, the pope in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, gazed upon English boys at
a Roman slave market and remarked, non Angli, sed angeli, si forent Christiani ; that is, "They are not Angles, but angels,
if they were Christian." Gregory's point was that such lovely beings needed to be converted to Christianity, although, of course,
others had, and would continue to have, other intentions.
If we fast-forward a thousand years or so, we see another kind of enslavement, resulting, at least in part, from profound economic
inequality. William Hogarth's famous prints , "A
Harlot's Progress," follow the brief life of the fictive yet fetching Moll Hackabout, who comes from the provinces to London seeking
employment as a seamstress -- only to end up as a kept woman, then as a prostitute, before dying of syphilis.
Interestingly, a traditional song about descent into earthly hell, "House of the Rising Sun,"
made popular again in the '60s , also makes reference
to past honest work in the garment trade -- "my mother was a tailor."
If we step back and survey civilization's sad saga of exploitation, we see that it occurs under all manner of political and economic
systems, from feudalism to capitalism to, yes, communism. As for ravenous reds, there's the notorious case of Stalinist apparatchik
Lavrenti Beria, whom one chronicler
says enjoyed "a Draculean sex life that combined love, rape, and perversity in almost equal measure."
In the face of such a distressing litany, it's no wonder that there have been periodic reactions, some of them violent and extreme,
such as the original "bonfire of the vanities" back in the 15th century, led by the zealously puritanical cleric, Savonarola.
Yet for most of us, it's more cheering to think that prudential reform can succeed. One landmark of American reform was the
White-Slave Traffic Act , signed into law in 1910
("white slavery," we might note, is known today as "sex trafficking"). That law, aimed at preventing not only prostitution but also
"debauchery," is known as the Mann Act in honor of its principal author, Representative James R. Mann, Republican of Illinois, who
served in Congress from 1897 to 1922.
Mann's career mostly coincided with the presidential tenures of two great reformers, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. And
it's hard to overstate just how central to progressive thinking was the combatting of "vice." After all, if the goal was to create
a just society, it also had to be a wholesome society; otherwise no justice could be sustainable. Thus when Roosevelt served
as police commissioner of New York City in the mid-1890s, he focused on fighting vice, rackets, and corruption.
Of course, Mann, Roosevelt, and Wilson had much more on their minds than just cleaning up depravity. They saw themselves as reformers
across the board; that is, they were eager to improve economic conditions as well as social ones.
So it was that Mann also co-authored the Mann-Elkins
Act , further regulating the railroads; he also spearheaded the
Pure Food and Drug Act
, creating the FDA. It's interesting that when Mann died in 1922, The New York Times ran an entirely admiring
obituary , recalling him as "a dominating figure in the House [a] leader in dozens of parliamentary battles." In other words,
back then, the Times was fully onboard with full-spectrum cleanup, on the Right as well as the Left.
To be sure, the Mann Act hardly eradicated the problem of sex-trafficking, just as Mann's other legislative efforts did not put
an end to abuses in transportation and in foods and drugs. However, we can say that Mann made things better .
Of course, the Mann Act has long been controversial. Back in 1913, the African-American boxer Jack Johnson was convicted according
to its provisions. (Intriguingly, in 2018, Johnson was posthumously
pardoned
by President Trump.)
In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a
young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed
his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over.
Cases such as these made the Mann Act distinctly unpopular in "sophisticated" circles. Of course, criticism from the smart set
is not the same as proof that the law is not still valuable. That's why, more than a century after its passage, the Mann Act is
still on the books, albeit much amended. Lawmakers agree that it's still necessary, because, after all, there's always a need to
protect women
from wolves .
Now back to Epstein. If we learn that he was actually running something called the "Lolita Express," that would be a signal that
prosecutors have a lot of work to do, rounding up the pedophile joyriders. So it was interesting on July 6 to see Christine Pelosi,
daughter of the House speaker, posting a stern
tweet : "This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated
but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may -- whether on Republicans or Democrats."
So we can see: the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all.
In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude
that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks.
That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed.
To put the matter another way, we need a bourgeoisie that is sturdier economically and more sure of itself culturally. Only then
will we have Legions of Decency and other
Schlafly-esque activist groups to function as counterweights to a corrosive and exploitative culture.
Of course, as TR and company knew, if we seek a better and more protective American equilibrium, a lot will have to change --
and not just in the culture.
Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements, as
in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland. Only with
these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far away from beguiling
pleasuredomes.
To be sure, we can't expect ever to solve all the troubles of human nature -- including the rage for fame that drives some youths
from the boondocks. But we can at least bolster the bourgeois alternative to predatory Hefnerism.
In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent angels
into their gilded dens of iniquity.
James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at . He served as a White House policy aide to both Presidents
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements,
as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland."
Neither of which will happen with the blue megacities having political control.
"(T)here's always a need to protect women from wolves." It should be noted that boys who are sex-trafficked also fall under
the Mann Act. This may not be clear from Wikipedia.
Wow! What a wonderful article! The compassion for the young victims just jumps off the screen along with the disgust at the
corruption that has allowed this predator to damage so many lives over at least three decades.
No, the fact is that your dispassionate, detached, political assessment objectifies and dehumanizes the girls that
were abused by Epstein and by the stupidly named "justice system" and reflects the obnoxious rot at the root of our society
when it comes to the abuse of women and children.
When it comes right down to it, this doesn't really matter to you, it is just another political amusement.
"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements,
as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland.
Only with these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far
away from beguiling pleasuredomes."
Liberal "social and cultural norming" (as in feminism, consent, discussion of sexual matters (gasp!) in the public sphere,
#MeToo, etc.) is what is making a difference more because such things are encouraging victims and giving them support. The (cough)
"justice" system needs reform so that rape kits get processed, victims are listened to instead of shamed, cases are actually
investigated, rapists aren't let off because "he comes from a good family" etc. The Nevada Legislature with it's recent legislation
is leading the way, because it has a female majority. THAT is what will change things FINALLY.
His "historical perspective" is just more of the same sh*t we have heard for millennia as are his prescriptions for solutions.
A key conclusion of the article is that Epstein and other recent scandals about the abuse of power mean "issues of regional
and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed."
So if all regions and all social classes were equal, this would go away? First, gifts have always been and will always be
distributed unequally, so this egalitarian utopia will never be obtained -- leading to the indefinite justification "we have
more work to do" to force people and society into an unattainable intellectual ideal, and justifying endless injustices in the
process. Second, the article itself points out that the Soviets who ostensibly pursued an egalitarian state had a famous abuser
among the ranks of their political bosses (and likely had others we don't known about).
Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents -- the very unit of society that's
been under unceasing attack for decades. Support the family and support small business which is responsible for something like
80% of new jobs created in the US. Then vigorously enforce the laws that are already on the books. A key problem with Epstein
was the law was for years or decades not enforced against him, I strongly suspect because he had very highly placed political
connections, probably several of which were sexually abusing young girls (and/or boys?) Epstein "introduced" them to. What amount
of social engineering or experimentation is going to eliminate that kind of political corruption? I highly doubt any will. Once
it's discovered, everyone involved should be prosecuted and exposed -- and any other cases of sex slavery rings discovered in
the process likewise have all their members prosecuted & exposed.
Lavrenti Beria as the prescient symbol of Soviet Babbitry v. worldwide immorality! So was Ernst Rohm! Thank god for the KGB
and SS as harbingers of true moral concern over sex abuse!
"Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents "
LMAO. Historically the family and biologoical parents were part and parcel in many of the deals involved with these trades.
Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely
to come from within the family. I can't remember the family name but there was a family that made a big thing of their
"Proper Christian Family" even while one son was abusing his younger sister/s and the Parents protected and shielded him.
"In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up." - You almost lost
me on that one. The Left is not normally 'indulgent on crime'. However, The Left is resistant to making 'immorality' (pot smoking,
sodomy, gambling, gay marriage, etc) criminal, given how driving 'vice' underground and making it illegal has unintended consequences
(such as creating the mafia and Latin American drug cartels) that are worse than 'the crime', but I decided to read on.
"That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed."
- All in for that one. Glad to see your 'wokeness'. Please send a check to Bernie.
"In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent
angels into their gilded dens of iniquity" - Like Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore, David Vitter, Dennis Hastert, Chris
Collins, Duncan Hunter, Michael Grimm, and on and on.
The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged and actual
wrongdoing. The Republicans, not so much, since they usually overlook all kinds of deviance if a politically expedient. Such
as Tim Murphy from PA and Scott DesJarlais from TN, both married 'anti-abortion' zealots caught urging their mistresses to have
abortions.
"The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged
and actual wrongdoing."
Like Bill Clinton. The same Team D Wokemon champions who insisted that any form of sexual or romantic contact between a male
supervisor and a female subordinate was by definition sexual harassment suddenly changed their tune when Bill Clinton was the
supervisor.
Not only that, but they came up with the most hilarious tortured redefinitions of "perjury" in order to justify their hero.
For the record: I am not a Team R fan either, but I am not so naive as to think the problem is limited to one team.
It is not. Bill Clinton was a cad. No doubt. But I find it very interesting that Juanita Broaddick recanted her allegations
against Clinton when Ken Starr put her under oath.
The only outrage Democrats will actually express over Epstein is to again tar and feather Trump in the usual fashion: Nibble
at the toes of hapless political operatives and bureaucrats like Acosta, and then accuse the President of colluding in his own
purported ignorance and self-enrichment.
There is an elephant in the room I think many conservatives are ignoring right now. A real big one...
"President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old hedge fund manager charged this week with sex trafficking and
conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, were the only other attendees to a party that consisted of roughly two dozen women at
his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a New York Times report."
"In 1992, the women were reportedly flown in for a "calendar girl" competition that was requested by Trump, The Times said.
"At the very first party, I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming,'" former Trump associate George Houraney
reportedly said. "It was him and Epstein."
"I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You're telling me it's you and Epstein," he recalled saying."
"Houraney claimed to have warned Trump about Epstein's behavior and said the real estate tycoon did not heed his notice.
Houraney, a businessman, reportedly said Trump "didn't care" about how he had to ban Epstein from his events."
This is an old elephant. It raised its head during the campaign and did not make much in the way of waves. Will it come back
to bite the president today -- one hopes that its all rumor hearsay and gossip.
I am willing to grant that the president may have been a "masher" in his day. Whether that means relations with children
is another matter.
Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean
island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island"
or "Pedo Island" by the locals.
One is a retired politician. The other is the current POTUS. If Bill is guilty, lock him up. If Trump is guilty - we need
to know ASAP and he can no longer be the president.
If Jeffery Epstein is such a monster then what is one to make of a man who has been quoted as saying "You can do what ever
you want, grab them by the *****." and then during a presidential debate shamelessly state "I have great respect for women.
Nobody has more respect for women than I do."?
Laughing good grief --- First I have to get passed the suggestion that guys bragging nonsensically about their female conquests
is the same hiring teens to for relations.
Good grief . . . these types of issues are ripe for hysterics.
excuse my politically incorrect suggestion of making the categorical distinctions
I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans
are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc.
Cultural Marxism is at play and next they will soften up and normalize pedophile. As far as the women's movement they are bitter
progressives who on there Facebook moaning about how they make less money then men. Who is taking of the kids? There are no
real men any more they have become boys!! Sex is every where and no one cares they all going along with the new world order!
You forgot to mention our current thrice divorced President who cheats on his wife with porn stars and pays them to stay
quiet. Strong moral leadership....
If this happened, my faith in the "rule of law" and in prosecutors and law enforcement treating everyone equally might be
restored. But, alas, we all know this is not going to happen.
"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."
Don't we all. But if history teaches us anything it teaches that the higher up the socioeconomic food chain we go, the more
"flexible" that standard becomes.
So we'll see about Epstein--and all the other big shots who were in on this debauch.
"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."
Does she want that single standard to apply to people that flaunt our laws by having, say, a clandestine and illegal email
server that was used for classified correspondence?
Mr. Pinkerton apparently (like many) needs to learn what the definition of pedophile is (hint: It's doesn't mean any and
all sex under he legal age of consent). However illegal (to say nothing of distasteful and immoral) Epstein's actions may have
been, based on the claims I've seen, he is not a pedophile.
I also find it hard to believe that Clinton and others didn't know. Rumours of Epstein's proclivities, and his plane being
called "Lolita Express," have been around for along-time, but Epstein has been protected by his connections and wealth. Clinton
flew nearly 30 times on Epstein's private jet. Is he the only person in the world who never heard the stories about him? What
did he know and when did he know it?
If you're asking that question about Clinton- a 90s has-been politician whose own party has moved on past him, then I hope
you're also asking it about the current president who was also a bosom buddy to Epstein.
According to flight manifests, Trump flew one time, from New York to Palm Beach, on Epstein's plane. Clinton took at least
26 international trips on the Lolita Express, including 18 trips to Epstein's private Caribbean island, where he supposedly
had dozens of underage women from Latin America kept. The locals referred to it at 'Orgy Island" and "Pedo Island". We're not
exactly comparing apples to apples here, are we?
Compare the Mueller soap opera. The characters in that story were sleazy international fixers and blackmailers who worked
for everyone. Same type as Epstein. They worked for KGB, CIA, Clinton, Trump, Mossad, Saudi. Despite the universality of the
crimes, Mueller meticulously "saw" only the crimes that involved Trump and Russia. FBI always works that way. Any accusation
or evidence that doesn't fit the predefined story disappears.
Muller had a specific investigatory mission. He was not empowered to look into every government scandal since Alexander Hamilton
was blackmailed by Maria Reynolds.
Part of what doomed the post-WWII "Right" was the "fusionism" between conservatism and capitalism. While the latter got real
policy results, the former was merely pandered to during elections but otherwise ignored. As a result, leftists and centrists
mistakenly came to believe that being "right-wing" means being a corporate shill lobbying to cut taxes for the rich and pay
for it by cutting programs for the poor.
At the same time,
as Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys
everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives
accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness."
Many traditionalists (such as Russell Kirk) resisted fusionism for placing too much emphasis on markets and not enough on
the conservative commitment "to religious belief, to national loyalty, to established rights in society, and to the wisdom
of our ancestors." And many libertarians (such as F.A. Hayek) explicitly rejected conservatism for being too nationalistic
and hostile toward open systems.
If conservatives want any political future in this country, then they're going to have to "de-fuse," so to speak, with capitalism,
which has been exploiting their support in order to advance policies against their own interests and values. If
"Woke Capitalism" isn't the final straw, then what will it take? Conservatives could learn a lot from the Progressive Movement
of the 1890s-1920s, which despite its name was far more conservative than the David-Frenchist National Review is nowadays.
Indeed, the Progressives' reformist playbook (which recognized that the rapid changes brought by industrialization, immigration,
and urbanization had caused corruption, poverty, and vice) could and should be dusted off for today.
As far as Epstein goes, I'm rather pessimistic that he'll ever be punished and that the public will ever learn the full extent
of his crimes. While Nancy Pelosi's daughter may be principled (and good for her), the fact that so many wealthy and powerful
people may be incriminated is precisely why he'll be let off easy and the evidence will be covered up, just like last time.
I have zero confidence in our justice system, particularly in the hyper-politicized SDNY.
If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many
more important people are involved than those we know. Anyone involved would be terrified; they'll have to break someone
to get the facts. As someone who was almost abducted at age 9, I say get on it.
Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this
isn't yet another part of the coup attempt.
Twisted sisters will do what they do with or without social disparities. All you can do is bury them when you catch them.
If the rich and famous get caught up, no ones fault but their own.
The Mann Act mainly served to enforce Roman Catholic ideas about marriage's being somehow special. The Bible offers no such
thing as an example of a religious marriage, whether Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, unless it be that of Job.
You expect a free pass for this term paper theory that downright American types are going to unite to stop sexual predation,
and their brains will swirl with reminiscences of St. Gregory and Sen. Mann?
I am unaware that Chaplin's career was "effectively over" after his sex trial. Chaplin made "Monsieur Verdoux" in 1947 in
good time after the modern Bluebeard of France, Marcel Petiot made headlines (this predator swindled Jews of safe passage money
out of France, poisoned them, and burned their bodies in his home. No time of reckoning for France or Francophiles here). Five
years later he released "Limelight", which could be called a loving tribute to vaudeville and silent film at the same time (Buster
Keaton appeared, and it is said that many omitted segments were his finest hour in the sound era. Note that financially and
at box office, Keaton was as ruined and burned out as countless others, but was in the end a hard working trouper who even made
it to Samuel Beckett!). Chaplin flagged thereafter, but made films at exactly the pace he wished, as characterized by the slow
linger from "Modern Times" to "The Great Dictator".
Errol Flynn on the other hand was boosted by his sex scandal as alleged with a 15 year old. His release "They Died With Their
Boots On" made reference to the allegation that Flynn was naked except for a pair of boots. And remember the original Hollywood
Confidential scandal that rounded up dozens of celebrities including Lizbeth Scott in a prostitution ring? All forgotten.
So if your going to make big analogies between Hollywood, celebrity, and yet another paroxysm of soon to evaporate Puritan
righteousness, at least know what you're talking about.
For the record, I believe that if Epstein punched 8 years above his weight in his choice of femmes, he might never have been
caught.
The article is way to long and I read the first paragraph and after the words "The sober-minded New York Times" I jumped
to the comments. The headline was enough for me...I agree, Lock Him Up.
"... Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit. According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly $18 million, in August 2007. ..."
"... Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds. ..."
"... By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register as a sex offender ..."
"... The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people. ..."
"... "Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information. ..."
"... Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public ..."
Jeffrey Epstein's wealth has long been a topic of discussion since becoming known as a 'billionaire pedophile' and other similar
monickers. Described by prosecuitors this week as a "man of nearly infinite means," a
2011 SEC filing has
provided a window into the registered sex offender's elite Wall Street links, according to the
Financial Times .
Epstein, who caught a lucky break tutoring the son of Bear Stearns chairman Alan Greenberg before joining the firm, left the
investment bank in 1981 to set up his own financial firm. While he reportedly managed money for billionaires for decades, most of
Epstein's dealings have been done in the shadows.
A 2011 SEC filing reveals that Epstein's privately held firm, the Financial Trust Company , took a 6.1% stake in Pennsylvania-based
catalytic converter maker Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESW) backed by Leon Black, the billionaire founder of Apollo Global
Management .
ESW itself has a checkered past. In 2002, its then-chairman Bengt Odner was accused by the SEC of participating with others in
a $15 million "pump and dump" scheme with ESW stock. The case was settled a year later according to FT , with Odner ordered to pay
a $25,000 civil penalty. Of note, ESW accepted Epstein's investment several years after he had registered as a sex offender in a
controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida.
Epstein's connection to Black doesn't stop there - as the financier served as a director on the Leon Black Family Foundation
for over a decade until 2012 according to IRS filings. A spokeswoman for the foundation claims that Epstein had resigned in July
2007, and that his name continued to appear on the IRS filings "due to a recording error" for five years. A 2015 document signed
by Epstein provided to the Financial Times appears to confirm this.
Epstein also built his wealth with Steven J. Hoffenberg and Leslie H. Wexner, the former of whom was convicted of running a giant
Ponzi scheme, and the latter a clothing magnate.
Mr. Epstein's wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men -- Steven J. Hoffenberg, a
onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running
a $460 million Ponzi scheme , and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the
chief executive of the company that owns Victoria's Secret.
Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Epstein's partner in two ill-fated takeover bids in the 1980 s, including one of Pan American World
Airways, and would later claim that Mr. Epstein had been part of the scheme that landed him in jail -- although Mr. Epstein
was never charged. With Mr. Wexner, Mr. Epstein formed a financial and personal bond that baffled longtime associates of the
wealthy retail magnate, who was his only publicly disclosed investor. -
New York Times
"I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns," Wexner told Vanity Fair in 2003. "But Jeffrey sees patterns in politics
and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends."
Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.
" Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was ," said Robert Morosky, a former vice chairman of The Limited. "I checked
around and found out he was a private high school math teacher, and that was all I could find out. There was just nothing there."
As the New York Times
noted on Wednesday, Epstein's "infinite means" may be a mirage, as while he is undoubtedly extremely rich, there is "little
evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire."
While Epstein told potential clients he only accepted investments of $1 billion or more, his investment firm reported having
$88 million in capital from his shareholders, and 20 employees according to a 2002 court filing - far fewer than figures being reported
at the time.
And while most of Epstein's dealings are unknown, his Financial Trust Company also had a $121 million investment in DB Zwirn
& Co, which shuttered its doors in 2008, and had a stake in Bear Stearns's failed High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced
Leverage Fund - the collapse of which helped spark the global financial crisis.
Epstein was hit hard by the financial crisis a decade ago, while allegations of sexual abuse of teenage girls caused many associates
- such as Wexner - to sever ties with him.
Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit.
According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly
$18 million, in August 2007.
Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was
collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds.
By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution
charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register
as a sex offender. -
New York Times
In trying to determine what Epstein is actually worth, Bloomberg notes that " So little is known about Epstein's current business
or clients that the only things that can be valued with any certainty are his properties. The Manhattan mansion is estimated to
be worth at least $ 77 million , according to a federal document submitted in advance of his bail hearing."
He also has properties in New Mexico, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he has a private island, and a Palm Beach
estate with an assessed value of more than $12 million . He shuttles between them by private jet and has at least 15 cars, including
seven Chevrolet Suburbans, according to federal authorities. -
Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank, meanwhile,
severed ties with Epstein earlier this year - right as federal prosecutors were preparing to charge him with operating a sex-trafficking
ring of underage girls out of his sprawling homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, according to Bloomberg , citing a person familiar
with the situation. It is unknown how much money was involved or how long Epstein had been a client.
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FKTHEGVNMNT , 1 hour ago
That black book is still missing, it is actually a meticulous journal. His butler who died at 60 due to mesothelioma kept
it as insurance, those snippets was just him saying " I got the goods.
Dr.Strangelove , 1 hour ago
The Feds should do what they did with Al Capone, and put him in the slammer on tax evasion charges. I'm sure Epstein has
reported all of his ill gotten billions to the IRS tax man.....NOT.
CheapBastard , 43 minutes ago
I wonder how many human assets, aka, slave girls, he owns? I guess they could value the slave child based on how much revenue
they brought in.
FKTHEGVNMNT , 2 hours ago
The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings
for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people.
"Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself
with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.
I wonder if Prince Andrew has deleted him from Facebook
marcel tjoeng , 3 hours ago
Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him
all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line
trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark
ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling
and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst
to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public.
Trafficking underage girls from Ukraine back and forth to the USA to pimp out to every diplomat from every country that bought
and sold state secrets, flying underage girls to the Middle East to peddle to oil sheiks, involved with obtaining and exchanging
state secrets of for instance American DARPA, the top secret military research giant, to any 'diplomat' connected to the secretive
network of an 'Illuminati' type deep state collusion, the power brokers of war and sex.
The Irgun of Menachem Begin, the Mossad of Moshe Dayan were infamous for their poolside parties where all the jewish female
'pretty' Israeli agents were used and trained to be honey pot sex objects, with mandatory sex orgies that lasted for days, the
worst of a James Bond type environment but without the glitter.
on the contrary, the secret world of parasites that practice and trade in massive scale rape, war, torture, sex aberrations,
***********, blackmail, extortion, paedophilia, child trafficking, international orphan trafficking, drugs, trafficking underage
sex slaves to be used as dolls and much much worse,
that is who is Jeffrey Epstein is.
The front cover of rape, murder and mayhem international Inc., the go-to-boy of sick Wall Street, Washington DC, the CIA,
NSA, Dyncorp, the power brokers within the DNC and the GOP,
all the usual sick subjects whose code mantra is 'we have unlimited funding', which means the FED, Wall Street, the BIS,
the whole of the Central Bank System that originated in Europe in Venice, and then spread to Amsterdam, the Dutch House of Orange,
London, New York, the British paedophile Empire,
Epstein lives in what is reputed to be the largest private dwelling in New Mexico, on an $18 million, 7,500-acre ranch
which he named Zorro.
Jeffrey Epstein's palatial New Mexico home is relatively near to a top military base. The Epstein home is in Stanley
in New Mexico.
Albuquerque now has a variety of Jewish synagogues and a Chabad house.
Mossad sex party, according to former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky
There were about 25 people in and around the pool and none of them had a stitch of clothing on.
The second-in-command of the Mossad -- today, he is the head -- was there.
Hessner. Various secretaries. It was incredible. Some of the men were not a pretty sight, but most of the girls were
quite impressive. I must say they looked much better than they did in uniform! Most of them were female soldiers assigned
to the office, and were only 18 or 20 years old.
Some of the partiers were in the water playing, some were dancing, others were on blankets to the left and the right
having a fine old time vigorously screwing each other right there...
It was the top brass all right, and they were swapping partners. It really shook me. That's sure not what you expect.
You look at these people as heroes, you look up to them, and then you see them having a sex party by the pool.
-- Ostrovsky, Victor, By Way of Deception, (1990), pg. 96
ReflectoMatic , 2 hours ago
Because what George Webb is saying is so important in expanding the scope of understanding what is going on:
George Webb on youtube
JSBach1 , 3 hours ago
Researcher Wayne Madsen: Trump's Connection to Epstein Needs to Be Exposed
I like Miles' work a lot, but I don't always agree with the results of his studies. There are a great many fabricated events.
Events like those are cover for other very real events. The clowns will fake (or real) blow up townships just to prevent a case
from going to trial or getting news feed, OKC comes to mind. And there's always more than one reason for it behind the BS cover
story. It's tactical. Ep is just another arm of the octopus: Ep is definitely a middle man, a bag man, a front man, an intel
asset (for several agancies no doubt) and he got his cover job as a "financier" along with a client that got rich selling women's
underwear and kids clothes as whitewash. A guy who wrote a paper on how America perceives Israel and how to influence that perception.
That is the definition of magic and it's intel.
Ep definitely uses his own product... He had to be sure he could bounce those children off his clients, for one. Years of
grooming, investing in an asset, categorizing each one. It's an industry, for sure. I don't think the numbers are fabricated.
I don't think his black book was fabricated. Bloomberg was in there, btw, along with Bronfman, and Murdoch. The remoteness of
7500 acres in New Mexico, an Island, the planes, all neon signs that say "SECRET". But, you have to recruit from large population
areas to find suitable victims, er, individuals. I think it's more likely that this is real world and not a manufactured event.
Look: there are theories. I collect theories. Miles is a great researcher and he makes distinctions and observations that
are all very good. Reading him, I throw a lot of theories and music and vomit in the trash after. But when you peel back all
the fake events... the "Kansas"... One day Kansas is gone. Once and for all. What's left is this: there's some very real ****
on the down-low going on that has, until now, been permitted and some people who liked it that way are gonna be on the news
for it. Pelosi's kid tweeted it. What about, say, what might a sheriff of a certain New Mexico county know? Santa Fe is totally
compromised because it's an "Art" hub, for one. The unincorporated location is called "Stanley" which ought to ring bells. Right
by a military base, Kirtland and Los Alamos Demo Army base, god knows what else. It's the perfect M.O. of the fake events Miles
writes about. Miles sees patterns.
There is everything that is not real, and then there is everything that is real. For me it comes down to the Cartesian Brain
in a Vat theory, that, indeed, is "the Matrix" pop culture go-to of today, err, 20 years ago. Red pilled means you can't go
back. Get blue pilled you Get woke and go broke. It doesn't mean that everything is fake, but for all I know 2012 was real and
we live on this timeline now and maybe I am a brain in a vat. So cogito ergo sum. And that is kind of a statement of faith or
belief. It's the deep irony of philosophy. It's the glitch.
Ep is not the psyop. He's the guy you do the psyop to cover up. It's a better question to ask what generation MK Ultra are
we on? What subset? What might Cathy O'Brien have to say about it? Don't flame the victims, or make Miles look stupid because
you think it's all fake. Andrew Breitbart didn't think this **** was fake and he's dead. God bless him.
Theosebes Goodfellow , 3 hours ago
~Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.~
Apparently those around Wexner were not familiar with the term "fourteen year-old spinner".
Lumberjack , 3 hours ago
...
Dershowitz was one of several heavy-hitters on Epstein's first legal defense team. Epstein's lead attorney in the Florida
case was Jack Goldberger, who now represents New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. His legal team also included Roy Black,
Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis and Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated Bill
Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Asked why he took Epstein as a client, given the unsavory nature of his alleged crimes, Dershowitz stated bluntly, "That's
what I do."
"I take controversial cases and I will continue to do so," he told Sinclair Broadcast Group in a Tuesday interview. "I defended
Jeff Epstein for the same reason John Adams defended the people accused of the Boston Massacre
On that note, Schumer said he'll give the money he received to help children and women.
I'd bet twice that amount it goes to Israeli causes. Not to real victims and the kahkzucker gets another nice write off.
Epstein's intel connections must be brought forth. My guess is when Kraft got busted that there were really big names that
are still being hidden. A long time and VERY TRUSTED ZH member that I know a bit and collaborated a bit with on the Linda Green
fiasco caught on and commented about it including providing solid evidence.
Maybe they should stop blaming Iran and Russia and look at Linda herself.
"Cy Vance - Democrat, gave Epstein a pass on sex offender status.
Acosta - Republican, approved plea deal.
Muller - Republican, signed off on FBI closing file on Epstein.
Schumer - Took money from Epstein.
Bill Clinton - Travel.
This isn't partisan. Corruption at all levels."
What's good is that most people commenting on the threads I've read, including
Cernovich's, understand just how deep the rot goes, and that it's not confined to North
America.
It would be a most salutary outcomoe if Obama were dethroned and exposed for the lying
lounge lizard he is. Scales reallyl need to fall from eyes. I am surprised that Trump doesn't
embark on this enterprise with gusto.
Puncture the Obama-Clinton BS balloon once and for all.
"... I'm curious when & how Epstein made his billions. No one that I know in the hedge fund world has ever heard of his trades!! Nor does it seem there is any reporting on that. ..."
"... Only reporting that I've seen is on his partner who was sentenced to 20 years for fraud. He skated then too. ..."
"... I think this may be Barr putting Mueller on notice in advance of congressional testimony, given that is very likely that Mueller is implicated in this whole Epstein affair. ..."
"... Utterly fascinating. Watching the US "nomenklatura" fight it out, gloves off. Us mere mortals never usually get to gawp on their goings on. ..."
"... ¿City on a hill? Caligula an Nero look good compared to that tribe. ..."
"... epsteins arrest had better be merely point of the lance or you can start the count down clock on our political dissolution. ..."
"... If, after interviewing Steele for sixteen hours, anyone professes to find him credible, then in my view they are either fools or knaves – if not both. ..."
"... The cover-up of the circumstances of the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, which Steele was instrumental in orchestrating, is a matter I have discussed on and off here on SST. I now have a 'smoking gun' – it is clear there were honest detectives in Counter Terrorism Command, who got fed up with the lies he was mass producing (as is his wont). ..."
"... A very interesting question however arises as to how the Reuters report by Mark Hosenball which is the source of TTG's claim, originated, and what its implications are. ..."
"... Obviously, my hypotheses reflect my conviction that Steele is a form of pond life – the 'scum', rather than the 'dregs' of society – born in part out of experience with superannuated Cambridge and Oxford student politicians of his kind. ..."
"... As an outside observer, the only explanations that make sense about the absurd plea bargain agreement from 2007-2008 are that it was the result of either bribery, or an order that came down from someone above Alex Acosta in the heirarchy at the Department of Justice, and he followed orders. Or maybe both. ..."
"... Another observation is that Jeffrey Epstein has been and is a front man for an organization or organizations, that could be governmental, private, or both. ..."
"... In my opinion, there should be a RICO charge also against Epstein. ..."
"... From what I can gather, several high levels are getting real nervous, and rumblings that Epstein's time on this planet may be shortened because of it ..."
"... It appears that Epstein is a faux hedge fund manager. So, where does/did the money come from? Robert Willman suggested that the most interesting question about this creep is who or what he really represents. ..."
IMO AG Barr is conducting a general counter-offensive against "the resistance." He has his
bulldog Durham organizing indictments for the former underground in DoJ and the FBI. He has DoJ
IG Horowitz' report on malfeasance coming out soon. He has that fellow out in Utah who must
have done something in all this elapsed time. He has various cats and dogs in DoJ running down
a variety of blood trails looking for dead men walking.
And then there is Jeffrey Epstein (the man who loved childwomen). The timing is interesting
as a part of the putative Barr counter-offensive. Is Trump vulnerable? Probably not unless he
was so self-indulgent as to let Epstein ("a great guy") loan him one of these girls in days of
yore. On the positive side Trump did ban Epstein from Mar a Lago a while back for an assault on
a young woman. No. the vulnerables would seem to be mostly on the other side, especially the
Clintons. Bill is a prospective figure of interest no matter what his spokesman said of his
innocence and her majesty is toast if it can be shown that she was knowledgeable of adventures
in Epsteinland. She doesn't have to have participated in the Epstein child care program. She
merely has to have been contemporaneously knowledgeable.
Epstein flew back into the US aboard his private 727 (aka The Lolita Express). He must have
thought he had the situation "wired." Apparently the AG did not accept the terms of the old
Florida deal. IMO Barr is following his own program in this. Trump is merely a pleased
spectator. pl
What do you make of media reports of Bill Barr's father having hired Epstein as a school
teacher? Why do you think they're going after him now considering his "protected" status and
do you believe that they'll also go after the other high profile potential child rapists who
took advantage of the Lolita Express?
Yup. More than meets the eye here. I'm curious when & how Epstein made his billions.
No one that I know in the hedge fund world has ever heard of his trades!! Nor does it seem
there is any reporting on that.
Only reporting that I've seen is on his partner who was sentenced to 20 years for fraud.
He skated then too.
In short, Epstein's hedge fund may just have been a front to collect hush money (masked as
"management fees", which for hedge funds are usually 2% of the total value of assets under
management in any given year) from very rich people that he entrapped in his alleged underage
women prostitution scheme.
Timing is (just about) everything, including within the art of public swamp draining.
I'm not familiar with the pace of legal proceedings of this nature through the US Court
system, however Trump will be in an advantageous position if Barr's processes are timed to
result in convictions and penalties being handed out to various well known DNC and IC
luminaries immediately before the 2020 election date.
The mistake would be to rely on any convictions of the 2016 players to discredit the DNC
candidate of 2020. The Clintons, et al, are current era irrelevancies or indeed parodies, and
they and proof of long gone conspiracies would be seen as separate issues to whatever the
Democrat candidate, eg., Elizabeth Warren, can credibly promise for 2020-24.
Trump will still have to fight 2020, not re run 2016.
I think the answer to the above question is 'yes' within the context that ever action the
WH takes from now on in, be it relating to Epsteins or Iranians, will be with the 2020
outcome as the prime determinant.
Timing is indeed everything. Russiagate set the precedent for lawfare to become a normal
part of the political process and I'd fully expect Trump to maximize it to his own advantage
in the run up to 2020.
Lolitagate may be targeting the Clintons and you are probably right that the Clintons need
not drag down someone like Warren simply because of party association. However, I'd bet Barr
can be relied upon to do plenty of damage to the Dems which will affect voters next
year. It depends how high up the Russiagate blowback goes. I'd not expect any Dem candidate
to beat Trump if the guts of the coup plot spill out in public, especially if St. Obama is
implicated - that would be a dagger to the heart.
This is why I found it interesting to see the Strzok-Page texts info the
Favored Fox News Channel had, referred to in Larry's last post. I'd expect
more of the same building to a crescendo at the most opportune time. Trump is a ruthless SOB
and I expect his revenge will be sweet.
This action is being brought by the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, which
is/are also bring charges against Trump parallel to the federal charges which fizzled. It
looks to me like that is another attempt to bring down an elected president. From Vox
News:
"Trump, meanwhile, reportedly attended Epstein-hosted events in New York and Florida,
as Epstein patronized the Mar-a-Lago Club. In 2002, Trump even gave a remarkable
on-the-record comment about Epstein to a New York magazine journalist, calling him 'terrific'
and adding that he 'likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the
younger side.'"
And, "During the 2016 campaign, Trump was sued by an anonymous woman who claimed he
raped her at an Epstein party when she was 13 years old."
I don't regard Vox as a reliable source, but am citing them here as representative of what
the "story line" will be.
Yes my first and ongoing question is 'Who's being targeted' given that 2020 is underway.
Given the Steele dossier is there any link to the leaking of the Ambassador cables just prior
to this announcement. I'm way to far removed to comment further at this stage.
You are right about the storyline/narrative in the making. Christine Beasley Ford, the
sequal. There are other reports out in the press that Trump had Epstein banned from
Mar-a-Lago after his conduct there.
Sounds like Walrus' comments on a prior thread about the
truly rich having their own folks investigate people before they get involved socially are
accurate regarding Trump. He's be active in NYC, charity and entertainment circles for
decades. I'm sure he's seen this kind of stuff destroy people many times.
This article paints a little bit different picture. If the article is accurate, New York high
society is apparently more degenerate than the movers and shakers that Walrus apparently
knows.
"Why was Epstein so easily rehabilitated? He was smart. Attractive. Rich. And that is a
potent combination. As David Patrick Columbia, editor of New York Social Diary, explained it
for the Times: "A jail sentence doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned
in New York society is poverty."
Yeah. I guess so. I misread what Walrus wrote. It seemed he was disagreeing with me because
of how he wrote it and because he bothered to write it at all, yet we were saying the same
thing.
The high flying people on Epstein's guest registry knew who they were associating with and
chose to go ahead anyhow.
I think you're missing the point - which is that Epstein was connected to many wealthy movers
and shakers in New York society and, indeed, globally.
Walrus says that the movers and shakers he knows would never be so stupid and crass as to
associate with the likes of Epstein. I'll take Walrus at his word, but, apparently, he
doesn't know the subset of movers and shakers that do associate with the likes of Epstein, to
include people that would have access to info such that they would understand Epstein's
reputation and predilections. In fact, the article suggests that NY society knew and didn't
care, which is contrary to what Walrus asserts.
I don't normally read Salon because it is typically globalist garbage. As I read the
article I linked to, it's not a hit on Trump. Rather it is a hit on all of NY high society.
They readily accepted Epstein back into their fold after his conviction in Florida. They knew
who he was prior to the conviction as well.
Bottom line, NY society as well as global players, that should know better, did not
exercise discretion in their association with Epstein. Walrus think that is inconceivable,
but there it is and we will learn more names from the upper echelons who were involved in the
weeks and months to come.
I wonder whether domestic Israeli politics is also involved here, too, in the form of
Barak being fingered, so to speak, for his Epstein connections, via Wexner, in order to smear
him as election time approaches.
I think this may be Barr putting Mueller on notice in advance of congressional testimony,
given that is very likely that Mueller is implicated in this whole Epstein affair.
I also think Les Wexner needs to be stripped of his fortune. I believe he was in cahoots
with Epstein in this entrapment operation that was run.
Sir;
Which "...her majesty..." do you refer to? There is HRH HRC, ie. Hillary, the Dowager of the
White House and there is Elizabeth Rex, the real Queen of England. Both are associated with
potential 'co-defendants' of Epstein.
As to the relevance of the Clintons in this election cycle, well, the Clinton Foundation
still wields considerable power in internal Democrat Party affairs. Any real damage done to
Bill Clinton will be a body blow to the now old guard Democrat 'Nomenklatura.'
It will be interesting to see how fast and how vehement the 'denunciations,' or lack thereof,
of Bill Clinton will be. The Democrat insiders might spin this one as a 'litmus test' of
Party loyalty.
The organized sexual exploitation of children has absolutely no excuse. Epstein has skated
away on thin ice concerning this so far. His 'plea deal' from earlier was an abomination. It
included a blanket immunity for anyone who aided and abetted him in the the sexual
exploitation of these girls.
I don't care what Barr's motivations are. Here's to his continuing success in the vital
democratic process of showing Justice to be carried out.
All the conspiracies withstanding, the Miami Herald was going public with the details and
thus forcing the prosecutors to act. There seems to be a "public corruption" angle to this,
which will also be revealed in the future.
It would appear that Epstein has deserved all the
attention.
Acosta appears to be first up for the whipping post. Even if he blames it on someone else
what will be on his resume afterwards would likely prove disqualifying at a Hong Kong rubber
dog-poop factory.
for a not insignificant percentage of Americans the fairness and integrity of the us
justice system is now viewed with deep skepticism all the way to out right contempt.
if this nation has any chance of surviving intact and in a manner that engenders respect
and belief we have arrived at that moment when heads must roll for all the vile things done
and never punished by so called untouchables (political, financial, popular celebrity).
epsteins arrest had better be merely point of the lance or you can start the count down
clock on our political dissolution.
I couldn't agree more, with the presiding judge being a Clinton appointee and one of the
prosecutors being Comey's daughter, it's the US Justice Department on trial as much as it is
Epstein.
I think AG Barr will be looking for ways to quash the Epstein affair. That's why he
refused to recuse. Trump has more exposure to this than you think. Trump was already accused
of sexual assault of a young girl in the company of Epstein a while back. The girl dropped
her complaint out of fear. Perhaps we'll hear from her again now the SDNY is on the case or
her photo is contained in the files seized from Epstein's mansion. Trump was also seen
frequenting Epstein's NY house by witnesses. I doubt it was for poetry readings. In addition
to infamously singing Epstein's praises back in 2002, Trump also admitted during an on air
interview with Howard Stern that he was a sexual predator.
I am surprised Trump didn't throw Acosta under the bus already. To the contrary, he's
standing by him and claiming Acosta's a great guy. At least he's now claiming he's no longer
a fan of Epstein. I'm sure he prudently dropped Epstein like a hot potato once he was first
indicted. I'm waiting for Trump to deny ever meeting him or claiming he was just a coffee boy
any day now.
On another front, Trump's allies are not happy with the DOJIG interview with Steele. After
16 hours of questioning, the IG investigators found Steele's testimony credible and even
surprising. The IG probed Steele's extensive work on Russian interference efforts outside his
dossier, his intelligence-collection methods and his findings about Carter Page and came away
believing him.
"The girl dropped her complaint out of fear."
So the example of Hilary running for office didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the "grab 'm by the p****y" scandal didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the pink hats at inauguration didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the example of Christine Beasley Ford didn't give her the courage to come forward;
the example of Stormy Daniels didn't give her the courage to come forward; but hey, SDNY is
on the case! - of just this one girl, not the others that were not of concern to kindly
grandmother and FIFA scandal investigator Loretta Lynch or her Fast and Furious predecessor.
Or their boss; or his predecessor. Thank goodness for prosecutors from the Empire State!
There is definitely a new sheriff in town, not at all like that Sheriff of Wall Street, Eliot Spitzer.
I wonder if Epstein has a photo of him from back in his good Democrat days?
"After 16 hours of questioning, the IG investigators found Steele's testimony credible and
even surprising. "
I believe Ms. Ford was touted as credible too. Has all that testimony leaked out already?
If, after interviewing Steele for sixteen hours, anyone professes to find him credible,
then in my view they are either fools or knaves – if not both.
Having once been
involved – successfully I hasten to add – in a protracted libel case in relation
to a programme I made, I can easily see many lines of questioning to which he could quite
clearly not have provided a satisfactory answer.
The cover-up of the circumstances of the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko,
which Steele was instrumental in orchestrating, is a matter I have discussed on and off here
on SST. I now have a 'smoking gun' – it is clear there were honest detectives in
Counter Terrorism Command, who got fed up with the lies he was mass producing (as is his
wont).
The maps they produced purporting to show Litvinenko's movements on the day Steele claimed
he was poisoned were craftily constructed, so as to pretend to support the cover-up, while
actually blowing it apart. It was done very ingeniously, with a sense of humour. More on
this, I hope, shortly.
A very interesting question however arises as to how the Reuters report by Mark Hosenball
which is the source of TTG's claim, originated, and what its implications are.
'One of the two sources said Horowitz's investigators appear to have found Steele's
information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is
now unclear.'
In fact, however one interpreted Steele's claims, it would be extremely likely that what
he said would have provided good grounds to 'extend the investigation.'
All kinds of interpretations are, rather obviously, possible.
It could turn out that Horowitz is part of what is by now quite clearly a conspiracy to
subvert the constitutional order in the United States. How people can continue to defend
this, without calling in to question their ability to understand what a 'constitutional
republic' means, has come rather to defeat me.
But then, Horowitz could be playing different sides. It might be convenient to disseminate
a story which was partly disinformation, in order to gain time to pursue investigations
undisturbed. Or, people concerned to put a 'gloss' or 'spin' favourable to Steele might have
been those who leaked to the media.
Obviously, my hypotheses reflect my conviction that Steele is a form of pond life –
the 'scum', rather than the 'dregs' of society – born in part out of experience with
superannuated Cambridge and Oxford student politicians of his kind.
There may be other interpretations, for which a serious case can be made, more favourable
to him.
But to take the Hosenball report at face value is really not sensible.
The timing of the arrest of Epstein is indeed fascinating. The indictment which was of
course unsealed yesterday, 8 July, shows a filing date of 2 July 2019, which was last week
Tuesday.
The search warrant on his residence was executed shortly after he was arrested on 6
July. That search warrant had to be supported by an affidavit containing recent information
showing that evidence relating to a particular crime should be found there. An affidavit
cannot have "stale" or out-of-date information in it; if it does, the warrant is no good and
the evidence gathered can be excluded from a trial. So, the search warrant affidavit should
be interesting in itself.
As an outside observer, the only explanations that make sense about the absurd plea
bargain agreement from 2007-2008 are that it was the result of either bribery, or an order
that came down from someone above Alex Acosta in the heirarchy at the Department of Justice,
and he followed orders. Or maybe both. The excuse that the federal Justice Department cowed
down just because there were some experienced lawyers representing the defendant is not
credible.
Another observation is that Jeffrey Epstein has been and is a front man for an
organization or organizations, that could be governmental, private, or both.
In my opinion, there should be a RICO charge also against Epstein. I'd like to see him get
out of prison one day and take an Uber to his singlewide mobile mansion.
From what I can gather, several high levels are getting real nervous, and rumblings that
Epstein's time on this planet may be shortened because of it.
Nothing more dangerous than
scared/nervous power players who have the real deal ability to reach out and touch someone.
There are quite a few connect-the-dots to world and state power players that stretch around
the globe.
What I find interesting on a side note is Mueller's past association with Epstein.
It appears that Epstein is a faux hedge fund manager. So, where does/did the money come
from? Robert Willman suggested that the most interesting question about this creep is who or
what he really represents.
Les Wexner for one; the E 71st street residence in NY is the tip of the iceberg: Wexner
purchased the house in the 1980s and it was owned by an Epstein-Wexner joint trust until 2011
when ownership was transferred to Maple Inc, a US Virgin Islands company controlled by
Epstein.
I'm most curious about the question you pose. I know many people in the NYC hedge fund
world and no one has heard of any winning trades by him, let alone any trading activity.
There's more than meets the eye related to the question of his "wealth:.
Epstein was originally funded by Deutsche Bank. I have no idea how much it was and if it
was just a one time deal. DB definitely has a shady side. When I was retiring, a couple of
friends and I were negotiating for a cybersecurity contract with them. My primary
contribution was to assess the people we were dealing with. I told my buddies we should run.
I got the feeling we could be left holding the bag if anything went sideways. We never
regretted my assessment and recommendation.
Sir,
Would a foreign govt really utilize someone with Epstein's life style to handle their
money?
The guy doesn't exactly fly under the radar. It was only a matter of time before he was
busted. Seems highly irresponsible and stupid of whichever government(s).
I believe you are on to something. At least Marc Rich was an oil trader. With Epstein
there doesn't seem to be any information on his trading activity. Would a foreign government
or intelligence agency keep a depraved loose cannon as an asset? I suppose his role was not
money management but blackmail or something more nefarious. Could this foreign government be
our "staunchest ally" in the ME?
We haven't seen anything yet of which I'm aware to allow for a determination of what led
to Epstein's serial abuses getting revisited. I very much doubt that it was a political
appointee new to the system who came into the job while harboring a determination to right a
wrong if given the chance. I think it more likely that it's a bottom up initiative, a witness
having developed as a result of having gotten jammed up in another case and offering up a
bigger fish, a newspaper story, new victims coming to light as a result of civil process, the
review process prior to releasing the disclosure materials triggering outrage, something
along these orders. Whatever it was, once the case was underway, in the era of #MeToo and
with new political appointees in place, there would be no stopping it.
It will be interesting to see who will be the ultimate targets. It was a travesty that in the
original case Epstein was the only person charged, unless I missed something. It's obvious
that there had been a facilitating organization that he was running and boatloads of cash
coming and going. No curiosity about that?
The prediction here is that Epstein will offer to cooperate sooner rather than later. It
would not surprise me at all if hasn't already been given the opportunity and wanted to wait
to see what cards the government was holding, try to figure out who from his old team had
turned and were witnesses against him.
A big question now is that if and when he does cooperate, what kind of corroborative
materials he would be able to bring along with him to bolster the victim testimony which will
be recollections of abuse from women when they were adolescents that happened quite a while
ago.
The indictment forecloses on any opportunity to use Epstein actively; and what kind of deal
do you offer to this guy anyway who right now appears to be the principal malefactor in order
to get to others, culpable users of his scheme surely, but not integral to his organization
per se, largely because they are newsworthy figures of one sort or another. Not an easy call,
but I would argue Epstein should take a major hit even if it means risking not getting his
cooperation.
if you ask around the trading desk in nyc epstein and his org is unknown. how is it a
billionaire finance guy is unknown on the trading desks?
answer:
because his fortune did not come from trading or investment or anything typically
understood to be finance related.
perhaps epstein and his sexual predilections was a way for....say... the mossad........ to
aggregate wealthy powerful and political figures into revealing the stuff needed to control
them in the future as favors are needed.
whats is a service like that IF epstein was indeed just a pimp for the
deviant.........worth?
how many billions to have a file on a who's who of international power would you pay?
Nobody knows what Epstein is really worth. The $billions figure comes from a single
source; a stipulation in his original trial. He would say what his worth was and the
prosecutors asked "$billions?" and E's lawyers said "sure". That's it.
He manages money held in off-shore accounts. Forbes thinks he has a fraction of that.
The guy is a sleazy con artist. He's probably happy to have people think he has way more
than he does for various reasons.
Pollard was an amateur. Is Epstein the professional?
Some will recall the name "mega" surfacing during and after the Pollard contretemps. An
as-yet unidentified Israeli spy operating at a high level.
Now consider the following quote:
"Epstein, who recently loaned his jet to President Clinton, is usually seen in the company
of Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of deceased publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell. After Maxwell
fell or was pushed off his yacht in 1991, it was revealed that he was working for the Israeli
government and the Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence service. While Maxwell's ties to the
Mossad are well-documented, Epstein's connections are less well known. The London Sunday
Times quoted a New York social observer describing Epstein as follows: "He's Mr. Enigmatic.
Nobody knows whether he's a concert pianist, property developer, a CIA agent, a math teacher
or a member of Mossad." New York Magazine claims Epstein is the man who moves Wexner's
billions around the globe.
Wexner's philanthropic side is more public. In 1998, the Wall Street Journal reported that
Wexner was part of the "'Mega Group,' a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation's
wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen." The Mega Group meets purportedly to
discuss "philanthropy," but others have speculated that their charitable interests are often
a cover for lobbying activities on behalf of Israel."
This could be entirely coincidental. Or is Epstein (or Wexner) mega? It sure looks like
his operation was all about getting kompromat for Mossad. Whether that comes out with any
veracity remains to be seen.
"... As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia against his own country." ..."
"... Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). ..."
"... Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this. They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else. ..."
As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees
prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being
drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top
Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic
public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.
"There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were carried out in the FBI
and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the United States or, at that
time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The Hill.
King (image on the right), a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice
chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence
Committee.
He asserted:
"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign
– and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this
is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the
investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie
Sanders It's just wrong."
The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today:
"The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous
thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy
with Russia against his own country."
According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William Barr
, would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation led
by John Durham , U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to complete
his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the experience of
waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about now?
So Where is the IG Report on FISA?
That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan , former FBI Director
James Comey , former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe , former Deputy Attorneys General Sally
Yates and Rod Rosenstein , and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA
applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at
last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).
The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether
the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to
surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process.
(Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure
that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)
The Washington Examiner
reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of
potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican
congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The
report continued:
"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ
watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview,
Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz
'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of
drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made
available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much
as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will
have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,'
Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the
August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"
Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may,
in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key
witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz
(image on the left) early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have
come forward at the 11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the
Justice Department and FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was
assigned to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that
led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie
investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or
reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.
Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all
they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former
colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 ,
prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).
It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end,
even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why
are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?
What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?
Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of
counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI
Director McCabe, Lisa Page , wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president
"wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that
the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark
about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire
to provide him with "plausible denial."
It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about
the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that
Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort
to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.
Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it"
defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang.
Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that --
or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.
Reining in Devin Nunes
That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated
Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House
Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA, image on the right). On April 5,
2019, in the apparent belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes
wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous
individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be
held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."
On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send
eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged
misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified
material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be
no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to
talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.
Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed
smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new
sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the
criminal referrals?
There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State
functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr
leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded
investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious
liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to
follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and
prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however
there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this.
They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and
CIA.
Trump by now realizes these agencies can make anything up and the Jewish owned and
controlled media will do their bidding. I have to assume that Trump has come to the
conclusion that he wasn't suppose to win and that the NWO wasn't happy with that because he
stands in their way especially on World Trade and Immigration.
The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in
which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against
the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than
figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else.
I believe Trump knows he could be assassinated at any time. Obama the "God King" did his
part for NWO and that's why he gets a King's Ransom for his speeches for reading a
teleprompter and banging on his chest and saying, "I did that." What he is really saying is I
did that for you -- now where's my check!
Gabbard is NOT a member of the CFR. She has by her own admission, attended some meetings
as an invited guest. According to her, it was to engage members and find out what their
inside game is. I don't know if Gabbard is for real. I voted for Trump because I perceived
him to be the anti-war and anti-intervention candidate. Period. So, as I said, I don't know
what to think about the lady. I do now understand however, why some individuals in olden
times became hermits.
beemasters , 22 hours ago
Epstein's arrest tells me he's now out for blood.
Dotard has no control over what Epstein will say. Mossad does and it is the one out for
blood.
Justapleb , 22 hours ago
Mike Cernovich got records unsealed that prove Epstein got away with serial raping and
pimping for elites that were then blackmailed.
It is not because Trump is out for blood. It is because nothing could stop the criminal
conduct of prosecutors being exposed.
The #Metoo crowd knew Clinton was a violent rapist, and sent uniformed, armed officers out
to retrieve interns for sex whie governor. Smoking a cigar while having his cigar smoked by
Monica Lewinsky, while talking to a Chinese official on the phone.
So no, this won't do anything but continue proving how the #Metoo movement are just
leftist hypocrites.
ZD1 , 22 hours ago
"The news is speculative about whether Epstein was being protected by Robert Mueller's
special counsel's office, and why the Department of Justice acted now, given that he's been
problematic for years. There's also his role as a bigfoot Democrat donor, same as Ed Buck and
other perverts who've financed the Democrats. But one thing's pretty clear, based on a tweet
by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine: Democrats knew.
All kinds of Democrats are going to be found in Epstein's little black book of clients,
not just Bill Clinton.
President Trump, by contrast, banned the pervert from his Mar-a-Lago club years ago. So
much for pinning the scandal on Trump as Democrats had hoped."
The photo provides further proof of Epstein and his associates' close ties to the Clinton
dynasty.
Epstein's pimp Maxwell, whose social circle includes members of the UK royal family, has
been named in several lawsuits as the woman who helped procure and transport underage girls
which provided the billionaire massages and ultimately sexual favors.
The Miami Herald has
more on Maxwell's connections to Epstein:
Lawyers for Epstein's victims, in court filings, have often likened Epstein's sex
operation to an organized crime family, with Epstein and Maxwell at the top, and below them,
others who worked as schedulers, recruiters, pilots and bookkeepers.
For her part, Maxwell, whose social circle included such friends as Bill and Hillary
Clinton and members of the British Royal family, has been described as using recruiters
positioned throughout the world to lure women by promising them modeling assignments,
educational opportunities and fashion careers. The pitch was really a ruse to groom them into
sex trafficking, it is alleged in court records.
At least one woman, Sarah Ransome, claimed in a lawsuit that Maxwell and Epstein
threatened to physically harm her or destroy any chance she would have of a fashion career if
she didn't have sex with them and others.
Maxwell has thus far managed to escape charges, but a lawyer for one of the women suing
Epstein predicts she'll eventually be swept up in the sex trafficking litigation.
"The one person most likely in jeopardy is Maxwell because the records that are going to
be unsealed have so much evidence against her," said David Boies, the attorney for Epstein
accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre. "She is in a particularly vulnerable position and will have
an interest in cooperating, even though she may have missed that opportunity."
Those 26 trips by Billy Boy on the Lolita Express are only the ones in the log book. How
many were there that were not logged? Isn't it amazing that the mainline press never picked
up on this. It just shows how corrupt and fraudulent they are. I hope there is a deal and
Epstein furnishes the names of his associated scum with proof. I wonder how many congressmen,
senators, Judges, etc. There are.
And Hillary went to the sex slave island at least six times .
my new username , 21 hours ago
Wikileaks had a Hillary email about Chelsea bringing a young Haitian girl into the USA,
past immigration, on one of those CGI/State Department/Haiti Earthquake flights from Port au
Prince.
8iron , 21 hours ago
so Trump is now deciding who to prosecute AND tell the SDNY to do it? This author is as
retarded as the Left.
Epstein's case is being unsealed. SDNY knew this was coming so as to not look like idiots,
they found some "new" victims. This guy makes most the ***-pedo-sex perverts (but I repeat
myself) look like Rabbi's and he needs his d*ck connected to 'ol sparky but WTF?
Something else is going on...clearly nothing being reported or guessed (like above)
Spectorman , 22 hours ago
There are so many ways for these mutually guilty power rapists to cut deals with each
other and avoid the real rap. Some patsys might get snipped, but thinking this will be the
stake in the heart seems wishful thinking. These guys are busy raping America with an
information/internet/media chokehold and a money printing press. That's probably bigger than
child rape, and it will take more than a federal prosecutor to stop it.
beemasters , 22 hours ago
The author's theory doesn't make sense at all. They are all Lolita Island visitors. They
are friends. Dotard would have implicated himself if he was the one taking Epstein route to
get to Killary. Killary is much more vicious and vindictive and will drag him down along with
Epstein. Dotard wouldn't dare!
There is already enough evidence to throw the Clintons in jail by the private-server case
alone.... if Dotard wanted them them in jail. He really doesn't.
Buck Johnson , 23 hours ago
So true, it's hard to justify ******* and having sex with 14 year old girls. That is why
no one is defending this piece of **** and when he starts to sing it's going to take down
alot of people (ALAN DERSHOWITZ, hate the ******).
I totally agree that this guy has blackmail material on everyone, everyone. A man like
this that was able to do what he was doing for years and still get the president, Alan and
alot of others to go to his private island knowing what he did.
Nope, this man is a dirt bag that thought he had the fix in and he went ham in having sex
with these girls. Not realizing that someone else in power could go after him and force him
to rat out any and everyone.
With this so public there is no way that the fed is going to give him anything light, he's
going away for decades unless he could out people to help his case.
Mr. Barr said he is recused because he once worked for one of the law firms that
represented Epstein "long ago," the report said. He did not name the law firm.
bobcatz , 23 hours ago
Tom Luongo is filtering this event through a deep-seated hope that Trump the Potus is not
too far from Trump the candidate he voted for.
Hate to tell you, Tom, you just got played. Nothing of your estimation will occur. If
anyone goes down, it'll be some insignificant nobodies.
CNN reported this morning that Epstein's arrest ropes in Trump's Labor Secretary,
Alexander Acosta, who evidently was Epstein's Florida attorney who let Epstein walk.
swmnguy , 23 hours ago
No, Acosta was the US Attorney in Florida during the GW Bush Administration, who let
Epstein walk over the full-throated objections of every attorney on his staff. Acosta went
around behind their back, behind the court's back, to give Epstein a sweetheart deal that
raised eyebrows throughout the legal community at the time, in early 2008.
Epstein's actual attorney was somebody else, who wrote Acosta a very grateful letter
thanking Acosta for going beyond even what Epstein's own attorney was hoping for in terms of
clemency.
There's a reason Acosta did that; beyond the insipid excuses Acosta has gotten away with
until now. Just as there's a reason Attorney General William Barr just recused himself on all
matters Epstein; above and beyond the stupid and unconvincing reasons Barr just gave.
SummerSausage , 23 hours ago
Acosta worked for the DOJ and the way Epstein's case was handled is almost identical to
the way they handled Hillary a few years later.
Only difference is Mueller was head of FBI for the Epstein investigation.
Acosta didn't have the authority to give the deal on his own. It had to come from higher
up
j0nx , 22 hours ago
Agreed. US attorneys don't do **** unless the AG tells them to. It's preposterous to think
the SDNY is some rogue agency running around prosecuting who they want. If Bill Barr says no
then they say yes sir. Of course all of this comes from up high. It's either that or Bill
Barr like Jeff Sessions has lost all control of his department.
June 12 1776 , 23 hours ago
A pathetic useless attempt to appease status quo uniCRIME, uniPARTY chimp army.
"But something had to be done to keep our faith in our political and social
institutions intact. Because otherwise that way leads to only chaos and collapse."
Wrong, through out all human history, all criminal, unconstitutional outlaw, political and
social institutions natural law and faith of nature is COLLAPSE AND DESTRUCTION, one way or
another.
bobcatz , 23 hours ago
Tom Luongo is filtering this event through a deep-seated hope that Trump the Potus is not
too far from Trump the candidate he voted for.
Hate to tell you, Tom, you just got suckered. Nothing of your estimation will occur. If
anyone goes down, it'll be some insignificant nobodies.
SirBarksAlot , 23 hours ago
Maybe.
But I think this is the big payback for their failed attempt to impeach him via a
fabricated "dossier." This is the first chance he has been out from under the shadow of that
witch hunt that was supposed to prevent this investigation into the Satanists from going
forward.
He's just playing Bolton and his buddies by keeping them by his side. Letting them think
they're running the show, like they did under Bush, then deciding not to invade Iran at the
last minute. Where is Bolton now? Mongolia? He gives a little with the space program, then
takes away from the expensive, endless wars to nowhere.
That's why the British tanker is stuck at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz instead of
running right though it. Britain royally fucked up.
Solio , 1 day ago
George Washington: "If the laws are to be trampled upon with impunity and a minority is to
dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government."
September 9, 1774 at the beginning of the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, from Ron
Chernow's book "Alexander Hamilton," 2004, p. 473
Nunyadambizness , 1 day ago
I most certainly hope that the author is correct, and this vile corrupt sewer in DC gets
weeded out--forcefully if necessary.
We the People have allowed unelected bureaucrats to ru(i)n our lives for far too long,
protected by those who lust for power and who will do anything for it--yes Cankles, I'm
speaking of you AND your former boss Barry Obozo, among dozens (if not hundreds) of others in
the sewer. Protected by a wink-and-a-nod to those in power, they've done whatever they wanted
knowing that they were untouchable. Here's hoping that this is just the first of dozens of
arrests and ultimately convictions of these scumbags and their kin.
Drain the SEWER. FLUSH DC STARTING AT THE TOP.
SummerSausage , 1 day ago
Just a reminder - Mueller was head of the FBI during the Epstein investigation. If Trump
had been involved in any way Mueller would have found a way to put it in the Mueller
report.
turbojarhead , 23 hours ago
I think Kunstler is exactly right-this is the Trump faction counterstrike.
Conservative Treehouse actually caught something I did not in the indictment:
While these items were only seized this weekend and are still being reviewed, some of the
nude or partially-nude photographs appear to be of underage girls, including at least one
girl who, according to her counsel, was underage at the time the relevant photographs were
taken. Additionally, some of the photographs referenced herein were discovered in a locked
safe, in which law enforcement officers also found compact discs with hand-written labels
including the following:
The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not
repentant;6 rather, he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces
devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges." ( cloud
– pdf link )
Notice the young Name + NAME------gee, you think that NAME might be the creeps Epstein was
blackmailing? Hahahahhh
SummerSausage , 23 hours ago
That info didn't come from the indictment I don't think. It came from the letter to the
judge about bail.
The indictment was drawn up to arrest Epstein. The search of his home took place at the
same time as the arrest or just after.
Reportedly, Epstein had quite a few surveillance cameras in his homes. It will be
interesting to know what's on the CD's. Hard to believe he didn't have some "insurance"
tucked away for a rainy day.
SummerSausage , 23 hours ago
Acosta wasn't Epstein's lawyer. He was US Attorney for S Fl.
The Epstein treatment reads like a dress rehearsal for the Hillary FBI/DOJ whitewash -
except instead of just the associates getting of scot-free Hillary did, too. (read the Miami
Herald series from Nov https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
Since Trump hasn't fired him but this story has been circulating for more than 6 months,
Acosta was probably ordered to follow the deal cut at the highest levels of Mueller's FBI and
the DOJ bureaucracy.
Acosta may well know where the bodies are buried.
NumberNone , 1 day ago
The people in the 'deviant' circles got comfortable after the Obama election. They put the
people they wanted in power and the Evil Queen Hillary was guaranteed to be President to
reside over 8 years of destroying their enemies. Life was going to be good. There was no
reason to hide or be afraid.
Look at Epstein, the guy got off with a handslap and was so fearless rather than destroy
his kiddie-****...he still kept in the open.
Now they are in a panic and throwing everything they can at Trump. If you are facing the
death sentence, nothing is off-limits to save yourself.
If you are right or left in your political beliefs and think that this sort of absolute
evil needs to be weeded out then please shut the hell up about Trump or Clinton and simply
demand that no stone be unturned in the pursuit of justice. A golden opportunity has been
placed in front of all of us to purge this scum.
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 1 day ago
Pelosi's daughter:
Christine Pelosi warns it's 'quite likely that some of our faves are implicated' in
'horrific' Epstein case.
What does it say when some of your "faves" are pedophiles?
jutah , 1 day ago
BullFuckinShit. He's had 3 years as President and many years prior to that where he was
aware of exactly what was going on and did and said nothing . Oh, correction, he did say
something when he praised Epstein; ""I've known Jeff (Epstein) for fifteen years. Terrific
guy. He's a lot of fun to be with . It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as
I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
It's too late for that ****. That ship has sailed. These traitors should have been
executed on day 1. All the evidence of criminal activities was well documented before you
even became president. You are a sorry sack of **** coward to let this continue for so long
and in my book an accomplice to it- you and ever other neo-zio-con who went along with it.
Now, youre all worried about your re-election campaign, image and being indicted yourself.
**** off you Orange Clown. Go ahead and bomb Iran as a distraction as your masters order you
to do
Kafir Goyim , 1 day ago
There's video of Trump saying Clinton would have trouble because of his frequent and
suspicious (no Secret Service) associations with Epstein. There is a record of Trump helping
prosecutors going after Epstein. There is record of Trump barring Epstein from Mar a
Lago.
I think you are a little confused ... or engaged in purposeful disinformation, which is
more likely.
Next time, don't quote Fusion GPS. The article that quote came from was a puff piece about
Epstein from 2002. It extolled his brilliance and philanthropy with quotes from the Dem Sen
Leader, Harvard scientists and just about everyone they could find.
At the time, Epstein served on the board of the Trilateral Commission with Kissinger,
Summers and a dozen CEO's of Fortune 50 companies, the Rockefeller Foundation and
Harvard.
SirBarksAlot , 23 hours ago
No kidding!
He really does have a blackmail racket going on there!!!!!!!
WhackoWarner , 22 hours ago
Let's not disregard Prince Andy. (old article from Guardian but still...)
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a Mossad blackmail operation.
Rahm Emmanuel was kicked out of the Clinton WH by the FBI. They had a file on him
"Security Risk"...then he got back in with Obama ?
Trump is too smart for the blackmail ****. Roy Cohn taught him that.
BUT Jared Kushner is Trumps Achilles heel. Kushner's father spent two years in prison for
blackmail/extorsion.
ZD1 , 1 day ago
Epstein hung with Democrats and donated to them.
No doubt Epstein found what the commie muzzie *** from Kenya craved?
Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, and Woody Allen are some
of the celebrities who reportedly traveled and partied with Epstein in the past.
Even Stephen Hawking made a visit to Epstein's island.
Props to Michael Cernovich, and then there's the make-up Queen Shep Smith who show's
Epstein and Trump together, Trump banned this Fukk Epstein from his club and the Clinton's
had enough frequent flyer on Epstein's plane to Lolita Island for 2 round trip tickets to
Paris. Shepp & the golden sperm seed piss punks of Murdoch must share something in common
wonder what it is?
JBLight , 1 day ago
As this continues to pour out, I look forward to seeing the faces of the people I know who
voted for Hillary. They voted for child trafficking.
John Law Lives , 1 day ago
This article sounds like speculation, but I am ready to see privileged scumbags get their
due. This has been a long time coming (imo).
BandGap , 1 day ago
This is the opening of the portal to hell for a lot of kids' agonies, even deaths.
Watch the names of the rich and famous tumble out. If you read previous articles you know
that they also seized tapes Epstein was holding of young girls with older men. This is what
fuels the blackmail, and hence the corruption.
The Weiner laptop is also in play with the NXVIUM convictions.
The Clintons remain free and Trump keeps elitists like Ross, Pompeo and Bolton in the
White House. Comey's daughter is one of the prosecutors for Epstein and Epstein is already
claiming immunity. He might go to jail again, he might not. But nothing is going to happen
with the Epstein thing as far as the fall of the banksters. Nothing.
pmc , 1 day ago
I don't think Trump is behind his arrest. I think it's the head NY prosecutor trying to
make a name for himself in order to run for president at a late time! We'll see where this
all goes but my money is on the procecutor!
onewayticket2 , 1 day ago
Trump should be "out for blood" but it's the SDNY...and we KNOW they are "out for
blood"....trump's. So my read is the opposite. The SDNY is never going to do something that
will harm the clintons. The ONLY goal is keeping Trump out of office for these guys. all
roads lead to trump at the SDNY...it's job 1.
evoila , 1 day ago
It's ahead of muellers testimony for a reason.
yaright , 1 day ago
Agree, timing is everything
Snípéir_Ag_Obair , 1 day ago
Pedosadist Elites Panic: Congress Bill Wants To End Child **** In Pentagon Networks;
Epstein Arrested, Files To Be Unsealed On Powerful Clients
America is receiving a hell of a Christmas in July present – a bill in Congress is
being pushed to end child **** sharing in Pentagon networks, and Jeffrey Epstein was
arrested for child trafficking. Additionally, an appeal court ordered that all files
pertaining to Epstein's case of wealthy powerful clients will be released to the press and
public.
Congress is aiming to halt child **** distribution within Pentagon networks according to
a bipartisan bill (The End
Network Abuse Act) that was introduced by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Mark
Meadows (R-N.C.)
The National Criminal Justice Training Center, one of the groups that has thrown its
weight behind the bill, reported in 2018 that DOD's network was ranked 19th out of almost
3,000 nationwide networks on the amount of peer-to-peer child *********** sharing.
Spanberger described the issues of child sexual exploitation and abuse as "horrific
crimes."
"The notion that the Department of Defense's network and Pentagon-issued computers may
be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and
one we must fight head on," Spanberger said in statement. (Source:
The Hill )
So... if I send child **** to anyone the entire law enforcement apparatus on planet Earth
descends upon my location with the full weight of every alphabet agency. Yet, when child ****
is trafficked within a government agency we need to pass a bill thru Congress in order to
stop it. WTF.
Nekoti , 22 hours ago
Rules for thee, not for me.
chunga , 1 day ago
That's some pretty wild speculation there, but I hear angels singing just the same.
caconhma , 1 day ago
<Epstein's Arrest Tells Me Trump Is Now Out For Blood> Wrong.
Trump and Bill Clinton were willing participants in these crimes.
Don't be surprised when Trump's name will appear in all legal documents. Remember, the
lead prosecutor is from Demo New York and Epstein will behave no different from Trump's loyal
lawyer Cohen. After all, this case was not resurrected from dead to promote justice in
Americ
Friedrich not Salma , 1 day ago
Do a Youtube search for * Trump BBC 1998 * and jump 5 minutes into the vid. You will
realize Trump will be out for blood. He waits until the right time.
BBC: "You talk in your book about getting even. The importance of getting even. Is revenge
sweet?"
Trump: "I believe strongly in getting even. If someone has hurt you. If someone's gone out
of their way to hurt you. I think that if you have the opportunity, you should certainly go
out of your way to do a number on them."
I didn't believe in the "the indictments are coming from Jeff Sessions" lines, but I do
believe Trump will nail these people when the time presents itself and that time is coming up
fast.
"... A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy. ..."
"... Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge would. ..."
Thank you, Ray. Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded
illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who
have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere.
I have been quoting Ben Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it."
I don't think we can.
A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The
most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800,
first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy.
Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time,
Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a
chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge
would.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says that sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had a "state sponsor" backing him and that his
operation was a way to blackmail powerful men.
During an appearance on 790 KABC, Coulter suggested that Epstein is merely the front man for a far more powerful network.
"Epstein according to both the girls accounts, he wanted them to have sex with powerful men, come back to him and report on it,
describe what they wanted what their fetishes were and he had cameras throughout the house so this is obviously for blackmailing
purposes," said Coulter.
"It just seems to me something much bigger is behind this -- perhaps a state sponsor -- powerful enough people it just seems
to me there's something a very powerful force behind what's going on here and I am still nervous about this not coming to a conclusion,
somehow this getting compromised," she added.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/eNbK-hkZMLY
Coulter said that it remained a mystery as to how Epstein became a billionaire and that the source of his money should be investigated.
Former President Bill Clinton attempted to distance himself from Epstein last night, claiming he only flew on the infamous 'Lolita
Express' private jet four times despite flight logs showing at least 26 trips.
As we
reported yesterday, speculation is swirling that Epstein may give up names of influential people who used his network in order
to secure a maximum prison sentence of no more than five years.
"... "Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge. ..."
"... Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 , prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information). ..."
"... Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president "wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire to provide him with "plausible denial." ..."
"... It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him. ..."
"... "That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)." ..."
"... It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. ..."
"... The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly sell out the middle class in broad daylight. ..."
"... The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful. ..."
"... Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge would. ..."
"... I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even before they made it legal. ..."
"... Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television. ..."
"... This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused. ..."
"... I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is lawless. It is a disaster. ..."
"... Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior, and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc. recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders". ..."
"... This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more. ..."
"... there have always been nefarious agents in one government or another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct interest of the American people ..."
"... It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just it will to power. ..."
"... So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold War. A stark education has just played out to this point. ..."
The Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on Trump to
unfetter investigators, all hell may break lose, says Ray McGovern.
A s Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees
prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being
drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top
Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic
public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.
King
told a radio audience: "There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were
carried out in the FBI and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the
United States or, at that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The
Hill.
King, a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice chaired the House
Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence Committee.
He asserted:
"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign
– and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this
is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the
investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie
Sanders It's just wrong."
The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today: "The
media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going
that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia
against his own country."
King: Lashes out.
According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William
Barr, would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation
led by John Durham, U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to
complete his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the
experience of waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about
now?
So Where is the IG Report on FISA?
That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James
Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates
and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA
applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at
last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).
The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether
the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to
surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process.
(Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure
that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)
The Washington Examiner
reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of
potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican
congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The
report continued:
"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ
watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview,
Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz
'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of
drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made
available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much
as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will
have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,'
Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the
August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"
Horowitz: Still waiting for his report
Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may,
in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key
witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz
early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the
11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the Justice Department and
FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was assigned to lead a
separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that led to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie
investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or
reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.
Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all
they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former
colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 ,
prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).
It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end,
even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why
are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?
What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?
Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of
counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI
Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president
"wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that
the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark
about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire
to provide him with "plausible denial."
It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about
the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that
Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort
to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.
Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it"
defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang.
Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that --
or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.
Reining in Devin Nunes
That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated
Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House
Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA). On April 5, 2019, in the apparent
belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes
wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous
individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be
held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."
On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send
eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged
misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified
material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be
no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to
talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.
Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed
smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new
sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the
criminal referrals?
There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State
functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr
leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded
investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious
liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to
follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and
prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
If you enjoyed this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
Joe T Wallace , July 8, 2019 at 20:24
I'm a great admirer of Ray McGovern's reporting. He exposes much that is never revealed by
the mainstream media. That said, I do have one quibble about this article. In the seventh
paragraph, just below the heading "So Where is the IG Report on FISA?" he writes:
"That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director
James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally
Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant
FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI
library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)."
My immediate reaction was: Who is Horowitz? It was confusing not to know. Further down in
the article, I learned that Ray was referring to Michael Horowitz, a DOJ watchdog who is
preparing an IG report about FISA abuse, but readers should have been informed who he was
earlier in the article.
John , July 8, 2019 at 17:10
Peter King? Devin Nunes?
At one point the article says little effort was made to cover tracks because of certainty
that HRC would win but later that the FBI et al were planting land mines to either defeat
Trump or blow up his presidency. Seemed contradictory to me.
Perhaps you have the skinny on these machinations, if indeed there were machinations by
one person or group or another for this purpose or that.
But Peter King and Devin Nunes? If either ever was credible, their track record condemns
them to be received, if at all, with extreme skepticism.
Realist , July 8, 2019 at 16:59
It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with
the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. Or will she be expected to
repudiate the Hitlery-run DNC? Where does the money and the ground game originate if the
latter?
The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump
favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly
sell out the middle class in broad daylight. I won't like it, but I can see Trump Derangement
Syndrome pulling out the chestnuts for the Dems, what with all their celebrity spokespeople
constantly running and ranting like their hair is on fire underneath those pussy hats. My
poor gullible sister from Cali embraces that whole ball of wax as revealed truth holier than
the total dry weight of all the Abrahamic scriptures rolled into one big bale for the
recycling center. Kamala Harris seems to be emerging as the new messiah anointed to lead this
country back to Obamian gridlock and more prestidigitation like mandated insurance to ensure
the health of the insurance companies. Again, it will only be the illusion of "free
stuff."
The only way such a scenario won't cause four more years of turmoil for this country
(rinse and repeat in 2024) is if the victor is Gabbard and she ends all the illegal and
unconstitutional wars by edict, telling all the sure-to-be pissing and moaning Deep State
functionaries to pick up their severance pay and go pound sand. Then shut the world-wide
spider web of military bases and bring home the troops while we can still afford the carfare.
That would be "morning in America," and Gabbard would be the most heroic chief exec since
Lincoln and FDR made their marks in the history books, though such fantasies never play out
in the real world. More likely all the criminal evidence of treason remains classified, most
Americans pop the blue pill, the actual rabbit hole continues to grow ever deeper but the
masses are contentedly oblivious to it all, satisfied to blame select scapegoats from
Russia, China and other "malign" countries for our viewing entertainment.
Deniz , July 8, 2019 at 17:50
The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful.
ML , July 8, 2019 at 20:12
You are really something, Realist. I love the way you flourish that pen of yours. Thank
you.
Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:13
Realist, well said, per usual. To add a bit the Dems probably gave Trump the gift of a
lifetime the next election. Wasting three years on Russiagate instead of hammering out a
decent platform for the party was beyond dumb. That reminds me. the Dems's next dumbest idea
choosing Joe Biden as their next candidate. Just like Hillary, he can't beat Trump. The
duopoly is dead, they just don't know it.
As for Tulsi, she's got my vote.
John Earls , July 8, 2019 at 16:55
Looks like Barry Eisler's John Rain (expert in "death by natural causes") will have a lot
of work in front of him if the investigation builds and a whole lot of "material witnesses"
begin to testify.
ricardo2000 , July 8, 2019 at 16:33
I'm supposed to feel sorry for the surveillance of a right-wing creep? OH PLEASE.
No one in government, or the right wing ReThugs, has ever suffered the intrusive, lying,
speculative 'investigations' that social justice, environmental, or human rights activists
have over the past 70 years.
When these buttheads suffer what MLK and Malcolm X have suffered then I might just wipe
away a few tears, after I stop roaring with laughter and get off the floor.
Realist , July 8, 2019 at 17:08
You prefer a race to the bottom of the cesspool?
You never win when you adopt the methods you claim to revile. The opponent who introduced
the tactics you condemn wins if you embrace them as your own. You didn't beat him, you joined
him.
LibertyBonBon , July 8, 2019 at 18:12
Must be nice to think the justice system should revolve around your particular emotions,
rather than equality and objectivity. Safe and easy.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:41
ricardo2000, nothing personal, I get the revulsion to Trump and entourage not to mention a
large portion of the Maga crowd but this right and left thing is really just an illusion, the
people doing the persecuting here regardless of how disgusting Trump is are the same ones
doing the persecuting to a large degree of everyone else from Assange to the Iranians, that
is this government deep state in combination with all of the various American alphabet soup
agencies as well as foreign deep states have cornered the market in State power, hate Trump
but don't confuse this with a good thing.
Thank you, Ray McGovern. You are a good man, Charlie Brown!
Thing is, all of this was predictable from the beginning. Many of us saw it coming.
No one really wanted an incompetent baboon running things – the song about Monkey
and the Engineer comes to mind – so Obama tried to hamstring Trump with this
investigation. I mean, Obama couldn't very well have not completed the transfer of power
because it is the most valuable thing about democracy. There is no ten year bloody hellified
civil war every time the crown changes hands from one inbred to the next.
So Obama did the next best thing on his way out the Oval Office doors, he put Brennan and
the boys on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time, I'm sure. But it backfired because he
couldn't call the dogs off once he was no longer president. Not Brennan, not anyone could
call them off after the snowball really got rolling because the spooks believed their own
story and the media made too much money off selling the mythology:
Only question left to answer now is whether or not Trump the carnival barker can milk his
opportunist Armageddon into a second term of fleecing the rubes.
This is a very serious Constitutional Law issue and MUST be pursued–and it makes no
difference the political party denomination of those breaking the law! The Current
Oligarchy–Deep State–is the adversary of the vast majority of US citizens and
humanity. With Epstein's arrest and the developments McGovern relates, some progress appears
to be happening.
Lydia , July 8, 2019 at 14:51
You summed it up perfectly, Jill.
Pablo Diablo , July 8, 2019 at 14:42
"the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him." says
it all. Trump is a loose cannon. The so called "Deep State" has been "controlling" our
Presidents since at least the Dulles Brothers. Truman even admitted giving them power was a
BIG mistake. Still question the Kennedy Assassination.
In the 70's, the FBI mailed me a box of drugs, which I refused to take from a very
incompetent fake Mail Man, and three minutes later they showed up with a search warrant for
my house that listed all the drugs in the failed mailed box signed by a Federal Judge. So
much for FISA. The bullshit continues. I could reveal more if necessary.
robert e williamson jr , July 8, 2019 at 14:32
Sam F. whether you realize it or not you got it pretty much on the nose. Except for
this.
The judiciary has been compromised by the congresses refusal to hold CIA et. al.
accountable for their actions. Why? Those in congress remember what happened to JFK.
The number one reason is because the deep state ensures that if anyone goes after CIA
officials or designees that the persons career and life are ruined. Which is something else
that needs to be investigated. Something that if explored may very well put a stop to CIA's
B.S. of lying about everything and getting away with it.
Currently no deterrent exists. None.
Anytime some one or entity gets close the Deep State ends up with their guy as AG. See the
Bill Barr story.
Barr may get his chance to prove me right and at the same time prove "Lady Justice" has
little to do with the DOJ! I think he is a cowardly blowhard. Justice would be Trump and Barr
going to jail .
Justice in this country for the true scoundrels in government or billionaires is non-
existent at this point in time. Putting Epstein in prison for life is called for and if he is
threatened with that maybe his jaw will loosen up.
Until DOJ can become a deterrent to bad actors in government, all government the country
will be controlled by the Deep State. The SWETS, super wealthy elitists.
@ "Justice would be Trump and Barr going to jail ."
Are you suggesting that *any* of their living predecessors don't deserve the same? If so,
which do not and why?
Jay , July 8, 2019 at 14:18
Bif:
I agree something very suspect occurred.
And it's very likely the Obama White House knew that either the NSA or the FBI was tapping
into the communications of some of Trump's campaign team BEFORE Hillary lost in Nov.
2016.
However the xenophobic, lying, terrorist (IRA) supporting, Peter King is not a credible
messenger. (Right, Rep Steve King of Iowa is even worse than King of Long Island.)
Peter Dyer , July 8, 2019 at 14:09
Thanks, Ray.
DH Fabian , July 8, 2019 at 13:59
Actually, that deep split among the masses, and certainly within the Dem voting base, was
achieved in the 1990s -- middle class vs. poor, workers vs. those left jobless, further split
by race. The Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent. Russia had nothing to do
with the Democrats' 2016 defeat, nor will it be the reason for their 2020 defeat. Democrats
maintain their resistance against acknowledging the consequences of dividing and conquering
their own voting base.
EuGene Miller , July 9, 2019 at 00:24
DH, that's an interesting assessment. However, I doubt that any House or Senate Democrat
sought an advantage by "splitting their base". The elected Dems do not control the narrative.
So, who benefits by splitting the masses into rival factions?
Perhaps the narrative of social and political discourse is defined by the owners, boards,
and foundations that control the main-stream media and pop-culture.
Robert Reich wrote that an oligarchy divides-and-conquers the rest of us. I suspect that
controlling the narrative is not simply a propaganda tool; it is the basis of
divide-and-conquer strategy.
Is it possible that the DOJ, see the Sec. of Labor's problems developing with the Espstein
case, is about to have it's gloriously corrupt underbelly rolled over into the sunlight? (you
must roll the snake over to see its belly)
Please Ray tell me this is where we might be heading or instead will we end up with the
courts truncating investigation because they say it will be best for the country not to have
all this filthy laundry dragged out into the sunlight or someones bull shit sources and
methods might be exposed. The DOJ has become a really bad joke!
I'm hoping you know something I don't because Barr's past history pretty much speaks for
itself I'd say after be made sure he pardoned all of Bush 41 henchmen!
At this point I certainly do not have much faith in the DOJ doing the right thing. What
Acosta did in Florida with Epstein was hardly the right thing to do.
They all need to be locked up.
Eric32 , July 8, 2019 at 13:33
Very little "punishment" will occur, and no deep change cleanup will occur.
The US govt. is controlled by money and blackmail – not "voting" or public outrage.
So many high level people have so much dirt on other high level people that nothing major
will be done.
A series of very big events, including the JFK murder and the 9/11 charade went unexposed and
undealt with – there is no reason to think that this medium size event will wind up
making a big difference.
What will happen is that US "democracy" will continue on its downward course, but maybe
with a better facade.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:59
I personally believe that the empire will crash when it hits maximum overreach it will
also simultaneously go broke at the same time, as the money interests at that point Will
probably move east, this will partially be due to both the feds tendency to over inflate in
order to cover military acquisitions as well as the decline of swift and the ascendancy of
China in the rest. I actually think that this is what some American factions desire, it is
potentially good for all of us if we can regain a republic but it will mean the end of
American hegemony.
Gary Weglarz , July 8, 2019 at 13:22
This is the same "deep state" that assassinated a sitting president, then proceeded to
assassinate the next three most important and influential progressive leaders in the country
all over a five year period. Problem solved. And just when you thought Allen Dulles didn't
know what to do with all those oh so experienced Nazi war criminals he'd recruited to the
CIA.
When Congress investigated the CIA in the mid-1970's (before Congress became completely
"owned" by the deep state) right on cue witnesses began to "commit suicide" just before they
would be scheduled to testify. Problem solved. Hardly a raised eyebrow from the always
complicit MSM through all of this. Expecting anything more than a massive coverup of this
latest deep state corruption and abuse is beyond my abilities to even effectively fantasize
about.
herbert davis , July 8, 2019 at 14:12
Justice in the USA?
John Drake , July 8, 2019 at 13:20
The corporate Democrats strike out again. They run a corrupt, violent(war monger)
candidate, who loses to a buffoon-an election which was hers to lose. Meanwhile trying to
hedge their bets they play sleazeball with the investigative arm's authority in order to
sabotage said buffoon; which as it is revealed gives ammunition and the advantage to their
target. i.e. "They were illegally picking on me"
If Trump is smart-a very long stretch, but some advisor might suggest this- he will expose
all this slime closer to the election for maximum effect. What a distressing thought. All the
more reason to run a progressive Presidential candidate that can disavow the DNC clowns and
their corruption.
geeyp , July 8, 2019 at 12:37
It's past time for the Deep State to come up from the deep state of hell in which they
reside. At least to purgatory for some fresh air and a wee ray of light. I couldn't let the
Schumer warning keep me from giving the go ahead on this. If my coconut is shattered, someone
somewhere (not our current media) would have a clue as to what happened to me. Sic 'em,
President Trump and A.G. and Devin Nunes!
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 12:14
The US needs to solve the underlying problem of corruption of secret agencies and
judiciary, otherwise the political wrongdoing of one faction will only be matched by that of
its opponents, regardless of a few prosecutions. I know from experience the extreme
corruption of the Repubs, and little doubt that the Dems do such things at least when
desperate.
The solution includes:
1. All secrets meaningfully shared among multiparty committees;
2. All politicians and top officials monitored for corrupt influence;
3. Entire federal judiciary fired, replaced, and monitored like the politicians; and
4. Amendments to protect elections and mass media from control by money power.
Until then all government acts are tribal gangsterism and little more.
Guy , July 8, 2019 at 13:50
You forgot about dual citizenship members of the senate and congress . Elected as a
representative for the country of the US should mean just that and not another country . And
while we are at it , major reform on monetary contributions to candidates running for
re-election . There is something terribly wrong with needing millions if not billions of
dollars to run the electoral races.There is much more that needs to be done but this would be
a good start .
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:32
Yes, the proposed Amendments would restrict funding of mass media and elections to
registered individual contributions (some prefer government funding) limited to the average
day's pay annually (for example), with full reporting by candidates and all intermediaries.
We all can see the destruction of democracy that was caused by economic power controlling
elections, mass media, the judiciary, etc.
But of course we cannot get those amendments because those tools of democracy now belong
to the rich, etc. History suggests that we are in for generations of severe decline before
the people are hurting enough to turn off the tube and do something, and generations more
before they can re-establish democracy.
Ray McGovern writes:"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite
tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious
embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge"
On the matter of government reform classification there is a great need of public
discussion and radical reform. Why? Because the government is playing with an essential
right, the right to know. All the red herrings needed to be thrown in the trash and the
burden placed on the classifiers to justify why the public does not have a right to know.
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:24
Yes, the facts and their significance (especially about false flags and scandals) need to
be publicly debated, as well as policy goals, and the policies derived from facts and goals.
We have far too many government secrets to sustain a democracy.
I suggest limiting secrets to ongoing investigations (with a time limit), defensive
military plans and operations (not alleged provocations or aggressive war schemes), and
personal IDs of those at risk. Beyond that secrets disguise tyranny.
Ida G Millman , July 8, 2019 at 16:02
Another path towards a solution to government corruption could be term limits for all
federal representatives. Limiting the number of terms would curtail the opportunities for
forming the uninterrupted years of long coalitions between public servants and government
officials that result in the abuses of power that have damaged the interests of ordinary less
wealthy citizens, in favor of corporate and military interests.
In the matter of the original intentions of the men who wrote our founding documents, we
should consider one of the enormous differences that technology has made between us: that our
representatives can travel between DC and their homes with enough ease that they can continue
reasonably, or nearly reasonably, satisfactory family lives – something that could not
be done in the 18th century. The forefathers did not foresee that being a member of
government would become a career for a lifetime. They assumed, I believe, that members of
government would always be citizens who would give our country a few years of their lives and
then return to private life to share their experience and knowledge with their neighbors.
Such a change would not magically reform government corruption. There will always be those
who will find a way – but it could slow things down and it would certainly engage an
increasing number of citizens who would participate in governing, as well as the circles of
people surrounding each of them whose interest in and understanding of government would
increase because everyone would know more of their representatives. Got that, kids?
L&B&L
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:37
Term limits are useful and we should enact more. There seems to be a sufficient supply of
puppets for the rich/WallSt/Mic/zionists to ensure that all new candidates represent only
those interests, unless we go further and control funding of mass media and elections,
monitoring of politicians and judges for life, etc.
Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:28
Ida,
Term limits wouldn't be necessary if money were out of elections and all elections were
publicly funded. Next, a law should be passed to prevent retired congress people from
lobbying for any private company of any kind. Then people wouldn't have to spend all their
time in congress lining up money for the next election, nor would they owe favors to
anyone.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:19
Sam F, all of those goals seem very nice but it would probably be better if we just
dissolved back into 50 states save for an interstate system and a very small navy for common
defense, maybe four nuclear submarines total, the American people will be best off without a
government completely working it out for themselves, if some of them work it out in
completely different ways without hurting each other so be it. Besides even a libertarians
would have to acknowledge democracy best works for smaller populations. We may never be able
to curb the will to power of evil men but we can diminish their abilities to fleece the
public if we are not subject to them.
Jay , July 8, 2019 at 11:42
Peter King?
Really now.
Not a credible source, no matter how invention filled Russia-gate is. And no matter how
clear it is that in 2016 the FBI was poking around campaign Trump and likely telling the
White House what it found.
Bif Webster , July 8, 2019 at 13:28
I agree that King isn't the best of messengers, but we can also go to others who are not
right-wing to see something fishy went on.
Those text messages convinced me something was going on. And that was before all the other
stuff came to light.
I think this will be about who has more dirt on the other side you know, leverage?
Jeff Harrison , July 8, 2019 at 11:41
Thank you, Ray. Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded
illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who
have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben
Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A
reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene
republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a
democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret
service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't
hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall
Street the way that a new Doge would.
I don't see that as necessarily much of a plus.
Steven Berge , July 8, 2019 at 11:40
I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing
happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even
before they made it legal.
Drew Hunkins , July 8, 2019 at 11:32
Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for
running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much
of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by
way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells
for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television.
Jill , July 8, 2019 at 11:15
This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows
into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has
sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would
result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that,
then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the
deaths he has caused.
I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally
supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as
a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass
surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is
lawless. It is a disaster.
Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters
doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats
meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior,
and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc.
recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders".
People won't speak to one another because of this division, all based on lies. Democrats
want Assange put to death because he exposed truthful information about Clinton. Neighbor has
turned against neighbor over this. We have stopped talking and stopped thinking about whether
claims make sense or have evidence behind them. Political parties have become cults with cult
leaders. Meanwhile, many who think it was wrong to use surveillance against Trump, accept
mass surveillance against everyone else, including themselves.
This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our
populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil
men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and
pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader
is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more.
I cannot believe what Russiagate has done to our own people. I am terrified at the wars it
has/may yet cause and the cruelty against others, both foreign and domestic, which it has
wrought.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:51
What else would you call it, there have always been nefarious agents in one government or
another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however
they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call
something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct
interest of the American people, I'm not trying to be you over the head with this but Mr.
McGovern was once upon a Time swimming in the same waters and he knows what he is talking
about. The deep state maybe several different factions but all of it at least so far is
fairly I'm Accountable, this thing must be named.
AnneR , July 8, 2019 at 14:18
First the Disclaimer: I'm not a supporter of either side of the one party two headed
monster political machine, not of either HRC or DT, both, and their "parties," making me want
to puke.
I am curious about the following: "He [DT] has sent people to die knowing full well that
his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as
our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep
state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused."
While I have no doubt that DT has been responsible for civilian deaths (I am far less
concerned about military deaths – join the military and you cannot expect not to have
to chance it, particularly in a warmongering nation state; if the recruit doesn't recognize
this reality, then they need to do some reading), *most* such deaths in those countries we
(the US and its vassal states and proxies) have been happily bombing, shelling, destroying
one way or another, even since the late 1980s (not therefore including the appalling and
illegal warring on Vietnam et al) are down, not to DT, but rather to presidents: BC, GHB,
GWB, BO. Pretty evenly divided betwixt the two heads, wouldn't you say?
That's not to excuse DT (and I wouldn't excuse HRC either – think Libya; as bad as
MA, if with different forms of warfare; but then they're buddies, like attracting like).
We – the US – need to stop killing other peoples (let's cry for the war-making
profiteers), stop destroying other countries (and for our corporate-capitalists who plunder
them); need to mind our own "shop" and business. And stop pretending that we're such a
wonderful, white-hatted, "good" nation.
Jill , July 8, 2019 at 15:15
AnneR,
We have had war criminal presidents from the legacy parties, period. Barr is a party to
war crimes so I share other's doubts that he will do anything about actual justice. He may be
in on the current winning side of the IC and they may be purging some enemies at this time.
That is the only thing I see Barr being involved in.
Speaking as someone who has done counter-recruitment in schools, I will just give you my
experience. Students are tracked from grade school. A file is kept on them with over a
thousand data points. These files are taken by recruiters and used to "pitch" the military to
young people. I don't know if you were sophisticated at 16. I was a little bit but not much.
So here's an example–they told one young woman who had a single mother that if she went
in the military she would not be a burden on her mother any longer. They understood the
family had few resources and they played on this young woman's "guilt" over being a financial
"drain" on her mother. No, recruiters do not tell the truth to those they meet. They lie and
they lie very well because they have excellent information to help them tell the correct
lies. That girl is dead and I mourn her death.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:05
AnneR, you have so much anger, I understand, it is terrible what our nation has done and
is continuing to do, it has gone on so long that many of the people currently perpetrating
the crimes against foreign populations are themselves of descendents of peoples the US has
victimized. It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize
societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have
sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel
seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your
interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just
it will to power.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:09
Jill that was an incredibly cogent description of the mess we are currently in,
congratulations on such clarity, peace out.
David Otness , July 9, 2019 at 00:18
With you on all that you state, Jill. It's really exposed the U.S. population for what we
unfortunately are, if not what we've become. So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold
War. A stark education has just played out to this point. I wonder how many have learned anything at all from it?
"... Great post. Inequality has been visibly widening in the US (and the UK) for years, principally as a result of globalisation. ..."
"... some people see that you put in the same republican representatives that are just the opposite side of the same coin. Actually the repubs are worse . No to unions, higher min wage, tax cuts to the very wealthy etc. Dems talk about these issue but can never get it together to actually implement them. ..."
"... I think Naomi has given the answer by mistake. The liberal elite is totally disconnected from the rest of the country. It wasn't just trump it was a red wave of republican victory ..."
This is an excellent response. However already you can hear the liberal elite dismiss the
Trump voters as idiots - it's always funny when you hear people complain that Trump
threatening to put his opponent in jail, or Brexiters threatening the partiality of the
judiciary are threats to the democratic system... these same people then start making the
argument the electorate is too stupid to make a decision. The liberal elite need to
acknowledge the tangible suffering and injustice being faced by working-class people across
Europe and the United States, and act to address it.
There was a telling point early on in the election coverage when the democrat
representative on the BBC panel was arrogantly smiling once the exit polls showed Clinton on
for a comfortable victory. Andrew Neil put him straight back in his place when he asked 'is
it not concerning for the Democrat Party that they are no longer the party of the blue-collar
American?' The representative highlighted the arrogance and complacency of the liberal elite,
that seconds after the election result looked to be in, he seemed to go back to not caring
about working-class people and re-enter the elite bubble.
Great post. Inequality has been visibly widening in the US (and the UK) for years,
principally as a result of globalisation. A large proportion of the people are "mad as hell"
and have decided to try to do something about it. Trump is unlikely to be the answer, but
there will be more support for anti-politicians (such as Grillo & the 5 Star movement in
Italy) while the conventional politicians continue to bleat nonsense.
some people see that you put in the same republican representatives that are just the
opposite side of the same coin. Actually the repubs are worse . No to unions, higher min
wage, tax cuts to the very wealthy etc. Dems talk about these issue but can never get it
together to actually implement them.
I think Naomi has given the answer by mistake. The liberal elite is totally disconnected
from the rest of the country. It wasn't just trump it was a red wave of republican victory --
her article demonstrates how little she understands.
The liberal elite includes the media, who can't wait to run stories of "thousands" of
people protesting about Trump in the US. Yes, thousands, in a country with a population of
318 million.
The problem here is that the US population is too brainwashing with jingoism and Exceptionalism to value Tulsi message. The
US army is mercenary army and unlike situation with the draft people generally do not care much when mercenaries die. That makes
any anti-war candidate vulnerable to "Russiagate" smear.
He/she need to have a strong domestic program to appeal to voters, So far Warren is in better position in this area then
Tulsi.
Notable quotes:
"... The Drudge Report website had its poll running while the debate was going on and it registered overwhelmingly in favor of Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Likewise, the Washington Examiner , a right-wing paper, opined that Gabbard had won by a knockout based on its own polling. Google's search engine reportedly saw a surge in searches linked to Tulsi Gabbard both during and after the debate. ..."
"... On the following day traditional conservative Pat Buchanan produced an article entitled "Memo for Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi," similar to a comment made by Republican consultant Frank Luntz "She's a long-shot to win the presidency, but Tulsi Gabbard is sounding like a prime candidate for Secretary of Defense." ..."
"... In response to a comment by neoliberal Congressman Tim Ryan who said that the U.S. has to remain "engaged" in places like Afghanistan, she referred to two American soldiers who had been killed that very day, saying "Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? Well, we just have to be engaged? As a soldier, I will tell you that answer is unacceptable." ..."
"... Tulsi also declared war on the Washington Establishment, saying that "For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end." ..."
"... Blunt words, but it was a statement that few Americans whose livelihoods are not linked to "defense" or to the shamelessly corrupt U.S. Congress and media could disagree with, as it is clear that Washington is at the bottom of a deep hole and persists in digging ..."
"... In the collective judgment of America's Establishment, Tulsi Gabbard and anyone like her must be destroyed. She would not be the first victim of the political process shutting out undesirable opinions. One can go all the way back to Eugene McCarthy and his opposition to the Vietnam War back in 1968. ..."
"... And the beat goes on. In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, fixed the nomination process so that Bernie Sanders, a peace candidate, would be marginalized and super hawk Hillary Clinton would be selected. Fortunately, the odor emanating from anything having to do with the Clintons kept her from being elected or we would already be at war with Russia and possibly also with China. ..."
"... Tulsi Gabbard has let the genie of "end the forever wars" out of the bottle and it will be difficult to force it back in. She just might shake up the Democratic Party's priorities, leading to more questions about just what has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past twenty years. ..."
"... Yes, to some critics, Tulsi Gabbard is not a perfect candidate . On most domestic issues she appears to be a typical liberal Democrat and is also conventional in terms of her accommodation with Jewish power, but she also breaks with the Democratic Party establishment with her pledge to pardon Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. ..."
"... She also has more of a moral compass than Elizabeth Warren, who cleverly evades the whole issue of Middle East policy, or a Joe Biden who would kiss Benjamin Netanyahu's ass without any hesitation at all. Gabbard has openly criticized Netanyahu and she has also condemned Israel's killing of "unarmed civilians" in Gaza. As a Hindu, her view of Muslims is somewhat complicated based on the historical interaction of the two groups, but she has moderated her views recently. ..."
"... To be sure, Americans have heard much of the same before, much of it from out of the mouth of a gentleman named Donald Trump, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years. ..."
Last Wednesday’s debate among half of the announced Democratic Party candidates to become their party’s nominee for
president in 2020 was notable for its lack of drama. Many of those called on to speak had little to say apart from the usual
liberal bromides about health care, jobs, education and how the United States is a country of immigrants. On the following
day the mainstream media anointed Elizabeth Warren as the winner based on the coherency of her message even though she said
little that differed from what was being presented by most of the others on the stage. She just said it better, more
articulately.
The New York Times’
coverage was typical, praising Warren for her grasp of the issues and her ability to present the same
clearly and concisely, and citing a comment "They could teach
classes in how Warren talks about a problem and weaves in answers into a story. She's not just
wonk and stats." It then went on to lump most of the other candidates together, describing
their performances as "ha[ving] one or two strong answers, but none of them had the electric,
campaign-launching moment they were hoping for."
Inevitably, however, there was some disagreement on who had actually done best based on
viewer reactions as well as the perceptions of some of the media that might not exactly be
described as mainstream. The Drudge Report website
had
its poll running while the debate was going on and it registered overwhelmingly in favor of
Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Likewise, the Washington Examiner , a right-wing
paper, opined that Gabbard had won by a knockout based on its own polling. Google's search
engine reportedly saw a surge in searches linked to Tulsi Gabbard both during and after the
debate.
On the following day traditional conservative Pat Buchanan produced
an
article entitled "Memo for Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi," similar to a comment made by
Republican consultant Frank Luntz "She's a long-shot
to win the presidency, but Tulsi Gabbard is sounding like a prime candidate for Secretary of
Defense."
Tulsi, campaigning on her anti-war credentials, was indeed not like the other candidates,
confronting directly the issue of war and peace which the other potential candidates studiously
avoided. In response to a comment by neoliberal Congressman Tim Ryan who said that the U.S. has
to remain "engaged" in places like Afghanistan, she referred to two American soldiers who had
been killed that very day, saying "Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers
who were just killed in Afghanistan? Well, we just have to be engaged? As a soldier, I will
tell you that answer is unacceptable."
At another point she expanded on her thinking about America's wars, saying "Let's deal with
the situation where we are, where this president and his chickenhawk cabinet have led us to the
brink of war with Iran. I served in the war in Iraq at the height of the war in 2005, a war
that took over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniforms' lives. The American people need to
understand that this war with Iran would be far more devastating, far more costly than anything
that we ever saw in Iraq. It would take many more lives. It would exacerbate the refugee
crisis. And it wouldn't be just contained within Iran. This would turn into a regional war.
This is why it's so important that every one of us, every single American, stand up and say no
war with Iran."
Tulsi also declared war on the Washington Establishment,
saying
that "For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after
the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned
tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end."
Blunt words, but it was a statement that few Americans whose livelihoods are not linked to
"defense" or to the shamelessly corrupt U.S. Congress and media could disagree with, as it is
clear that Washington is at the bottom of a deep hole and persists in digging. So why was there
such a difference between what ordinary Americans and the Establishment punditry were seeing on
their television screens? The difference was not so much in perception as in the desire to see
a certain outcome. Anti-war takes away a lot of people's rice bowls, be they directly employed
on "defense" or part of the vast army of lobbyists and think tank parasites that keep the money
flowing out of the taxpayers' pockets and into the pockets of Raytheon, General Dynamics,
Boeing and Lockheed Martin like a perpetual motion machine.
In the collective judgment of America's Establishment, Tulsi Gabbard and anyone like her
must be destroyed. She would not be the first victim of the political process shutting out
undesirable opinions. One can go all the way back to Eugene McCarthy and his opposition to the
Vietnam War back in 1968. McCarthy was right and Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the Democratic
Party were wrong. More recently, Congressman Ron Paul tried twice to bring some sanity to the
Republican Party. He too was marginalized deliberately by the GOP party apparatus working
hand-in-hand with the media, to include the final insult of his being denied any opportunity to
speak or have his delegates recognized at the 2012 nominating convention.
And the beat goes on. In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, head of the Democratic National
Committee, fixed the nomination process so that Bernie Sanders, a peace candidate, would be
marginalized and super hawk Hillary Clinton would be selected. Fortunately, the odor emanating
from anything having to do with the Clintons kept her from being elected or we would already be
at war with Russia and possibly also with China.
Tulsi Gabbard has let the genie of "end the forever wars" out of the bottle and it will be
difficult to force it back in. She just might shake up the Democratic Party's priorities,
leading to more questions about just what has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past
twenty years. To qualify for the second round of debates she has to gain a couple of points in
her approval rating or bring in more donations, either of which is definitely possible based on
her performance. It is to be hoped that that will occur and that there will be no Debbie
Wasserman Schultz hiding somewhere in the process who will finagle the polling results.
Yes, to some critics, Tulsi Gabbard is
not a perfect candidate . On most domestic issues she appears to be a typical liberal
Democrat and is also conventional in terms of her accommodation with Jewish power, but she also
breaks with the Democratic Party establishment with her pledge to pardon Chelsea Manning,
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
She also has more of a moral compass than Elizabeth Warren,
who cleverly evades the whole issue of Middle East policy, or a Joe Biden who would kiss
Benjamin Netanyahu's ass without any hesitation at all. Gabbard has openly criticized Netanyahu
and she has also condemned Israel's killing of "unarmed civilians" in Gaza. As a Hindu, her
view of Muslims is somewhat complicated based on the historical interaction of the two groups,
but she has moderated her views recently.
To be sure, Americans have heard much of the same before, much of it from out of the
mouth of a gentleman named Donald Trump, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine
antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years. It is essential
that we Americans who are concerned about the future of our country should listen to what she
has to say very carefully and to respond accordingly.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its
email is [email protected]
"... Brand's fast-talking, plain-speaking criticism of the existing political order, calling it discredited, unaccountable and unrepresentative, was greeted with smirking condescension by the political and media establishment. Nonetheless, in an era before Donald Trump had become president of the United States, the British media were happy to indulge Brand for a while, seemingly believing he or his ideas might prove a ratings winner with younger audiences. ..."
"... Then he overstepped the mark. ..."
"... Instead of simply criticising the political system, Brand argued that it was in fact so rigged by the powerful, by corporate interests, that western democracy had become a charade. Elections were pointless . Our votes were simply a fig-leaf, concealing the fact that our political leaders were there to represent not us but the interests of globe-spanning corporations. Political and media elites had been captured by unshored corporate money. Our voices had become irrelevant. ..."
"... But just as Brand's rejection of the old politics began to articulate a wider mood, it was stopped in its tracks. ..."
"... These "New Labour" MPs were there, just as Brand had noted, to represent the interests of a corporate class, not ordinary people. ..."
"... It wasn't that Corbyn's election had shown Britain's political system was representative and accountable. It was simply evidence that corporate power had made itself vulnerable to a potential accident by preferring to work out of sight, in the shadows, to maintain the illusion of democracy. Corbyn was that accident. ..."
"... The system was still in place and it still had a chokehold on the political and media establishments that exist to uphold its interests. Which is why it has been mobilising these forces endlessly to damage Corbyn and avert the risk of a further, even more disastrous "accident", such as his becoming prime minister. ..."
"... Listing the ways the state-corporate media have sought to undermine Corbyn would sound preposterous to anyone not deeply immersed in these media-constructed narratives. But almost all of us have been exposed to this kind of " brainwashing under freedom " since birth. ..."
"... The initial attacks on Corbyn were for being poorly dressed, sexist, unstatesmanlike, a national security threat, a Communist spy – relentless, unsubstantiated smears the like of which no other party leader had ever faced. But over time the allegations became even more outrageously propagandistic as the campaign to undermine him not only failed but backfired – not least, because Labour membership rocketed under Corbyn to make the party the largest in Europe. ..."
"... As the establishment's need to keep him away from power has grown more urgent and desperate so has the nature of the attacks. ..."
In the preceding two years, it was hard to avoid on TV the figure of Russell Brand, a
comedian and minor film star who had reinvented himself, after years of battling addiction, as
a spiritual guru-cum-political revolutionary.
Brand's fast-talking, plain-speaking criticism of the existing political order, calling it
discredited, unaccountable and unrepresentative, was greeted with smirking condescension by the
political and media establishment. Nonetheless, in an era before Donald Trump had become
president of the United States, the British media were happy to indulge Brand for a while,
seemingly believing he or his ideas might prove a ratings winner with younger audiences.
But Brand started to look rather more impressive than anyone could have imagined. He took on
supposed media heavyweights like the BBC's Jeremy
Paxman and Channel 4's Jon
Snow and charmed and shamed them into submission – both with his compassion and his
thoughtful radicalism. Even in the gladiatorial-style battle of wits so beloved of modern TV,
he made these titans of the political interview look mediocre, shallow and out of touch. Videos
of these head-to-heads went viral, and Brand won hundreds of thousands of new followers.
Then he overstepped the mark.
Democracy as charade
Instead of simply criticising the political system, Brand argued that it was in fact so
rigged by the powerful, by corporate interests, that western democracy had become a charade.
Elections were pointless
. Our votes were simply a fig-leaf, concealing the fact that our political leaders were there
to represent not us but the interests of globe-spanning corporations. Political and media
elites had been captured by unshored corporate money. Our voices had become irrelevant.
Brand didn't just talk the talk. He started committing to direct action. He shamed our do-nothing
politicians and corporate media – the devastating Grenfell Tower fire had yet to happen
– by helping to gain attention for a group of poor tenants in London who were taking on
the might of a corporation that had become their landlord and wanted to evict them to develop
their homes for a much richer clientele. Brand's revolutionary words had turned into
revolutionary action.
But just as Brand's rejection of the old politics began to articulate a wider mood, it was
stopped in its tracks. After Corbyn was unexpectedly elected Labour leader, offering for the
first time in living memory a politics that listened to people before money, Brand's style of
rejectionism looked a little too cynical, or at least premature.
While Corbyn's victory marked a sea-change, it is worth recalling, however, that it occurred
only because of a mistake. Or perhaps two.
The Corbyn accident
First, a handful of Labour MPs agreed to nominate Corbyn for the leadership contest,
scraping him past the threshold needed to get on the ballot paper. Most backed him only because
they wanted to give the impression of an election that was fair and open. After his victory,
some loudly regretted having assisted him. None had
thought a representative of the tiny and besieged left wing of the parliamentary party stood a
chance of winning – not after Tony Blair and his acolytes had spent more than two decades
remaking Labour, using their own version of entryism to eradicate any vestiges of socialism in
the party. These "New Labour" MPs were there, just as Brand had noted, to represent the
interests of a corporate class, not ordinary people.
Corbyn had very different ideas from most of his colleagues. Over the years he had broken
with the consensus of the dominant Blairite faction time and again in parliamentary votes,
consistently taking a minority view that later proved to be on the
right side of history . He alone among the leadership contenders spoke unequivocally
against austerity, regarding it as a way to leech away more public money to enrich the
corporations and banks that had already pocketed vast sums from the public coffers – so
much so that by 2008 they had nearly bankrupted the entire western economic system.
And second, Corbyn won because of a recent change in the party's rulebook – one now
much regretted by party managers. A new internal balloting system gave more weight to the votes
of ordinary members than the parliamentary party. The members, unlike the party machine, wanted
Corbyn.
Corbyn's success didn't really prove Brand wrong. Even the best designed systems have flaws,
especially when the maintenance of the system's image as benevolent is considered vitally
important. It wasn't that Corbyn's election had shown Britain's political system was
representative and accountable. It was simply evidence that corporate power had made itself
vulnerable to a potential accident by preferring to work out of sight, in the shadows, to
maintain the illusion of democracy. Corbyn was that accident.
'Brainwashing under freedom'
Corbyn's success also wasn't evidence that the power structure he challenged had weakened.
The system was still in place and it still had a chokehold on the political and media
establishments that exist to uphold its interests. Which is why it has been mobilising these
forces endlessly to damage Corbyn and avert the risk of a further, even more disastrous
"accident", such as his becoming prime minister.
Listing the ways the state-corporate media have sought to undermine Corbyn would sound
preposterous to anyone not deeply immersed in these media-constructed narratives. But almost
all of us have been exposed to this kind of " brainwashing under freedom
" since birth.
The initial attacks on Corbyn were for being poorly dressed, sexist, unstatesmanlike, a
national security threat, a Communist spy – relentless, unsubstantiated smears the like
of which no other party leader had ever faced. But over time the allegations became even more
outrageously propagandistic as the campaign to undermine him not only failed but backfired
– not least, because Labour membership rocketed under Corbyn to make the party the
largest in Europe.
As the establishment's need to keep him away from power has grown more urgent and desperate
so has the nature of the attacks.
There were no Jews anywhere around most native Britons. And yet the Empire was banked most
importantly by Jews back to at least the post-Glorious Revolution closing the 17th century,
and that pattern of Jewish bankers being indispensable to the UK and the Brit WASP Empire
goes back to Oliver Cromwell.
Just in time for the 2020 presidential election, the Democrats have discovered that there is
real economic inequality in the United States. But they have not yet fully addressed the role
that the Democratic party and its leaders have played in creating this vast inequality that led
to the election of President Donald Trump in 2016.
The presidential candidates have been slow to fully recognize the role that former President
Bill Clinton's globalization policies (NAFTA and WTO) played in the outsourcing of American
jobs or the lowering of wages for workers.
As the Democratic presidential debates have shown, Vice President Biden is having a hard
time defending his long public record, especially as an opponent of federally mandated "forced"
busing to integrate our public schools decades after the Supreme Court's overturning of racial
segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). As a Senator Joe Biden was a free
trade advocate as well.
But Senator Biden played a large role in creating inequality in two additional realms. He
was a strong backer of a 2005 bankruptcy "reform" law that made it harder for people to file
personal bankruptcy and to wipe out all of their debts. Given that perhaps as many as fifty
percent of all personal bankruptcies in America are caused by debt incurred from health care
not covered by insurance, this was an especially cruel blow to those seeking relief from their
heavy debt loads.
In "'
Lock the S.O.B.s Up: Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration ," The New York
Times documents his decades-long support of tough on criminals legislation, culminating in
the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This bill, signed into law by President
Clinton, has been blamed for the jailing of high numbers of African Americans and other
minorities, in particular.
Unlike the Republicans whose goal is to increase inequality by lowering taxes on the
wealthy, at least the Democrats seem sincere about reducing it. To do this, they have fallen
all over themselves to offer free college tuition and to reduce student loan debt. Sen. Bernie
Sanders recently proposed to
eliminate all student loans entirely .
Why have Democrats focused on college as a means of solving economic inequality? Statistics
have shown that in general the more education you have, the higher your lifetime earnings will
be. For example, men with bachelor's degrees earn nearly a million more
dollars in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates.
"... Mr. Lidow is among the semiconductor executives in the United States who have become concerned that the trade war with China -- particularly the Trump administration's ban on selling chips to some prominent Chinese customers -- won't just squeeze current revenue. He fears that recent events have convinced Chinese companies that American component makers can no longer be seen as dependable partners and are permanently shifting away from them. ..."
"... In May, President Trump ordered American companies on national-security grounds to stop selling components to companies like Huawei , China's big maker of mobile phones and networking equipment. And the administration placed five other Chinese entities on the same blacklist this month, including the computer maker Sugon and three subsidiaries. ..."
"... China has responded by saying it would put together its own "unreliable entities list," including many American tech companies. ..."
"... "The U.S. is in danger of becoming the vendor of last resort for China," said Walden Rhines, chief executive emeritus of Mentor, a unit of Siemens that sells software for designing chips ..."
SAN FRANCISCO -- Alex Lidow has sold semiconductors in China for decades, starting at a
company, called International Rectifier, that his father and grandfather founded in the Los
Angeles area in 1947.
Now Mr. Lidow runs Efficient Power Conversion, which makes chips that manage electrical
power in cars and other products. Efficient Power has a strong foothold in China, but has
lately run into resistance from customers there that he traces to moves in Washington.
Mr. Lidow is among the semiconductor executives in the United States who have become
concerned that the trade war with China -- particularly the Trump administration's ban on
selling chips to some prominent Chinese customers -- won't just squeeze current revenue. He
fears that recent events have convinced Chinese companies that American component makers can no
longer be seen as dependable partners and are permanently shifting away from them.
"In my 40 years in this business, I've had friends in China that viewed me as a trusted
supplier," Mr. Lidow said. "They can't now." His experience is part of the fallout affecting the American chip industry, one of the tech
sectors hardest hit by the tit-for-tat between the United States and China over trade and
national security.
In May, President Trump ordered American companies on national-security grounds to
stop selling
components to companies like Huawei , China's big maker of mobile phones and networking
equipment. And the administration placed
five other Chinese entities on the same blacklist this month, including the computer maker
Sugon and three subsidiaries.
Even if a new trade deal eases tensions -- Mr. Trump is set to meet with President Xi
Jinping of China in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday -- American chip executives and others said
lasting damage had already been done. They said Chinese officials and companies would step up
efforts to design and make more chips domestically. And Chinese customers seem likely to turn
to vendors from countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan if no homegrown chips are
available.
"The U.S. is in danger of becoming the vendor of last resort for China," said Walden
Rhines, chief executive emeritus of Mentor, a unit of Siemens that sells software for designing
chips
Already, big American chip makers have taken a financial hit from the China bans. Micron Technology, which sells two of the
most widely used varieties of memory chips, disclosed Tuesday that the Huawei ban had lowered sales in its most recent quarter
by nearly $200 million. Huawei is Micron’s largest customer, accounting for around 13 percent of its revenue.
"... If her trend of seriously closing the favorability gap with Joe Biden is any indication, if her broad but incomplete acceptability to the Clinton and the Sanders wings of the Democratic party is any indication, we would have to answer that question with a fairly emphatic, "yes, she can." ..."
On the first night of the first Democratic debates, Elizabeth Warren gave a master class in
when to speak and when to keep one's mouth shut. This is a lesson former Vice President Joe
Biden could learn a ton from.
When Waren did speak, it was clear, passionate, on point, and richly factual. On health
care, she even surprised a bit by committing to eliminating private insurance where she has
previously hedged her betting.
... ... ...
Can Warren beat Biden? If her trend of seriously closing the favorability gap
with Joe Biden is any indication, if her broad but incomplete acceptability to the Clinton and
the Sanders wings of the Democratic party is any indication, we would have to answer that
question with a fairly emphatic, "yes, she can."
Whether she will depends on a number of factors, some within, some beyond her control. In my
view, the most critical tasks within her control are finding a way to a coherent foreign policy
position and pivoting to an efficient answer on the DNA testing question that simultaneously
educates regarding and firmly rejects blood quantum theories of race.
"... Sanders and Warren are not what they claim to be. They are both updating Roosevelt's New Deal and more closely resemble the Social Democrats that have governed western European democracies for years, delivering higher standards of living than that experienced by Americans. ..."
"... In May 2009, the moderate Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, said: "The banks – hard to believe when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." ..."
"... In the new book, Banking on the People , by Ellen Brown, readers can get an idea of the way large banks, insurers, and the giant shadow banking system – money market funds, hedge funds, mortgage brokers, and other unregulated financial intermediaries – speculate and shift deep risk and their failures onto Uncle Sam. These corporate predators gouge customers, and, remarkably, show a deep aversion for productive investment as if people matter. ..."
"... Control of our political economy is not a conservative/liberal or red state/blue state issue. When confronted with the specifics of the corporate state or corporate socialism, people from all political persuasions will recognize the potential perils to our democracy. No one wants to lose essential freedoms or to continue to pay the price of this runaway crony capitalism. ..."
"... The gigantic corporations have been built with the thralldom of deep debt – corporate debt to fund stock buybacks (while reporting record profits), consumer debt, student loan debt, and, of course, government debt caused by drastic corporate and super-rich tax cuts. Many trillions of dollars have been stolen from future generations. ..."
Trump Invites Debates over Omnivorous Crony Capitalism
Donald J. Trump's 2020 election strategy is to connect
his potential Democratic opponents with "socialism." Trump plans to use this attack on the
Democrats even if Senator Bernie Sanders, who proudly calls himself a "democratic socialist,"
doesn't become the presidential nominee (Sanders has been decisively re-elected in Vermont).
Senator Elizabeth Warren is distancing herself from the socialist "label." She went so far
as to
tell the New England Council "I am a capitalist to my bones."
Sanders and Warren are not what they claim to be. They are both updating Roosevelt's New
Deal and more closely resemble the Social Democrats that have governed western European
democracies for years, delivering higher standards of living than that experienced by
Americans.
The original doctrine of socialism meant government ownership of the means of production
– heavy industries, railroads, banks, and the like. Nobody in national politics today is
suggesting such a takeover. As one quipster put it, "How can Washington take ownership of the
banks when the banks own Washington?"
Confronting Trump on the "socialism" taboo can open up a great debate about the value of
government intervention for the good of the public. Sanders can effectively argue that people
must choose either democratic socialism or the current failing system of corporate socialism.
That choice is not difficult. Such an American democratic socialism could provide almost all of
the long overdue solutions this country needs: full more efficient Medicare for all;
tuition-free education; living wages; stronger unions; a tax system that works for the people;
investments in infrastructure and public works; reforms for a massive, runaway military budget;
the end of most corporate welfare; government promotion of renewable energies; and the end of
subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power.
In my presidential campaigns I tried to make corporate socialism – also called
corporate welfare or crony capitalism – a major issue. Small business is capitalism
– free to go bankrupt – while corporate capitalism – free to get bailouts
from Washington – is really a form of corporate socialism. This point about a corporate
government was documented many years ago in books such as America, Inc. (1971) by Morton
Mintz and Jerry Cohen.
Now, it is even easier to make the case that our political economy is largely controlled by
giant corporations and their political toadies. Today the concentration of power and wealth is
staggering. Just six capitalist men have wealth to equal the wealth of half of the world's
population.
The Wall Street collapse of 2008-2009 destroyed eight million jobs, lost trillions of
dollars in pension and mutual funds, and pushed millions of families to lose their homes.
Against this backdrop, the U.S. government used trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail out, in
various ways, the greedy, financial giants, whose reckless speculating caused the collapse.
In May 2009, the moderate Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, said: "The banks – hard
to believe when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still
the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
Is there a single federal government agency or department that can say its most powerful
outside influence is NOT corporate? Even the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations
Board are under more corporate power than union power.
Who better than Trump, on an anti-socialist fantasy campaign kick, can call attention to the
reality that Big Business controls the government and by extension controls the people? In
September 2000, a Business Week poll found over 70 percent of people agreeing that big
business has too much control over their lives (this was before the horrific corporate
crimes and scandals of the past two decades). Maybe that is why support in polls for
"socialism" against "capitalism" in the U.S. is at a 60 year high.
People have long experienced American-style "socialism." For example, the publicly owned
water and electric utilities, public parks and forests, the Postal Service, public libraries,
FDIC guarantees of bank deposits (now up to $250,000), Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,
etc.
What the public is not sufficiently alert to is that Big Business has been profitably taking
over control, if not outright ownership, of these public assets.
In the new book, Banking on the
People , by Ellen Brown, readers can get an idea of the way large banks, insurers, and
the giant shadow banking system – money market funds, hedge funds, mortgage brokers, and
other unregulated financial intermediaries – speculate and shift deep risk and their
failures onto Uncle Sam. These corporate predators gouge customers, and, remarkably, show a
deep aversion for productive investment as if people matter.
Moreover, they just keep developing new, ever riskier, multi-tiered instruments (eg.
derivatives) to make money from money through evermore complex, abstract, secret,
reckless, entangled, globally destabilizing, networks. Gambling with other people's money is a
relentless Wall Street tradition.
The crashes that inevitably emerge end up impoverishing ordinary people who pay the price
with their livelihoods.
Will the Democrats and other engaged people take Trump on if he tries to make "socialism"
the big scare in 2020? Control of our political economy is not a conservative/liberal or red
state/blue state issue. When confronted with the specifics of the corporate state or corporate
socialism, people from all political persuasions will recognize the potential perils to our
democracy. No one wants to lose essential freedoms or to continue to pay the price of this
runaway crony capitalism.
The gigantic corporations have been built with the thralldom of deep debt – corporate
debt to fund stock buybacks (while reporting record profits), consumer debt, student loan debt,
and, of course, government debt caused by drastic corporate and super-rich tax cuts. Many
trillions of dollars have been stolen from future generations.
No wonder a small group of billionaires, including George Soros,
Eli Broad , and Nick Hanauer, have just publicly urged a modest tax on the super wealthy.
As Hanauer, a history buff and advocate of higher minimum wages, says – "the pitchforks
are coming."
We’ll see how neoliberal MSM will spin this, but I would say Sanders emerged unscathed, Harris attacked and "wounded" Biden, Biden
sounded like a lightweight, Gillibrand seems to be a very unpleasant person although different form Harris...
Notable quotes:
"... as if polling on donald trump and stuff is just so interesting ..."
"... Kamala Harris got more floor time than anyone else. Harris ended Biden's campaign. The debate is rigged against Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... Did Harris get the debate questions in advance? ..."
"... Her manner of speaking is like someone who doesn’t care, doesn’t take the whole thing seriously. It’s like someone who is cheaply casually condescending on the whole thing, on her having to be there. That’s what I perceived. It is deeply disqualifying from any leadership position. “Food fight”? We at that level now? That makes her cool? My god, what garbage. ..."
"... Harris will alienate The Deplorables, the military, the White Working Class or even black people, who know her as Kamala The Cop. ..."
Pathetic, the whole scene is pathetic. What a way to run a putative democracy, bring back the league of women voters to run
the debates and that idiot with the graphs during commercial breaks while watching this online, I want to break his freaking head
sorry.
I had the idea that your sensibilities were rather more refined than that, knowing anything about or not.
Her manner of speaking is like someone who doesn’t care, doesn’t take the whole thing seriously. It’s like someone who
is cheaply casually condescending on the whole thing, on her having to be there. That’s what I perceived. It is deeply disqualifying
from any leadership position. “Food fight”? We at that level now? That makes her cool? My god, what garbage.
FWIW, Boot Edge Edge’s prehensile sincerity was masterful in my view – shows some real talent.
I’m just observing this out of academic interest and hope we’ll all have a chance to vote for Bernie in the general. But from
tonight, Boot Edge Edge to me stood out as a talent – and everyone else (besides Bernie who was reliably on message and will keep
going more or less the same after this) was garbage or unnecessary (Biden is a disgrace), and the first debate was better.
Cal2, June 27, 2019 at 11:19 pm
In that case, Donald Trump gets our votes, as well as keeping all the potential crossovers, who had supported Trump last time,
and would have voted for Sanders-Gabbard.
Harris will alienate The Deplorables, the military, the White Working Class or even black people, who know her as Kamala
The Cop.
Sanders-Harris would be political suicide for the Democrats.
"... This story of lost American leadership and production is not unique. In fact, the destruction of America's once vibrant military and commercial industrial capacity in many sectors has become the single biggest unacknowledged threat to our national security. Because of public policies focused on finance instead of production, the United States increasingly cannot produce or maintain vital systems upon which our economy, our military, and our allies rely. Huawei is just a particularly prominent example. ..."
"... Higher budgets would seem to make sense. According to the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the United States is shifting away from armed conflicts in the Middle East to "great power" competition with China and Russia, which have technological parity in many areas with the United States. As part of his case for higher budgets, Mattis told Congress that "our military remains capable, but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare -- air, land, sea, space, and cyber." ..."
"... And yet, the U.S. military budget, even at stalled levels, is still larger than the next nine countries' budgets combined. So there's a second natural follow-up question: is the defense budget the primary reason our military advantage is slipping away, or is it something deeper? ..."
"... The loss of manufacturing capacity has been devastating for American research capacity. "Innovation doesn't just hover above the Great Plains," Mottl said. "It is built on steady incremental changes and knowledge learned out of basic manufacturing." Telecommunications equipment is dual use, meaning it can be used for both commercial and military purposes. The loss of an industrial base in telecom equipment meant that the American national security apparatus lost military capacity. ..."
"... "The middle-class Americans who did the manufacturing work, all that capability, machine tools, knowledge, it just became worthless, driven by the stock price," he said. "The national ability to produce is a national treasure. If you can't produce you won't consume, and you can't defend yourself." ..."
"... In the commercial sector, rebuilding the industrial base will require an aggressive national mobilization strategy. This means aggressive investment by government to rebuild manufacturing capacity, selective tariffs to protect against Chinese or foreign predation, regulation to stop financial predation by Wall Street, and anti-monopoly enforcement to block the exploitation of market power. ..."
Wall Street's short-term incentives have decimated our defense industrial base and
undermined our national security.
Early this year, U.S. authorities filed criminal
charges -- including bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and theft of technology -- against the
largest maker of telecommunications equipment in the world, a Chinese giant named Huawei.
Chinese dominance in telecom equipment has created a crisis among Western espionage agencies,
who, fearful of Chinese spying, are attempting to prevent the spread of Huawei equipment
worldwide, especially
in the critical 5G next-generation mobile networking space.
In response to the campaign to block the purchase of Huawei equipment, the company has
engaged in a public relations offensive. The company's CEO, Ren Zhengfei, portrayed Western
fears as an advertisement for its products, which are, he said, "so good that the U.S.
government is scared." There's little question the Chinese government is interested in using
equipment to spy. What is surprising is Zhengfei is right about the products. Huawei, a
relatively new company in the telecom equipment space, has amassed top market share because its
equipment -- espionage vulnerabilities aside -- is the best value on the market.
In historical terms, this is a shocking turnaround. Americans invented the telephone
business and until recently dominated production and research. But in the last 20 years, every
single American producer of key telecommunication equipment sectors is gone. Today, only two
European makers -- Ericsson and Nokia -- are left to compete with Huawei and another Chinese
competitor, ZTE.
This story of lost American leadership and production is not unique. In fact, the
destruction of America's once vibrant military and commercial industrial capacity in many
sectors has become the single biggest unacknowledged threat to our national security. Because
of public policies focused on finance instead of production, the United States increasingly
cannot produce or maintain vital systems upon which our economy, our military, and our allies
rely. Huawei is just a particularly prominent example.
When national security specialists consider preparedness, they usually think in terms of the
amount of money spent on the Pentagon. One of President Donald Trump's key campaign promises
was to aggressively raise the military budget, which he, along with Congress, started doing in
2017. The reaction was instant. "I'm heartened that Congress recognizes the sobering effect of
budgetary uncertainty on America's military and on the men and women who provide for our
nation's defense," then-defense secretary Jim Mattis said. Budgets have gone up every year
since.
Higher budgets would seem to make sense. According to the 2018 National Defense
Strategy, the United States is shifting away from armed conflicts in the Middle East to "great
power" competition with China and Russia, which have technological parity in many areas with
the United States. As part of his case for higher budgets, Mattis told Congress that "our
military remains capable, but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare --
air, land, sea, space, and cyber."
In some cases, our competitive edge has not just been eroded, but is at risk of being -- or
already is -- surpassed. The Chinese surge in 5G telecom equipment, which has dual civilian and
military uses, is one example. China is making key investments in artificial
intelligence, another area of competition. They even seem to be able to mount a rail gun on a naval ship ,
an important next generation weapons technology that the U.S. Navy has yet to incorporate.
And yet, the U.S. military budget, even at stalled levels, is still larger than the next
nine countries' budgets combined. So there's a second natural follow-up question: is the
defense budget the primary reason our military advantage is slipping away, or is it something
deeper?
The story of Huawei, and many others, suggests the latter.
♦♦♦
For over a century, America led the world in producing telecommunications equipment. The
American telecom industry, according to Zach Mottl of Atlas Tool Works, a subcontractor in the
industry, used to be a "crown jewel of American manufacturing." Mottl's company had been a
manufacturing supplier to AT&T and its Bell Labs from the early 1900s until the early
2000s. "The radar system was invented here. The transistor came out of Bell Labs. The laser. I
mean all of these high-tech inventions that have both commercial and military applications were
funded out of the research," Mottl told TAC . More than just the sexy inventions, there
was a domestic industrial sector which could make the equipment. Now, in a strategic coup for
our adversaries, that capability is gone.
Yet it wasn't one of those adversaries that killed our telecommunications capacity, but one
of our own institutions, Wall Street, and its pressure on executives to make decisions designed
to impress financial markets, rather than for the long-term health of their companies. In 1996,
AT&T spun off Bell Labs into a telecom equipment company, Lucent Technologies, to take
advantage of investors' appetite for an independent player selling high-tech telecom gear after
Congress deregulated the telecommuncations space. At the time, it was the biggest initial
public offering in history, and became the foundation of a relationship with financial markets
that led to its eventual collapse.
The focus on stock price at Lucent was systematic. The stock price was posted daily to
encourage everyone to focus on the company's relationship with short-term oriented financial
markets. All employees got a small number of "Founder's Grant Share Options," with executives
offered much larger slugs of stock to solidify the connection. When Richard McGinn became CEO
in 1997, he focused on financial markets.
Lucent began to buy up companies. According to two scholars , "The perceived
need to compete for acquisitions became a 'strategic' justification for keeping stock prices
high. This in turn demanded meeting or exceeding quarterly revenue and earnings targets,
objectives with which Lucent top executives, led by the hard-driving McGinn, became
obsessed."
Lucent got even more aggressive. McGinn's subordinate, an executive named Carly Fiorina,
juiced returns with a strategy based on lending money to risky startups who would then turn
around and buy Lucent equipment. Fiorina collected $65
million in compensation as the stock soared. And then, when the dot-com boom turned to
bust, the company, beset by accounting scandals designed to impress shareholders and the
financial markets, embarked on massive layoffs. CEO McGinn was among those laid off, but with a
$12.5 million severance package -- royal compensation for taking one of America's strategic
industrial assets down the road toward total destruction.
In the early 2000s, the telecom equipment market began to recover from the recession.
Lucent's new strategy, as Mottl put it, was to seek "margin" by offshoring production to China,
continuing layoffs of American workers and hiring abroad. At first, it was the simpler parts of
the telecom equipment, the boxes and assembly, but soon contract manufacturers in China were
making virtually all of it. American telecom capacity would never return.
Lucent didn't recover its former position. Chinese entrants, subsidized heavily by the
Chinese state and using Western technology, underpriced
Western companies. American policymakers, unconcerned with industrial capacity, allowed Chinese
companies to capture market share despite the predatory subsidies and stolen technology. In
2006, French telecom equipment maker Alcatel bought Lucent, signifying the end of American
control of Bell Labs. Today, Huawei, with state backing, dominates the market.
The erosion of much of the American industrial and defense industrial base proceeded like
Lucent. First, in the 1980s and 1990s, Wall Street financiers focused on short-term profits,
market power, and executive pay-outs over core competencies like research and production, often
rolling an industry up into a monopoly producer. Then, in the 2000s, they offshored production
to the lowest cost producer. This finance-centric approach opened the door to the Chinese
government's ability to strategically pick off industrial capacity by subsidizing its
producers. Hand over cash to Wall Street, and China could get the American crown jewels.
The loss of manufacturing capacity has been devastating for American research capacity.
"Innovation doesn't just hover above the Great Plains," Mottl said. "It is built on steady
incremental changes and knowledge learned out of basic manufacturing." Telecommunications
equipment is dual use, meaning it can be used for both commercial and military purposes. The
loss of an industrial base in telecom equipment meant that the American national security
apparatus lost military capacity.
This loss goes well beyond telecom equipment. Talking to small manufacturers and
distributors who operate in the guts of our industrial systems offers a perspective on the
danger of this process of financial predation and offshoring. Bill Hickey, who headed his
family's metal distributor, processor, and fabricator, has been watching the collapse for
decades. Hickey sells to "everyone who uses steel," from truck, car, and agricultural equipment
manufacturers to stadiums and the military.
Hickey, like many manufacturers, has watched the rise of China with alarm for decades.
"Everyone's upset about the China 2025 plan," he told TAC , referencing the current
Chinese plan causing alarm among national security thinkers in Washington. "Well there was a
China 2020 plan, 2016 plan, 2012 plan." The United States has, for instance, lost much of its
fasteners and casting industries, which are key inputs to virtually every industrial product.
It has lost much of its capacity in grain oriented flat-rolled electrical steel, a specialized
metal required for highly efficient electrical motors. Aluminum that goes into American
aircraft carriers now often comes from China.
Hickey told a story of how the United States is even losing its submarine fleet. He had a
conversation with an admiral in charge of the U.S. sub fleet at the commissioning of the USS
Illinois , a Virginia-class attack submarine, who complained that the United States was
retiring three worn-out boats a year, but could only build one and a half in that time. The
Trump military budget has boosted funding to build two a year, but the United States no longer
has the capacity to do high quality castings to build any more than that. The supply chain that
could support such surge production should be in the commercial world, but it has been
offshored to China. "You can't run a really high-end casting business on making three
submarines a year," Hickey said. "You just can't do it." This shift happened because Wall
Street, or "the LBO (leveraged buy-out) guys" as Hickey put it, bought up manufacturing
facilities in the 1990s and moved them to China.
"The middle-class Americans who did the manufacturing work, all that capability, machine
tools, knowledge, it just became worthless, driven by the stock price," he said. "The national
ability to produce is a national treasure. If you can't produce you won't consume, and you
can't defend yourself."
The Loss of the Defense Industrial Base
But it's not just the dual-use commercial manufacturing base that is collapsing. Our policy
empowering Wall Street and offshoring has also damaged the more specialized defense base, which
directly produces weaponry and equipment for the military.
How pervasive is the loss of such capacity? In September 2018, the Department of Defense
released findings of its analysis into its supply chain. The results highlighted how fragile
our ability to supply our own military has become.
The report listed dozens of militarily significant items and inputs with only one or two
domestic producers, or even none at all. Many production facilities are owned by companies that
are financially vulnerable and at high risk of being shut down. Some of the risk comes from
limited production capability. Mortar tubes, for example, are made on just one production line,
and some Marine aircraft parts are made by just one company -- one which recently filed for
bankruptcy.
At risk is everything from chaff to flares to high voltage cable, fittings for ships,
valves, key inputs for satellites and missiles, and even material for tents. As Americans no
longer work in key industrial fields, the engineering and production skills evaporate as the
legacy workforce retires.
Even more unsettling is the reliance on foreign, and often adversarial, manufacturing and
supplies. The report found that "China is the single or sole supplier for a number of specialty
chemicals used in munitions and missiles . A sudden and catastrophic loss of supply would
disrupt DoD missile, satellite, space launch, and other defense manufacturing programs. In many
cases, there are no substitutes readily available." Other examples of foreign reliance included
circuit boards, night vision systems, batteries, and space sensors.
The story here is similar. When Wall Street targeted the commercial industrial base in the
1990s, the same financial trends shifted the defense industry. Well before any of the more
recent conflicts, financial pressure led to a change in focus for many in the defense industry
-- from technological engineering to balance sheet engineering. The result is that some of the
biggest names in the industry have never created any defense product. Instead of innovating new
technology to support our national security, they innovate new ways of creating monopolies to
take advantage of it.
A good example is a company called TransDigm. While TransDigm presents itself as a designer
and producer of aerospace products, it can more accurately be described as a designer of
monopolies. TransDigm began as a private equity firm, a type of investment business, in 1993.
Its mission, per
its earnings call , is to give "private equity-like returns" to shareholders, returns that
are much higher than the stock market or other standard investment vehicles.
It achieves these returns for its shareholders by buying up companies that are sole or
single-source suppliers of obscure airplane parts that the government needs, and then
increasing prices by as
much as eight times the original amount . If the government balks at paying, TransDigm has
no qualms daring the military to risk its mission and its crew by not buying the parts. The
military, held hostage, often pays the ransom. TransDigm's gross profit margins using this
model to gouge the U.S. government are a robust 54.5 percent. To put that into perspective,
Boeing and Lockheed's profit margins are listed at 13.6 percent and 10.91 percent. In many
ways, TransDigm is like the pharmaceutical company run by Martin Shkreli, which bought rare
treatments and then price gouged those who could not do without the product. Earlier this year,
TransDigm
recently bought the remaining supplier of chaff and one of two suppliers of flares,
products identified in the Defense Department's supply chain fragility report.
Yet, Trandigm's stock price thrives because Wall Street loves monopolies, regardless of who
they are taking advantage of. Take this
analysis from TheStreet from March 2019, published after the latest Inspector General
report and directly citing many of the concerning facts from the report as pure positives for
the investor:
The company is now the sole supplier for 80% of the end markets it serves. And 90% of the
items in the supply chain are proprietary to TransDigm. In other words, the company is
operating a monopoly for parts needed to operate aircraft that will typically be in service for
30 years . Managers are uniquely motivated to increase shareholder value and they have an
enviable record, with shares up 2,503% since 2009.
Fleecing the Defense Department is big business. Its executive chairman W. Nicholas Howley,
skewered by Democrats and Republicans alike in a May 2019 House Oversight hearing for making up
to 4,000 percent excess profit on some parts and stealing from the American taxpayer, received
total compensation of over $64
million in 2013 , the fifth most among all CEOs, and
over $13 million in 2018 , making him one
of the most highly compensated CEOs no one has ever heard of . Shortly after May's hearing,
the company agreed to voluntarily return $16 million in overcharges to the Pentagon, but the
share price is at near record highs.
L3 Technologies, created in 1997, has taken a different, but also damaging, approach to
monopolizing Defense Department contracts. Originally, it sought to become "the Home Depot of
the defense industry" by going on an acquisition binge, according
to its former CEO Frank Lanza. Today, L3 uses its size, its connections within the government,
and its willingness to offer federal employees good-paying jobs at L3, to muscle out
competitors and win contracts, even if the competitor has
more innovative and better priced products . This practice attracted the ire of two
Republican congressmen from North Carolina, Ted Budd and the late Walter Jones, who found
in 2017 that L3 succeeds, in part, due to "blatant corruption and obvious disregard of American
foreign interest in the name of personal economic profit."
Like TransDigm, this isn't L3's first brush with trouble. It was
temporarily suspended from U.S. government contracting for using "extremely sensitive and
classified information" from a government system to help its international business interests.
It was the subject of a scathing Senate Armed Services Committee investigation
for
failing to notify the Defense Department that it supplied faulty Chinese counterfeit parts
for some of its aircraft displays. And it agreed to pay a
$25.6 million settlement to the U.S. government for knowingly providing defective weapon
sights for years to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet, also like TransDigm, L3 has thrived despite its troubles. When the company was granted
an open-ended contract to update the Air Force's electronics jamming airplane in 2017,
Lieutenant General Arnold Bunch
outlined the Air Force's logic at a House Armed Services Subcommittee meeting. L3, he said,
is the only company that can do the job. "They have all the tooling, they have all the existing
knowledge, and they have the modeling and all the information to do that work," he said.
In other words, because L3 has a monopoly, there was no one else to pick. The system -- a
system designed by the financial industry that rewards monopoly and consolidation at the
expense of innovation and national security -- essentially made the pick for him. It is no
wonder our military capacities are ebbing, despite the large budget outlays -- the money isn't
going to defense.
♦♦♦
In fact, in some ways, our own defense budgets are being used against us when potential
adversaries use Wall Street to take control of our own Pentagon-developed technologies.
There's no better example than China's takeover of the rare earth metal industry, which is
key to both defense and electronics. The issue has frequently made the front page during the
recent trade war, but the seldom-discussed background to our dependence on China for rare
earths is that, just like with telecom equipment, the United States used to be the world leader
in the industry until the financial sector shipped the whole thing to China.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Department invested in the development of a
technology to use what are known as rare-earth magnets. The investment was so successful that
General Motors engineers, using Pentagon grants, succeeded in creating a
rare earth magnet that is now essential for nearly every high-tech piece of military equipment
in the U.S. inventory, from smart bombs and fighter jets to lasers and communications devices.
The benefit of DARPA's investment wasn't restricted to the military. The magnets make cell
phones and modern commercial electronics possible.
China recognized the value of these magnets early on. Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping
famously said in 1992 that "The Middle East has oil, China has rare earth," to underscore
the importance of a rare earth strategy he adopted for China. Part of that strategy was to take
control of the industry by manipulating the motivations of Wall Street.
Wall Street's outsized control over defense contracting and industry means that every place
a foreign adversary can insert itself into American financial institutions, it can insert
itself into our defense industry.
At an Armed Services Committee hearing in 2018, Representative Carol Shea-Porter talked
about how constant the conflict between financial concentration and patriotism had been in her
six years on the committee. She recounted a CEO once telling her, in response to her concern
about the outsourcing of defense industry parts, that he "[has] to answer to stockholders."
Who are these stockholders that CEOs are so compelled to answer to? Oftentimes, China.
Jennifer M.
Harris , an expert in global markets with experience at the U.S. State Department and the
U.S. National Intelligence Council, researched a recent
explosion of Chinese strategic investment in American technology companies. She found that
China has systematically targeted U.S. greenfield investments, "technology goods (especially
semiconductors), R&D networks, and advanced manufacturing."
The trend accelerated, until the recent flare-up of tensions between the United States and
China. "China's foreign direct investment (FDI) stock in the U.S.
increased some 800% between 2009 and 2015," she wrote. Then, from 2015 to 2017, "Chinese
FDI in the U.S. climbed nearly four-fold, reaching roughly $45.6 billion in 2016 , up from just
$12.8 billion in 2014."
This investment runs right through Wall Street, the key lobbying group trying to ratchet
down Trump's tough negotiating posture with the Chinese. Rather than showing concern about the
increasing influence of a foreign power in our commerce and industry, Wall Street banks have
repeatedly followed Archie Cox down the path of easy returns.
In 2016, J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to pay a
$264 million bribery settlement to the U.S. government for creating a program, called "Sons
and Daughters," to gain access to Chinese money by selectively hiring the unqualified offspring
of high-ranking Communist Party officials and other Chinese elites. Several other banks are
under investigation for similar practices, including Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, who, not
coincidentally,
hired the son of China's commerce minister. It appears to have worked out for them. In
2017, Goldman Sachs
partnered with the Chinese government's sovereign wealth fund to invest $5 billion Chinese
government dollars in American industry.
In short, China is becoming a significant shareholder in U.S. industries, and is selectively
targeting those with strategic implications. Congresswoman Shea-Porter's discovery that defense
industry CEOs aren't able to worry about national security because they "[have] to answer to
shareholders" was disturbing enough. But the fact that it potentially translates as CEOs not
being able to worry about national security because they have to answer to the Chinese should
elevate the issue to the top of our national security discussion. This nexus of China, Wall
Street, and our defense industrial base may be the answer to why our military advantage is
ebbing. Even when American ingenuity can thrive, too often the fruits go to the Chinese.
In short, the financial industry, with its emphasis on short-term profit and
monopoly , and its willingness to ignore national security for profit, has warped our very
ability to defend ourselves.
How Did We Get Here?
Believe it or not, America has been here before. In the 1920s and 1930s, the American
defense industrial base was being similarly manipulated by domestic financiers for their own
purposes, retarding innovation and damaging the nation's ability to defend itself. And American
military readiness was ebbing in the midst of an increasingly dangerous world full of rising
autocracies.
Today it might be artificial intelligence or drones, but in the 1930s the key military
technology was the airplane. And as with much digital technology today, while Americans
invented the airplane, many of the fruits went elsewhere. The reason was similar to the problem
of Wall Street today. The American aerospace industry in the 1930s was undermined by fights
among bankers over who got to profit from associated patent rights.
In 1935, Brigadier General William Mitchell told Congress that the United States didn't have
a single plane that could go against a "first-class power." "It is a disgraceful situation and
is due," he said, "for one thing, to this pool of patents." The lack of aerospace capacity
reflected a broader industrial problem. Monopolists refused to invest in factories to produce
enough steel, aluminum, and magnesium for adequate military readiness, for fear of losing
control over prices.
New Dealers investigated, and by the time war broke out, the Roosevelt administration was in
the midst of a sustained anti-monopoly campaign. The Nazi war machine, like China today, gave
added impetus to the problem of monopoly in key technology-heavy industries. In 1941, an
assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, Norman Littell, gave a speech to the
Indiana State Bar Association about what he called "The German Invasion of American
Business."
The Nazis, he argued, used legal techniques, like patent laws, stock ownership, dummy
corporations, and cartel arrangements, to extend their power into the United States. "The
distinction between bombing a vital plant out of existence from an airplane and preventing that
plant from coming into existence in the first place [through cartel arrangements]," he said,
"is largely a difference in the amount of noise involved."
Nazis used their American subsidiary corporations to spy on U.S. industrial capacity and
steal technology, such as walkie-talkies, intertank and ground-air radio communication systems,
and shortwave sets developed by the U.S. Army and Navy. They used patents or cartel
arrangements to restrict the production of stainless steel, tungsten-carbide, and fuel
injection equipment. According to the U.S. military after the war, I.G. Farben, the Nazi
chemical monopoly, had influence over American production of "synthetic gas and oils,
dyestuffs, explosives, synthetic rubber ('Buna'), menthol, cellophane, and other products," and
sought to keep the United States "entirely dependent" on Germany for certain types of
electrical equipment.
The Nazis took advantage of an industrial system that was, like the current one, organized
along short-term objectives. But seeing the danger, New Dealers attacked the power of
financiers through direct financing of factories, excess profits taxes, and the breaking of the
power of the Rockefeller, Dupont, and Mellon empires through bank regulation and antitrust
suits. They separated the makers of airplanes from airlines, a sort of Glass Steagall for
aerospace. During the war itself, antitrust chief Thurman Arnold, and those he influenced,
sought to end international cartels and loosen patent rules in part because they allowed
control over American industry by the Nazis.
After the war, the link between global cartels and national security vulnerabilities was a
key driver of American trade and military strategy. America pursued globalization, but with two
differences from the form we have today. First, strategists sought to prevent the recurrence of
global cartels and monopolies. Second, they sought to become industrially intertwined with
allies, not rivals. While multinational corporations stretched across the West, they did not
locate production or technology development in Moscow or among strategic rivals, as we do today
in China.
Domestically, anti-profiteering institutions and rules protected against corruption,
especially important when the defense budget comprised a large chunk of overall American
research and development. The Defense Department's procurement agency -- the Defense Logistics
Agency -- was enormously powerful and oversaw procurement and supply challenges. The Pentagon
had the power to force suppliers of sole source products -- contractors that had monopolies --
to reveal cost information to the government. The financial health of defense contractors
mattered, but so did value to the taxpayer, a skilled defense industrial workforce, and the
ability to deliver quality products to aid in national defense.
A fragmented base of contractors and subcontractors ensured redundancy and competition, and
a powerful federal apparatus with thousands of employees with expertise in pricing and
negotiation kept prices reasonable. The Defense Department could even take ownership of
specialized tooling rights to create competition in monopolistic markets with specialized spare
part needs -- which is precisely where TransDigm specializes. This authority and expertise had
been carefully cultivated over decades to provide the material necessary to equip American
soldiers for World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the first Gulf war.
In the 1980s, while Ronald Reagan allowed Wall Street free rein elsewhere in the economy, he
mostly kept Wall Street from going after the defense base. But scholars began debating whether
it made sense to have such a large and expensive negotiating apparatus to deal with
contractors, or if a more "cooperative" approach should be taken. Business consultants
argued that the Pentagon could save money if it would simply be "a better customer, by
being less adversarial and more trusting" of defense contractors.
With the end of the Cold War, these arguments found new resonance. Bill Clinton took the
philosophical change that Reagan had pushed on the civilian economy, and moved it into the
defense base. In 1993, Defense Department official William Perry gathered CEOs of top defense
contractors and told them that they would have to merge into larger entities because of reduced
Cold War spending. "Consolidate or evaporate," he said at what became known as "The Last
Supper" in military lore. Former secretary of the Navy John Lehman noted, "industry leaders
took the warning to heart." They reduced the number of prime contractors from 16 to six;
subcontractor mergers quadrupled from 1990 to 1998. They also loosened rules on sole source --
i.e. monopoly -- contracts, and slashed the Defense Logistics Agency, resulting in thousands of
employees with deep knowledge of defense contracting leaving the public sector.
Contractors increasingly dictated procurement rules. The Clinton administration approved
laws changing procurement, which, as the Los Angeles Times put it, got rid of the
government's traditional goals of ensuring "fair competition and low prices." They reversed
what the New Dealers had done to insulate American military power from financiers.
The administration also pushed Congress to allow foreign imports into
American weapons through waivers of the Buy America Act, and demanded procurement officers stop
asking for cost data. Mass offshoring took place, and businesses could increase prices
radically.
This environment attracted private-equity shops, and swaths of the defense industry shifted
their focus from aerospace engineering to balance sheet engineering. From 1993 to 2000, despite
dramatic declines in Cold War military spending and declines in the number of workers in the
defense industrial base and within the military, defense stocks outperformed the S&P.
Today, the American defense establishment quietly finds itself in the same predicament it
did in the 1930s. Despite spending large amounts of money on weapons systems, it often gets
substandard equipment. It is dependent for key sources of supply on business arrangements with
potentially hostile powers. The problem is so big, so toxic, and so difficult that few
lawmakers even want to take it on. But the increasingly obvious danger of Chinese power means
we can no longer ignore it.
The Fix
Fortunately, this is fixable. Huawei's predatory pricing success has shown policymakers all
over the world what happens when we don't protect our vital industrial capacity. Last year,
Congress strengthened the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the committee
that reviews foreign investment and mergers. The Trump tariffs have begun forcing a
long-overdue conversation across the globe about Chinese steel and aluminum overcapacity, and
Democrats like Representative Dan Lipinski are focused on reconstituting domestic manufacturing
ability.
Within the defense base itself, every example -- from TransDigm to L3 to Chinese
infiltration of American business -- has drawn the attention of members of Congress.
Representatives Ted Budd and Paul Cook are Republicans and Representatives Jackie Speier and Ro
Khanna are Democrats. They are not alone. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and
Representative Tim Ryan have joined Khanna's demand for a TransDigm investigation.
Moreover, focus on production is bipartisan. One of the most ardent opponents of
consolidation in the 1990s is current presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who in 1996
passed an amendment to block Pentagon subsidies for defense mergers, or what he called "Payoffs
for Layoffs." On the other end of the spectrum, Trump has refocused national security and trade
officials on the importance of domestic manufacturing.
Defense officials have also become acutely aware of the problem. In a 2015 briefing at the
Pentagon, in response to questions about Lockheed's acquisition of Sikorsky, then secretary of
defense Ash Carter
emphasized the importance of not having "excessive consolidation," including so-called
vertical integration, in the defense industry because it is "[not] good for the defense
marketplace, and therefore, for the taxpayer and warfighter in the long run." Carter's
acquisition chief, Frank Kendall,
also noted the "significant policy concerns" posed by the "continuing march toward greater
consolidation in the defense industry at the prime contractor level" and the effect it has on
innovation.
American policymakers in the 1990s lost the ability to recognize the value of production
capacity. Today, many of the problems highlighted here are still seen in isolation, perhaps as
instances of corruption or reduced capacity. But the problems -- diminished innovation,
marginal quality, higher prices, less redundancy, dependence on overseas supply chains, a lack
of defense industry competition, and reduced investment in research and development -- are not
independent. They are the result of the financialization of industry and of monopoly. It's time
for a new strategic posture, one that puts a premium not just on spending the right amount on
military budgets, but also on ensuring that financial actors don't capture what we do spend. We
must begin once again to recognize that private industrial capacity is a vital national
security asset that we can no longer allow Wall Street to pillage. By seeing the problem in its
totality, we can attack the power of finance within the commercial and defense base and restore
our national security capacity once again.
There are many levers we can use to reorder our national priorities. The Defense Department,
along with its new higher budgets, should have more authority to promote competition, break up
defense conglomerates, restrict excess defense contractor profits, empower contracting officers
to get cost information, and block private equity takeovers of suppliers. Congress could
reinstate the authority of the Defense Department to simply take ownership of specialized
tooling rights to create competition in monopolistic markets with specialized spare part needs,
a power it once had.
In the commercial sector, rebuilding the industrial base will require an aggressive
national mobilization strategy. This means aggressive investment by government to rebuild
manufacturing capacity, selective tariffs to protect against Chinese or foreign predation,
regulation to stop financial predation by Wall Street, and anti-monopoly enforcement to block
the exploitation of market power.
Policymakers must recognize that industrial capacity is a public good and short-term actors
on Wall Street have become a serious national security vulnerability. While private businesses
are essential to our common defense, the public sector must once again structure how we
organize our national defense and protect our defense industrial base from predatory finance.
For several decades, Wall Street has been organizing not just the financing of defense
contractors, but the capabilities of our very defense posture. That experiment has been a
failure. It is time to wake up, before it's too late.
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Open Markets Institute. His book, Goliath: The
100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, is due out this fall from Simon &
Schuster. Lucas Kunce spent 12 years in the United States Marine Corps, and is a veteran of the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The views presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily
represent the views of the Department of Defense or its components. This article was supported
by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The contents of this publication are solely the
responsibility of the authors.
Sobering read. However, it is likely that only a major war will spur legislators and
administrators into action. Until then Wall Street will reign and the US administrations will
keep threatening countries with sanctions if they buy equipment that prevents the US to
conduct an easy bombing campaign on them.
I've heard similar stories about the imminent collapse of the Russian Defense sector, they
can't make their own parts, they lack diversity of suppliers, there is a huge brain drain, no
customers (somewhat true since we practice extortion).
I'm not dismissing the author, actually quite the opposite and I am agreeing with you. The
secret ingredient is an actual sense of danger. The Russians are terrified, we pretend to be
terrified but know it's all threat inflation. If we had honest people in Congress proposing
targeted budgets for real needs rather than 'freedom of navigation' when we know it's power
projection then the fear of God might return to our habits. The author brought up the 20/30's
I bet WW2 gave us that fear again.
Dude, your government stopped being able to do anything this complicated somewhere around
1995. Your infrastructure is in shambles and diabetics are dying because of an insulin
monopoly that forces them to ration medication. The rope remark resembles you.
This is the longest litany about demise of American prowess in technology that I've ever read
in TAC so far. The story of destruction of Bell Labs, described in details by Matt Stoller is
very accurate: I have been eyewitness to it from 1983 and up to its gruesome end. Carly
Fiorina, one of the runners for President in 2016, delivered American icon coup-the-grace.
She even justified her claim on presidency on business experience: destruction of another
icon of American high-tech – Hewlett-Packard. Alas, there is the most fundamental
reason for the current situation in the 21-st century USA, was formulated 100+ years ago by
Vladimir Lenin: "For profit capitalists will be eager to sell us rope, with which we'll
hung them" .
Would anybody protest today that profit IS the Nature of capitalism ? And
more: those who substitute Reality with their wet dreams might be cured by watching
Democratic 2020 debates.
Great piece. There are lots of good articles here but not that many that tell something I
really didn't already know. Great perspective on the whole China issue. Amazing how sick our
financialized economy really is when you look under the hood.
This is excellent information. Hope folks on the Hill are reading this.
The Wall Street and finance industry depend on US military, long-term this is a disaster, but
they care only for short-term profits. Whoever thought that principles of free market apply
internationally, where other goverments are free to influence "free trade" in any way they
wish, while US goverment will do nothing is an idiot.
"... Warren's announcement of her presidential candidacy made clear that she considers Trump to be merely a symptom of this larger problem – the detritus of a crumbling democracy. Just cleaning up the garbage is not going to solve the systemic problem of plutocracy from which he emerged. If not systemically fixed today with more than cosmetics, Warren understands, the corrupt plutocracy is capable of generating even more toxic products tomorrow. ..."
Sanders, by contrast, was not a troublemaker at all. He talked about his blue-sky political
ideals as something he believed in passionately, but he separated that idealism from his
practical legislative work, which was grounded in vote counts." In other words Warren put
principles over party in the interest of advancing the issues she cared about, like a true
progressive. Sanders' messaging "revolution" was all talk and bluster but no show. Warren has
been praised
for "picking strategic battles she won with a specific set of political skills. 'I would say
she's the best progressive Democratic politician I've seen since Bobby Kennedy,'" reports the
political writer Robert Kuttner. Before she went into electoral politics Warren had already
received credit from Obama and others for establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) a progressive half-billion dollar New Deal-type agency. Can another person be named who
has been responsible for establishing a comparable key regulatory agency in recent decades? By
contrast the not easily dismissed explanation about
Sanders' lack of such accomplishments is "in a business where personal relations count, Sanders
is viewed as a brusque and inflexible loner."
Which then is the true WaPo "Revolutionary?" The tame lion who talks a good game or the
principled brinkswoman who plays a good game? It is Warren who complained to the NYT: " Democrats have been unwilling to get out there and fight." Warren did fight during
her campaign for and service in the Senate, even acquiring a reputation
(among
males , at least) for "stridency" as she was learning the ropes for coping with a
systemically corrupt political order. We should doubt anyone within such a system who is not as
strident or angry as Warren. That stance tended to enhance her power to change the system, at
least until she decided to campaign for president as a way to acquire more power to reform it.
She then appropriately revealed
"a folksier, more accessible side that wasn't always apparent in her role" in the Senate.
Former congressman Barney Frank, always a sharp observer of such matters, said of Warren,
after she had barely completed two years of her brand new "strident" career in electoral
politics: "Right now, she's as powerful a spokesperson on public policy as you could be in the
minority . She has an absolute veto over certain public-policy issues, because Democrats are
not going to cross her . Democrats are afraid of Elizabeth Warren." Can anything remotely
similar be said of Sanders after his 30 years in Washington? Indeed, Frank expressed what
Politico reported as a consensus view
that "[Sanders'] legislative record was to state the ideological position he took on the left,
but with the exception of a few small things, he never got anything done . He has always talked
about revolution, but on Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, he left the pitchfork at home and joined the
Democrats."
Warren acquired power to make change. After two more years she was so powerful that the
Clinton establishment unsuccessfully pressured her to endorse Clinton in the primaries, and
Sanders' acolytes would blame her for not making Sanders the victor by performing as his
unsolicited super-endorser. It takes exceptional strategic and other political skills, focus
and commitment to gain such power in such a short time. Unlike Sanders, even Warren's enemies
do not claim she is ineffective.
Warren, no less than Sanders, has clearly stated that the reason for her candidacy is to
fight "against a small group that holds far too much power, not just in our economy, but also
in our democracy." She says her purpose is not "to just tinker around the edges --
a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change" of
plutocracy, "a rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone
else." WaPo must have missed these parts of Warren's presidential
announcement speech which promised this challenge to the power of the systemically corrupt
plutocracy. It is the central motif of her campaign. And of course, "she has a plan for that"
– her first plan. It is her
bill S.3357. 15 th Cong. – the "Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity
Act."
Warren's announcement of her presidential candidacy made clear that she considers Trump to
be merely a symptom of this larger problem – the detritus of a crumbling democracy. Just
cleaning up the garbage is not going to solve the systemic problem of plutocracy from which he
emerged. If not systemically fixed today with more than cosmetics, Warren understands, the
corrupt plutocracy is capable of generating even more toxic products tomorrow.
Therefore, from the very start of her highly effective campaign Warren positioned herself in
opposition not just to Trump but to the economically "rich and powerful [who] have rigged our
political system as well. They've bought off or bullied politicians in both parties to
make sure Washington is always on their side." Like Sanders at his best , she calls this system by its proper name. "When
government works only for the wealthy and well-connected, that is corruption --
plain and simple. Corruption is a cancer on our democracy. And we will get rid of it
only with strong medicine -- with real, structural reform. Our fight is to
change the rules so that our government, our economy, and our democracy work for
everyone." She emphasized to Emily Bazelon, writing for the NYT: " It's structural change that interests me." She
toldTIME "If we want to make real change in this country, it's got to be systemic
change."
Ignoring the fetid distraction of Trump to focus her advocacy instead on the necessary
systemic reforms is a winning progressive strategy. Establishment Democrats will again
predictably
ignore this strategy, as they did in 2016, at their peril. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already
accurately
predicted the result of sending what Naomi Klein calls ,
"tepid centrists carrying the baggage of decades of neoliberal suffering" to battle against
mobilized totalitarians: "We have a very real risk of losing the presidency to Donald Trump if
we don't have a presidential candidate that's fighting for true transformational change in
lives of working people in the United States."
Warren has taken on the task of defeating, not appeasing, the corrupt establishment which is
willing in 2020 as it was in 2016 to take just that risk in order to preclude a progressive
revival. Warren's plan is, "First: We need to change the rules to clean up Washington. End the
corruption." This is not an opportunistic aspersion by a political con-artist, like Trump's
totally phony "drain the swamp" slogan, soon belied by his own most corrupt administration in
recent history. With Trump second to none in pandering to plutocrats, even a broad section of
his own base has abandoned the remaining mere 23% of
Americans who think he has made any progress on this central campaign promise. In Warren's
case, according to a New Yorkerprofile , "her agenda
of reversing income inequality and beating back the influence of corporate power in politics .
are issues that Warren has pursued for three decades." Her mission has nothing to do with
political calculation. It constitutes hard-earned strategic wisdom about priorities.
Once the systemic corruption is ended all the other crises from climate change and energy to
health and food policy and much more can finally all respond to currently disempowered
majorities. Systemic anti-corruption reform sustains itself first through the watchdog agencies
it creates; solutions for these other issues are not similarly sustainable once the corrupt
plutocracy refocuses its purchased influence on any modest measures that may filter through its
defenses in singular and usually highly constricted moments of reform. For example Obama's
singular unambiguous reform – the Iran nuclear deal – and other more modest Obama
reforms have been killed or wounded by Trump, because Obama left the MIC, Big
Pharma, Wall Street and the other components of the corrupt plutocracy with even
more power than he found them. Through his strategic malfeasance, for motives that
historians will need to pick over, Obama's 8 years were therefore not just unproductive, but
counterproductive for democracy and social justice.
For Warren this issue of the corrupt plutocracy is not just a majoritarian favorite adopted
to boost a political campaign. Obama campaigned
as one "tired of business as usual in Washington" who would "overcome all the big money and
influence" there and get the "lobbyists [who] dominate our government system in Washington" and
their "undue influence" out of "our way." But he woke up president not so "tired of business as
usual in Washington"after all. Refreshed by record-setting campaign cash from the Wall Street
plutocracy he did the opposite
of what many thought to be his central campaign promise. Roger D. Hodge, Mendacity of Hope:
Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism (2010) ( Obama
"the best friend Wall Street could hope for").
Warren does not seem to be just another mendacious politician on this priority issue of the
day. It is one for which Warren's prior expertise and activism drew her into politics. This is
uniquely her
own issue, emergent from a highly successful academic and policy career which brought her
into contact with the corruption which then shaped her views about its centrality. It is less
that Warren needs to be president in the mode of the usual megalomaniacal career politician
than that this paramount issue calls her to bring to the presidency her unique skills acquired
during an extraordinarily successful career outside of electoral politics. Warren herself
confides : "I know why I'm here. I have ideas for how we bring systemic change to this
country. And we're running out of time." As a University of Chicago economist told the
NYT ,
"Wall Street and its allies are more afraid of her than Bernie because when she says she'll
change the rules, she's the one who knows how to do it." Such knowledge is a relevant strategic
distinction, unlike WaPo's "Revolution versus Reform" nonsense, for the very reason that
progressive failure has for two generations been driven by lack of competent strategy not lack
of motivational ideology.
Zach Carter's
argument quoted above can be interpreted to suggest another answer than WaPo's misguided
theory for this key question of the difference between Sanders and Warren. Some claim their
differences are merely symbolic, "differences of temperament, style," " and
world views," much in the same manner as the other candidates who are mining the plutocratic
wing's war-chest of symbolic and diversionary identity politics, and single issue politics,
while at the same time they raise
money from plutocrats to seed and foster those divide and conquer divisions and strategic
errors among progressives. That argument goes that these are just different flavors of
progressivism, wholly unrelated to strategic success. But to deny the existence of objectively
important – indeed decisive strategic – differences between the two progressives in
the race would also be just as wrong as the ridiculous and disputable subjectivity of the
"Revolution versus Reform" distraction marketed by WaPo and others. It invites progressives to
distribute themselves randomly according to the subjective appeal of various styles and smiles
rather than be guided by disciplined thoughtful strategic choice which has become the decisive
factor for recovering democracy.
In the face of such distracting theories of difference, it is important for progressives to
debate and answer this question for themselves, well before the primaries, so as not to
squander their resources of time, finances and conviviality fighting
among themselves over largely subjective triggers during the important lead-up to the primary
elections. For the primaries they must be strategically united in order to win against a
plutocracy which rarely finds itself strategically impaired. I have argued at length
elsewhere that the contemporary uniquely extended failure of democracy in America since
Buckley – which can be quantified by the metric of rising economic inequality
– is fundamentally due to the failure of progressives over two generations to unite
behind effective strategy to fight the corrupt plutocracy as their priority. At those times of
similarly profound crises in the past, progressives have successfully formulated and united
behind effective strategy. In the United States, due to its own systemic cultural legacy of
racist slavery, genocide, and imperialism, joined by more universally shared issues of
patriarchy and plutocracy, there will always be fertile soil for the emergence of latent
anti-democratic elements into a totalitarian mobilization when an authentic and competent
opposition is laking. This was understood from early days, such as Franklin's famous
qualification "if you can keep it."
Trump is the direct and predictable product of the progressive failure to have forged an
effective opposition to corrupt plutocracy by the time of that strategic moment when popular
trust has been lost in the plutocratic "
center ." Lack of a unifying progressive strategy meant that volatile and highly
manipulable proto-totalitarian element would look elsewhere. As Slavoj Zizek, Trouble in
Paradise (2014) 115, posits: "The rise of Fascism is not only the Left's failure, but also
proof that there was a revolutionary potential, a dissatisfaction, which the Left was not able
to mobilize." Proto-totalitarian Trumpism is what arises when progressives are unable to unite
strategically.
The Plutocracy and its propagandists take a keen and well-financed interest in prolonging
this division among progressives. They now back Biden, or Trump. Recent reliable polling shows
Biden 30% – Sanders 19% – Warren 15%. This current data shows that supporters of
the two progressives, if united, would defeat the
plutocracy 's
status quo candidate. As the progressive choice between Sanders and Warren lingers through
the summer of 2019 in a mere contest of subjective tastes it will aggravate yet another in a
series of historical failures by progressives to unite strategically and competently at a time
when the stakes are now the highest. Continued progressive failure to act strategically for
decisively wresting control of the Democratic Party from its corrupt plutocratic establishment
will only move the country further in the direction of totalitarianism. Sanders failed at this
task in 2016 though progressives provided him resources and support to do the job. Yet another
progressive failure to organize strategically behind a competent progressive in the 2020
primaries could be terminal. The likes of WaPo will not do it for them. The necessary exercise
of their own strategic judgment in this choice needed to prevail in 2020 will be a useful
exercise of an unexercised muscle by progressives. To elect a strategist progressives must
master the strategy.
The purpose of this article is to discuss four issues for which there is evidence of an
objectively salient strategic difference between these two leading alternatives to Biden beyond
those already discussed. Though the " eminently
beatable" Biden currently leads the plutocracy's large stable of compromised candidates, it is
difficult to imagine Biden not tripping fatally over his own serial, legendarily tone-deaf and
unrepented gaffes. The plutocracy may need to draw on its deep bench in later innings.
Progressives need be prepared. The objective evidence below can assist progressives in making
the necessary early strategic choice between the two progressives for opposing the plutocracy's
eventual candidate which will help them to resist predictable distractions. The alternative to
such a strategic decision is bickering over subjective, standard-free, factually contested
assertions that too often seem to belie unattractive motivations if not actual bot
provocateurs.
Some might object that 2019 is too early for progressives to rely on polls or even to make
such a choice. My own experience in authoring a long 2015 Huffington Post article strongly
supporting Sanders is that discerning use of early polling data can provide a reliable guide to
what will remain as the decisive factors through to the end of the campaign cycle, and even
beyond. The present piece is offered in the same spirit as my 2015
article which remains relevant as an example of how early the disastrous outcome of the
establishment Democrats' 2016 status quo approach could be predicted. Since the decisive
factors are now discernible there is no advantage and great risk in delaying the inevitable
choice that progressives will make.
I disclose my personal views at the outset, if they are not already clear. Though I
supported Sanders extensively through advocacy and as a state delegate for Sanders in 2016,
lending a good deal of my time and even some money to the effort, my experience produced high
regard for self-organizing Sanders supporters but quite the opposite for the man himself.
Certainly by the time of his craven speech
at the Democratic Convention in July, if
notearlier , I had
concluded he was an incompetent
betrayer of the important role and opportunity he had been granted by his supporters, which
he wasted at a crucial moment in American history. When he is compared to Elizabeth Warren, I
now find Sanders to be
unreliable , inauthentic, and wrongly motivated as a career politician with no other
relevant skill base. This perspective has been elaborated at greater length by Jeffrey St.
Clair (2016), as referenced below.
Sanders is concededly good at expounding majoritarian policies and his nominal independence
allows him rhetorical distance from the plutocratic wing of the Democrats, which creates guilt
by association and a fat target
for the proto-totalitarian (also called "populist") right-wing. I do not deny the sincerity of
his progressive views. He has a role. That role is not a leadership role. The problem with
Sanders is execution. Chris Smith
makes a similar point in Vanity Fair when he observes that Sanders "is very good at
raising money .what Sanders was less good at in 2016 was spending his large pile of money to
win votes. Particularly the crucial Democratic primary votes of women and African-Americans.
Sanders is showing little sign that he's going to get it right this time around." Marketing
strategy is not political strategy. Sanders ran a both lucrative and wasteful 2016 campaign in
these respects and also in his failure to elaborate detailed strategy to support his big
themes, which also drew justifiable criticism of his competence.
If Bernie Sanders has not, Elizabeth Warren clearly has learned each of these lessons from
Sanders' flawed campaign. She has been generating detailed policy at such a fast pace it is
difficult to see anyone catching up to her, though Sanders has tried by feebly issuing a less
nuanced version of Wilson's college debt plan. Warren has demonstrated her ability to run a
highly effective campaign on limited funds. Spending money effectively is a strategic skill.
There do not seem to be any third-string cronies around her siphoning off funds into useless
sideshows. One imagines that if Warren possessed Sanders' 2016 mostly wasted pile of loot she
would already have reorganized the Inauthentic Opposition party – as Sheldon Wolin described the Democrats
in 2008 – into a true opposition party that it was designed by Martin Van Buren
to be at its inception.
As for Sanders' problem with reaching African-Americans, according to Rev. Al
Sharpton his progressive rival has no such problem. Of course, "Kamala [Harris] connects
with black-church audiences. Cory Booker, too," says Sharpton. "And I'll tell you who surprised
me: Liz Warren. She rocked my organization's convention like she was taking Baptist preacher
lessons." Warren thus readily solves the biggest demographic problem Sanders had and still has:
black women, particularly in the south. And this Oklahoma woman might also surprise with her
ability to use "
southern charm " to flip the script for white women still living under the South's
unreconstructed patriarchy. Her primary-election campaign strategy has been preparing her with
the experience to play an unprecedented role in American political history in the 2020 general
election.
An establishment Democratic Congressman offered
a similar observation about Warren's potential: "If she can make the leap to being a candidate
that played in the rural Midwest it could be really interesting to watch." By comparison
Sanders, used to "giving the same stump speech at event after event, numb to the hunger of the
beast he had awakened," St. Clair (2016) 8, brings a known and dated turn to the stage, which
like Biden's has little potential to surprise on its up side potential among new demographics
in this manner. The sooner Warren becomes the acknowledged front runner in the party, the
sooner she can use her proven networking skills within the party to bring some order to the
crowded primary field for purposes of deploying them effectively to reach various such
disaffected demographics. She is the person most capable of turning the lemon of an overcrowded
field of contenders into lemonade. Organizing such cooperation is something foreign to Sanders'
experience, which was demonstrated in his shutting out potential allies from his campaign. Yet
it is a significant potential strategic factor that Warren can uniquely bring for the essential
redefinition of the Democratic Party in 2020.
We already know Sanders capitulated to the plutocracy in 2016 for no
reason that he could credibly
explain . After promising his supporters to carry the fight to the Convention floor he
folded long prior to the Convention. What exactly is to be gained by progressives in trusting
Sanders not to do the same thing again? We now have the alternative of Warren who gives us no
reason to doubt and some reason to trust that she will " persist " with strategic intelligence rather
than capitulate under similar circumstances. She combines the unique qualities of a true policy
expert with the ability to communicate. But most important she is someone who has not been a
career politician, and therefore is not, like Sanders, "year after year: a politician who
promises one thing and delivers, time and again, something else entirely." St. Clair (2016) 18.
In 2016 this habit, in the form of deference to the plutocracy he campaigned against, delivered
Trump.
Having disclosed this general point of view toward the two progressives, I try to remove
these subjective understandings largely derived from my involvement in 2016 on behalf of
Sanders' effort from the analysis below of four objective factors that distinguish Sanders'
from Warren based on opinion polling of their supporters. Those with a different experience
than mine can nevertheless use these objective factors to make a strategic progressive choice.
The issue raised here is not so much about the contested fact-based considerations above, but
about the necessity for progressives to made a strategic decision based on uncontested
objective facts. The argument is that there is no reason to delay making that strategic
choice.
... ... ...
If it is true that Warren is attracting support on her merits and not for her
gender, the men who are supporting Sanders in excess numbers and at the same time prioritized a
progressive victory in 2020 should make a primary choice only after they a) get better informed
about Warren, b) read the writing of polling trendlines on the wall, c) not be fooled by
Sanders' "socialism" gambit, and d) eschew even the appearance of gender bias by immediately
unifying progressive support behind Warren.
2016 was then, 2020 is already now. Warren is not remotely a Clinton.*
* This article is based in part on the author's book, "Strategy for Democracy: From
Systemic Corruption to Proto-Totalitarianism in the Second Gilded Age Plutocracy, and
Progressive Responses" which is currently available as a free ebook .
Rob Hager is a public interest litigator who filed an amicus brief
in the Montana sequel to Citizens United and has worked as an international consultant on
anti-corruption policy and legislation.
"... The Democratic Party, thanks largely to the Clintons and their DLC nonsense, has certainly moved to the right. So far right that I haven't been able to call it the Democratic Party. ..."
"... Every Democrat should sign on to FDR's 1944 Economic Bill of Rights speech. It is hardly radical, but rather the foundation of the modern Democratic Party, or at least was before being abrogated by the "new Democrats." Any Dem not supporting it is at best one of the "Republican-lights" who led the Dem party into the wilderness. It would also behoove the party to resurrect FDR's Veep Henry Wallace's NY Times articles about the nature of big businesses and fascism, also from '44. Now that was a party of the people. 7 Replies ..."
In its most recent analysis, Gallup
found that from 1994 to 2018, the percentage of all Democrats who call themselves liberal more
than doubled from 25 percent to 51 percent.
Over the same period, the percentage of Democratic moderates and conservatives fell
steadily, with the share of moderates dropping from 48 to 34 percent, and of conservatives
dropping from 25 to 13 percent. These trends began to accelerate during the administration of
George W. Bush and have continued unabated during the Obama and Trump presidencies.
... ... ...
The anti-establishment faction contributed significantly to the large turnout increases in
Democratic primaries last year.
Pew found that from 2014 to 2018, turnout in House primaries rose from 13.7 to 19.6 percent
of all registered Democrats, in Senate primaries from 16.6 to 22.2 percent and in governor
primaries from 17.1 to 24.5 percent.
... ... ...
The extensive support among prospective Democratic presidential candidates for
Medicare for All , government-guaranteed jobs and a higher minimum wage reflects the
widespread desire in the electorate for greater
protection from the vicissitudes of market capitalism -- in response to "increasingly
incomplete risk protection in an era of dramatic social change," as the political scientist
Jacob Hacker put it in "
Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy
Retrenchment in the United States ." Support for such protections is showing signs of
becoming a litmus test for candidates running in the 2020 Democratic presidential
primaries.
... ... ...
Sawhill looks at the ideological shifts in the Democratic electorate less from a historical
perspective and more as a response to contemporary economic and social dislocation. Among both
conservatives and liberals, Sawhill argued, there is "an intellectual awakening about the flaws
of modern capitalism" -- a recognition of the failings of "neoliberalism, the idea that a
market economy with a few light guardrails is the best way to organize a society." This
intellectual climate may result in greater receptivity among voters to more radical
proposals.
These "big, bold leftist ideas" pose a strategic problem for liberals and the Democratic
Party," (sigh). Here we go again. I am an older guy (Caucasian). I attended Texas A&M
University from 1978 to 1982. My tuition payments during that entire time was $4 per credit
hour. Same for every Texas resident during that time. Roughly $128 per year. Had Texas
A&M not offered education at this modest entry point financially, I would still be
working in the Holiday Inn kitchen washing dishes. Like I was in high school. So, I don't
understand why older guys who went to school on the cheap, like me, and probably like Mr.
Edsall, are writing articles about "radical" proposals like "free" or at least "affordable"
education for Americans. We could achieve this very easily if America refocused on domestic
growth and health and pulled itself out of its continuous wars. America has spent $6 Trillion
dollars on war since 2001. For what? Nothing. Imagine how much college tuition we could have
paid instead. Imagine how that would change America. What is radical is killing people of
color in other countries for no goal and no reason. Let's refocus on domestic USA issues that
are important. Like how to get folks educated so they/we can participate in the US economy.
Mr. Edsall, what did you pay to
go to school per year? Was that "radically" cheap? For me, it was not radical to pay $128 per year. It was a blessing.
Bruce Rozenblit Kansas City, MO
Jan. 23 Times Pick
To the conservative, liberal means socialist. Unfortunately, they don't know what socialism
is. They think socialism is doing nothing and getting paid for it, a freeloader society.
Socialism is government interference in the free market, interference in production.
Ethanol
is socialism. Oil and gas subsidies are socialism. Agricultural price supports are socialism.
Tax breaks and subsidies are socialism. The defence industry is socialism. All of these
socialist policies greatly benefit big business. What liberals want is socialism of a similar
nature that benefits people. This would include healthcare, education, public transportation,
retirement, and childcare. Currently, people work their tails off to generate the profits
that pay for corporate socialism and get next to nothing in return. Daycare costs as much as
many jobs pay.
Kids graduate from college $50,000 in debt. Get sick and immediately go
bankrupt. They have to work past 70. Pursuing these policies is not some far out leftist
agenda. They are the norm in most industrialized nations.
It's hard to live free or die if
you don't have anything to eat. It's easy to be a libertarian if you make a million bucks a
year. Liberals are not advocating getting paid for doing nothing. They want people to have
something to do and get paid for it. That is the message that should be pushed. Sounds pretty
American to me. 27 Replies
This old white (liberal) man regrets that I was born too late for the FDR New Deal era and
too early to be part of this younger generation taking us back to our roots. I lived in
America when we had a strong middle class and I have lived through the Republican
deconstruction of the middle class, I much preferred the former.
Economic Security and FDR's second bill of rights is a very
good place for this new generation to pick up the baton and start running. 4 Replies
Are these really moves to the left, or only in comparison to the lurch further right by the republicans. What is wrong with
affordable education, health care, maternal and paternal leave, and a host of other programs that benefit all people? Why
shouldn't we have more progressive tax rates? These are not radical ideas. 6 Replies
As a senior, who has been a healthcare provider for decades, I hope that people will not be
afraid if they get sick, that people will not fear going bankrupt if they get sick, that they
do not have to fear they will die needlessly if they get sick, because they did not have
proper access to haeathcare treatment. If a 29 year old woman from Queens, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, can fulfill my hopes and dreams, and alleviate these fears, just to get humane
healthcare - then I say "You Go Girl!" What a wonderful world that would be..... 9 Replies
Moving to the left??? I'm 64 years old. I started out on the left and haven't moved leftward
in all these years. I'm just as far left now as when I registered to vote as a Democrat when
I was 18. We called it being liberal and the Democratic Party reflected my beliefs.
The
Democratic Party, thanks largely to the Clintons and their DLC nonsense, has certainly moved
to the right. So far right that I haven't been able to call it the Democratic Party. So far
right that I have seriously considered changing my party affiliation. Right now, the only
think keeping me in the party is this influx of vibrant new faces. One thing that will make
me leave is any ascendancy of the corporate lapdog "New Democrat Coalition" attempting to
keep my party in thrall to the Republicans. No. The electorate has not shifted sharply
leftward. We've been here all along. Our party went down a wrong path. It had better get back
on track or become a footnote. 12 Replies
I work with young adults in a university setting. The university I work for used to be really
inexpensive. It is still relatively inexpensive and still a bargain. Most of the students
have student loans. They can not make enough money in the summer or during the term to pay
for tuition, fees, housing, and food. They need jobs that will pay enough to pay for those
loans. They also need portable health care. As the employer based health insurance gets
worse, that portable health care becomes a necessity so they can move to where the jobs are.
So if a livable wage and universal health care are far left ideas then so be it. I am a
leftist. 1 Reply
Every Democrat should sign on to FDR's 1944 Economic Bill of Rights speech. It is hardly
radical, but rather the foundation of the modern Democratic Party, or at least was before
being abrogated by the "new Democrats." Any Dem not supporting it is at best one of the
"Republican-lights" who led the Dem party into the wilderness. It would also behoove the
party to resurrect FDR's Veep Henry Wallace's NY Times articles about the nature of big
businesses and fascism, also from '44. Now that was a party of the people. 7 Replies
@Michael. Pell grants and cheap tuition allowed me to obtain a degree in aerospace
engineering in 1985. I'd like to think that that benefited our country, not radicalized it.
I don't think that's entirely accurate, and even if true, leaving students to
the predations of private lenders isn't the answer. Although I'm willing to entertain your
thesis, soaring tuition has also been the way to make up for the underfunding of state
universities by state legislatures.
At the same time, there's been an increase since the 70s
in de luxe facilities and bloated administrator salaries. When administrators make budget
cuts, it isn't for recreational facilities and their own salaries -- it's the classics and
history departments, and it's to faculty, with poorly paid part-time adjuncts teaching an
unconscionable share of courses. So universities have been exacerbating the same unequal
division between the people who actually do the work (faculty) and the people who allocate
salaries (administrators) -- so too as in the business world, as you say.
I have a friend who lives on the West Coast and is constantly posting on social media about
"white privilege" and how we all need to embrace far left policies to "even the playing
field" for minorities. I always bristle at this, not because I don't support these policies,
but because this person chooses to live in a city with actually very few minorities. She also
lives in a state that's thriving, with new jobs, new residents and skyrocketing real estate
values. I, by contrast, live in a state that's declining....steadily losing jobs, businesses
and residents....leaving many people feeling uneasy and afraid. I also live in a city with a
VERY high minority crime rate, which also makes people uneasy and afraid. Coastal liberals
like my friend will instantly consider anyone who mentions this a racist, and hypocritically
suggest that our (assumed) racism is what's driving our politics. But when I look around here
and see so many Trump supporters (myself NOT included), I don't see racists desperately
trying to retain their white privilege in a changing world. I see human beings living in a
time and place of great uncertainty and they're scared! If Dems fail to notice this, and fail
to create an inclusive message that addresses the fears of EVERYBODY in the working/middle
class, regardless of their skin color, they do so at their own peril. Especially in parts of
the country like mine that hold the key to regaining the WH. Preaching as my friend does is
exactly how to lose. 5 Replies
A majority of Americans, including independent voters and some Republicans favor Medicare for
all, a Green New Deal, and higher taxes on the rich. While Trump has polarized voters around
race, Ocasio-Cortez is polarizing around class -- the three-fourths of Americans working
paycheck to paycheck against the 1 percenters and their minions in both parties. Reading the
tea leaves of polls and current Democratic Party factions as Edsall does, is like obsessing
about Herbert Hoover's contradictory policies that worsened the Depression. If Ocasio-Cortez
becomes bolder and calls for raising the business taxes and closing tax incentives,
infrastructure expansion, and federal jobs guarantee, she'll transform the American political
debate from the racist wall meme to the redistribution of wealth and power America needs. 1
Reply
Labels such as 'liberal" fail to characterize the political agenda articulated by Bernie
Sanders. By style and substance, Sanders represented a departure from the hum-drum norm. Is
something wrong about aspiring to free college education in an era when student debt totals
$1.5 trilliion? His mantle falls to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her followers. One hundred
years ago, American progressivism was spawned by Robert La Follette. As governor and senator
from Wisconsin, and as failed third party candidate for president, La Follette called for
laws to protect youth from horrendous labor practices. He called for laws to protect civil
rights. In time, many of La Follette's positions became mainstream. Will history repeated
itself? Maybe. The rise of "liberalism" in the Democratic Party is therapeutic, as evidenced
by youthful audiences who attended the Sander's rallies. Increasing voter turnout will take
back government from a minority that undermines the essence of a democratic system. A
Democratic counterbalance to the Republican "Freedom Caucus" may appear divisive to some. To
others, it offers a path to the future. 4 Replies
Ok, from the perspective of a rural white midwest retiree independent with post graduate
education, the issues weren't the democrats moving to the left, it was the Republican party
turning right (and they show no signs of stopping). Who is against an equal opportunity for
an equal quality education for everyone? My college costs years ago could be met with a
barely minimum wage job and low cost health insurance provided by the school and I could
graduate without debt even from graduate school. Seeing what years of Republican rule did to
our college and university systems with a raise in tuition almost every year while
legislative support declined every year, who is happy with that? Unions that used to provide
a majority of the apprenticeships in good jobs in the skilled were killed by a thousand tiny
cuts passed by Republicans over the years. The social safety net that used to be a hand up
became an ever diminishing hand out. What happened is those that had made it even to the
middle class pulled the ladder up behind them, taking away the self same advantages they had
in the past and denying future generations the opportunity. The young democrats and
independents coming along see this all too clearly. 1 Reply
These so-called liberal and progressive ideas aren't new. They work now in other countries
and have so for many, many years, but the rich keep screaming capitalism good, socialism bad
all the while slapping tariffs on products and subsidizing farmers who get to pretend that
this is somehow still a free market. It's fun to watch my neighbors do mental gymnastics to
justify why subsidizing soy bean farmers to offset the tariffs is a strong free market, but
that subsidizing solar panels and healthcare is socialism AKA the devil's work. All of this
underscores the reality that, much like geography, Americans are terrible with economics.
The tensions between progressive and moderate positions, liberal and conservative positions
in the Democratic Party and in independents, flow from and vary based on information on and
an understanding of the issues. What seems to one, at first glance, radically
progressive/liberal becomes more mainstream when one is better informed. Take just one issue,
Medicare for all, a progressive/liberal objective. At first glance people object based on two
main points: costs and nefarious socialism. How do you pay for Medicare for all? Will it add
to the debt? Will socialism replace our capitalist economy? People who have private medical
insurance pay thousands in premiums, deductibles, co-pays each year. The private insurance is
for profit, paying CEO's million dollar salaries and returns to stockholders. People paying
these private insurance premiums would pay less for Medicare and have more in their own
pockets. Medicare for all is no more nefariously socialistic than social security. Has social
security ended capitalism and made America a socialist country? I think not. Is social
security or Medicare adding to the national debt? Only if Congress will continue to play
their tribal political games. These programs are currently solvent but definitely need
tweaking to avoid near term shortfalls. A bipartisan commission could solve the long term
solvency issues. The more we know and understand about progressive/liberal ideas, the less
radical they become. The solution is education. 17 Replies
@Bruce Rozenblit Absolutely correct. According to the Bible of Saint Reagan, Socialism for
corporations and the rich: Good. Socialism for the poor and working class: bad.
@Michael - cheaper tuition starts with getting the Federal Govt out of the student loan
business, it's as simple as that. Virtually unlimited tuition dollars is what drove up
tuition rates. Higher Ed is a business, make no mistake.
@Bruce, have you ever considered creating a new "reality" network where the truth about
things could be told? You're quite good at articulating and defining how the world works,
without all the usual nonsense. I really appreciate your comments.
Can we please, please stop talking about AOC? Sure, she's young and energetic and is worthy
of note, but what has she accomplished? It's easy to go to a rooftop- or a twitter account-
and yell "health care and education for all!' But please, AOC, tell us how you are going to
not only pay for these ideas but actually get them through Congress and the Senate? It's just
noise, until then, and worse, you're creating a great target for the right that will NOT move
with you and certainly can label these ideas as leftist nutism- which would be fine, if we
weren't trying to get Trump out of office ASAP.. Dreams are great. Ideals are great. But
people who can get stuff actually done move the needle...less rhetoric, more actual plans
please.. 10 Replies
Its ok for a far right bigoted clown to be elected to the president and a tax cut crazy party
that wants to have a full scale assault against the environment and force more medical
related bankruptcies to be in charge? The safe candidate protected by 800 superdelegates in
2016 was met with a crushing defeat. The Democratic establishment wants a safe neo con
corporatist democrat. Fair taxation and redistribution of wealth is not some far out kooky
idea. The idea that the wealthiest Americans getaway with paying tax at 15%, if at all, is
ruinous to the country. Especially since there is an insane compulsion to spend outlandish
trillions on "national security". Universal health care would save the country billions of
dollars. Medicare controls costs much more effectively than private insurers. As with defense
the US spends billions more on health care than other countries and has worse medical
outcomes. Gentrification has opened fissures in the Democrats. The wealthy price out other
established communities. The problems of San Francisco and Seattle and other places with
gentrification need to be addressed before an open fissure develops in the party. 2 Replies
@Midwest Josh It's time for higher education to stop being a business. Likewise it's time to
stop electing leaders who are businessmen/women. 38 Replies
One could argue that many of these ideas are not that far left - rather it's a result of more
and more Americans realizing that WE are not the problem. Clean water and air, affordable
health care and affordable education are not that radical.
@Midwest Josh Hmmm, how old are you Midwest Josh? There were student loans back in the 1970s
when college cost me about $400 a year. Maybe something happened when that failed Hollywood
actor spouted slogans like "Government is not the solution, government is the problem" (and,
no, it was not taken out of context, he most definitely DID mean that government is the
problem - look it up) www.remember-to-breathe.org 38 Replies
You are studying this like it represents some kind of wave but in fact it is just a few
districts out of 435. These young women seem extraordinarily simply because the liberal media
says they are extraordinary. If the media attention on these new representatives were to
cease, no one except their families, their staff, and maybe Stephen Colbert would notice. 9
Replies
Finally, the left came out of its hibernation. We have spent the last decade or more either
sleeping or hiding, while at the same time, the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, Trump, and his
minions were taking over our government---It is such a breath of fresh air to finally listen
to airwaves filled with outrage over CEO's making millions of dollars an hour, of companies
that have become monopolies, of tax plans that bring back the middle class---it took us a
while, but we are back. 2 Replies
For so long (40+ years) the political spectrum has been pulled wildly and radically to the
right across so many issues. The Democratic party has for the most part ''triangulated''
their stances accordingly to essentially go along with republicans and corporate interests
for a bargain of even more tax/corporate giveaways to hold the line on social issues or
programs. It has now gotten to the point that continuous war has been waged for two (2)
decades and all the exorbitant costs that go along with that. There has been cut, after cut
after cut whereas some people and businesses are not paying any taxes at all now.
Infrastructure, social spending and education are all suffering because the cupboard is now
bare in the greatest and most richest country in the world. It just came out the other day
that ONLY (26) people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire world's
population. That amount of wealth in relation to dwindling resources of our planet and
crushing poverty for billions is abjectly obscene on so many levels. Coupled with all of the
above, is the continued erosion of human rights. (especially for women and dominion over
their own bodies) People are realizing that the founding fathers had a vision of a secular
and Progressive nation and are looking for answers and people that are going to give it to
them. They are realizing that the Democratic party is the only party that will stand up for
them and be consistent for all.
Democrats just don't like to win presidential elections. Go ahead. Move left. But remember,
you are not taking the rest of the country with you. As a NeverTrump Republican, I'll vote
for a moderate Democrat in 2020. No lefties. Sorry. Don't give the country a reason to give
Trump four more years. Win the electoral college vote instead of complaining about it. The
anti-Trump is a moderate. 5 Replies
"These "big, bold leftist ideas" pose a strategic problem." No they don't. The Real Problem
is the non-thinking non-Liberal 40% of Democrats and their simpatico Republicans who are
programmed to scream, "How will we pay for all that?" Don't they know all that money will
just be stolen? They were silent when that money was stolen by the 0.1% for the Tax Giveaway
(they're now working on tax giveaway 2.0) and by the military-industrial complex (to whom
Trump gave an extra $200,000,000,000 last year), various boondoggle theft-schemes like the
Wall, the popular forever Wars (17 years of Iraq/Afghanistan has cost $2,400,000,000,000 (or
7 times WW2)), and the Wall Street bailouts. Don't those so-called Democrats realize whose
money that was? First of all, it's our money. And second, our money "spent" on the People is
a highly positive investment with a positive ROI. Compare that to money thrown into the usual
money pits which has no return at all - except more terrorists for the military, more income
inequality for the Rich, and Average incomes of $422,000 for Wall Street. When the People's
money is continually stolen, how can anyone continue to believe that we're living in a
democracy?
Bruce, a succinct summary of your post is this: What we have now is socialism for the wealthy
and corporations (who, as SCOTUS has made clear, are people, too) and rugged individualism
for the rest of us. What we're asking for is nothing more than a level playing field for all.
And I hope that within my lifetime SCOTUS will have an epiphany and conclude that, gosh,
maybe corporations aren't people after all. We can only hope. 27 Replies
Edsall writes with his normal studious care, and makes some good points. Still, I am growing
weary of these "Democrats should be careful and move back to the center" opinions. Trump
showed us that the old 'left-right-center' way of thinking is no longer applicable. These
progressive policies appeal to a broad majority of Americans not because of their ideological
position, but because so many are suffering and are ready to give power to representatives
who will finally fight for working families. Policies like medicare for all are broadly
popular because the health insurance system is broken and most people are fed up and ready to
throw the greedy bums out. We've been trying the technocratic incrementalism strategy for too
long, with too little to show for it. Bold integrity is exactly what we need. 1 Reply
@Bruce Rozenblit Thank you; as others have commented already, this is so well said. To build
on your point: just yesterday, a commenter on a NYT article described AOC as a communist.
Incredible. The extent to which decent, pragmatic and, in a bygone era, mainstream, ideas are
now painted as dangerous, extreme, and anti-American is both absurd and disturbing. 27
Replies
If Hillary were President, there would never have been a shutdown. That is the lesson that
Mrs. Pelosi, AOC and Democrats should carry forward to 2020. 5 Replies
@LTJ No one is promoting ''free stuff'' - what is being proposed is that people/corporations
pay into a system Progressively upwards (especially on incomes above 10,000,000 dollars per
year) that allowed them and gave them the infrastructure to get rich in the first place. I am
sure you would agree that people having multiple homes, cars, and luxury items while children
go hungry in the richest nation in the world is obscene on its face. Aye ?
@Ronny Respectfully, President Clinton had a role in the deconstruction of the middle class.
My point is many of the folks in the news today were in congress that far back. Say what you
will about President Trump and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez,I believe they both have exposed
the left,the right,the press for what they are. Please choose your own example. I don't agree
with all of her positions, but I can't express how I enjoy her making the folks that under
their watch led us to where we find ourselves today squirm and try to hide their anger for
doing what she does so well. I've been waiting 55 years for this. Thank you AOC.
@Bruce Rozenblit Bruce, spot on. The point of the New Deal was not to replace capitalism with
socialism, but to save capitalism from itself by achieving the balance that would preserve a
capitalist economic system but one in which the concerns of the many in terms of freedom from
want and freedom from fear were addressed. In other words, the rich get to continue to be
rich, but not without paying the price of not being hung in the public square - by funding an
expanding middle class. A middle class that by becoming consumers, made the rich even richer.
But then greed took over and their messiah Saint Reagan convinced this large middle class
that they too could be rich and so cutting taxes for the wealthy (and in the process
redistributing the wealth from the expanding middle class to the wealthy) would one day
benefit them - when they were wealthy. Drunk on the promise of future wealth, and working
harder than ever, the middle class failed to notice whose ox was being gored and voted
Republican. And now finally, the pendulum swings. Amen. 27 Replies
@Socrates I'm reminded of a poll I saw several years ago that presented positions on issues
without attaching them to any individual politician or affixing labels of party or ideology.
The pol aimed to express the issue in neutral language without dog whistles or buzzwords.
When the pollsters had the data, they looked for the member of Congress whose positions best
reflected the view of the majority of respondents. It was Dennis Kucinich, the scary liberal
socialist bogeyman of his day.
I lived in Europe for a long time. Not even most right wing parties there wish to abolish
universal healthcare, replace low or tuition-free colleges with college debt, etc. The US has
politically drifted far to the right when the center Democrats were in charge. Now Trump is
lurching the country to extreme raw capitalism at the cost of national debt, even our
environment and climate, Democrats need to stop incrementalism. Simple as that. 1 Reply
@Michael Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was opposed to the eternal triumvirate axis of inhumane
evil aka capitalism, militarism and racism. King was a left-wing socialist community
organizer. In the mode of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. And the Nazarene of Matthew 25:
31- 46. America's military and prison industrial complexes are the antithesis of America' s
proclaimed interests and values. America is number one in arms, money and prisoners. MAGA? 38
Replies
Bernie and AOC don't seem all that radical to me for the reason this op-ed points out -- I
grew up in a New Deal Democratic family. My Grampa was an electrician supervisor for the City
of Chicago and my Granma was a legal secretary. They wanted universal health care and free
education and jobs for all. Those things made sense then, and they make sense now. They
provide solutions to the deep problems of our society, so who wouldn't want them? We've had a
lab test -- other than actual jobs for all Northern Europe has these things and we don't.
Neo-liberalism, its Pay-Go formula for government, and its benefits for the rich fails on
most counts except producing massive inequality and concentrated wealth. Bernie voters want
solutions to inequality and climate change, and they are readily available if government can
be wrested from the hands of Republicans like Trump and neo-liberals.
@Michael To me, the key sentence in your excellent post is that American needs to "refocus on
domestic growth and health and pull itself out of its continuous wars." All policiticians
hoping for our votes in the future need to make clear where they stand on this. As to those
who say that making all those weapons creates jobs, is there any reason that we couldn't
instead start producing other quality goods in the U.S. again? 38 Replies
@chele Me too! I am 72 y/o, retired, college educated at a rather tough school in which to
gain entrance. Lived below my means for over 40 years. Parents are both WW2 Marine Corps
officers(not career), who voted Republican and were active in local elections. They would be
shocked and disgusted at what that "party" represents now.
I think you look at all this in a vacuum. Democrats veered left because there was a need to
counterbalance what was happening on the right. They see Republicans aggressively trying to
undo all the gains the left had achieved the previous several decades. Civil rights, Womens'
rights, anti-poverty efforts, and so on all not just being pushed to the right, but forced to
the right with a bulldozer. It got to a tipping point where Democrats could clearly see the
forest for the trees. A great deal of this was a result of Republicans inability to candy
coat their agenda. Universal healthcare....not being replaced by affordable alternatives, but
by nothing. Tax cuts that were supposed to help the middle class, but, as evidenced by the
government shutdown, giving them no economic breathing room. And, in fact, making their tax
cut temporary, something nearly impossible to reverse with such a high deficit. Attacking
immigrants with no plan on who, actually, would do the work immigrants do. The list goes on
and on. In the past, many social programs were put in place not so much to alleviate
suffering as to silence the masses. Now Republicans feel the time has come to take it all
back, offering easily seen through false promises as replacements. That the left should see
the big picture here and say "Not so fast" should come as absolutely no surprise. All they
need now is a leader eloquent enough to rally the masses.
I think the Democratic Party is finally returning to its roots. We are now engaging in the
same politics which gave us control of the House for about fifty years. I went to my first
International Union convention is 1972 at which Ted Kennedy was one of the featured speakers.
One of the themes of the convention was healthcare for all. Now it treated as some sort of
radical proposal from the left. I am not certain why clean air and water, affordable health
care and housing, combating climate change, raising wages, taxing the highest income
brackets, updating our infrastructure, solving the immigration issue, and providing aid not
weapons to other nations, are considered liberal or socialistic. I think it represents the
thinking of a progressive society looking to the future rather than living in the past. 1
Reply
@David G. I would also say that many people think a cooperative economic enterprise, such as
a worker owned factory, is Socialism. But this is blatantly wrong and is pushed by the rich
business and stock owners to denigrate these types of businesses. Cooperatives have often
proven themselves quite successful in navigating a free market system, while simultaneously
focussing on workers rights and ownership. We need more if this in North America. 27 Replies
@Samuel She's been in office less than a month. You want to shut down the conversation that
is finally bringing real hope & passion to average people, & is bringing a new set of
goals (& more integrity) to the Democratic Party? Paying for single-payer has been
rehashed many times; just look at all the other 'civilized' countries who have it. For once,
try putting the savings from ending co-pays, deductibles, & premiums into the equation.
Think about the savings from large-group bids, & negotiations for drug prices, & the
savings from preventative medicine heading off more expensive advanced treatment. Bernie
Sanders has been explaining all this for years now. 'Less rhetoric'? The conversation is
(finally) just now getting started! You start by explaining what is possible. When enough
people understand it, the needle will start to move. Watch.
@JBC, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was voted into congress and then the media took notice. It wasn't
the other way around. My only hope is that she stays the course.
@Bruce Rozenblit And don't forget the biggest socialist project of our time - the wall! And
withholding 800k employee checks to do so? That's socialism at gun point. 27 Replies
There are two points left out of all of the analysis of both Pressley's and Ocasio-Cortez's
campaigns. First of all, both women did old fashioned retail politics, knocking on doors,
sending out postcards, gathering as many volunteers as they could and talking about the
issues with voters face to face. They took nothing for granted. This is precisely what
Crowley and Capuano did not do. Second, they actually listened to the voters regarding what
they needed and wanted in Congressional representation. What both of the stand for is neither
Liberal or Conservative. What they stand for human values. This is not to say that Capuano
and Crowley did not stand for these same values, but they took the voter for granted. That is
how you lose elections. The Democrats are going back to their roots. They have found that the
Mid-terms proved that issues of Health Care, minimum wages, good educations for all despite
economic circumstances, and how important immigration is to this country really matter to the
voters. They need to be braver in getting this across before the next election And the press
might want to start calling the candidates Humane, period. 1 Reply
@MIMA Yes, absolutely. I'm retired from the healthcare field after practicing 38 years. It is
unconscionable that we question the access of healthcare to everyone. The complaint usually
heard from the right is about "the takers." Data I've seen indicates that the majority on
"the dole" are workers, who can't make ends meet in the gig economy or the disabled. That
some lazy grubbers are in the system is unavoidable; perfection is the enemy of the good.
@Stu Sutin I agree, "Liberal" is too broad a term, as so-called liberals do not agree on
everything, especially the degree. We can be socially liberal, while economically
moderate--or vice versa. Some believe in John Maynard Keynes economics, but appose abortion.
Some want free college tuition, while others support public schools but do not support the
public paying for higher education. Our foreign policy beliefs often differ greatly. What
joins us is a belief in a bottom up economy, not top down--and a greater belief in civil
liberties and a greater distribution of wealth. Beyond that, our religious and cultural
beliefs often differ.
I think the Internet has provided an influx of new understanding for the American left.
They've learned that things considered radical here are considered unexceptional in the rest
of the developed world. There is a realization that the only reason these are not normal here
is because of a lack of political will to enact them. That will is building as the ongoing
inequities are splashed across the front pages and the twitter feeds. It is the beginning of
the end for American exceptionalism (a term coined by Stalin as America resisted the wave of
socialism spreading around the world in the early 20th century). Unbridled capitalism lasted
longer than communism but only because its costs were hidden longer. We need to find the
sustainable middle path that allows for entrepreneurship along with a strong social safety
net (and environmental protection). This new crop of progressive Democrats (with strong
electoral backing) might lead the way.
at 63, I was there. I don't want second Trump administration either, but the route to a
Democratic victory is not cozying up to the corporations and the wealthy, but by stating
clearly, like FDR, "they are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred." We
need people who are willing to say that the rich deserve to be taxed at a higher rate,
because they have benefited more from our society, that no income deserves to be taxed at a
lower rate than the wages paid to working people, and that vast wealth needs to be earned,
not inherited. Emmanuel Saez makes persuasive arguments, but they need to be made in the
language of the working people. 12 Replies
@Michael Your $128 a year would be more like $414 or so in today's dollars. Still . . . I
went to Brooklyn College, part of the tuition-free City University of New York from
1969-1973. We paid a $53 general fee at the start of every semester ($24 for a summer
semester), and that was it. Wealthy or poor, everyone paid the same amount (about $334 in
today's dollars). 38 Replies
@JRS Democratic party leaders have been in favor of more border security and an overhauled
immigration system for as long as I've been alive. The suggestion (clearly this comment's
intention) that Democrats favor "open" borders, ports, etc., is a myth propagated by an ever
more influential right wing. And it's working: it's been repeated so often that it's now
virtually an assumption that Democrats favor open borders, despite that fact that any
critical thought on the subjection indicates the opposite is true.
I'm a very moderate Democrat -liberal on social issues and very supportive of free global
trade- who would vote for any of the current Democrats over Trump, but would leave the party
if AOC's ideas became the norm. I don't have a problem in principle with a 70% top marginal
tax rate or AOC's Green New Deal- Meaning, these aren't moral issues for me per se. I just
believe they would bankrupt the economy and push us into a chaos far worse than what we're
seeing under Trump. 5 Replies
@Michael The increase in fees for education to include the books along with the lowering of
standards for the classes taken is part and parcel of the reagan revolution to remake
American society. One of the most problematic things for those seeking to undo what FDR did
was the plethora of well educated and well read people American had managed to create. How
were they going to be able to overcome this? You can deduce whatever methods you may know but
I saw them tank the economy on purpose and prey on the fear that it created with more and
more radical propaganda. Once they got into office they removed the best and brightest of our
Civil Service and began making legal the crimes they wanted to commit and changing laws and
procedures for how things were done so that people would eventually come to think of this as
the "right" way when it was in fact purpose designed to deny them their due. 38 Replies
Younger candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, appeal to younger voters. John Kennedy
appealed to WWII veterans, most of whom were in their 30s when they elected him. One of the
reasons for Barack Obama's support in 2008 among younger voters is that he was a younger
candidate and they identified with a younger candidate. That appeal to a younger electorate
will play a larger role in future elections. Don't focus too strongly on issues. Democrats
will win by a landslide in 2020 if they nominate a younger candidate that can inspire younger
voters. November 3, 2020. 1 Reply
@Samuel Actually, running a campaign and getting elected is a significant accomplishment.
Before anyone decides about what bills to promote and means of paying for them, we need a
momentum of discourse, and promoting that discourse is another major accomplishment. You and
many millions of others, also, have good reasons to be frustrated. Let's just try to actually
"work" at talking the talking and walking the walk, and maybe we will--or maybe we
won't--arrive some place where we can see some improvement.
The interesting part of this piece is the statement about politicians moving unwillingly. So
some Democratic Congressmen and Congresswomen are allowing their personal beliefs to be
compromised for the glory of being elected or re-elected? Sounds like someone I would not
care to support. 2 Replies
A great essay! The wild card in all this analysis, of course, is what happens when these
(now) young voters, age, eventually partner, and have kids. As every generation has shown,
the needs of a voter changes as they age. I'm surrounded by many new neighbors with little
kids who moved out of Brooklyn and Jersey City who suddenly find themselves concerned about
rising property taxes- they now see the balance between taxes and services. Not something
they worried about a few years ago. 2 Replies
@Tracy Rupp I am a senior citizen heterosexual white male. I do not apologize for my race,
gender, etc. In fact, I am proud of our accomplishments. I do apologize for my personal
wrongs, and strive to improve myself.
"This will be difficult, given the fact that what is being proposed is a much larger role for
government, and that those who are most in need of government support are in the bottom half
of the income distribution and disproportionately minority -- in a country with a long racist
history." True enough, but if progressives want actual people in that bottom half to lead
happier lives, the focus of any programs should not be to employ armies in left-leaning and
self-perpetuating "agencies," but rather to devise policies to help people develop the
self-discipline to: A) finish high school, B) postpone the bearing of children until marriage
(not as a religious construct but as a practical expression of commitment to the child's
future), and; C) Find and get a regular job. These are supported by what objective, empirical
data we have. These have not struck me as objectives of the rising left in the Democratic
party. Mostly, I see endless moral preening, and a tribal demonizing of the "other," just
exactly as they accuse the "other." In this case the "other" is we insufficiently "woke" but
entirely moderate white folks who still comprise a plurality of Americans. I see success on
the left as based primarily on an ability to express performative outrage. But remember, you
build a house one brick at a time, which can be pretty boring, and delivers no jolt of
dopamine as would manning the barricades, but which results in a warm, dry, comfortable place
to live. 4 Replies
@Concerned Citizen For your information, Holiday Inns typically had a restaurant in the hotel
in the days Michael is talking about so... whatever! 38 Replies
My father fought in Germany during WWII, then came home and went to college on the GI bill.
Both my parents received federal assistance for a loan on their first house. Later, during
retirement, they were taken care of by Medicare and given an income by Social Security. They
worked hard, kept their values, lived modestly, and voted for Democrats. Apparently, they
were wild-eyed, leftist-socialist radicals, and I never knew it.
@Bruce Shigeura AOC in some ways is doing what Bernie was doing -- mobilizing people around
class as you say -- but the difference is that AOC doesn't shy away from issues of racial
justice. Bernie seemed to want to unite people by ignoring issues of race, as if he was
afraid that mentioning race too much might drive Whites away. AOC seems able to hold whites
on the class issue while still speaking to the racial justice issues that are important to
non-Whites. She's an extraordinary phenomenon: smart, engaging, articulate and with personal
connections to both the White and Non-White worlds, so she threatens neither and appeals to
both.
@Stu Sutin "Is something wrong about aspiring to free college education in an era when
student debt totals $1.5 trilliion?" Yes. If you're the Congressperson who gets his/her
funding from the lenders.
A O-C has yet to open a district office. A O-C is more interested in "national" issues and
exposure than those of her district. What A O-C may have forgotten is that it is her district
and constituents that have to re-elect her in less than 2 tears (or not): "Would you rather
have a Congress member with an amazing local services office, or one that leads nationally on
issues?" she queried her 1.9 million followers on Instagram -- a number that is well over
twice the population of her district. The results strongly favored national issues."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/nyregion/aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-district-office.html
As Mr. Edsall points out, her district is not necessarily progressive and liberal and while
there may be national issues, at the bottom line, many of her instagram groupies are not her
constituents. Democrats like to constantly point out that Ms. Clinton won the popular vote,
and she was the non-liberal-progressive Democrat. I am sure that the Republicans pray for the
success of the Democratic left. They seek to give voice to that left. That will bring the
swing votes right back to or over to the Republicans, without, but possibly even with Mr.
Trump (if the Democrats cross a left-wing tipping point). Bottom line, instagram is fine and
likes are great, twitter is good for snappy answers, but representatives to the House have to
deliver to their district and constituents. A O-C leads, but to the salvation of the
Republican party. 6 Replies
@Joshua Schwartz M. Ocasio-Cortez explained on The Late Show the other night that the reason
she has not opened her district office is due to the Government Shutdown. The people charged
with setting up the office are on furlough, the money for the office is being held up and she
staff or furnish the office.
Isn't this somehow the natural swing of things? Years of heavy-handed politics benefitting
small minorities on the right have taken their toll, so now new ideas are up at bat. By the
way, these ideas aren't really that bold at all - many countries have living minimum wages or
mandatory healthcare, and are thriving, with a much happier population. Only in the context
of decades-long, almost brainwash-like pounding of these ideas as 'Un-American' or
'socialist' can they be seen as 'bold'. American exeptionalism has led to a seriously
unbalanced and dangerously threatened social contract. Tell me again, Republicans: why is a
diverse, healthy and productive population living under inspiration instead of constant fear
so bad?
The "experts" offering advice here seem to have forgotten that Hillary Clinton listened to
them in 2016: the party decided that appealing to suburban Republicans and Jeb Bush voters
was more important than exciting the Democratic party base. The other hazard of calculated
politics is that the candidate is revealed to be a phony, believing in nothing but power or
that it's simply "her turn" -- an uncompelling program for a voter. 1 Reply
They will all face primary challengers in 2020. Tlaib and Omar didn't even win a majority of
the primary vote. There were so many candidates running in those primaries, they only managed
a plurality. And let's be honest about the demographic changes in the districts Pressley and
Ocasio Cortez won. They went from primarily ethnic White to minority majority. Both women
explicitly campaigned on the premise that their identity made them more representative of the
district than an old White male incumbent. Let's not sugarcoat what happened: they ran
explicitly racist campaigns. They won with tribalism, not liberal values. Democrats actually
need more candidates like Lucy McBath, Antonio Delgado, and Kendra Horn if they want to
retain Congressional control and change policy. And many minorities and immigrants aren't
interested in the far left faction. We don't have a problem with Obama and a moderate
approach to social democracy.
@JABarry - Some data: Canada has a program like Medicare for All, and its bottom line health
care statistics are better than ours in spite of a worse climate. We paid $9506.20 per person
for health care in 2016. In Canada, they paid $4643.70. If our system we as efficient as
Canada's, we would save over $1.5 TRILLION each and every year. This is money that can be
used for better purposes. If one uses the bottom line statistics, we see that both Canada and
the UK (real socialized medicine) do better than we do: Life expectancy at birth (OECD):
Canada- 81.9, UK - 81.1, US - 78.8 Infant Mortality (OECD)(Deaths per 1,000): Canada - 4.7,
UK - 3.8, US - 6.0 Maternal Mortality (WHO): Canada - 7, UK - 9, US - 14 Instead of worrying
how we would pay for it, we will have the problem of how to spend all the money we would
save. BTW can you point to a period where too high federal debt hurt the economy? In 1837 the
federal debt as a percentage of GDP was 0%; it was 16% in October of 1929. Both were followed
horrendous depression. It was 121% in 1946 followed by 27 years of Great Prosperity.
Best comment in some time. I work and live too much in the'big flat'. I am a very hard core
Chicago Democratic Liberal from birth, but the distressed towns and small cities are facing
extinction. then what?
@In the know I'm formerly Republican, and female. I'm on the ACA, and while premiums were
going up slowly, they've exploded in the past two years due to Republican sabatoge. They are
certainly no reason to vote for Trump.
@Midwest Then the rich will only be eligible for college. Give me government intervention any
time. I am retired military . Off base in Lewes De a mans hair cut is now 20.00 plus tips.
Just a plain cut. On base with gov intervention it 12.00 . Capitalism you support is only for
the 1 percent the 99 percent never gets ahead. 38 Replies
She has a massive throng of twitter followers, is completely unconcerned with facts, uses
publicity to gain power and seems unwilling to negotiate on her positions. Remind you of
anyone else? 3 Replies
The establishment is trying so hard to spin the progressives push on the issues of Medicare
for All, free state college and university tuition, a livable wage of $15/hr as ponies and
fairy dust and an extreme "socialist" makeover/takeover of America. But from all the polls
that I've seen, these policies are actually quite popular even with a majority of
Republicans. Yes, a majority of Republicans. A Medicare for All would cover everybody,
eliminate health insurance premiums for individuals and businesses ( which by the way are
competing with businesses in other countries that have a single-payer system) and would save
$2 trillion over ten years (Koch bothers funded study). The result would be a healthy and
educated populace. But how to pay for this? Well, we spend over $700 billion on our military
while Russia spends $20 billion and China spends $146 billion, so there seems to be plenty of
money that is already being spent to be redirected back to us without compromising national
security. A Medicare for All system supports a private healthcare system just as it is now,
except instead of giving some insurance company our premium who then skims off a big chunk
for their profit, we pay it to our government who then administers the payments to the
healthcare provider(s). The system is in place and has been for people 65 years and older and
works very well with high satisfaction rates. Just expand it to all. 2 Replies
@Midwest Josh Wrong!!! Tuition's have skyrocketed because for past 35 years States have
slashed support for public universities. The Federal Government took over student loan
business from predatory banks which was a very good thing but unfortunately have kept
interest rates high ... Student loans is a profit center for Federal Government 38 Replies
@Concerned Citizen Go ahead and check the holiday inn in Palestine Texas. It had a small
restaurant in 1978. I was their dishwasher. There was no ford plant nearby. 38 Replies
@Bruce Rozenblit Well put. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: "We all too often have socialism
for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor." 27 Replies
@stuart They used to call it the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party". I was glad when
Thomas Edsall finally got around, in this piece, to mentioning that what is often thought of
as a radical leftist turn today, due to just how far to the right our general political
discussions had gone, was actually pretty much mainstream Democratic policy for much of the
middle 20th century.
@Len Charlap Quite simply Canada's healthcare quality is ranked 16th in the world, while ours
is lower ranked at 23rd. And we pay twice as much. That indicates some funny business going
on.
It is remarkable that "big, bold leftist ideas" include - preserving the historical
relationship between the minimum wage and the cost of living - lowering the cost of college
to something in line with what obtained for most public colleges and universities in the 50s,
60s and 70s and exist in the rest of the Western world today - adapting our existing Medicare
system to deliver universal coverage of the kind generally supported across the political
spectrum in Canada and the UK Democrats should reject the "leftist" label for these ideas and
explain that it is opposition to these mainstream ideas that is, in fact, ideological and
extreme. 2 Replies
@Marc Except that's outright false. Offices are open. All the other new Congress members from
New York are setup and taking care of people. She doesn't care about constituent service. She
revels in the media attention, but isn't getting anything done even in the background. NY has
three Congress members (Lowey, Serrano, Meng) whose under-appreciated work on the
appropriations committee actually helps ensure our region's needs and liberal priorities are
reflected in federal spending. Meanwhile Ocasio Cortez is working on unseating Democrats
incumbents she deems insufficiently leftist e.g. Cuellar, Jeffries. Who needs Republicans
when you have Socialists trying to destroy the Democratic Party.
The NYT should consider getting some columnists who reflect the new (FDR? new?) trends in the
country and in the Democratic party. The old Clinton/Biden/Edsall Republican lite approach --
all in for Wall Street -- is dying. Good riddens. BTW I'm a 65 year old electrical engineer.
1 Reply
You're missing something big here, sir. Capuano was a Clinton superdelegate in 2016 who
declared well before the primaries (like all other Mass superdelegates, save for Warren who
waited until well after the primaries.) Thereby in effect telling constituents that their
vote was irrelevant, as they were willing to override it. Somerville went for Sanders 57% to
42%. Putting party over voters maybe isn't a great idea when 51% of voters in Massachusetts
are registered Unenrolled (Independent) and can vote in primaries. Bit rich to signal that
our votes don't matter, but then expect it later as it maybe actually does matter after all.
Pressley was all in for Clinton, which is of course suspect. But like me, she had only one
vote.
@C Wolfe Wow. Funky Irishman has been, for many months, writing about and presenting
excellent data showing that the US is actually a center-left (if not strongly progressive)
country. I used to present this evidence to Richard Luettgen (where has he gone??) who kept
insisting we are center-right (but never, as was his custom, presented any evidence for
this). your example is the best I've ever seen. I'm a member of a 4000-strong Facebook group,
the "Rational Republicans" (seriously - a local attorney with a decidedly liberal bent
started it and almost beat regressive Patrick McHenry here in Asheville). I've been making
this point on the FB page for the past year and people are stunned when they see the numbers.
I'm going to post your example as well. Excellent!
It's funny to watch people shocked when she makes her proposal. Her ideas are very old and
have worked in the past in various cultures. But the point that she can voice them is because
she can. Her people put her there because she said those things with their approval. She
reflects her community ideals. Just like Steve King.
I'm already tired of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I'm a liberal and Hispanic...its constant
overkill, everybody falling over her, total overexposure. The news media has found their
darling for the moment. Let's see what she accomplishes, what bills she proposes and passes
that is the work to be done not being in the news 24/7.
Until the left figures out that every single one of their most desired Policy Implementations
are only feasible with controlled immigration and secured borders doesn't matter who the
messenger is. Want Single Payer Healthcare? Can't have it and Open Borders too. Want free
College? Can't have it and Open Borders too. Want Guaranteed Basic Income? Cannot have it in
any form without absolutely controlling the Border. So, either you want that influx of new
voters to win elections or you want to see new policy changes that will benefit all
Americans. Pick one and fight for it. You seem to have chosen the new voters. 3 Replies
@Matt Williams But they are extraordinary, relative to their bought and paid for colleagues.
That came first and the media is reporting it. Their authenticity is naive, but it shouldn't
be, and that's the story. It's a glimmer of hope for democracy that may be extinguished -
let's celebrate this light in the darkness, while it lasts.
@Bruce Rozenblit This is. Spot. On. The socialism of: Privatize the profits, socialize the
losses. It's defined American economic and social policy for the last 30+ years and we can
see the results today. 27 Replies
@shstl I agree and as a moderate Democrat, I already feel like an outsider, so imagine what
independents are thinking. AOC stated that she wants to primary Hakeem Jeffries, who is a
moderate. With statements like these, made before spending a day in congress, who needs the
GOP to tear apart the Democratic party? Sanders didn't even win the primary and his
supporters claim the primary was stolen. We lost the house and senate all by ourselves. I
already have AOC fatigue and my rejoice for the blue wave is still there but fading.
The Democratic party was shoved to the right with Bill Clinton's Third Way ideology that made
its focus the same wealthy donor class as the Republicans, while breaking promises to its
former base, the middle and working class. This led to the unchecked capitalism that produced
the Crash of '08, and the subsequent bail out to Wall St. The powers running the DNC - all
Third Way disciples, like Hilary - refused to take up any of these "socialist" causes because
their wealthy donors didn't want to have their escalating wealth diminished. Meanwhile these
Democrats In Republican Clothing were banking on continued support from those they had
abandoned. And they got it for years...until now. Now, finally, we're getting candidates who
represent those abandoned, and who are refusing to hew to the poobah's Third Way agenda. But
the Old Guard is trying to retain their power by labeling these candidates as "socialists",
and "far left". Well, if that's true, then FDR was a "socialist" too. Funny though how all
those "socialists" who voted for FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ enjoyed such capitalistic benefits
like good paying jobs, benefits, home ownership, good education, and the fruits of Big
Guv'mint like the Interstate Highway system, electricity, schools, the Space Program and all
the benefits that produced. It was only when we turned our backs on that success and relied
on unchecked capitalism that most of America began their slide backwards. We need to go left
to go forward.
Why is the media lionizing this ignorant, undisciplined child? She should shut up, sit down,
learn how to listen and learn from her elders in government. She is acting like a college
student, who has no one to hold her accountable for her reckless, stupid behavior. Why does
the media seem to be enamored of her?????
@Michael Lucky for you. I went to the University of Michigan at roughly the same time and it
was no where near that cheap--not even close. And housing? Don't get me started on that. Even
then it took my breath away. 38 Replies
@chele That which you are pleased to call the DLC nonsense originated not with the Clintons,
but with one of the worst presidential defeats the Democratic party ever suffered: the 1972
campaign of George McGovern. That debacle resulted in a second Nixon administration and I
hope that the current trends within the Democratic party do not result in a second Trump
administration.
It is exceeding strange to me that "Conservatives" in the US consider Medicare for all and
universal access to higher education as being radical, pie-in-the-sky, proposals. Here in
Canada we have had universal medicare for a half a century and it has proven itself to be
relatively effective and efficient and has not driven us into penury. As for free access to
education beyond high school, I remember learning a while ago that the US government
discovered that it had earned a return of 700% on the money spent on the GI Bill after WWII
which allowed returning GIs to go to colleges and universities. The problem with American
conservatives is that they see investments in the health, welfare and education of the
citizenry as wasteful expenditures, and wasteful expenditures such as the resources going to
an already bloated military, and of course tax cuts for themselves as investments.
@chele Amen to you! I too am old guy (79) and think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a savior of
the Democratic Party! She is young and has great ideas. I agree with you about the Clintons,
they led the party down a sinkhole. I agree with just about everything I have heard
Alexandria espouse. She is refreshing. Glad she is kicking the butts of those old guard
Democrats that have fossilized in place--they are dinosaurs. 12 Replies
@Tracy Rupp The problem with blaming a group based on demographics, rather than behavior or
ideology, is that you are likely to be disappointed. There are a lot of people who are not
old white men who are just as seduced by money, power, and local privilege as was the old
guard. Feminists writing letters to condemn a male student who made charges of being sexually
harassed by his female professor; African American activists who refuse to reject the
antisemitism of charismatic cult leaders. Human beings in charge will be flawed, regardless
of their race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. As the balance of power changes hands,
corruption too will become more diverse. 6 Replies
Money is the mother's milk of politics, so let me comment on "many of whom did not want the
Democrats to nominate a candidate with deep ties to party regulars and to the major donor
community." Include me. Because the major donor community is Charles E Schumer, Leader
Democrats, House Top Contributors, 1989 - 2018 1 Goldman Sachs 2 Citigroup Inc 3 Paul, Weiss
et al 4 JPMorgan Chase & Co 5 Credit Suisse Group That is Wall Street Nancy Pelosi,
leader Democrats, House Top Contributors, 2017 - 2018 1 Facebook Inc 2 Alphabet Inc (Google)
2 Salesforce.com 4 University of California 5 Intel Corp $13,035 That is Silicon Valley . The
U of CA should spent its money on students What is the interest of these donors ? For Wall
Street, it is maximizing profits by suppressing wages, outsourcing to of enterprises it owns
to low wage countries, and immigration of people willing to work for less For Silicon Valley
it is Mining your data, violating your privacy, and immigration of people willing to work for
less via H1B To win general (not primary) elections you need large amounts of money. At in
return for this money, you need to take care of your donors, lest you find you without money
in the next election Until the Democratic Party frees itself of this system, it will spout
liberal rhetoric, but do little to help average Americans As Sanders showed, it can do so,
running on small donations. DNC, eye on frightened donors, killed his attempt. 1 Reply
"The most active wing of the Democratic Party -- the roughly 20 percent of the party's
electorate that votes in primaries and wields disproportionate influence over which issues
get prioritized -- has moved decisively to the left." Yet it seems that you feel that the
party should ignore them and move to the center right in order to capture suburban Republican
women, who will revert back to the Republican party as soon as (and if) it regains something
resembling sanity. Do you seriously think that its worth jettisoning what you describe as
"the most active wing of the party" for that? 2 Replies
@David G. See Norway, Denmark, Germany, England and Finland. Citizens have jobs and health
care; education is affordable and subsidized. Not all young people attend universities; many
go to vocational schools which prepare them for good jobs. We could do the same. 27 Replies
@Midwest Josh That is so NOT true Midwest Josh. The unattainable loans and interest problems
are because the private sector has been allowed into the student loan game. The government
should be the underwriter for all student loan programs unless individual schools offer
specialized lending programs. Whenever the government privatizes anything the real abuse
starts and the little guy gets hurt. 38 Replies
@Bruce Rozenblit, at the end of a long line of commenters, I add my congratulations for a
well-articulated overview of our political dilemma. Both "trickle-down"economics and
"neo-liberalism" have brought us to this pass, giving both Democrats and Republicans a way of
rewarding their corporate masters. I believe both Cinton and Obama believed they could find a
balance between the corporate agenda and a secure society. We see with hindsight how this has
hailed to materialize, and are rightly seeking a more equitable system – one that
addresses the common sense needs of all of us. I, for one, am overjoyed that the younger
generation has found its voice, and has a cause to support. My recollection of demonstrating
against the Viet Nam war (and the draft), marching for civil rights, and even trying to
promote the (then largely inchoate) women's rights movement, still evokes a passionate
nostalgia. We have witnessed an entire generation that lacked passion for any cause beyond
their individual desires. It's good to have young men and women reminding us of our values,
our aspirations, and our power as citizens. As the bumper sticker says, "If you think
education is expensive – try ignorance." Thanks again for a fine post. 27 Replies
@Quiet Waiting That was FIFTY YEARS AGO. People who fought in the Spanish-American War were
still casting ballots, for heaven's sake. McGovern has been used by Third Way apologists as a
cautionary tale to provide cover for doing what they clearly wanted to do anyway. The other
reality is that the McGovern/Nixon race took place in a time when there was broad consensus
that many of the social programs Republicans are now salivating over privatizing weren't
going anywhere. 12 Replies
Abolishing ICE is tantamount to having open borders. No modern country can allow all people
who are able to get to its borders to just move in, and take advantage of its government
services. If a country were to start offering Medicare for All, no or reduced college
tuition, a universal jobs guarantee, a $15 minimum wage, and wage subsidies to the entire
bottom half through an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, paid maternity/paternity
leave, and free child care, it would need tax-payers to support these plans. It could not
afford to support all of the poor, uneducated migrants who have been illegally crossing our
borders, let alone all of those who would run here if ICE were to be abolished. Look at
Canada which has more of a social safety net than is offered in our country. It has
practically no illegal immigrants. (A long term illegal immigrant had to sue for the
government to pay for her extensive medical care, and the court decisions appear to have
limited government payment of her medical bills just to her and not to other illegal
migrants.) It picks the vast majority of its legal immigrants on a merit system that
prioritizes those who would contribute a special needed skill to the Canadian economy, who
are fluent in English and/or French, and who could easily assimilate. Thus, most of Canada's
immigrants start paying hefty taxes as soon as they move to Canada, helping to support the
country's social safety net. 1 Reply
@Samuel To pay for universal health care you capture all the money currently being spent for
the health care system. That includes all the employer insurance premiums, VA medical care
costs, military medical costs, all out-of-pocket expenses, everything. That provides plenty
of money for our health care needs as exemplified by the costs in other advanced countries
with better systems. Also re-activate parts of the ACA that were designed to control and
reduce costs but that have gone unfunded. Reduce hospital and hospital administration costs,
which are exorbitant and provide little real health care benefit. There will be plenty of
funds for actual provider salaries (physicians, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, etc). 10
Replies
You have to accept some of this polling data with a grain of salt. Most of the population has
no idea what "moderate," "slightly liberal," or extremely liberal mean. These tend to be
labels that signify how closely people feel attached to other people on the left side of the
ideological spectrum. The same is true, btw, of people on the right. The odd thing is that if
you ask Trump voters about the economic policies they favor, they generally agree that social
security ought to be expanded, that the government has an obligation to see that everyone has
medical care, that taxes on the rich should be higher and that we ought to be spending more
money, not less on education. Where you see a divergence is on issues tightly aligned with
Trump and on matters that touch on racial resentment. Trump voters do not favor cuts in
spending on the poor, though they do support cuts in "welfare." The moral of the story is
that a strategic Democratic politician who can speak to these Trump voters on a policy level
or at the level of values -- I'm thinking Sharrod Brown -- may be able to win in 2020 with a
landslide.
I saw AOC on the Colbert Show recently and one of her first statements was in regards to
wearing red nail polish. I turned it off. Enough of the red lipstick as well. Please. Next
she'll discuss large hoop earrings. 1 Reply
O'Cortez is a "Fantasy Socialist. She says the stupidest and most outlandish things so the
media puts a microphone in front of her face. She hates when folks fact check her because
nothing she is saying adds up. O'Cortez has all of the same "spread the wealth" tendencies as
the previous president who was much more cunning and clever at hiding his true Socialist
self.
@chele Right on. I expect there is a very large contingent of us. It is disheartening to be
associated by age and ethnicity with the corporatist financial elite power mongers who
control both parties and the media. But we can still continue vote the right way and spread
the word to fight corruption and corporatism. Eschew New Democrats like ORourke. The first
commitment to find out about is the commitment to restore democracy and cut off the power of
the financial elite in politics. All the other liberal sounding stuff is a lie if that first
commitment is not there. Because none of it will happen while the financial elite are
controlling votes. There will always be enough defectors against, for example, the mainstream
support for medicare for all national health care to keep it from happening if New Democrats
aren't understood as the republican lite fifth column corrupters they really are. 12 Replies
Chock full of very interesting data, but we tend to to believe Zeitz's conclusion that Dems
are just returning to their roots, following the spectacular 2008 failures that saw no
prosecutions - in starkest contrast to the S&L failure and boatload of bankers charged:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html
To the extent this primary voter data is replicated across the country in Dem primaries, and
not just the AOC and Ayana Pressley races, we could be convinced some massive swing is
occurring in Dem primary results. Until then, we tend to believe that the cycle of 30-50
House seats which swing back and forth as Dem or GOP from time to time (not the exact same
30-50 districts each cycle, but about 30-50 in total per election cycle or two) is a
continuation of a long-term voting trend. Unpacking the egregious GOP'er gerrymandering, as
is the goal of Eric Holder and Barack Obama: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/voting-gerrymander-elections.html
which has blunted Dem voter effects, will be of far more consequence - get ready !
@Michael Gig'em dude. Class of '88, and I feel the same way. And as far as I can tell, the
increase has been almost totally because state support has fallen in order to fund tax cuts
for the people, like us, who got the free education. Who says you can't have your cake and
eat it too? You just have to raid everyone else's plate. 38 Replies
I understand the Andy Warhol concept of everyone having 15 minutes of fame. But it's absurd
that AOC's 15 minutes of fame coincide with her first 15 minutes in office.
Ocasio-Cortez and the rest haven't been in Congress a month. Get back to me when anyone of
them even gets a bill passed naming a Post Office. Until the, maybe you ought to learn your
jobs?
@In the know, Your party invented the fundamental ACA program. It was the brainchild of the
Heritage Foundation that started this fiasco that you'd like to blame on Dems. Also, you
simply cannot argue that the Republicans attempted to implement the program in good faith.
They have done everything they can to sabotage it. In the end, Republicans don't want people
to have affordable health care. It doesn't fit their "family-unfriendly" philosophy.
Furthermore, the only real business-friendly ideas Republicans embrace are a) eliminate
taxes, b) remove regulations, c) pay employees nothing. If you as a woman believe these are
notions that strengthen you or your family, I'm at a total loss in understanding your
reasoning.
@Matt Williams - You are ignoring the many statistics in the article that apply to the
Democratic party as a whole. For example: "From 2008 to 2018, the percentage of Democrats who
said the government should create "a way for immigrants already here illegally to become
citizens if the meet certain requirements" grew from 29 to 51 percent, while the share who
said "there should be better border security and stronger enforcement of immigration laws"
fell from 21 to 5 percent." There are many others.
"...as millennials and minorities become an ever-larger proportion of the party, it will have
a natural constituency..." I would counter that as they start to actually pay taxes then the
millennials will adopt the standard liberal plaint, 'raise the taxes on everybody except me'
@D I Shaw I think the precise point is that would much easier to do A,B, and C if there were
universal health care, job guarantees, and clean water to drink. It is much easier to make
good long-term decisions when you aren't kept in a state of perpetual desperation.
These 'new' ideas are not new, nor are they 'progressive democrats'', nor are they even the
democratic party's per se. More importantly, the 'issue', for which no one has come up with a
solution, is the same -- how are we going to pay for this all? The GAO reported in '16 that
Sander's proposal for payment was completely unsustainable. Similarly, Cortez's plan for a
tax rate of 70% of earnings (not capital gains) over $10mm per annum does not come close to
funding 'medicare for all', 'free collage/trade school', and 'the New Green Deal'. Our
military is a 'jobs program' rooted in certain state's economy -- it is going to be very
difficult to substantially reduce those expenditures any time soon. The purpose of government
is governance -- what politician is going to have the integrity and cujones to tell the
American people that we need these 'liberal' policies, but that every single one of us is
going to have to contribute, even those at the far lower income strata? Are we all willing to
work longer in life and live in much smaller houses/apartments to do what is necessary? If
the answer is yes, then and only then can any of us claim the moral high ground. Until then,
it's just empty rhetoric for political gain and personal Aggrandizement of so-called
progressives. 5 Replies
@chele I'm an "elder millennial" in my 30s. The first US election I really paid attention to
was in 2000. Remember how all of the Democrats would gripe about, "oh I really *like* Nader,
but the Green Party candidate is never going to win..." It's a party in dire straights when
the ideological base doesn't even particularly love its candidates on the issues. Repeat in
2004 with Kerry. Obama managed to win based on charisma and the nation's collective disgust
with the neocons, but then we did it again with Hillary. 12 Replies
Sorry libs, but with the exception of the Left Coast, and Manhattan, there is not alot of
attention given AOC and her silly class warfare 70% tax nonsense, that goes with the Dem/Lib
territory--nothing new or exciting with her. Being a certain ethnicity or gender is not
exciting or inherently "good" as Progressives attempt to convince others. Identity politics
is nonsense. When she does something of merit, not simply engage in publicity stunts and
class warfare nonsense then maybe she will get some attention outside of Lib/Wacko world.
"With all the attention that is being paid to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley,
Rashida Tlaib" Other than these opinion pages and the Lib coasts, not so much. 2 Replies
Since Reagan there has been a steady drumbeat to the right and far-right policies. We've
lived so long in this bubble that we've normalized these For-the-Rich policies as centrist.
So I don't accept the writer's premise that the Democratic party is moving to a radical left.
The Democratic party is simply embracing pro middle class policies that were once the norm
between 1935-1979. And I welcome the shift of the pendulum. 1 Reply
@Giacomo That's right, this country can afford trillions for the Pentagon system--the
military-industrial complex, to coin a phrase--and foolishly criminal wars, but it can't
afford national health insurance, something that some industrialized countries have had since
the late 19th century. Anybody who thinks these ideas are "radical" or "leftist" clearly
understands nothing about politics.
The shift claimed by Mr. Edsall among democratic voters who claim to be liberal or
progressive is more illusion than reality. With President Obama more democrats are willing
and indeed proud that our party represents the cutting edge principle that we protect the
needs and interests of those struggling to find a place in our society. For a long time
Democrats bought into the notion that the word liberal was some how shameful. But now with
the machinations of a McConnell and Trump it becomes obvious that Democratic principles of
justice for all and fighting for economic equality are not outside ideas, but actually
central to the growth of our country. No longer will we kow tow to a false stilted opinion,
but stand up proudly for what we believe and fight for.
AOC behaves like a sanctimonious know-it-all teenager....entertaining for about 5 minutes,
then just plain annoying and tiresome. Does not bode well for the Democratic Party,...
Actually, people like AOC or Bernie aren't that far left at all. Internationally, they'd be
considered pretty centrist. They're simply seen as "far left" because the Overton window in
DC is far to the right. Even domestically, policies like universal healthcare and a living
wage enjoy solid majority support, so they're perfectly mainstream
I understand what you are saying, but please remember- half of this country thinks- rightly
or wrongly- that AOC and many of her ideals are unobtainable and socialist. Whether they are
or are not is NOT the point. We need ideas that are palatable to the mainstream, average
American- not just those of us on the liberal wings. And I AM one of those. Since you bring
up Bernie- how well did that work out? The country isn't ready for those ideas. And rightly
or wrongly, pursuing them at all cost will end up winning Trump the next election.
@Jose Pieste Well here in Australia its 10 minute waits for appointments made on the same
day. I have MS and see my specialist without a problem. And the government through the PBS
prescription benefit scheme pays $78 of my $80 daily tablets. We are not as phenomenally
wealthy a country as the USA and we mange it with universal health care. I pay about $30
Australian for each doctor's visit and sometimes with bulk billing that is free too. You
reflect a uniquely American attitude about social services that is not reflective of what is
done in other modern democracies. I really do feel for you my friend and for all Americans
who have been comprehensively hoodwinked by the "can't afford it" myth. You can pay for
trillion dollar tax cuts for people who don't need it. Honestly mate - you have been conned.
@Samuel Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has sponsored or co-sponsored 18 bills in the House, including
original co-sponsor with Rep. Pressley of H.R.678 -- 116th Congress (2019-2020) To provide
back pay to low-wage contractor employees, and for other purposes. 10 Replies
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, as is well documented here and throughout world media, prefers spotlights
and baffling interviews to opening her district office and serving her electorate. As with
every other media creation, the shiny star that it has made of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will fade
soon. The arc of her House career will as well. 4 Replies
"What pundits today decry as a radical turn in Democratic policy and politics actually finds
its antecedents in 1944." This quote in the article should have been the lede. Instead, it
appears 66 paragraphs into the article. What is now being called "left" used to be called
"center." It used to be called the values and the core of the Democratic party.
@Derek Flint There was a reason for the DLC's decision to be more center left. The Democrats
were losing and this gave them a chance to win, which they did with Clinton, almost Gore, and
Obama. 12 Replies
@Jason A. Representatives should represent their constituents. For example, if most of the
voters one represents want Medicare, perhaps that's a sign that one should reconsider their
anti-Medicare views. And think about why constituents want Medicare.
The leftward swing of the Democrats is in direct proportion to the rightward swing of the
Republicans and a gut reaction to the GOP's failure to do anything constructive while in
power -- i.e. failure to replace Obamacare with Trump's promise of "cheaper and better;"
failure to repair our crumbling infrastructure, and yet another failed attempt at
trickle-down economics by robbing the U.S. Treasury with a massive tax cut for the rich that
provided absolutely no benefits for the middle class and the poor. As always, what the
Republicans destroy the Democrats will have to fix.
@Quiet Waiting, the DLC was officially formed after Mondale's loss, in '85. the DLC's main
position is that economic populism is not politically feasible. But I don't recall either
McGovern or Mondale's losses being attributed to being too pro-worker, too pro-regulation of
capitalism, or making tax rates progressive again. Further, the idea that economic populism
has no political value was just disproved by a demagogue took advantage of it to get elected.
The RP's mid-term losses and other data points show that people in the middle are realizing
Trump's not really a populist. Those economic Trump voters, some of whom voted for Obama
twice, are up for grabs. Why would you be afraid that the DP's shift to raising taxes on the
wealthy and being pro-worker will result in a Trump victory? 12 Replies
@Michael The cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security has increased as a fraction of
tax receipts. Twice the as many people go to college as when you went, so the subsidies are
spread more thinly. Colleges have more bureaucrats than professors because of multiple
mandates regarding sex, race, income, sexual preference, etc. People have not been willing to
see taxes raised, so things like college subsidies get squeezed. The US decided in the 1940s
that the only way to avoid a repeat of WW1 and WW2 was to provide a security blanket for
Western Europe and Japan (and really, the world), and prevent military buildups in either
region while encouraging economic development. The world is as a result more peaceful,
prosperous, and free than ever in human history, despite "its continuous wars" as you put it.
For the US to pull back would endanger the stability that gave us this peace and prosperity,
but Trump is with you all the way on that one, so it must be a good idea. Liberal reforms
will mean tax increases, especially Medicare for all, but also more college subsidies, which
largely benefit the middle class and up. Liberal reformers need to convince the public to
send more money to the IRS, for which there is no evident support. Let's not confuse
opposition to Trump with a liberal groundswell. 38 Replies
Why do Political Commentators and Analysts keep operating under the delusion that people vote
their skin colour ? People vote their economic interests. I am all in favour of National
Health Care Letting Immigrants who have not committed a crime stay and become citizens. But I
am also in favour of stricter Border Control as I feel our duty is to the poor citizens of
America. Send Economic aid to poorer countries, help them establish just governments. As for
Ocasio-Cortez, she is aiming too high and has too many lies about her past to go much higher.
The meanings of these labels--liberal, left, center, conservative--, and of the spectrum
along which they supposedly lie, changes year to year, and most pundits and politicians seem
to use them to suit their own purposes. When you realize that a significant group of people
voted for Obama and then for Trump, you realize how radically the politics of the moment can
redefine the terms. The Democrats could create a narrative that unites the interests of all
economically disadvantaged people, including white people. Doing so would create a broad
majority and win elections, but it would arouse the fury of the oligarchs, who will demonize
them as "socialists." But as Obamacare proved, if actually you do something that helps people
across the board even the Republicans and the media will have a hard time convincing people
that they are oppressed, for example, by access to health insurance. For the oligarchs, as
for the Republicans, success depends on creating a narrative that pits the middle class
against the poor. In its current, most vulgar form, this includes pitting disadvantaged white
people against all the rest, but the Republicans have an advantage in that their party is
united behind the narrative. Democratic politicians may be united against Trump, but that
means nothing. The challenge will be uniting the politicians who run on economic justice with
the establishment Democrats who have succeeded by hiding their economic conservativism behind
identity politics.
I applaude AOC. I am 72 white male. I have been waiting for someone like AOC to emerge. I
wish her the best and will work for her positions and re-elections and ultimate ambitions.
She is a great leader, teacher, learner, whip smart, and should not be taken likely. Go for
it AOC! Realize your full potential.
Someone as thoroughly imbedded in the establishment as this Op-Ed writer is necessarily going
to need to be educated on what the political center of gravity really is. The Democrats have
shifted RIGHT over the past few decades. Under Bill Clinton and Pelosi, Schumer, Feinstein
and Obama. They are not left, not center-left, not center, but instead center-right. They
have pursued a center-right agenda that does not engage with the rigged economy or widening
inequality, or inadequate pay, or monopolist abuse of power, or adequate regulation and
punishment of corporate crime. They have enthusiastically embraced our deeply stupid wars of
choice, and wasted trillions that could have been put to productive use at home. The new
generation of progressive Democrats seek to move the debate BACK TO THE CENTER or Center-Left
if you will. Not the Left or Far-Left. They want to address the issues the current Democrat
Establishment have ignored or exacerbated, because they are in essence, the same rarified
rich as the lobbyists and donors they mingle with. The issues that affect MOST of us, but not
the FEW of them. The endgame of this shift is that Obama engineered a pseudo-recovery that
saw the very rich recover their gains, but the poor become MORE impoverished. Such is the
rigged economy, 21st Century style. Things have to change, the old guard have to be neutered.
Too much wealth and power is concentrated in too few hands, and it's too detrimental to our
pseudo-democracy.
This is the difference between R & D's. OAC may get her support from well-to-do, educated
whites, but her platform focuses on those left behind. Even her green revolution will provide
jobs for those less well off. R's, on the other hand, vote only for candidates that further
their selfish interests.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and her legislative cohorts are a much needed breath of fresh, progressive
air for the U.S. Congress. And I say that as someone going on age 70 who was raised and
educated in the conservative Deep South. Go left, young people!
@Bruce Rozenblit Unfortunately, the hot button on fox is the word socialism. so undo the
negative press there and have a chance of implementing fairer policies. 27 Replies
@Samuel "It's easy to go to a rooftop- or a twitter account- and yell "health care and
education for all!'" Its not easy to get anyone to listen. The moral impetus precedes the
"actual plans," which come out of the legislative process, Why would you be against this
getting attention?Unless, of course, you oppose health care and education for all. 10 Replies
The further the Democrats go Left with all the cultural politics including white people
bashing and calling Men toxic, the further I am heading towards the right. I personally can't
stand what the Democratic Party has turned into. We'll see who wins in 2020. I think a lot of
people forget what happens in mid term elections. People vote for change and then, after
seeing what they wrought, switch back.
I am a old white male geezer and lifelong liberal living in complete voter disenfranchisement
in Florida due to gerrymandering, voter suppression and rigged election machines (how else
does one explain over 30,000 votes in Broward County that failed to register a preference for
the Senate or Governor in a race where the Republican squeaked in by recount?). I am pleased
to finally see the party moving away from corporatist and quisling centrists to take on
issues of critical import for the economy, the environment and the literal health of the
nation. As "moderate" Republicans come to a cognitive realization that they too are victims
of the fascist oligarch billionaire agenda to end democracy; they too will move to the left.
So, I for one am not going to worry an iota about this hand-wringing over something akin to
revolution and instead welome what amounts to the return of my fellow New Deal Democrats.
Too much attention here to this new cohort of self important attention seekers presenting as
civil servants. Not one of them has had any legislative experience in their lives how can
they do all they say they want. They have no grasp of policy economics and politics. Are they
too good to recall the wise words of Sam Rayburn - "Those who go along get along" or is that
too quaint outdated and patriarchal for them? Why dont journalists and other pols call them
out. Example, AOC calls for 70% marginal tax rate - saying we had it before, ha ha. Yes but
only when defense spending as percent of gdp was 20-40 percent, in the depth of WW2 and the
cold war, life and death struggles - it is now 5%, no one has the stomach for those rates
now, and no need for them to boot. Free school, free healthcare, viva la stat! yeah ok who
will pay for it? Lots of ideas no plans, flash in the pan is what it is, it will die down
then settle in for a long winter.
There is a difference between posturing as a leader and actually leading. So, there is
another, and very direct, way for real Americans to end the shutdown: Recall petitions. With
very little money, why not target Mitch McConnell. Laid off federal workers could go
door-to-door in Kentucky. The message, not just to the Senate majority leader, would be
powerful. And this need not be limited. There are some easy targets among GOP senators.
Perhaps Ms. Ocasio-Cortez can achieve greater national standing with a clipboard and pen down
on the hustings.
All this fuss over a bright young person who stopped complaining and ran for office. She has
a platform. Time will tell how effective she will be. Right now, she's connecting to those
young and old who believe we can do better. If you had a choice who would you rather share a
beer with?A Trump supporter who has no interest beyond building an ineffective wall or an
Ocasio-Cortez supporter, full of ideas, some fanciful, some interesting but most off all
energy and light versus fear and hate?
I'm a liberal Democrat and I remain very skeptical regarding the platforms of these new
members of Congress. Youthful exuberance is admirable, but it's not sufficient to address
complicated issues related to fairness. Fairness does not always mean equity of wealth. Some
people have more because they have worked more, worked longer, or took more risks with their
money. Should the nurse who worked three jobs to make $150,000/year be made to sacrifice a
significant portion for those who chose to work less? Such an anecdotal question may seem
naive, but these are the kinds of questions asked by regular Americans who often value social
programs, but also value fairness. The claim that only some tiny fraction of the 1% will bear
the cost of new programs and will alone suffer increased taxation is simply untrue, and those
who are making this claim know it. This tiny group of wealthy knows how to hide its money
off-shore and in other ways, as documented in the Times last year. Everyone knows the
low-lying fruit for increased taxation is the upper middle class: Those who work hard and
save hard and are nowhere near the top of the wealth pyramid. It's that nurse with the three
jobs, or the small business owner who now clears $200,000 a year, or the pair of teachers
who, after 25 years of teaching, now bring home $150,000 combined. Those are the targets of
the proposed "new" taxes. Don't believe the hype. I'm a liberal, and I know what's up with
these people. 4 Replies
Ocasio-Cortez represents the success of a progressive in ousting a white liberal in a safely
Democratic district. While interesting, that doesn't provide much of a blueprint for winning
in 2020 in districts and states that voted for Trump. As noted elsewhere in this newspaper,
of the roughly 60 new Democrats in Congress elected in 2018, two-thirds, were pragmatic
moderates that flipped Republican seats. Progressives were notably less successful in
flipping Republican seats.
Just keep in mind that what the author deems "radical" ideas are considered mainstream in the
rest of the developed world. We are an extreme outlier in lacking some form of universal
health care, for example. Also, while the NYT clearly saw Bernie's 2016 campaign as
shockingly radical, the very people Edsall says we must court were wild about Bernie. His
message about income inequality resonates with anyone living paycheck to paycheck and the
only thing "radical" about it is that he said the truth out loud about the effects of
unbridled capitalism. The neoliberal types that the NYT embraces are the milquetoast people
who attract a rather small group of voters, so, I am not too eager to accept his analysis. I
fully expect the Times to back Gillibrand and Biden, maybe even that other corporatist,
Booker. They don't scare the moneyed class.
The Dems have been drifting to the right for decades, egged on by pundits who keep telling
them to move to the center. Do the math: moving to the center just moves the center to the
right. Frankly, Nixon was more liberal than most of today's Dems. A move to the left is long
overdue.
The rumblings in the Democratic party may represent a realization that WE THE PEOPLE deserve
a bigger slice of the pie. Democrats such as Sanders, Warren and AOC are tapping into a
reservoir of voters who have been excluded from the American Dream by design. The new message
seems to be "fairness". I think that translates into government which does the most good for
the greatest number of people. Candidates who embody that principle will be the new leaders.
Ignore at your peril.
@Quiet Waiting: if voters believe republicans are helping them economically then follow them
off the cliff. Hopefully enough voters will try a more humane form of capitalism. 12 Replies
Ms Ocasio Cortez is a partial illustration of Reagan's dictum that "The trouble with our
liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so". In
the case of AOC she is not only very ignorant but she believes many things that are actually
not true. For her to actually believe that the "world will end in 12 years" and
simultaneously believe that, even if true, Congress could change this awful fact is so
breathtakingly ignorant one hardly knows where to start.
Maybe it's worth considering that a lot of those spooky millennials, the stuff of campfire
scare stories, themselves grew up in the suburbs. They are the children of privilege who have
matured into a world that is far less secure and promising than that of their swing-voter
soccer moms. Health care, student debt, secure retirement, and the ability to support a
family are serious concerns for them. And don't even get me started on climate change and the
fossil fuel world's stranglehold on our polity.
@dudley thompson, if you are one of those elite moderate liberals against the "lefties"
concern about college and medical costs, protections for workers and the environment, and
progressive taxation, then in the end getting your vote isn't worth sacrificing the votes of
all the other people who do care about those things. Your "moderate" way may calm those swing
voters who fear change, and allow them to vote for the Democrat, but it also demoralizes and
disappoints the much larger group of potential Democratic voters that craves change.
@Jessica Summerfield ..."article described AOC as a communist." And I saw an article describe
Ross Douthat as a "columnist"... equally misleading. Will the calumny never cease? 27 Replies
Thomas, this "left" used to be known as the middle. A commitment to housing instead of an
acceptance of homelessness. Dignity. A tax system designed to tax wealthy people, not, as we
have now, a tax system designed to tax the middle class and poor. Can we all just take a look
at what is being promoted -- look at what AOC is proposing compared to Eisenhower era tax
rates. We have lurched right so that event center-right is now considered left.
Rage is the political fuel that fires up the Left. Rage also is the source of some very bad
ideas. Having bad ideas is the reason people don't vote for a political party in a
presidential election. The democrats are now the party of socialism, open borders, very high
taxes, anti-religious bigotry, abolishment of free speech, rewriting the constitution,
stuffing the Supreme Court, impeachment of the President, and being intolerance of other
views. They have also alienated 64 million Americans by calling them deplorables, racist and
a host of other derogatory terms. Not a good strategy to win over voters in swing states.
They also have attacked all men and white men in particular. They think masculinity is toxic
and that gender is not biological but what a person believes themselves to be (noticed that I
used the plural pronoun?). So far a long list of bad ideas. Let's see how it plays out in
2020. 1 Reply
We need to be careful what we refer to as left. Is the concept that we have access to
affordable housing, healthcare, and decent jobs really a position of the far left? Not
really. The 1944 progressives saw access to basic life as a right of all people. This is why
young educated progressives support policies that encourage success within the unregulated
capitalist economy that has been created over the last 40 years. The evidence illustrates
that federal and state governments need to help people survive, otherwise we are looking at
massive amounts of inequality that affect the economy and ultimately affect the very people,
the extremely rich, who support deregulation.
@Bruce Rozenblit The Republicans great skill has been selling lies to the socially
conservative to get their greedy financial agenda through. They have never cared about their
voters other than how best to spin their rhetoric. 27 Replies
Moving left takes a twitter account, a quixotic mentality and the word free. Its sedition
arousing rhetoric is blinkered by the lack of a viable strategy to support and move it
forward. Liberals thrive on the free media attention which feeds their rancor and aplomb.
Liberals are the infants of the Democratic Party. They're young, cute and full of amusing
antics. They have an idyllic view of what the world can be but without efficacy. When they
are challenged, or don't get enough attention, they revert to petulance. As all mammals do,
most liberals eventually grow up to join the Democratic median. Those that don't become the
party regalers brought out when the base needs energized. They grow old and fade away,
remembered only for their flamboyance and dystopian view of the world. The Democratic Party
has never been more fractured since its inception. With close to thirty potential candidates
for President, it is going to take a coalition within their party in order to put forth a
viable nominee. Then the party infighting will commence which will lead the party into
defeat. Democrats must focus on a untied party platform which is viable and will produce
results for the American people. Enough of the loquacious hyperbole and misandrous language;
it's time to stop reacting and start leading.
If it looks like the Democrats are moving strongly to the left, it's because they have
stopped chasing the GOP over the cliff in a vain effort to meet them in some mythical middle.
That's why the gap is widening; Republicans have not slowed in their headlong rush to
disaster. In truth it is the Republican Party and its messaging machine that has been doing
its best to drag America to the extreme right by controlling the narrative and broadcasting
talking points picked up and amplified by the Mainstream Media. The Mainstream Media has its
own issues. Increasingly consolidated under corporate ownership into fewer and fewer hands,
it has developed a reflex aversion to anything that looks too 'left' and a suspicion of
anything that looks progressive. The desperate battle for eyeballs in a fragmenting market
has also taken a toll; deep journalism or reporting that risks alienating any part of the
shrinking audience for traditional news is anathema to the bean counters who have
financialized everything. Deliberate intimidation by the right has also taken a toll.
Republicans have no answers; Democrats do - and that's the gist of it. The real challenge is
to prevail against a party that has embraced disinformation, the politics of resentment and
destruction - and the Mainstream Media that has failed to call them out on it.
We are looking at a future Speaker of the House. Watch out Republicans, this woman is not
afraid of you white, stodgy, misogynistic and racist haters. Your party, once a viable and
caring party, is dead.
The Republican Party used to be a moderate political party that was fully capable of
governing. Over the years, the right wing of the party assumed control and they became a
radically conservative party that basically hated government and did nothing for the benefit
of average Americans. As a result, many voters came to believe that a more liberal stance was
preferred to what the Republicans had become. Basically, the Republican Party veered sharply
to the right and went off and left a lot of their earlier supporters, like me.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the perfect foil to the Trump twitter fest we've been subjected
to for the past 2 years. However, enough of the tit for tat -- I would still like to see the
freshman representative put forth some legislation for a vote.
In terms of policies, this "sharp shift to the left" represents a return to the New Deal and
the Great Society and a renewed commitment to civil rights. It is a return to things we never
should have turned away from.
@Tracy Rupp Don't be so quick to condemn. The really old white men of today defeated Germany
and Japan. Then those same old white men went into Korea and then Vietnam. Ok so maybe you
have a point.
Shifted to the LEFT? After decades of movement to the Right, by the GOP and even assisted by
Dems such as the Clintons, etc., this political movement is merely a correction, not a
radical shift as your article contends.
Just as the reader comments from yesterday's opinion piece on the Covington School story by
David Brooks reveal rampant confirmation bias, the comments here reveal an equally relevant
truth: nobody, but nobody, eats their own like the left. The "Down With Us" culture in full
effect.
I am confused about what message, what issues resonate with the "moderate" people who are
disaffected from the liberal message of the Democrats on the left. What policies would bring
them to vote Democratic, what is it about health care for all, a living wage and opening the
voting process to all people are they opposed to. Is it policy or message that has them
wavering?
@dudley thompson Do you consider Eisenhower leftist? (highest tax rates ever). How about
Nixon? (established the EPA). We have lurched so far right in this country that the middle
looks left. I'm sick of the labels -- listen to what these leaders are actually proposing. If
you don't understand how the marginal tax rate works, look it up. If you don't realize we
once didn't accept mass homelessness and mass incarceration as a fact of life in America,
learn some history. We're living in a myopic, distorted not-so-fun-house where up is down and
center is left. We need to look with fresh eyes and ask what our communal values are and what
America stands for. 5 Replies
Here is a thought I would like to share with the New York Times: Thomas Edsall's article is
excellent. The corollary I draw from it that the paper that projects itself as the voice of
the liberals in this county has to understand that it has fallen behind times. If the
statistics and commentary accompanying it is a criteria to consider, The Times should move to
a more progressive editorial platform. The sooner, the better! The support given by this
paper to Hillary Rodham Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016 is unforgivable. The attitude
exhibited towards Elizabeth Warren is hardy different. This has to change if you want to keep
your relevance unless you believe publishing Edsall's essay is just part of your "diversity"
policy. What the followers of AOC and other progressives are clamoring for are very basic
human needs that have been delivered in affluent (and not so affluent) societies all over the
globe. No need to name those countries, by now the list is well known. What do we need
delivered: Universal Healthcare, Free Public Education K through College, No Citizens United,
Total Campaign Finance Reform, Regulation of Wall Street, Regulation of Pharma, Regulation of
Big Tech, Gender Equality, 21st Century Infrastructure. All paid for by cutting the Military
and Defense Budget Waste (cf Charlie Grassley, a buddy of Karl Marx) and taxing the top
percent at levels AOC cites and Professors Suez and Zucman concur with in their Times OpEd.
Democrats need to win elections first. Progressive ideas may have support on the coasts and
cities but fall flat in red states where there is still widespread dislike for immigrants and
minorities and strong opposition to "having my hard-earned tax money supporting free stuff
for the undeserving who can't/won't take care of themselves." Because the Electoral College
gives red states disproportionate representation the Democrats must win some red states to
win a presidential election. Running on a strong progressive platform won't work in those
Republican-majority states. What Democrats need is a "Trojan Horse" candidate. Someone who
can win with a moderate message that has broad appeal across the entire country but who will
support and enact a strong progressive agenda once he/she is elected. And on a local election
level, Democrats need to field candidates whose message is appropriate for their local
constituency -- progressive in liberal states, more moderate in conservative areas. Winning
elections comes first. Let's do what it takes to win and not let our progressive wish list
blind us to the importance of winning elections.
@Westchester Guy: Leftists want amnesty and, eventually, open borders. This is utterly and
totally incompatible with their push for "free" college, universal health care, and so forth.
The fiscal infeasibility is so obvious that one could only believe in these coexisting
policies if they were blinded by something, like Trump hatred, or just plain dishonest. The
"leftist" label for the new Democrat party is entirely appropriate. You also have your own
bigots to counter Trump. The difference is that their bigotry is sanctioned by most of the
mainstream media.
Has AOC or any other liberal offered any feasible policy to improve the lives of the people
they claim to help? Just take a good hard look at NYC where AOC is from which for many years
the Public Housing Authority cannot even provide adequate heat in the building the city owns.
So while AOC dreams of taxing the wealthy 70% perhaps she needs to slow down and catch up to
reality to realize what she offers is only building towards another Venezuela.
This article is half poison pill. By reading it, you learn a lot about Democratic Party
voting patterns, but you also have to endure a number of false ideas, the worst of which is
Edsall's warning that radical Democrats will foment internal chaos leading to electoral loss.
The fact is, it is the corporate democrats, who in the last 40 years abandoned the base of
working, blue collar democrats in favor of their Wall Street overlords. It is the corporate
democrats who created the billionaire class by reducing corporate tax rates. It is the
corporate Democrats who by reducing marginal tax rates created the plutocracy. It is the
corporate democrats who gave *Trillions of Dollars* to Bush and Obama's perpetual wars and
$70 Billion more than the defense department asks. This impoverishing the citizenry with debt
is their legacy as much as the Republicans. This shoveling of money to the 1% who abandoned
the middle class has been a train ridden by Corporate Democrats. It is the Corporate
Democrats who caused all this friction by letting the middle class fall off the edge of the
economic cliff -- all the while proclaiming how much they care. They show up on MLK day and
read flowing speeches from the podium when what we really need is activism and changes in
marginal tax rates, defense spending and the Medical Insurance and care oligopoly. So now
there is revolution brewing in response to the Corporate Democrats' appeasement of the
Oligarchy? Good. Bring it on.
Honestly, it is the centrist, neoliberal wing of the Democratic party that gave up on talking
to the Midwest and focused on the coasts. That was the Clinton strategy and it didn't work.
Although AOC comes from an urban area, her message is broad: she is for the struggling,
working person. Edsall underestimates AOC's basis in economic thinking and her appeal to
flyover country. She speaks carefully and justly to social issues, but she also speaks to the
"kitchen table" issues that middle America is concerned with--in a much more real way than
the neoliberal Dems have figured out how to.
Please end you outsized coverage of AOC. I really don't know how you justify all the news
coverage. She is one of 435 representatives, and a new one at that. No accomplishments, just
a large Instagram following.
@John Patt Everybody over the age of 50 should apologize for giving our young people
catastrophic climate change, endless wars, broken healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, ever
widening income and wealth disparates, unaffordable post-secondary education, rampant gun
violence, no voice for labor. We over 50 didn't care enough to vote and to make enough
political noise to keep these things from happening. We over 50 all have personal
responsibilities for this messed up world we're leaving the young. 6 Replies
@Zor The answer is no. Remember Schumer saying that for every urban vote Democrats lost by
running Hillary, they would gain 2 suburban votes. It didn't turn out that way. The centrist,
corporatist Democrats (including Hillary and Biden) have no clue how to reach the working
class of any race. The working class focus of AOC is the Democratic Party's best chance at a
future. But of course the establishment, centrist, corporatist Democrats are still focused on
helping their big money donors. Here's another question: Just how are establishment,
centrist, corporatist Democrats different from Republicans?
Here's my thing- though I'm a deeply liberal person who shares a lot of political beliefs
with Ocasio-Cortez, I'm am not the least bit interested in her. Why? Because she's one
representative of a district all the way across the country from where I live. I care about
about my newly flipped district in Sherman Oaks. I care about my solidly Democratic district
in Santa Rosa. Just because one charismatic representative from Brooklyn has a good Twitter
feed doesn't mean that I have to care or that she deserves a highly-placed role on an
important committee. She's a freshman. Let her learn. And then, go ahead and tell me she
deserves a seat.
There really is not a far left in America. You guys have this weird aversion to moderate
sensible socialism that -as the saying goes- is only in America. Our conservative government
in Australia accepts it as a given the things AOC is fighting for. There is nothing weird
about universal health care in modern advanced countries. The conservatives have a magic word
in the USA that they us as a bogeyman and the word is socialism. Ironically they don't mind
Trump snuggling up to extreme left dictators like Kim and ex KGB Soviet operatives like Don's
supervisor Vlad Putin who by definition had to be a card carrying communist to get to his
position. But moderate socialism is all over northern Europe, NZ, UK and Australia. You
people are oppressed by conservatives playing the "that's socialism" card at every turn. We
never ask where does the money come from? here. The money seems to be there in all the
countries that take care of the health of their citizens. America is a wonderful country with
fantastic people- I love visiting... but to use an Aussie word - crikey I wouldn't want to
live there. 1 Reply
A.O.C. Alexandria "Overexposure" Cortez. This young woman is talented but should pace herself
a bit. It's not a marathon but it's not a sprint either. Let's call it "middle distance" in
track terms. You need to save some breath for when it's really needed. Pace for long term
influence on policy. Or be a "one hit wonder".
@Matt Williams Exactly. I'm a Democratic in a conservative area, and all my Democrat friends
think this woman is nuts. Our Senator Jon Tester is wonderful. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Hard
pass. 9 Replies
@Cass You may self-identify as a moderate but you sound like a conservative. Please go join
the other party of no ideas if AOC strikes you as radical. The majority of Democrats don't
agree with you.
Ideology fails when it meets reality. Trump and McConnell are busy teaching the American
middle class what it is to be reduced to poverty - health care they can't afford, rising
taxes on those who have had some economic success, elimination of well paying jobs, and on
and on. Those voters are understandably interested in pocket book issues, the resurgence of
progressive candidates meets this newly emphasized need. In addition, look at the population
demographics. The baby boomers were a "bump" in population, they in turn have produced a new
bump in their children, who are now adults. The boomers were quite left, their children have
inherited some of this belief system - equal rights and protection and support of those with
less opportunity. The voters in general are also completely fed up with politicians lying to
them and taking away their benefits. They generally have a mistrust both of the right wing
destruction of our norms, and the Democrats failure to fight back (Garland should have been
appointed even in the face of McConnell's calumny). The new face of the Democratic party
feeds pocketbook issues, a belief that America is, in fact, a melting pot, and the need for
restoration of our Democracy. This pretty much covers all the bases, the Democrats just need
to get better at educating the populace.
By and large, the majority of 2600+ counties that Trump carried are not economically well
off. However, they are socially very traditional. Do the Democrats have a message that will
resonate with millions of these traditional white middle/lower middle class voters in the
hinterland? 1 Reply
have you listened to her interviews? she doesn't say much of anything. all political about
all these socialist ideas with no means or method of how to get there. and thank goodness she
has no clue how to get there
I used to be friends with a very high-achieving guy I met as a 15-year-old on a teen summer
tour in Israel, run by the national Reform synagogue movement, in 1985. In the course of our
frienship spanning the final years of high school through the beginning of college, gradually
fading to an email or 2 once every couple years; our different paths & outlooks became
very stark, though we'd both call ourselves liberals. My friend left no stone unturned in his
unambivalent achievement orientation, embracing w/religious fervor the absolute virtue of
success, the unimpeachable morality & integrity of our meritocracy, & meritocratic
ideals/ethos. Naturally, he wound up at Harvard, majoring in government, followed by Harvard
Law. What struck me throughout was the unvarnished "empiricism" of his outlook: rarefied,
lofty principles or romantic ideals seemed alien: the nitty gritty of practical &
procedural realities were the whole picture. The one time we explicitly discussed comparative
politics, he only gravitated toward the topic of Harold Washington's coalition-building
prowess. He was an ardent Zionist ("Jewish homeland!"), with little apparent interest in
theology or spirituality for that matter. Eventually he went into corporate law, negotiating
executive compensation. I think he epitomized the Clinton Democrat: A "Social justice," equal
opportunity for all, meritocracy "synthesis." In a word, that peculiarly "practical,"
pragmatic liberalism was *ultimately conservative*.
Let us all remember that since Reagan the "center" has moved decidedly right. So when we talk
about a move left, we are moving back to where we were in the 1950s-1970's. For example take
AOC's tax proposal. Right out of that time period. Look at the GOP platform in the 1950's. It
reads like a progressive platform today. So let's put this in perspective. Everything is
relative and we have adjusted to right wing dominant politics today.
Edsall looks at the fact the Democrats (and, indeed, the whole country) are moving in a
progressive direction. He does not look at the question of why. I maintain that with an
increase in educated voters, the country is moving towards policies that work, that are good
for the country as a whole, not just for a minority. The other wealthy countries, all with a
universal government health care system such as an improved Medicare for all, get BETTER
health care as measured by all 16 of the bottom line public health statistics for ALL of
their people at a cost of less than HALF per person as we pay. High inequality has been bad
for the economy and governance of this country. Look at what happened in 1929 and 2008 both
preceded by periods of high inequality. Compare that with the long period of low inequality
after WWII of Great Prosperity. Today as a result of terrible SCOTUS decisions, the Super
Rich pushing the country towards oligarchy. The situation at our borders was actually better
before 2003 when ICE was created. It has perpetrated so many atrocities, rightly garnered
such a terrible reputation, why isn't it time to abolish the thing and start over with a new
more humane organization. After all, the Germans did not keep the Gestapo after the war. I
running out of space, but let me end by saying we are now getting more progressive voters
that say that 2 + 3 = 5, and fewer conservative ones who say 2 + 3 = 23 and fewer moderates
who want to compromise on 2 + 3 = 14.
@Concerned Citizen, likewise, public education is funded largely by property taxes, even on
those who do not have children in school, or whose children are out of school. This is not
"someone else's" money! It is all our money, and this is the way we choose to employ it
– to educate all our children, realizing, I hope, that educated children are a major
asset of a developed country. 38 Replies
Until AOC starts to achieve some actual LEGISTATIVE VICTORIES, I'm not prepared to follow her
ANYWHERE. I'm willing to listen to what she has to say, some of which I agree with and some I
question. I lean Left on most issues but I'm not a fanatic, and fanatics exist on BOTH sides
of the political spectrum. I believe that one must PROVE themselves before being beatified.
In substance, I'm open to the "new wing" of the Democratic party which I am, officially, a
member of. Let me add that I will NEVER cast a vote for anyone calling themselves a
Republican because that very label is forever tainted in my book. But I don't much care for
the 'tit for tat' Tweeting from AOC either, writing about Joe Lieberman (whom I do not like)
"who dat"? What is "dat", Miss AOC?
The insane part of this never gets addressed. Why should Americans political interests and
aspirations be controlled by two monopolistic parties? 1 Reply
The country may be in a need of a more social agenda, but this agenda must perceptible help
the depressed white rural folk first. Nothing will work what make those, who are already
falling behind feel like a "basket of deplorables". I hope AOC will find a way not just to
become a poster star of the progressive urban left, but also understand the ailing of the
depressed rural right.
The Democratic Party needs to do a very good job of educating an electorate (and possibly
some of its own members) that has for more than 30 years drunk the kool-aid of the "lower our
taxes," small government, and deregulation gurus. We have such a predatory capitalism now,
with government failing over and over again to reign in huge corporations headed by those who
think they should be determining everything from economic to housing to health to foreign
policy. Enough already. Most of the young members of Congress need a lot more experience and
more immersion in the nitty gritty of creating legislation before they can take the reins,
but they can educate their constituents. And maybe they can convince others that everyone
gains through a more level playing field.
Calling these ideas left is a joke. AOC and Bernie Sanders would practically be conservatives
in Canada and Europe. What we have are 3 unofficial parties: 1. The party of people with good
ideas who aren't afraid to speak about them because they aren't beholden to big donors 2. The
party of watered down, unpopular ideas that are vetted by 20 pollsters and donors before
seeing the light of day 3. The party that gets into office by tapping into people's primal
fears, and avoids policy altogether Republicans have been moving the goalposts for decades
now, how can you even tell left from right anymore?
@A. Stanton Since 1990, there have been funding gaps, shutdowns or serious threats of
shutdowns almost every year. The have become routine tactics in the effort of each party to
drive a hard bargain.
Running up the Democratic vote in Blue states by pandering to left leaning views will not
unseat DJT in 2020. Winning the popular vote by 3 or 3 million yields the same results.
Unless or until we adopt the Nation Popular Vote Intrastate Compact or reapportion the House
more equitably, Republicans will continue to exploit the Electoral College's
antimajoritarianism. Courting the minority of lefties mimics DJT's courting of his base; last
November proved that elections are won in the middle. Appealing to moderates in purple states
is the only path to 270. If you have any doubt, ask private citizen HRC how much good the
Democratic over-vote did for her.
@Bruce Rozenblit What is exceedingly strange to me is that those who rail against socialism
completely misread socialism at it's very roots; Family. 27 Replies
Yes, because all these pundits got 2016 so right. They are people with their own opinions,
just like everyone else, except the punditry has a vested interest in maintaining the status
quo that has been so good to them for so long. Enough already! Times, you're as much to blame
as these pundits for 2016!
When progressive solutions are proposed, the opposition yells "socialism" while others bring
up the cost of progressive solutions. No one talks about the significant portion of our
nation's wealth spent on the military. We don't audit the Pentagon or do due diligence on the
efficiency of huge projects undertaken by the military nor do we question the profits of the
industrial-military complex. Meanwhile, Russia manipulated our latest presidential race,
underscoring the worry over cyber attacks. Climate events in the country mean our citizens
experience life changing events not brought on by terrorists or immigrants. A medical event
in a family can initiate bankruptcy; we all live on that edge. Our infrastructure projects
have been delayed for so long that America looks like a second rate country. Income
inequality is ongoing with no sign of lessening. Suicide is on the increase while death by
drugs is an epidemic. An education for students can mean large debt; efforts to train the
workforce for the technological world are inconsistent. For many of us, the hate and fear
promoted in this country is repulsive. Because our society works for an ever smaller number
of us, Americans are increasingly understanding that a sustainable, just society works for
all it's citizens. We are exhausted by the stalemate in Washington leaving us caring very
little about the labels of progressive, moderate, or conservative. We just know what needs to
change.
Edall's final point that thsese are Democrats returning to Democratic roots and not a wave of
radicalism. I along with a lot of other older voters was infected with a kind of gradualism.
I voted for Hilary, much now to my dismay. AOC among others is stating what she, and what
many of us want. The old Democratic party was a mirror image of Republicans, with taking the
same money, voting for the same wars, and within it all a kind of shame,liberal as a kind of
curse, where we were afraid to make our own agenda, make our own plan for America. taking the
burden, in health care, college education, immigration, is an investment in the future
The New Democratic approach in essence is taking wealth and redistributing it, along with
promising free goods and services. Is that high-minded or simply a Brave New World. The
underlying assumption seems to be the rest of America will not find that worrisome, and that
what happened in MA and NY represents a nationwide trend. 3 Replies
These voters are not moving to the left. They are correcting a trend to the right that
accelerated with Reagan: the rise of corporate dominance and societal control; the loss of
worker rights, healthcare and protections through destruction of our unions; and the mass
incarceration of our nation's young African American men for minor drug offenses, thus
destroying their futures and communities. These "left" liberals are fighting to bring back
democratic norms and values that were once taken for granted among those of all political
stripes.
I have always voted in every primary. I have always voted for the most "leftist" available.
So did my whole family, and all the people with whom I discussed our voting. The issue was
always "most leftist available." That often was not very leftist at all. That is what has
changed. Now the option is there. It isn't because we vote for it. We vote for it now because
now we can, now the choice is there. What has changed is not so much the voters as the
invisible primary before anyone asks us voters. What changed is the Overton Window of
potential choices allowed to us. I think voters would have done this a long time ago, if
they'd had the opportunity. So why now? Abject failure of our politics to solve our problems
has been true for decades, so it isn't mere failure. I'd like to think it was voter
rebellion. We just wouldn't vote for their sell outs. Here, that meant Bernie won our
primary, and then we did not turn out for Her. We finally forced it. The money men could not
get away with it anymore.
It is strange that Mr Edsall frames Medicare 4 All , Free College , and higher taxes on
wealthy as RADICAL leftist ideas .. when it fact each of these proposals have the majority of
support from Americans.. The most current poll shows 70% support for Medicare 4 All.. so you
are only radical if you DON'T support.
Unless the progressives start addressing the concerns of the middle class, they will drive
the Democratic Party right off the cliff. You remember us, don't you? People who have tried
to do things right and work hard. Granted, our cares and concerns aren't that sexy or
tweetable so it's easy for you newly elected firebrands to overlook us. Don't forget, we are
the ones who will ultimately foot the bills for your giveaways.
The notion that democrats are moving leftward is borne on revisionist history. There's
nothing new or bold being proposed; Zeitz is right on the money.
"Medicare for All, government-guaranteed jobs and a higher minimum wage" I have a question to
all the "progressive" Democratic voices in Congress - how are you going to pay for such an
agenda? Money doesn't just grow on trees. Either you will have to cut funds from another
program, or raise taxes. Most of these progressive people favor raising taxes on the wealthy.
But what is your definition of "wealthy"? $10 million in annual income? $1 million in annual
income? $500k? $200k? Almost all the proposals I have seen coming from progressives involves
increasing tax rates for families making more than $200k, either through higher rates, phased
out deductions, or ineligibility for certain programs. A professional couple where both are
software engineers could easily surpass this threshold, but they are not rich. They struggle
to pay the mortgage, save for the future, pay taxes, and provide for their children. Why
should they be forced to pay more in taxes percentage-wise than a family earning $100k or
$60k? It is for these reasons that I as an independent will never support progressive
candidates. These candidates lack basic math abilities and a basic notion of fairness. So if
the Democratic party starts to embrace some of the policies espoused by these progressives,
they are on a path to lose elections in the future. 1 Reply
@AutumnLeaf Mitch McConnell blocked Obama at every turn; he denied him the appointment of a
moderate respected Judge to the SC, a Judge the GOP had voted for on the Superior Court.
Congress wasted time with 40 attempts to declare the ACA unconstitutional; the Plan was
modeled on a Romney Plan in MA. Scalia's Citizens United Decision declared that corporations
are people; Scalia knew that he was using a Superior Ct. Decision with a transcription error:
word spoken: corporation; word transcribed: individual. Scalia spent a lot of time at
corporate lodges, "hunting"; mainly eating until he finally ate himself to death. McConnell
spends his time with mine owners. Trump spends his time with lobbyists for Israel and Saudi
Arabia. 9 Replies
I think this article underscores the incredible opportunity available to the left if they
pick a radical democratic socialist candidate. If they are already winning the college
educated crowd that is gentrifying these major urban areas and losing the poorer minority
crowd that is voting for people like the Clinton's over Sanders or Crowley over AOC; we are
getting the people whom one would think would be less incentivized to vote for our platform
and we can gain the people who would benefit more from our platform.Therefore, it is really
just a question of exposure and talking to these people. Reaching out to minorities; talking
about mass-incarceration, how it disproportinately affects precisely these minority voters
that we have to gain; and how the moderate democrats have been benefiting economically and
politically from the chaos and inequities in these communities for years. It is a question of
messaging. Minorities are our natural allies. They are disproportinately affected by the
inequality; and as soon as we can reach them; tell them that there brothers, husbands, sons
are coming home, and that we have a job for them to support their family when they do, that
is a huge % of voters that will swing our way, and accelerate the pace of our revolution--and
what critics will come to remember as the end of their decadence and control over all facets
of society, to the detriment of everyone else. The end is coming--and a new, better society
is on the verge of being reborn 1 Reply
Of all of those quoted in this article, the only one who really gets it right is Joshua
Zeitz. FDR's 1944 State of the Union address should be required reading for every Democrat,
and every Establishment talking head who warns against alienating suburban voters by
advocating for a New Deal social safety net. I share the sentiments of many on who have
responded by noting that it was, and is, the leadership of the Democratic Party that has
moved right rather than the Democratic electorate that shifted left. Don't believe me? Go
back through the sixteen years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies and see how many times
each referenced Ronald Reagan versus even mentioning Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or
Lyndon Johnson.
Medicare for all? Get ready for 6-week waits for a 10 minute appointment (and that will be
just for primary care). After that, expect to wait 6-12 months to see a specialist. 1 Reply
@José Franco I will not dig out social security trustees' projections of future
funding requirements or the possible solutions bandied about by politicians (google them),
but one single tweak would eliminate any projected shortfalls. Currently the FICA
contribution is limited to earnings of $132,900. Those who earn over that amount pay no FICA
tax on the earnings above that level. The person earning a million dollars in 2019 will stop
paying FICA on his earnings by mid-February. Applying FICA to all earnings of all earners
would keep social security solvent. No raise in retirement age, no reduction in benefits, no
insolvency. As to Medicare's solvency and public benefits, see the excellent comments of Len
Charlap. 17 Replies
There are several issues upon which I and my like-minded moderate family members will cast
our votes in 2020: - Border security and the end to the brazen exploitation of our citizenry
by the millions of foreign migrants who illegally, and with an attitude of entitlement,
trespass into our sovereign country year after year...costing our taxpayers billions. -
Reckless proposals to increase government benefit programs that aren't affordable without
raising taxes, threatening our already stressed social security safety net. - The rise of
Antisemitism and the mendacious obsession with Israel amongst leftists within Congress, as
well as within the ranks of their constituents. Democrats will need to address these issues
to our satisfaction if they want our votes. 2 Replies
Ed, it's time to retire. If you spent time looking at the actual data, Democratic primary
voters, particularly those in overly restrictive closed primary states like New York, are
older, wealthier, "socially liberal" and "fiscally conservative." They are what we would have
called moderate/Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, but they vote Democratic because that's
who their parents voted for. Most progressive voters today, the ones who support Medicare for
all, investment in public higher education, taxation on wealth (you know, those pesky issues
that mainstream Democrats used to support 30-40 years ago) are younger and more likely to be
unaffiliated with any political party. This is why Bernie did much better in states with open
primaries, and Hillary did better in closed primary states like NY AOC won in spite of NY's
restrictive primary system. She was able to achieve this because many of the older Democratic
establishment voters who would have voted for Crowley stayed home, and she was able to
motivate enough first-time young voters in her district to register as a Dem and vote for
her. (First time voters in NY can register with party 30 days prior to primary election)
Let's be clear though: your premise that Dem primary voters are driving the party's shift to
the left couldn't be further from the truth--the progressive shift in the body politic you
describe is coming from younger, independent, working class voters and is redefining the
American left.
From the NYT , Edsall April 19, 2018 The Democrats' Gentrification Problem "Conversely, in
the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area (Clinton 53.9 percent, Trump 40.1 percent),
families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 -- $7,229
less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448." Syracuse, a
democratic City in one of the most democratic States in the US, so assuredly democratic that
Democratic Presidential candidates rarely show up has been left by the Democrats and the
Democratic Governor ,Cuomo, in a death spiral of getting poorer by the day That in a State,
that includes NYC, the international capital of the global billionaire elite. Exactly, what
have the Democrats done to help ?
"Sawhill argues that if the goal of Democrats is victory, as opposed to ideological purity,
they must focus on general election swing voters who are not die-hard Democrats." Wow, what
an original argument! I have been hearing the exact same thing since I registered to vote at
age 18 in 1977. Democrats are always urged to support the "sensible, centrist" candidates who
keep on losing elections to Republicans who drag their party, and the whole country by
default, even further to the right. JFK was called a communist and worse by pundits like this
and he would have won by a landslide in 1964. How about if Democrats for once push for
policies that are backed by 90 percent of Americans, like Medicare For All, the higher
minimum wage, universal college education, renewable energy and the rest of the Green New
Deal and higher marginal tax rates for the rich. I would love to see just one presidential
candidate run on this platform before I die so I can fill out my ballot without holding my
nose. 1 Reply
Kind of make sense considering how far to the right the Republican Party has gone with the
Donald. And he's a guy who was a Democrat at one point. He's a dangerous mr nobody. Let's
counter going far to the left so we can come back to some middle ground.
@Len Charlap Canada can also more easily afford universal healthcare and a stronger social
safety net because it doesn't have the outsized military budget that we do. 17 Replies
@Ronny I agree with you - have a subsidized education - (rather I prefer to say equal access
to education) as well as health care guarantees to a greater extent equality of opportunity -
which is what all democratic societies should strive for. It's not equality of outcome but
equality of opportunity. Children should not be punished for have parents of lesser means or
being born on the wrong side of the tracks...
Until I see well-crafted legislation that is initiated by her that will help improve the
lives of many she's just another politician with sound bite platitudes. She doesn't even have
a district office in the Bronx yet to the chagrin of many of the constituents.
@Midwest Josh Perhaps student loans made by the FED at the rates they charge the big banks in
their heist of the American economy achieved back in 1913. 38 Replies
AOC is a liberal darling who's stated (on 60 Minutes) that unemployment rates are low because
everyone is working two jobs; I might add, that has nothing to do with how unemployment rates
are figured and come on, "everyone?" And recently she's stated that the world will end in 12
years if we don't do something about climate change. Come on, this is silliness, ignorance
and borderline stupidity. If she's the poster child for the Democrats, then she's the gift
that will keep on giving to the GOP.
I grew up during the Vietnam War, and over the years came to admire the American people who
ultimately forced their government to withdraw from an immoral (and disastrous) military
adventure. This is rare in human history. Rare in American history too, as the follies in
Iraq drag on and on to remind us. Perhaps the American people are becoming themselves again.
I wouldn't call it drifting left at all.
Thomas Edsall's column is yet another conservative spin on Democrats from The New York Times.
Where are the voices of progressive Democrats, who form the overwhelming majority of New York
City residents? Of New York state residents? Who form the core of the Democratic Party's
support. The Times insists that these conservative voices are the only ones deserving of
publication here. Where in the world did the notion come from that The Times was a "liberal"
publication?
@Chris Young, It seems you aonly approve of departments that teach what you consider
"productive." If schools become an adjuct to the marketplace, then only the material,
quantifiable results will be the metric by which the value of education is measured. This
will leave us, as in some ways we are already becoming, a population that emulates robots,
and has no use for critical thinking, ethics, or art. The profit in education is in the
quality of the students it turns out into the world, not on a corporate balance sheet. 38
Replies
It's all good but important to expand the focus on the entirety of the Democrats in Congress
- and the amazing age range and gender mix. The opportunities are vast - an intergenerational
government of forward thinking, principled women and men. Please media pundits - avoid focus
on only 1 or 2. There are brilliant ideas pouring forth - let the ideas from every corner
flow! Remember that the intense media focus on Trump, liberal as well as conservative,
contributed significantly to what happened in election 2016.
If by liberal you mean the circular firing squad of the politics of aggrievement, no. My
politics fall in line with FDR's Second Bill of Rights. Here he describes them in 1944
https://youtu.be/3EZ5bx9AyI4
"...true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security & independence.
"Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry & out of a job are the stuff of
which dictatorships are made... We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under
which a new basis of security & prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of
station, race, or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job...; The
right to earn enough to provide adequate food & clothing & recreation; The right of
every farmer to raise & sell his products at a return which will give him & his
family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition & domination by monopolies at home or
abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care &
the opportunity to achieve & enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, sickness, accident & unemployment; The right to a good
education." That is where Democrats used to be. Then came the Corporate Democrats, the DLC
and the Clintons.
This piece misses more than it hits. Where it misses particularly is in it's insistence that
the Class interest of working class Democrats pulls the Party right, rather than left, and
that the insurgents are mostly young, white gentrifying liberals. This is not altogether
false, but misses that many of the gentrifiers are not middle class themselves, but lower
middle class young people with huge college debt who could never dream of living in upper
middle class enclaves like most of the opinion writers in the Time for example. So they move
into the inner city, make it safe for professionals, and then yes, Brooklyn goes white.
Harlem goes white. Berkeley loses its working class majority. Etc. The big problem for the
left of the Democratic Party is not that its mostly young, white and middle class; it is that
the very term "liberal" is now widely understood by working class people as meaning
"establishment." And they are against the "establishment". As it happens, so are the young
insurgents. This then is the task for the left of the Democrats; to unite the culturally
conservative working class with the emerging multi-racial, multi-ethnic youth vote to take
down both the reactionary Right and the Liberal establishment. And the only reason such a
sentiment seems crazy is that the New York Times, far from being a bastion of the resistance
to Trump is actually a bulwark of that Liberal Establishment. Stats are stats but the future
is unwritten.
AOC is pretty interesting. She's charismatic, fearless....and I'm trying to think of
something else. OH, she's personally attractive. If the government gig falls apart she can
probably get TV work. But as an intellectual light or a rational political leader -- she is
clearly lacking. OF course that may not matter as the earth will come to an end in 12 years.
Which is even more ludicrous than saying the earth is only 6000 years old. She is simply
spouting far left talking points which are driven by emotion, not rational thought. And she
keeps making unforced errors in her public speaking engagements. She really doesn't appear to
understand what she's talking about and can't respond to reasonable questions about her
policy positions. But then, that's not too unlike much of the left. So maybe she's a perfect
fit for a fact free faction which is beginning to run the dem party. 1 Reply
One commenter gave a really insightful look at socialism for corporations and the rich here,
otherwise known to most of us as corporate welfare, including subsidies to oil companies, who
seem rich enough, but nevertheless, extend their "impoverished" bank accounts for more of our
dollars. Successful corporations, will reward investors, CEO's, hedge fund managers, all
those at the top, but the worker, not too much for that drone, who was part of the reason of
the success of that corporation. Socialism has been tainted by countries with autocratic
rulers , uneducated masses, and ofttimes, as in Latin America, religious masses. But,
Scandinavia, has shown us a socialism to envy. It's confident citizens know that much of what
makes life livable has been achieved. Finland rates as one of the happiest countries in the
world. Taxes are high, but one isn't bankrupted because of illness, one doesn't lose a home
because of a catastrophic illness, education is encouraged, and one doesn't have to pay the
debt off for 30 years or more. The infrastructure is a priority, war is not. It just seems
like it's a secure way to live. This is socialism I wish we could duplicate. Does anyone
consider that socialism also includes our police, libraries, fire stations, roads, and so
much more? Used for the good of society, it's a boon for all, rather than unregulated
capitalism which enriches the few at the expense of most of us. 3 Replies
@Reilly Diefenbach "Democratic socialism" isn't a thing, but implies two contradictory
ideals. Social democracy is thing, a good thing, and in line with what Nordic nations have.
38 Replies
Never has someone gotta so much for doing so little. None of this means anything if it
doesn't become law. As a life long Liberal Democrat (there, I said it) myself, I find it
infuriating when Liberal/Progressive politicians get out-sized credit for their good
intentions while those same good intentions threaten party unity. The Progressive idea of
party unity seems to be limited to getting what they want or they'll walk away. They just
know better, so there's no need for compromise. Never mind that they have no way of enacting
any of this legislation -- and more often than not Progressives lose at the polls. These
"kids" need to wake up and realize that there are no moral victories in politics. The ONLY
goal of any Democrat has to be unseating Trump and McConnell, everything else is a noise, and
a dangerous distraction.
I support universal health care, free college for students who meet enhanced entrance
requirements and raising marginal tax rates to 70% on wealthy Americans. Yet I do not support
an expansion of the EITC, ending immigration enforcement or putting workers on boards of
directors. So where do I stand? All my life I've voted Democratic. But there has been a
seismic shift in politics. And after the shift I will most likely vote Republican or for a
third party. The issue that causes my change in affiliation is the Me Too movement. I find it
repugnant that feminists seem to argue that the media rather than the courts should determine
guilt or innocence in sexual assault cases. Bill Cosby had an agreement with Andrea Constand
in their case. But feminists weren't happy with the outcome. So they resorted to extra-legal
means to get Cosby convicted. This included a media campaign in which the NY Times and the
New Yorker wrote stories highlighting accusations of 60 women for which statutes of
limitations had elapsed. But statutes of limitations are there for a reason. This became
clear in the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh which degenerated into a trial for rape. Nobody
except maybe the accuser could remember in any detail events at the party in which the rape
had presumably occurred. So the confirmation became one of character assassination in which
Kavanaugh was convicted of drinking beer. I will NEVER vote for any politician who supports
the Me Too movement.
"... protection from the vicissitudes of market capitalism"? People want protection from
monopoly capitalism. The left-right frame is a fallacy. If you put the actual policies on the
table, the great majority want single payer, clean elections, action on climate change, etc.
Pitting Left v. Right only redounds to tribalism. It ends up with a President who shuts down
the business of which he himself is the CEO. That's not great.
From a report: Ren's downbeat assessment that the ban will hit revenue
by $30 billion , the first time Huawei has quantified the impact of the U.S. action, comes
as a surprise after weeks of defiant comments from company executives who maintained Huawei was
technologically self-sufficient. [...]
Huawei had not expected that U.S. determination to "crack" the company would be "so
strong and so pervasive," Ren said, speaking at the company's Shenzhen headquarters on
Monday.
Two U.S. tech experts, George Gilder and Nicholas Negroponte, also joined the session.
"We did not expect they would attack us on so many aspects," Ren said, adding he expects a
revival in business in 2021.
"... The massive student-debt jubilee would be financed with a tax on Wall Street: Specifically, a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% tax on bond trades and a .005% tax on derivatives trades. ..."
"... By introducing the student-debt plan, Sanders has outmaneuvered Elizabeth "I have a plan for that" Warren ..."
In his latest attempt to one-up Elizabeth Warren and establish his brand of "democratic
socialism" as something entirely different from the progressive capitalism practiced by some of
his peers, Bernie Sanders is preparing to unveil a new plan that would involve cancelling all
of the country's outstanding $1.6 trillion in student debt.
The massive student-debt jubilee would be financed with a tax on Wall Street:
Specifically, a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% tax on bond trades and a .005% tax on
derivatives trades.
Additionally, Sanders' plan would also provide states with $48 billion to eliminate tuition
and fees at public colleges and universities. Thanks to the market effect, private schools
would almost certainly be forced to cut prices to draw talented students who could simply
attend a state school for free.
Reps Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Pramila Jayapal of Washington have already signed on to
introduce Sanders' legislation in the House on Monday.
The timing of this latest in a series of bold socialist policy proposals from Sanders -
let's not forget, Bernie is largely responsible for making Medicare for All a mainstream issue
in the Democratic Party - comes just ahead of the first Democratic primary debate, where
Sanders will face off directly against his No. 1 rival: Vice President Joe Biden, who has
marketed his candidacy as a return to the 'sensible centrism' of the Democratic Party of
yesteryear.
By introducing the student-debt plan, Sanders has outmaneuvered Elizabeth "I have a plan
for that" Warren and established himself as the most far-left candidate in the crowded
Democratic Primary field. Hopefully, this can help stall Warren's recent advance in the polls.
The plan should help Sanders highlight how Biden's domestic platform includes little in the way
of welfare expansion during the upcoming debate.
My federal student loan monthly statement says I don't have to make a payment. I don't
qualify for any forgiveness because I'm responsible. Nonetheless, I pay the loan every month.
The balance goes down but every month it's still the same story.
I have to imagine the provider prefers students to see that it says zero dollars owed this
month with the hope that they don't pay because it says 0 dollars owed, default, and rack up
a bunch of fees and interest that the student doesn't see in the fine print.
The provider can then get paid by the taxpayer no questions asked. Much more profit and
payment is significantly faster.
Education costs are in the stratosphere 'because' of conversion of univeristires into
neoliberal institution. Which mean that the costs will skyrocket even more.
Somebody once said: If the neoliberal government took over management of the Sahara
desert, in five years, there would be a shortage of sand.
The only way to rein in neoliberals in government is to stop giving them so damned much
money...
The guaranteed student loan program created a mechanism that increases the price of
education. Before the program, graduates could expect 10 times the cost of a years' tuition.
Now, they'de lucky to get one year. The Americans were pushed out of this business and the
UN-Americans replaced them. This goes on for decades until the marks realized that they've
been screwed. ... The victims are in full support since they've been systematically dumbed
down that it seems like a good idea. It's not. This is a bailout of a failed neoliberal
institution.
Establishment comedian Bill Maher warned that if 2020 Democrats run "a campaign based on reparations and concentration camps"
it will be "very hard to win the election" against President Trump.
Warren reintroduced the Refund Equality Act, a bill that would allow same-sex couples to
amend past tax returns and receive refunds from the IRS.
"The federal government forced legally married same-sex couples in Massachusetts to file
as individuals and pay more in taxes for almost a decade," Warren said in a statement.
"We need to call out that discrimination and to make it right - Congress should pass the
Refund Equality Act immediately."
"... Sanders supported Clinton too in the general election. He also actively campaigned for her. ..."
"... apples and oranges, Thomas and Herr, Would you care to defend her "posture" on NATO? Ditto, for her contributing to the "Evil Vlad" narrative? Israel?? Wiki: Warren states she supports a two state solution, but she believes Palestinian application for membership in the UN isn't helpful.[63] ..."
"... "Warren lied about her ancestry to circumvent diversity quotas. Why should anyone believe anything she has to say?" You are going to be told this a million times before 11/20 but that's bullshit. It's been well established that she didn't get any job because of that. ..."
"... "In the most exhaustive review undertaken of Elizabeth Warren's professional history, the Globe found clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools. At every step of her remarkable rise in the legal profession, the people responsible for hiring her saw her as a white woman." ..."
"... With Warren and Sanders talking complete sense about our oligarchy, the electorate's expectations are going to improve. Nothing could be better. We've been asked to settle for Republican-lite servants of mammon for too long in the Democratic Party and that's going to change. ..."
"... Hell, if we're going to fine them for data breaches, do we start with the DNC? ..."
"... In a poll last week of 2,312 registered voters in South Carolina, Warren gained nine points to reach 17% compared to Biden's 37%. Among 18-34 year olds, Warren is leading 24% to Sanders' 19% and Biden's 17%. ..."
"... I keep hearing from the mainstream media that Biden is leading in the polls. But we ought to note that Biden's up against a group including Warren, Sanders, Harris etc who are pushing a progressive policies, and if you take their percentages together, Biden cannot compete. Once one of these progressive takes the lead in the group, and hires all the others as running mate, cabinet members etc, he or she will be unbeatable against both Biden and Trump. ..."
"... The latest of that polling features Sanders and Biden nearly neck and neck as far as approval goes. Funny you don't hear about that on CNN or MSNBC. ..."
"... American voters have spent so long being treated like idiots by politicians and to an even greater extent the press that Warren comes across as something new and interesting by comparison. ..."
"... This election won't be decided by defecting Trump voters. ..."
"... Those who would be swayed by Trump using "Pocahontas" as a slur or would even pay attention to it wouldn't vote for Warren anyway. He's not going to change any minds with it, just rile up his existing sheep. ..."
"... That's a very narrow view of her position on Israel. She also supported the Iran treaty, boycotting Netanyahu's speech to the Senate, called on Israel to stop colonizing the West Bank and to recognize the right of Palestinians in Gaza to peaceful protest – her comments about aggression toward Gaza were about Israeli response to missiles fired by Hamas. I don't mind her having a nuanced response to what is in fact a very complex situation. ..."
"... Nerd used to be just an insult, aimed at anyone more intelligent, thoughtful or better-informed than the speaker. But I think now, like 'queer' and other words, it has been reclaimed and repurposed in a much more positive light. ..."
Clinton said vote for me because I am a woman, Warren says vote for me because I am a potential leader who happens to be a woman.
Good luck to her and the US
Don't get me wrong. I would certainly vote for her, if needed. I believe she's quite green behind the ears on foreign policy and
how inequality is a global issue. Her backing of our entitled neoliberal wife of an ex-president & neocon dismayed me.
Sanders gets the bigger picture on poverty, race, and war/ neocolonialism:
if you wish: MLK Jr's take on "The Three Evils".
apples and oranges, Thomas and Herr, Would you care to defend her "posture" on NATO? Ditto, for her contributing to the "Evil
Vlad" narrative? Israel?? Wiki: Warren states she supports a two state solution, but she believes Palestinian application
for membership in the UN isn't helpful.[63]
In a town hall meeting in August 2014, Warren defended Israel's shelling of
schools and hospitals during that summer's Israel–Gaza conflict, stating that "when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals,
next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at
that point, to defend itself". She also questioned whether future US aid to Israel should be contingent on the halting of Israeli
settlements in the West Bank.[64] In addition she defended her vote in favor of granting Israel $225 million to fund the Iron
Dome air defence system.[65]
While the 2020 election feels critical, the 2024 election will decide the future. Like Trump himself, his base is filled with
old people who are still loyal to Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. Old people watch FoxNews, old people vote, old people love
Trump and in 2016, old people decided the election.
Younger people do NOT vote. The younger someone is, the less likely they are to vote. However, young people voted for Obama,
twice, but when Hillary came along, they stayed home and let the old people choose the president.
And then, in 2018 the young voted again and we learned the next generation plans to take this country into the future. If the
young vote in 2020, Trump is toast. If the young stay home, Trump will see a second term.
However, by 2024 the young will assume their rightful place in history and the age of old white men running the country, and
the world will come to an end.
You are making assumptions that old people are idiots. Making assumptions that middle aged people do not exist or are small in
numbers. Trump gets 200 or so electoral votes. He loses. I don't see any case he wins. He is past his 'used by date' even for
Republicans. You loose Tx to the Ds its game over, add PA and OH to the list. It doesn't even matter what crazy FL man thinks.
Don't forget modern geriatric medicine, by which the dinosaurs in the senate and elsewhere in the hardening arteries of the US
body politic will live - and hold ofice - for even longer than Strom Thurmond. They can afford the private medical insurance to
pay for it.
By the way, MeRaffey , I hope you meant to omit to punctuate in your last phrase so that it would read: ... the age
of old white men running the country and the world will come to an end . Your comma has me worried.
Warren/Harris, said it before but it makes sense. I would've preferred Biden to Clinton but I can't see him getting the same turnout
as Warren. Opinions on Trump are now fixed, it's a red herring to worry about "firing up" Trump supporters, they are already as
fired up as they can get. Swing voters are probably going to vote by where the economy is which is out of our control. Ideally
Democrats will be just as fired up as Trumpists, the investigations will suppress their enthusiasm somewhat (though they wouldn't
care if he killed someone so...) and the coming Trump recession will be brought on by his trade wars and the blame will therefore
fall where it should.
Warren lied about her ancestry to circumvent diversity quotas. Why should anyone believe anything she has to say? Furthermore,
What exactly is she promising that is any different then any of the other radical leftists running right now? It's all "Free Stuff"
that she's going to make the rich pay for. Um..yeah, that always works out doesn't it? Who needs real math when fuzzy math makes
us believe the combined wealth of the richest Americans will finance all this "free" stuff to say nothing about why so many Americans
feel entitled to the earnings of others. Remember folks, if a politician says 2+2=6 then it must be true.
"Warren lied about her ancestry to circumvent diversity quotas. Why should anyone believe anything she has to say?" You are
going to be told this a million times before 11/20 but that's bullshit. It's been well established that she didn't get any job
because of that.
She claimed Native American ancestry on her application to Harvard, a job she got and it wasn't the first time she played this
card either. But hey, in a political party that loves to change races and genders and expects everyone else to go along with the
charade by all means go ahead and believe what you want to believe.
A lie, see Snopes, see any link you've been given each time you post this lie. She got it on merit.
"In the most exhaustive review undertaken of Elizabeth Warren's professional history, the Globe found clear evidence, in
documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted
resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools. At every step of her remarkable
rise in the legal profession, the people responsible for hiring her saw her as a white woman."
With Warren and Sanders talking complete sense about our oligarchy, the electorate's expectations are going to improve. Nothing
could be better. We've been asked to settle for Republican-lite servants of mammon for too long in the Democratic Party and that's
going to change.
The danger, of course, is that in this transition period Biden gets nominated. However much centrists will clamor for voters
to hold their nose and vote for him, that's not an electoral strategy. Trump's best chance of winning is that Biden gets nominated
and the progressive base of the Democratic Party is totally demoralized and lacking energy by late 2020.
After the US public allowed themselves to be hypnotized by Trump's campaign of fatuous lies, empty promises and racist dog whistles,
I doubted the electorate possessed the wit to understand actual policies. Maybe they've finally woken up - time will tell.
Do you understand how elections work? The US public were hypnotized? He lost the popular vote. The fault lies with the Republican
establishment for letting him put the R after his name. Perot ran on essentially the same ticket back in 92 as a third party candidate.
He got 18% of the vote. Had he run as a Republican he could well have won.
Oh dear. The question is, do you know how US elections work? The popular vote is irrelevant. He's the 5th POTUS who lost
the popular vote. Almost 63 million hypnotized dolts voted for him, and he won - that's why he currently resides in the WH
Or neither "hypnotized" nor "dolts." The people I knew who voted for him in North Carolina thought he was an asshole. But they
wanted a conservative Supreme Court for the next two decades and he has delivered that for them. Why do you assume that people
on the right are idiots who don't know what they want? That essential presumption by the left is one of the reasons the left lost
last time.
As one who used to be a Warren supporter, I think she is both patronizing voters and pandering to them. These policies have some
detail, sure, but they don't deal with the consequences that Warren knows very well lurk in the wings and as a result they don't
necessarily make sense.
Her proposal for free college is one example – sounds great, while in reality it would benefit the better-off middle class
at the expense of the most vulnerable students and create a cascade of problems that she has no plans to fix.
Again, fining companies for data breaches? Surely we should fine them *if* they don't immediately report data breaches to their
customers– or maybe if they haven't maintained appropriate data security, although I'd love to see proving that one to a court.
Hell, if we're going to fine them for data breaches, do we start with the DNC?
PS To be clear, I'd still take her in a second over Fat Nixon, I just wish she would pander less and keep her plans to the sensible
and achievable, like her consumer protection bureau, which was a fantastic idea.
Yes, (politely) do you? The fines for HIPAA violation have to do with noncompliance with the act, not with an uncontrollable data
breach. The fines increase on a sliding scale if "willful neglect" has been found (the data were not properly secured) or if the
company delays in reporting a data breach/violation.
Yep - No more old white guys - just being disgusted by Trump is not enough - people want new ideas. EW all the way - with AOC
by her side as well hopefully.
There is nothing Trump fears more than the stigma of being a one term pres - his ego would implode.
Oh, I think he fears going to prison more. Michael Cohen was right – the minute Trump is no longer protected by the presidency
he is going to be facing charges, on tax evasion if nothing else. He will do anything to keep his protection for more years. He's
probably hoping to die in office. (I'd add something to that, but I don't want the Secret Service visiting me!)
The DNC is again placing it's foot on the scale in favor of Biden. I believe that they know Bernie is less likely to win because
of America's irrational fear of the word, "socialism." That's why they put Biden and Sanders on the stage together and pushed
out Elizabeth Warren to the other debate with lesser known and less popular candidates. They do not what her, with her solid plans,
to confront Biden, which would give her a greater boost in the polls and more recognition across the nation.
And who was watching the drawing? Who set up the drawing? Are you saying that there was independent oversight on its setup? Or
do you just take the DNC's word for it?
An inability to believe in coincidence will take you to some strange places. If Sanders and Warren drawn the same night you could
make an argument that Biden was getting set up to look good against the lightweight opponents. Or had Sanders drawn the undercard
that he was being marginalized. Warren will do fine either way. She's a great candidate. Biden isn't.
Biden rides high on President Obama's very long coat tails and Wall Street money even without detailed plans that actually help
the working class and the poor. Bernie is riding high on his honest fight for the working class and the poor.
Elizabeth Warren is rising fast because she not only agrees with Bernie on fighting for the working class and the poor,
but she has detailed plans that are holding up to independent economic scrutiny.
Both Warren and Sanders are honest in their fight for economic justice for all and recognize that the root cause of poverty
and lower middle class' struggle is corporate and wealthy-individual money in politics. They aim to stop it.
Biden claims he can negotiate with McConnell. Obama reached out to McConnell his entire term and drew back a nub. The same
will be true of Biden. For the Republicans and Trumpians, it's all about making Democrats fail no matter how much it hurts the
working class and the poor. Their propaganda network will always assist and sustain them by appealing to the emotions and prejudices
of millions of Americans.
Biden claims he can negotiate with McConnell. Obama reached out to McConnell his entire term and drew back a nub. The same
will be true of Biden.
The same will be true of any Democrat though. There is no way around it except by expanding the powers of the office
of the President, which is what has given Trump such a wide ability to repeal Obama-era policies.
Any Democrat coming up against a Republican Senate will have the same thing happen to them, although I can imagine the Republicans
will hate Biden marginally less than Obama given that he's not black.
There is no way around it except by expanding the powers of the office of the President, which is what has given Trump such
a wide ability to repeal Obama-era policies.
Not the first year of his presidency. His Republican Party controlled Congress and they mostly hated Obama as well. As long
as there was full control of congress, it was easy. It was not easy to remove the ACA because so many Americans liked it.
Now remember that the reasons Trump was appointed to office by the EC, was that enough far-right people voted, together with
the "conservative" media adding to Russia's concentration of propaganda in the key states (stats provided to the Russians by the
Trump campaign) and lifted him just enough to overcome the votes of ~3 million voters. Far more voters are now counting on voting
against him and for the best Democratic candidate.
Progressives do not want to expand the powers of the Oval Office. That is the wrong thing to do. True change for the better
can only come through the ballet box and by educating the voters to exactly why our government is dysfunctional and is replete
with corruption.
I think the most popular message to all voters (from farmers to all others in the working class) is that corporate and private
money in politics is the root cause of government corruption and dysfunction and why the collective wealth of the working class
is steadily redistributing to the uber-wealthy.
The only candidates who what to change the economy to a DEMAND-side economy is are those who actually and loudly advocate it.
But just voting for a progressive president while putting the "conservative" obstructionists (those who maintain the high capacity
money pipeline that runs from Wall Street to their pockets) back into Congress will mean the corruption and dysfunction will continue.
Voters must be replaced by a super-majority liberal/progressive Congress, and with that, Elizabeth Warren will make that change.
I think she also knows that she should've and easily could've been president right now. That strange piece yesterday, talking
about Biden and Sanders standing in front of good female candidates of today: leaving aside a keen Biden getting bullied out of
2016 by Clinton already having things sewn up, Sanders was notoriously late jumping into 2016 because he was waiting on Warren.
If Warren was going to run against the wretched Clinton, he wouldn't. Warren choked so Sanders had to do it himself. Warren must
know that she would have dismantled Crooked H and, seeing as Clinton was the only person who could've lost to el diablo naranja,
Warren would've hammered Trump too. Hence, Warren's got some making up to do and seems very determined.
She's always been my tip. If I was an American, I would vote for Tulsi Gabbard in a second but Warren is a strong candidate
and I always thought that her announcing on the last day of last year was going to give her licence to say to other candidates:
"I've been running since 2018!". Warren is the candidate that liars for Clinton tried to pretend that Clinton was. A note of caution,
though: someone posted a Republican survey of exactly four years ago yesterday. Bush was on 22%, Trump was polling 1%. Long time
to go yet.
In a poll last week of 2,312 registered voters in South Carolina, Warren gained nine points to reach 17% compared to
Biden's 37%. Among 18-34 year olds, Warren is leading 24% to Sanders' 19% and Biden's 17%.
I keep hearing from the mainstream media that Biden is leading in the polls. But we ought to note that Biden's up against
a group including Warren, Sanders, Harris etc who are pushing a progressive policies, and if you take their percentages together,
Biden cannot compete. Once one of these progressive takes the lead in the group, and hires all the others as running mate, cabinet
members etc, he or she will be unbeatable against both Biden and Trump.
There is no sure way of knowing how that would play out. You may be interested in looking at the Morning Consult Poll, which comes
out weekly. If you scroll down to Second Choices... it gives possible outcomes for where votes may fall. According to MC poll
the 2nd choice for Sanders voters is Biden, 2nd for Biden is Sanders, 2nd for Warren is Harris, 2nd for Buttigieg is Biden, and
2nd for Harris is Biden. The poll also shows results for early primary states, if you click on "Early Primary States". https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary
/
Only one question: are these the same polls that were running in ninth 2016? And if they are why do we give a crap what any of
them say since we know they are all horribly wrong?
The latest of that polling features Sanders and Biden nearly neck and neck as far as approval goes. Funny you don't hear about
that on CNN or MSNBC.
It's clear to me that the US public want action, and that means progressive policies. They were conned last time into thinking
Trump represented change. But a Hillary Mark II candidate such as Biden will lead to another Trump victory.
American voters have spent so long being treated like idiots by politicians and to an even greater extent the press that Warren
comes across as something new and interesting by comparison.
There is no doubt that Warren is the best policy brain in the Democratic Party. She also has some good ideas, and some not so
good ones.
Were I American, I would be tempted to vote for her. But her candidacy is hopeless. It may be unfair, but the Pocahontas issue
will kill her bid stone dead in the general election. Trump would be licking his chops over a Warren run.
Those who would be swayed by Trump using "Pocahontas" as a slur or would even pay attention to it wouldn't vote for Warren
anyway. He's not going to change any minds with it, just rile up his existing sheep.
That's a very narrow view of her position on Israel. She also supported the Iran treaty, boycotting Netanyahu's speech to
the Senate, called on Israel to stop colonizing the West Bank and to recognize the right of Palestinians in Gaza to peaceful protest
– her comments about aggression toward Gaza were about Israeli response to missiles fired by Hamas. I don't mind her having a
nuanced response to what is in fact a very complex situation.
Warren has treated voters as adults, smart enough to handle her wonky style of campaigning. Instead of spoon-feeding prospective
voters soundbites, Warren is giving them heaps to digest – and her polling surge shows that voters appreciate the nerdy policy
talk.
If talking sense and enunciating real policies is regarded as "wonky"and "nerdy"in the USA then Warren doesn't have a hope and
Trump is a shoe-in.
Nerd used to be just an insult, aimed at anyone more intelligent, thoughtful or better-informed than the speaker. But I think
now, like 'queer' and other words, it has been reclaimed and repurposed in a much more positive light.
Mr. Biden had
support from 32% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents - in line with his 33%
support from last month.
Ms.
Warren , meanwhile, is now at 15% - up 5 points from last month - and Mr. Sanders was at 14%
support.
... ... ...
The Monmouth survey of 306 registered voters who identified themselves as Democrats or
Democratic leaners was taken from June 12-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6
percentage points.
... ... ...
And a new survey from the firm Avalanche Strategy
found that when the notion of "electability" was taken off the table, Ms. Warren was the top choice of
Democratic voters at 21%, followed by Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders at 19% apiece.
It was neoliberalism that moved production to China and created condition for the Chinese own companies to compete. Now Trump
goes against neoliberal dogma. So it is not accidental that he was under attack and Russiagate was launched to ensure his resignation.
Notable quotes:
"... in an editorial in the state-run People's Daily, Beijing has warned that China has "the strength and patience to withstand the trade war, and will fight to the end if the U.S. administration persists." ..."
"... China's controversial telecom giant, Huawei, filed a civil lawsuit against the US Commerce Department over the mishandling of telecommunications equipment seized by American officials, demanding its release. ..."
"... However, the equipment was not shipped back to China. It was "purportedly" seized en route and is currently sitting in Alaska, as US officials wanted to investigate whether the shipment required a special license . Such requests are usually processed within 45 days, but nearly two years have already passed since then. ..."
"... "The equipment, to the best of HT USA's knowledge, remains in a bureaucratic limbo in an Alaskan warehouse," Huawei said in its lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in Washington. ..."
"... Huawei contends that the equipment did not require a license because it did not fall into a controlled category and because it was made outside the United States and was being returned to the same country from which it came. ..."
"... The lawsuit comes amid a bitter row between two world's largest economies, and Washington's crackdown on Huawei. In May, the Trump administration added Huawei to the entity list, barring it from buying needed U.S. parts and components without U.S. government approval. The US alleges that Huawei could be spying for the Chinese government, a claim which the company has repeatedly denied. ..."
"... Of course, Huawei is not the only Chinese tech company that the White House decided to put on its trade blacklist. On Friday, five Chinese organizations – supercomputer maker Sugon, three its affiliates, and the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology – were added to entity list on the grounds that their activities are allegedly contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests. ..."
"... don't expect a breakthrough: as Goldman's trade deal odds index found last week... the probability of a breakthrough between the two nations is roughly one in five. ..."
It's the weekend, which means the trade war between the US and China moved to the front page of the local propaganda media (in both
the US and China). And while Trump has yet to slam Beijing, focusing this morning on the all time high in the market instead, China
has been busy and in an editorial in the state-run People's Daily, Beijing has warned that China has "the strength and patience
to withstand the trade war, and will fight to the end if the U.S. administration persists."
Echoing what China's notorious twitter mouthpiece Hu Xijin said yesterday, the editorial said that just days ahead of the much
anticipated G-20 summit in Osaka where Trump and Xi are set to meet, " the U.S. must drop all tariffs imposed on China if it wants
to negotiate on trade, and only an equal dialogue can resolve the issue and lead to a win-win", according to Bloomberg.
The communist party's official paper also said the US had failed to take into account the interests of its own people, and they
are paying higher costs due to the trade dispute. "Wielding a big stick of tariffs" also disregards the condition of the U.S. economy
and the international economic order, according to the editorial.
Beijing's official warning to the US ended as follows: if the U.S. chooses to talk, "then it must show some good faith, take account
of key concerns from both sides and cancel all tariffs."
And just to prove that China isn't a paper tiger whose threats will be confined to the local newspapers,
Reuters reported that overnight China's controversial telecom giant, Huawei, filed a civil lawsuit against the US Commerce
Department over the mishandling of telecommunications equipment seized by American officials, demanding its release.
In an almost absurd reversal, the company whose entire existence can be traced to stealing and reverse-engineering foreign technology
and
trampling over corporate ethics , the complaint alleges that the US government took possession of hardware, including an ethernet
switch and computer server, which was transported from China to an independent laboratory in California for testing and certification
back in 2017.
However, the equipment was not shipped back to China. It was "purportedly" seized en route and is currently sitting in Alaska,
as US officials wanted to investigate whether the shipment required a special license . Such requests are usually processed within
45 days, but nearly two years have already passed since then.
"The equipment, to the best of HT USA's knowledge, remains in a bureaucratic limbo in an Alaskan warehouse," Huawei said in
its lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in Washington.
Huawei contends that the equipment did not require a license because it did not fall into a controlled category and because
it was made outside the United States and was being returned to the same country from which it came.
The company is not seeking any financial compensation and is not challenging the seizure itself, but is sending a message to Washington,
saying "post-seizure failures to act are unlawful", in effect charging the Trump admin with doing precisely what it, itself has been
accused of. Huawei wants to force the Commerce Department to decide whether an export license is really necessary and, if not, release
the withheld equipment.
The lawsuit comes amid a bitter row between two world's largest economies, and Washington's crackdown on Huawei. In May, the Trump
administration added Huawei to the entity list, barring it from buying needed U.S. parts and components without U.S. government approval.
The US alleges that Huawei could be spying for the Chinese government, a claim which the company has repeatedly denied.
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company's founder, has been detained in Canada since December on a U.S. warrant. She
is fighting extradition on charges that she misled global banks about Huawei's relationship with a company operating in Iran.
Of course, Huawei is not the only Chinese tech company that the White House decided to put on its trade blacklist. On Friday,
five Chinese organizations – supercomputer maker Sugon, three its affiliates, and the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology
– were added to entity list on the grounds that their activities are allegedly contrary to US national security and foreign policy
interests.
The fresh US blacklisting comes ahead of crucial talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka,
Japan, which are intended to ease tensions between the two sides. Still, don't expect a breakthrough: as
Goldman's
trade deal odds index found last week... the probability of a breakthrough between the two nations is roughly one in five.
"... There's a simple reason for Warren's sudden rise in the polls : the public has an appetite for policy. Of all the Democratic candidates, Warren's campaign has been by far the most ideas-driven and ambitious in its policy proposals. And voters love it. ..."
"... Week in and week out, she has been crisscrossing the country to tell receptive voters her ideas for an ultra-millionaire tax, student debt cancellation and breaking up big tech. She has also weighed in on reproductive rights, vaccines, the opioid crisis and algorithmic discrimination in automated loans. Her bevy of white papers demonstrates that there isn't a policy area Warren won't touch and she isn't worried about repelling anyone with hard-hitting proposals. ..."
"... Better than any other candidate, Warren has articulated a connection between her personal and professional struggles and her ideas, lending an air of authenticity to her campaign. Her backstory – teacher turned reluctant stay-at-home mom turned Harvard Law School professor – clearly resonates with voters in important states such as Iowa and South Carolina. ..."
"... Rule of thumb that is true for all politicians regardless of party. Most of what they promise they will do will never happen and much of does happen does not occur in the way they promised when they campaigned. ..."
n Friday, the Massachusetts senator
Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored a bill to impose mandatory fines on companies that have data
breaches. It was the kind of consumer welfare legislation that in the past would have been
unremarkable. But in an era when Congress has consistently shirked its duty to shield
consumers, the bill stood out.
The legislation capped a week in which Warren surged in the polls. Less than eight months
before the Iowa caucus, Warren is making strides in 2020 primary polls. According to an
NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey of 1,000 adults, 64% of Democratic primary voters in
June were enthusiastic or comfortable with Warren, compared with 57% in March. Fewer of these
voters were enthusiastic or comfortable with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who have
lost 11 and six points, respectively, since March.
There's more. In a poll last week of 2,312 registered voters in South Carolina, Warren
gained nine points to reach 17% compared to Biden's 37%. Among 18-34 year olds, Warren is
leading 24% to Sanders' 19% and Biden's 17%.
There's a simple reason for Warren's sudden rise in the polls: the public has an appetite
for policy
There's a simple reason for
Warren's sudden rise in the polls : the public has an appetite for policy. Of all the
Democratic candidates, Warren's campaign has been by far the most ideas-driven and ambitious in
its policy proposals. And voters love it.
Rather than condescend to voters, like most politicians, Warren has treated voters as
adults, smart enough to handle her wonky style of campaigning. Instead of spoon-feeding
prospective voters soundbites, Warren is giving them heaps to digest – and her polling
surge shows that voters appreciate the nerdy policy talk.
Indeed, since Warren declared her candidacy for president, she has been offering policy
prescriptions for our country's most pressing ailments – and she hasn't been
brainstorming in a bubble.
Week in and week out, she has been crisscrossing the country to tell receptive voters her
ideas for an ultra-millionaire tax, student debt cancellation and breaking up big tech. She has
also weighed in on reproductive rights, vaccines, the opioid crisis and algorithmic
discrimination in automated loans. Her bevy of white papers demonstrates that there isn't a
policy area Warren won't touch and she isn't worried about repelling anyone with hard-hitting
proposals.
Better than any other candidate, Warren has articulated a connection between her personal
and professional struggles and her ideas, lending an air of authenticity to her campaign. Her
backstory – teacher turned reluctant stay-at-home mom turned Harvard Law School professor
– clearly resonates with voters in important states such as Iowa and South Carolina.
That sense of reciprocity has turned Warren into a populist rock star. Instead of appealing
to the lowest common denominator among the voting public, she's listening to and learning from
voters in an ideas-driven campaign that doesn't take voters for granted.
The strategy is paying off – and proving wrong the outdated political wisdom that
Americans don't care about the intricacies of government.
In May, Warren traveled to Kermit, West Virginia, the heart of Trump country, to pitch a
$2.7bn-a-year plan to combat opioid addiction.
"Her stance is decisive and bold," Nathan Casian-Lakes
told CBS News . "She has research and resources to back her ideas."
Jill Priluck's reporting and analysis has appeared in
the New Yorker, Slate, Reuters and elsewhere
I've decided that I want to see Warren as President. She is honest and has many good ideas
about the economy and offering a leg up to minorities and the poor. Her integrity is
unimpeachable. I have donated small sums to her campaign. Bernie has not spoken in detail the
way Warren has although his democratic socialism goes in a positive direction. There are many
voters who feel that he is too old. I hope that he will approve Warren as the best candidate
in the running. Biden's moment is long gone. For now I believe that another recession lurks
in the near future and Warren, as a wonk, is the best person to deal with it.
She also does not take a dime of PAC money, which helps keep her mind cleared of hidden
agendas. Because of that, she is the first candidate who campaign I've donated to.
Rule of thumb that is true for all politicians regardless of party. Most of what they promise
they will do will never happen and much of does happen does not occur in the way they
promised when they campaigned.
In the case of Sen Warren she talks a lot of wonderful stuff,
paid by rich people. Expect the same results. The courts will probably shoot down the wealth
tax as described by Warren anyway which means everything she promises just dies.
Technocratic, neoliberal, Clinton Democrat ideas which have already proven to fail.
She's for the working class, so long as that working class wears a white collar.
but she declared that she will take "the money" in the general election if she wins the nomination. Do you expect that money
to come with no strings attached. Clearly this video
implied that she knows differently.
This video shows that as a member of Congress she is cognizant of the "as Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different"
Warren knows EXACTLY what she is doing when she says she will take the money in the general if nominated.
Okay, Warren made a mistake in claiming Native American heritage, which enabled her to
advance professionally as a "diversity" candidate. But that would have to count as a venial
not mortal sin. She is doing considerable good on the campaign trail, and I believe that she
means to try to follow through on her detailed promises.
"... 780 billion per year on defense without a enemy in sight, and no nation spending a tenth that, seems to be a place one could get a dollar or two. ..."
"... As Chomsky notes in 'manufacturing consent', the mass media that is not 'Right' is 'Centrist' and will support a centrist candidate over one advocating more radical change. ..."
"... Here's an idea. If Warren was a true progressive she wouldn't have been a registered Republican for 5 years, and she would have endorsed Bernie over Hillary in the 2016 primaries. ..."
Her backstory – teacher turned reluctant stay-at-home mom turned Harvard Law
School professor – clearly resonates with voters in important states such as Iowa and
South Carolina.
Working people who are struggling in Iowa and South Carolina say: "She's just like
us!"
Please expand upon the "Constitutional issues of a wealth tax".
Looks pretty clear to me.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes,
Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general
Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout
the United States.
"Please expand upon the "Constitutional issues of a wealth tax".
"Looks pretty clear to me."
The point is that the question would go to a Republican Supreme Court which could indeed
find a wealth tax unconstitutional. If you want to know why, do a search. There's lots
written on it.
I don't know. Seems a lot more substance this go round than the last, near as I can tell.
Last go round climate change got one question and 45 seconds in response, by both candidates
in the general. The media certainly wants and will allow that to happen, but any dem who does
would be a idiot.
Seems last go round gender preference was a main thing. Warren will I think not fall into
that trap. White male midwestern industrial voters are at large, what lost HRC key states,
she took for granted. White male voters and usually their spouses, will not have a part of a
program that seems to leave them out of things.
Substance is the name of the game for warren, but to counter Trump one needs to throw out the barbs as well, as she did in
her twitter post on not being on his propaganda outlet Fox.
"I won't do a town hall with Fox News because I won't invite millions of Democratic primary
voters to tune in, inflate ratings, and help sell ads for an outlet that profits from racism
and hate. If you agree, sign our petition.
Yes that is Elizabeth Warren calling them racists and haters. A guy like Trump calls names
and it is par for the course. A woman who conducts herself as your local librarian or grade
school teacher, and you have to take pause and listen, is there substance to this? Seems
there is.
This new Elizabeth Warren, name calling and all, I find must more to my liking than that
before. Which is the why to her newfound popularity. Substance and calling a pig a pig not a
dog or some other thing.
I think you made a good case. she isn't my favorite but still acceptable.
In no particular order, for me it is Gabbard, Sanders, Williamson, Warren or Yang. the other
18 would be like voting for the GOP with some protection against the conservative slant on
social issues.
The right wingers that post here won't debate me because I'll expose them. They know how
the system works and they use it to their advantage. Socialism is about getting free stuff
but the issue here is who gets the free stuff. Supply side econ says that the rich are
entitled to the free stuff and the less fortunate aren't entitled to it. this is killing
upward mobility.
Iceland, Denmark and Sweden repealed their wealth taxes because they don't work. The
Scandinavian countries pay for their safety net by embracing capitalism and taxing the hell
out of everyone. Maybe we should embrace that model? Or does Warren's base simply all of the
benefits of that system without paying for it?
They're not similar countries to the USA, at all. US citizens are taxed no matter where they
choose to live on earth. This is not the case in most countries.
The Scandinavian countries pay for their safety net by embracing capitalism and taxing
the hell out of everyone. Maybe we should embrace that model?
It would be a hell of a lot better than the government acting as the paymaster for large
corporations - paying their workers with food stamps because the corporations don't pay them
sufficiently to live on.
You do know that is how the US works, right? Corporations don't pay their workers enough, so
the government (i.e. taxpayers) pick up the tab.
To add the average family of four, assuming one stays with the kids so they do not pay day
care costs, at Walmart earning a average salary , is eligible for federal food assistance and
in most states, Medicaid.
California for several decades paid for most of kids college education and even today, New
Mexico does the same. New Mexico is indeed one of the poorest states, and if they figured out
how to do that(under a republican governor years ago), most places could. The tax rate here
is about on average, no higher than most.
780 billion per year on defense without a enemy in sight, and no nation spending a tenth
that, seems to be a place one could get a dollar or two.
Smart and lucid. All the right ideas, without using the " S " word that people in the
USA do not really understand, and have a big fear of
I'd extent that from "The USA" to "The USA & the editorial staff of most papers in
England", and include some writers for this paper in that catchall.
'Socialist' Sanders and 'Left Wing' Labour as personified by Corbyn are all very well as
useful poles to beat the Right with in polemics, but when it looks like they might actually
gain access to the corridors of power, suddenly they become villains that have to be defeated
so that sensible 'moderates' can retain power....
Warren was receiving more support from this particular paper even before she announced her
candidacy than Sanders has or I suspect will even if he gains the nomination.
As Chomsky notes in 'manufacturing consent', the mass media that is not 'Right' is
'Centrist' and will support a centrist candidate over one advocating more radical change.
Those labels are totally irrelevant in the USA. Calling someone 'right' or 'left' or
'socialist' in the USA has nothing to do with dictionary definitions. They all mean to say
one thing: I disagree with them because they're wrong.
On Friday, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored a bill to impose
mandatory fines on companies that have data breaches.
Warren is the politician who operates like a blind-folded person desperately trying to hit
a pinata. In her political realm, such companies simply twist in the wind and make easy
targets. Her policy is equivalent to any store or home being burglarized and then being fined by
government for being a victim of crime. Complete mindlessness describes the policy.
Yes. Of course every politician should simply lie down and let the corporations get away with
every damn thing. I mean, that's worked really well for most Americans since Reagan.
Agreed that is a stupid policy.
If the company suffers a data breach owing to poor security or conceals or unduly delays
disclosure of the data breach, then it would make sense to fine the company or to hold the
company civilly liable to those injured by the data breach. But a blanket fine for any company that suffers a data breach is dumb.
The Labor party in Australia surprised me with the boldness and coherency of their plans and
it was a great thing to see a party running a campaign on ideas and principles.
They lost the election.
Here's an idea. If Warren was a true progressive she wouldn't have been a registered
Republican for 5 years, and she would have endorsed Bernie over Hillary in the 2016
primaries.
What a really stupid thing to write and think. Do you have any inkling of the history of the
Republican and Democratic parties? I was born in a Republican household (progressive) and it
took me living overseas for 20 years to realize what a nasty little insurgency had taken the
Republicans from what Teddy Roosevelt championed to what he described as swine; the
Dixiecrats. Ignorance is not bliss no matter how hard you try to pretend.
One thing that needs to be done involves an honest discussion about the costs of Warren's
proposals and the fact that the US already has a $22 TRILLION national debt with more than $1
TRILLION being added each year at a minimum. A former US Comptroller General stated in 2015
that even the official National Debt figure is a misrepresentation and that taking into
account an honest understanding of the nation's actual legal obligations the figure was
actually $65 TRILLION.
If anyone wants to see it even worse just look at economist Lawrence Kotlikoff's infinite horizon estimates that placed future already promised commitments at
$220 TRILLION. My point is that Warren and everyone else in the DC political establishment,
is "blowing smoke" and that the US is bankrupt and needs a serious strategy to mitigate that
fact rather than reckless proposals aimed to attract votes.
That is not going to happen and
the country is in a fundamental financial crisis.
Its repinlicans who increase your deficits. Reagan believed deficits don't matter.
The bush tax cuts...and now Trumps tax cuts and QE. He's expanding credit, which looks like
real growth, but is it? Only the US can do this, because it runs the global dollar. We should
have had the Bankor. But the yanks ensured that did not happen.
Nobody expects Congress to deliver on a president's campaign promises. That's not how
the system works.
True. We use to call it "obstructionist" when the other party in congress
unreasonably opposed a president's proposals. We no longer use that term, though. Now we call
it "resistance". I'm sure there are at least a few republicans who see being part of the
"resistance" exciting if Warren wins the White House.
At first I thought she must be mad, running for president. Then I started listening to her
ideas and looking at how they were being received.
There are millions of young people, youngish people, and parents whose lives would actually
be changed by her college loan plan. Even conservatives admit that "her math is correct" and
"it's doable."
Then I started watching her in town halls and found her to be VERY different from that
awkward lady in the kitchen having a beer. She's warm, direct, funny, casually
self-deprecating, and easily able to translate complex ideas into readily understood ones.
Free college and health care, and the rich pay. Who wouldn't get on board with that?
Well, since you asked. I don't have any student debt and I don't need any more
health care. If we are buying votes with "free" stuff, what do I get for free?
I do like a good brisket. Can we carve out some of that tax on those nasty millionaires
for my grocery fund?
Well, as a rock ribbed Republican, you only one choice.
Not applicable since I'm not a republican. I did vote for Trump, after voting
for Obama twice. I'm an independent, and we outnumber either republicans or democrats.
For me it's a toss-up between Warren and Sanders. When it comes to who will actually get to
run against Trump, if a dining room set and 4 chairs gets the Democratic nomination, they get
my vote in the general election.
The fix is already in I think. Your table and chairs name is Sleepy Joe Biden.
Of course, it's still a long time to the election and mortality rates may kick in.
Warren is rising fast because A) she stands for something and B) she does an excellent job of
explaining how America can make the journey from where it is (including rampant inequality)
to where it needs to be to offer a future to all its people, not just to those who are white,
rich and privileged! Plus, she is super smart & sassy!
(nytimes.com)
70
restricting China's access to American technology and stoking already high tensions as
President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China prepare to meet in Japan next week. From a
report: The Commerce Department announced that it would add four Chinese companies and one
Chinese institute to an "entity list," saying they posed risks to
American national security or foreign policy interests [Editor's note: the link may be
paywalled;
alternative source ] . The move essentially bars the entities, which include one of China's
leading supercomputer makers, Sugon, and a number of its subsidiaries set up to design
microchips, from buying American technology and components without a waiver from the United
States government.
The move could all but cripple these Chinese businesses, which rely on American chips and
other technology to manufacture advanced electronics. Those added to the entity list also
include Higon, Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit, Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics
Technology, and Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology, which lead China's development
of high performance computing, some of which is used in military applications like simulating
nuclear explosions, the Commerce Department said. Each of the aforementioned companies does
businesses under a variety of other names.
Blocking Chinese access to any particular technology just gives them an incentive to pour
massive resources into developing their own versions. They've learned that US companies are
not reliable suppliers. Same as many former allies have learned that being an ally of the US
is a double edged sword.
Cuts in sales to China by US companies means less money for US companies to invest in
developing advanced products. Don't be surprised if by 2030 China will be the sole supplier
of the worlds best, most advanced technology. Just look at what happened to the robotics
industry. Or better yet, go back to the previous century, when the US decided to unload their
steel mills to China at a huge discount to China to invest in financial instruments, then
whined like crazy that China was able to make steel cheaper because their new-to-them steel
mills had less debt to fund per to. Of steel produced.
If China had had to buy new steel mills, the cost of production per ton would have been
higher. But no, trading pieces of paper or bits in bank accounts was easier.
The Chinese hi-tech companies should thank the US for clearing out American products from
the
biggest market [datenna.com], so they can eventually enter the lucrative cycles of being
able to sell primitive products and re-invest the proceeds to create more advanced products,
without having to compete with the most advanced American products upfront, and in a few
short year they will produce more advanced ones.
Oh, don't the US know that Chinese supercomputers already cleared out of American chips
[wikipedia.org] and achieve top performance long time ago?
The App Store also instituted the idea of tech products being part of a
vertically-integrated, closed platform. Apple and Google (with its Google Play store) became
the dominant platform owners for mobile, because their scale and network effects made them the
gatekeepers for companies that wanted to enter the mobile market and access the app
marketplace. Even a company with as much power as Microsoft could do nothing to break the mobile
duopoly .
So whatever your
opinion of Google's Huawei snub, it certainly demonstrates just how much power Google has,
and how that power is centralized. For phone makers, Google is the only option -- Apple being
its own walled garden -- and for app makers and consumers alike, the App Store and Google Play
are the only existing choices.
This is hardly a secret or conspiratorial. Huawei has
long been attempting to develop its own operating system , precisely to prevent such
situations as this. Similarly, despite being the largest Android vendor by far, Samsung still
has its own Tizen operating system. Building your business on someone else's platform leaves
you at their mercy. There's also the question of user experience: Consumers can't actually buy
books on the Kindle app on an iPhone or iPad, because Amazon understandably wants to avoid the
30 percent cut that Apple takes on its operating system.
Perhaps a closed app store linked to a platform has outlived its early usefulness. Not only
does it cement power among entrenched companies, it also puts up barriers to competition. This
idea isn't so radical. Recently,
the Supreme Court ruled that Apple's customers can sue the company under antitrust law for
monopolistic behavior for the way in which it takes that 30 percent of everything on the app
store. There are technical avenues forward: Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs, operate in a more
open, more platform-neutral manner, and have significantly improved in functionality recently;
they could offer a more neutral way for companies to offer apps outside the constraints of an
app store.
For her entire career, Warren's singular focus has been the growing fragility of America's
middle class. She made the unusual choice as a law professor to concentrate relentlessly on
data, and the data that alarms her shows corporate profits creeping up over the last 40 years
while employees' share of the pie shrinks. This shift occurred, Warren argues, because in the
1980s, politicians began reworking the rules for the market to the specifications of
corporations that effectively owned the politicians. In Warren's view of history, "The constant
tension in a democracy is that those with money will try to capture the government to turn it
to their own purposes." Over the last four decades, people with money have been winning, in a
million ways, many cleverly hidden from view. That's why economists have estimated that the
wealthiest top 0.1 percent of Americans now own nearly as much as the bottom 90 percent.
As a presidential candidate, Warren has rolled out proposal after proposal to rewrite the
rules again, this time on behalf of a majority of American families. On the trail, she says "I
have a plan for that" so often that it has turned into a T-shirt slogan. Warren has plans
(about 20 so far, detailed and multipart) for making housing and child care affordable,
forgiving college-loan debt, tackling the opioid crisis, protecting public lands, manufacturing
green products, cracking down on lobbying in Washington and giving workers a voice in selecting
corporate board members. Her grand overarching ambition is to end America's second Gilded
Age.
"Ask me who my favorite president is," Warren said. When I paused, she said, "Teddy
Roosevelt." Warren admires Roosevelt for his efforts to break up the giant corporations of his
day -- Standard Oil and railroad holding companies -- in the name of increasing competition.
She thinks that today that model would increase hiring and productivity. Warren, who has called
herself "a capitalist to my bones," appreciated Roosevelt's argument that trustbusting was
helpful, not hostile, to the functioning of the market and the government. She brought up his
warning that monopolies can use their wealth and power to strangle democracy. "If you go back
and read his stuff, it's not only about the economic dominance; it's the political influence,"
she said.
What's crucial, Roosevelt believed, is to make the market serve "the public good." Warren
puts it like this: "It's structural change that interests me. And when I say structural, the
point is to say if you get the structures right, then the markets start to work to produce
value across the board, not just sucking it all up to the top."
Warren (D)(1): "Elizabeth Warren to introduce bill cancelling up to $50,000 in student debt
for most borrowers" [
MarketWatch ]. "The Democratic Senator of Massachusetts plans to introduce legislation in
the coming weeks that mirrors her presidential campaign proposal
Under the proposal
Warren released as part of her presidential campaign in April, borrowers with a household
income of less than $100,000 would have $50,000 of their student debt cancelled and borrowers
with an income between $100,000 and $250,000 would be eligible for some student debt
cancellation -- though not the full $50,000. Borrowers earning $250,000 or more would receive
no debt cancellation.
Her campaign estimated the plan would cost $640 billion, which would be paid through a tax
on the ultra-wealthy." • I don't think it makes sense to introduce free college without
giving relief to those who, because they chose to be born at the wrong time, are subject to a
lifetime of debt, so kudos to Warren.
That said, note the complex eligibility requirements; Warren just can't help herself. Also,
of course, you can drown in an inch of water, so pragmatically, even $50,000 might not mean all
that much, especially since servicers gotta servicer.
Warren (D)(2): "Elizabeth Warren's plan to pass her plans" (interview) [Ezra Klein,
Vox ]. Klein: "Do you think that there's a way to sequence your agenda such that you're
building momentum as opposed to losing it?" Warren: "Here's my theory: It starts now. That's
what true grassroots building is about. Green New Deal. More and more people are in that fight
and say that matters to me. Medicare-for-all, that fight that matters to me [No, it doesn't.
–lambert]. As those issues over the next year and a quarter get clearer, sharper, they're
issues worth fighting for, and issues where we truly have leadership on it, have people out
there knocking doors over it . You asked me about my theory about this. This is the importance
of engaging everyone. The importance not just of talking to other senators and representatives
but the importance of engaging people across this country." • This language seems awfully
vague, to me. For example, when Sanders says "Not me, us," I know there's a campaign structured
to back the words up. I don't get that sense with Warren. I also know that Sanders knows who
his enemies are ("the billionaires"). Here again, Warren feels gauzy to me ("the wealthy"). And
then there's this. Warren: "I believe in markets But markets without rules are theft." This is
silly. Markets with rules can be theft too! That's what
phishing equilibria are all about! (And the Bearded One would would argue that labor
markets under capitalism are theft , by definition.) But I'd very much
like to hear the views of readers less jaundiced than I am. Clearly Warren has a complex piece
of policy in her head, and so she and Klein are soul-mates.
Warren (D)(1): [Team Warren, Medium ]. "The
rising cost of rent reflects a basic supply-and-demand problem. There aren't enough places to
rent that are affordable to lower-income families. That's because developers can usually turn
bigger profits by building fancier new units targeted at higher-income families rather than
units targeted at lower-income families. The result is a huge hole in the marketplace."
•
I'm not a housing maven by any stretch of the imagination, but I think a story that doesn't
consider the role of private equity in snapping up distressed housing after the Crash is likely
to be a fairy tale.
Warren (D)(2): "The Memo: Warren's rise is threat to Sanders" [
The Hill ]. "'She certainly does seem to be taking votes away from him,' said Democratic
strategist Julie Roginsky. 'It seems as if, as she is rising, he is falling.'" • The
national averages don't show that.
"... As it is, it seems that the corporate Democrats and Clintonites new strategy is to promote Warren and then start leaning on
her heavily in an effort to convert Warren to the neoliberal "dark side" or have her not be a problem for them. ..."
"... Her stance on single payer is troubling and telling, and her foreign policy positions and worldview are absolutely atrocious.
She has good policy ideas (not great political instincts), but none of the ideas at the present time have movements behind them and
would need those movements to push them through. ..."
"... As for Warren, I believe she could have value in a narrowly defined (finance-related) role in a Sanders administration. I will
not vote for her for president. Her foreign policy is atrocious, she doesn't support single payer, and she has proven herself to be
a garden variety neoliberal on all but her own niche issues. ..."
As it is, it seems that the corporate Democrats and Clintonites new strategy is to promote Warren and then start leaning
on her heavily in an effort to convert Warren to the neoliberal "dark side" or have her not be a problem for them.
Warren has unfortunately shown just how easy it is to get her to back down under pressure and there is also the fact that she
has been willing to carry water for the Clintonites before to advance her own political career like she did in the 2016 election.
At this point, I would seriously consider Yang to be my third choice after Sanders and Gabbard if it came down to it. Warren
would probably be either incapable or unwilling to face any serious political opposition either from Trump or neoliberal Democrats
and would probably cave.
Her stance on single payer is troubling and telling, and her foreign policy positions and worldview are absolutely atrocious.
She has good policy ideas (not great political instincts), but none of the ideas at the present time have movements behind them
and would need those movements to push them through.
Is she the person to lead movements and to help them grow? I can't see anyone making that case. She has had an impact on issues,
with the CFPB, which is good, but that was her work within academia. Different animal than actual movement building. Here, we
have single payer and she has backtracked.
So, changes that may happen down the road, great. At least provides some alternatives and possibly a path from here to there.
But, the fights we could win in the shorter term? Waffles. No thanks. I think she can play a great role in her current position
or if Bernie were to win, in his administration, but I think she would be very problematic as a general election nominee. Just
my opinion. I like her more than Biden and a number of others running but that says more about them than her.
The first thought that entered my mind when I saw that quote from Biden was that he really is suffering from cognitive decline.
As for Warren, I believe she could have value in a narrowly defined (finance-related) role in a Sanders administration.
I will not vote for her for president. Her foreign policy is atrocious, she doesn't support single payer, and she has proven herself
to be a garden variety neoliberal on all but her own niche issues.
The only candidates besides Sanders I would vote for (Gabbard and Gravel) have less chance of getting the nomination than he
does. If Sanders is not the Democratic nominee, I will once again be voting Green.
"... All of these interactions reek of entrapment . Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved in an active operation to target Trump and his associates." Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud, Mr. Downer had ties to the CIA , MI6 and (surprise!) the Clintons . ..."
"... Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks, it's difficult to believe that former DOJ/ FBI officials such as Peter Strzok or even James Comey and Andrew McCabe on their own devised the plan to deploy them . ..."
"... Interestingly, Haspel was the CIA's station chief in London during the Russiagate investigation - where the majority of the espionage against the Trump campaign aides took place ..."
"... One of the CIA officers Durham wants to question works at the agency's counterintelligence mission center - one potential conduit between the CIA and the FBI through which the agencies might have passed information during the Trump-Russia investigation. Another senior analyst Durham wants to talk to was involved in the CIA's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. ..."
The Department of Justice will interview senior CIA personnel as part of a sweeping investigation into
the origins of 'Russiagate,' according to the
New
York Times
,
citing anonymous sources briefed on the matter.
The interview plans are the latest sign
the Justice Department will take
a
critical look
at the C.I.A.'s work on Russia's election interference
. Investigators
want to talk with
at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior C.I.A.
analyst
, the people said. Both officials were involved in the agency's work on
understanding the Russian campaign to sabotage the election in 2016. -
New
York Times
The
Times
notes that while the DOJ probe is not a criminal inquiry,
CIA employees are
nervous,
according to former officials, while senior agency officials have questioned why the
CIA's analytical work should be within the purview of John H. Durham - the US Attorney for Connecticut
appointed by Attorney General William Barr to oversee the review.
Justice Department officials have given only broad clues about the review but did note that
it is focused on the period leading up to the 2016 vote
. Mr. Barr has been
interested in
how the C.I.A. drew its conclusions about Russia's election sabotage
,
particularly the judgment that Mr. Putin ordered that operatives help Mr. Trump by discrediting his
opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to current and former American officials.
Mr. Barr wants to know more about
the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding
of the details of the Russian interference campaign
, an official has said. He also wants
to better understand
the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the
summer of 2016
. -
New
York Times
The Obama Department of Justice and
FBI
targeting
of two low-level Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, was carried out in the spring of
2016 because they wanted to spy on the Trump campaign but needed a way in. They enlisted an American
academic and shadowy
FBI
informant
named Stefan Halper to repeatedly sidle up to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page.
But
complementing his work for the
FBI
,
Mr. Halper had a side gig as an intelligence operative with longstanding ties to the
CIA
and
British intelligence MI6
.
Another foreign professor,
Joseph Mifsud
, who played an important early part in
targeting Papadopoulos,
also had abiding ties to the
CIA
,
MI6 and the British foreign secretary.
A third operative, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, targeted Mr. Papadopoulos in a London bar.
It was Mr. Downer's "tip" to the
FBI
that
provided the justification for the start of Russia counterintelligence investigation, complete with
fraudulently-obtained FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
All of these interactions reek of entrapment
. Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I
believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved in an active operation to target Trump and his
associates."
Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud,
Mr. Downer had ties to the
CIA
,
MI6 and (surprise!) the Clintons
.
Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks,
it's difficult to believe that
former DOJ/
FBI
officials
such as Peter Strzok or even
James
Comey
and Andrew McCabe on their own devised the plan to deploy them
.
***
It should also be noted that Papadopoulos has suggested
Stefan Halper's fake
assistant 'Azra Turk' is CIA, not FBI as widely reported,
and that what happened to him "
was
clearly a CIA operation.
"
According to the
Times
, CIA director Gina Haspel has told senior officials that the agency
will cooperate
- up to a point,
as "critical pieces of intelligence whose
disclosure could jeopardize sources, reveal collection methods or disclose information provided by
allies"
will not be shared.
Interestingly, Haspel was the CIA's station chief in London during the Russiagate investigation -
where
the majority of the espionage against the Trump campaign aides took place
.
The Justice Department has not submitted formal written requests to talk to the C.I.A. officers,
but
law enforcement officials have told intelligence officials that Mr. Durham will seek
the interviews, two of the people said. Communications officers for both the C.I.A. and
the Justice Department declined to comment.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has previously interviewed several of the C.I.A.
officers the Justice Department is seeking to talk to, according to a person familiar with
the matter. The committee found no problems with their work or the origins of the Russia inquiry. -
New
York Times
One of the CIA officers Durham wants to question works at the agency's counterintelligence mission
center -
one potential conduit between the CIA and the FBI
through which the agencies
might have passed information during the Trump-Russia investigation. Another senior analyst Durham
wants to talk to was involved in the CIA's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The ties between the efforts by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to examine Russia's election
interference are broader. In the summer of 2016, the intelligence community formed a task force
housed at the C.I.A. to investigate Russian interference. The group shared intelligence with F.B.I.
investigators who opened the bureau's Russia inquiry in an effort to determine whether any
Americans were working with the Russians on their interference during the election. -
New
York Times
Of note - the CIA focuses on
foreign
intelligence
and is
not
supposed to investigate Americans
. Instead, the agency is required to pass domestic issues
which arise during investigations to the FBI.
Yes, we know the CIA is not supposed to investigate US citizens, but
we also know that they do a lot of things they're not supposed to,
and a lot of that stuff is never found out.
We also know that Obama
did a lot of things he wasn't supposed to, but that never seems to
alarm any of the Demonrats. Funny think how now that he's gone ACA is
all of a sudden unconstitutional.
When I think of the whole Russia thing and where it started and
who perpetrated it etc I just feel like how can things get so out of
control?
One good thing is that we know no lie lives forever, so at some
point in time it will all come out.
This insubordinate bitch is disobeying a direct order from The
President to fully cooperate with AG Barr & Durham including handing
over sources & methods. I don't think she gets who the boss is
here. Her fingerprints are all over this **** as Brennan's dirty
deeds doer in London. Fire her sorry azz yesterday then investigate
her.
It wasn't just the Democrats. The plot was undoubtedly created and
run by the CIA (likely Brennan) and FBI, with some degree of
involved by the NSA, who were communicating with the DNC and
Hillary. Most senior leaders of the Democratic must have known at
the outset that Russia Gate was a fraud, or more accurately, false
flag. Yet almost all the Dem leadership supported Russia Gate at
least by giving lip service to "Russian interference in our
elections."
Why? Why would the Dems be so stupid? Because they
thought the intel establishment was invincible. The CIA and FBI
always get what they want, and if you cross them, to quote Chuck
Schumer, "they can get you back a hundred ways from Tuesday". And
because the DNC, Hillary and Democratic Party leadership stand not
for reform but rather the status quo, the Democrats had nothing to
officer except idiotic "identity politics", which is really the
only thing Hillary ever stood for. The Dems just couldn't admit to
themselves or their base that voters could possible prefer a crazy
corrupt bullshitter over the politically correct Hillary. The Dems
had to look for exculpation-- Russia Gate served that purpose.
I say if the Brits where involved in this illegal spying then maybe
their methods and sources should be exposed...sounds like dirty
laundry anyway. This whole mess is beyond belief and it sure looks
like espionage against Trump from the highest parts of our
government....Treason anybody!
He is a Green and thinks Donald Trump is the worst President we've
ever had due to his environmental polices. They said the whole Russia
Gate narrative was ******** from the start. They urged Trump not to
pull out of the Iran deal.
I don't know, but when I see a group of people as large as this
who know the way the game is played since they ran it themselves
overseas for decades, they strike me as a lot more credible then John
Brennan working for CNN or James Clapper appearing on "The View" with
those skanky NY women on ABC and talking about spying.
For skeptics, past VIPS Memos to Presidents and the UN dating back
to 2003. Staunch anti war there is something for everyone here.
VIPS also did the analysis (Binney) that showed the metadata
proved that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked, because of the
transfer speeds. VIPS is a real treasure of an organization.
Thanks for that link, I had not heard of Ray's comment.
Yes I remember seeing that. They've torn the entire Mueller
narrative to shreds with lots of other specifics. I think it's
also interesting how they were having vigils for Julian Assange
regularly posting them and speaking constantly about the
screwing he's getting.
I see Consortium News posted this
story about Seth Rich yesterday. I find the site unbiased and
not everything I want to hear which is good. In my limited
travels I find it good Journalism. I'm sure there is more out
there.
So Pompeo was CIA head and then Haspel got appointed. Hopefully
Pompeo has all of the details because Haspel is buddies with Brennan
and was station chief in London where this originated!
Caitlin Johnstone is probably wrong. Such internal struggle actually rarely is bloodless...
There are actually two faction of the the USA ruling elite with different views on where the USA should go next. So this "intra-elite"
struggle can well lead to some casualties as Clinton faction launched the color revolution against Trump. A coup d'état, which
failed. In old time she (and Mueller, Brennan and Comey) would be beheaded on the main square...
Notable quotes:
"... I don't think Caitlin's "both sides do it" argument holds water. For over TWO YEARS the propaganda arm of the DNC– the mainstream media– has been reinforcing the Deep State/Dem party lie that Trump is a tool/spy for the Russian gov't. Every day, "the walls are closing in on Trump" was their go-to line. Only NOW that the curtains are being pulled back to see the perfidious machinations of the Deep State, Dems and their handmaiden media are SOME conservatives saying a reckoning is around the corner. ..."
"... The conservatives, while maybe premature, has a lot credibility, while the Democrat had exactly ZERO. In fact, it was a treasonous attempt at a coup, engineered by heads of the FBI, DNC, DOJ, CIA, NSA and God know what other intelligence agencies. There is no equivalency as Caitlin assumes. ..."
"... Russiagate (a fabrication made of whole cloth) was an engineered diversion from the fact that Democratic Party leadership had rigged the primaries and convention to steal the nomination from Bernie and Republicans had rigged the general in key swing states to steal the election from Hillary. It worked. ..."
"... According to columnist Paul Street, it was Upton Sinclair who said that Republicans and Democrats were two wings of the same bird of prey. I can't confirm the citation, but I agree with it wholeheartedly. ..."
"... The Orange Wrestling Clown has been drowning in debt since the 1990s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSDDMi3GUo Comfortable billionaires don't sell steaks or start scam universities to keep their business afloat. This is why he sold his soul to the Khazarian mafia. Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu have both fist so far up Trump's ass that John Bolton can shake hands with them through Trump's open mouth. ..."
If you only tuned into US politics within the last couple of years this will come as a major surprise, but believe it or not there
was once a time when both major parties weren't constantly claiming that imminent revelations are about to completely destroy the
other party any minute now. Used to be they'd just focus on beating each other in elections and making each other look bad with smears
and sex scandals; now in the age of Trump they're both always insisting that some huge, earth-shattering revelation is right around
the corner that will see the leaders of the other party dragged off in chains forever.
Enthusiastic Trump supporters have been
talking a lot lately about the president's decision to
give Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify information regarding the shady origins of the discredited Russiagate
hoax, including potentially illicit means used to secure a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign staff. For days online chatter
from Trump's base has been amping up for a huge, cataclysmic bombshell in the same language Russiagaters used to use back before
Robert Mueller pissed in their Wheaties.
"There is information coming that will curl your hair," Congressman Mark Meadows
told Sean Hannity on Fox News. "I can tell you that the reason why it is so visceral -- the response from the Democrats is so
visceral right now -- is because they know, they've seen documents. Adam Schiff has seen documents that he knows will actually put
the finger pointing back at him and his Democrat colleagues, not the president of the United States."
"There is some information in these transcripts that I think has the potential to be a game changer, if it's ever made public,"
former Republican congressman Trey Gowdy
told Fox News , referring to FBI transcripts of recorded interactions with surveilled individuals.
"Sources tell me there will be bombshells [of] information,"
tweeted Fox News contributor Sara A Carter
of the coming decassifications.
. @RepMarkMeadows Says 'Declassification
is right around the corner' I certainly hope so because the American people deserve the truth – all of it. Sources tell me there
will be bombshells if information. | https://t.co/0EpNJ2GZfG
Democrats and Democrat-aligned media are responding with similarly apocalyptic language, playing right along with the same WWE
script.
"While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize
law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies,"
griped congressman, Russiagater and flamboyant drama queen Adam Schiff, adding, "The coverup has entered a new and dangerous
phase. This is un-American."
"President Trump's order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation
sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A.," the New York Times
warns .
"National security veterans fear a declassification order could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA's ability to conduct
its core business -- managing secret intelligence and sources,"
frets Politico
.
"William Barr's New Authority to Declassify Anything He Wants Is a Threat to National Security,"
blares a headline from Slate .
New from me: Trump's declassification order has set up a showdown between DOJ and the intelligence community that could trigger
resignations and threaten the CIA's ability to conduct its core business -- managing secret intelligence and sources.
https://t.co/iUFVCeWRe0
-- Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand)
May 25, 2019
Both sides are wrong and ridiculous. Democrats are wrong and ridiculous for claiming a tiny bit of government transparency is
dangerous, and Republicans are wrong and ridiculous to claim that game-changing bombshell revelations are going to be brought to
the light by these declassifications. Just like with the Mueller report and the "
bigger than
Watergate " Nunes memo before it, there may be some interesting revelations, but the swamp of DC corruption will march on completely
uninterrupted.
Readers keep asking me to weigh in on this whole declassification controversy, but really I have no response to the whole thing
apart from boredom and a slight flinch whenever I think about Adam Schiff's bug-eyed stare. There's just not much going to come of
it.
This is not to suggest that the intelligence communities of the US and its allies weren't up to some extremely sleazy shenanigans
in planting the seeds of the Russiagate insanity which monopolized US political attention for over two years, and it's not to suggest
that those shenanigans couldn't be interpreted as crimes. Abuse of government surveillance and inflicting a malignant psyop on public
consciousness are extremely egregious offenses and should indeed be punished. And, in a sane world, they would be.
But we do not live in such a world. We live in a world where partisan divides are for show only and the powerful protect each
other from ever being held to account. Having the swamp of Trump's Justice Department investigate the swamp of Obama's intelligence
community isn't going to lead anywhere. Swamp creature Bill "Iran-Contra coverup" Barr isn't going to be draining the swamp any more
than swamp creature Robert "Saddam has WMDs" Mueller. The swamp cannot be used to drain itself.
Dems and allied pundits have been screaming for years that we must know every last detail about "Russian interference" in 2016,
and have launched multiple exhaustive investigations pursuant to this. But now they scream that we MUST NOT know about CIA/FBI
conduct in 2016. Very odd
It is possible that some important information will make its way to public view, like
Russiagate's roots in UK intelligence , for example. But no powerful people in the US or its allied governments will suffer any
meaningful consequences for any offenses exposed, and no significant changes in government policy or behavior will take place. I
fully support declassifying everything Trump wants declassified (as well as the rest of the 99 percent of classified government information
which is only hidden from public view out of convenience for the powerful), but the most significant thing that can possibly come
of it is a slightly better-informed populace and some political damage to the Democrats in 2020.
The only people who believe these inquiries will help fix America's problems are those who believe there are aspects of the DC
power structure which are not immersed in swamp. Trump supporters believe the Trump administration is virtuous, so they believe the
Justice Department is preparing to hold powerful manipulators to legal accountability rather than cover for them and treat them with
kid gloves. Democrats believed that a former FBI Director and George W Bush crony was going to bring the Executive Branch of the
US government to its knees, because they thought that swamp monster was in some way separable from the swamp. It doesn't work that
way, cupcake.
If people want to rid their government of the swamp of corruption, they're going to have to do it themselves. No political insider
is going to rise to the occasion and do it for you. They can't. You can't drain the swamp when you're made of swamp, any more than
you can wash yourself clean with a turd-soaked loofah.
The only upheaval that is worth buying stock in is the kind which moves from the bottom up. If you really want change, it's not
going to come from the US president or any longtime government insider. It's going to come from real people looking to each other
and agreeing to say that enough is enough, and use the power of their numbers to flush the corrupt power structure down the toilet
where it belongs. It will mean ceasing to imbue the fake partisan divide with the power of belief, and it will mean unplugging from
official authorized narratives about what's going on in the world and circulating our own narratives instead.
All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless, because both
parties are made of swamp and exist in service of the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption
and that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at.
__________________________
Everyone has my
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Lloyd / June 5, 2019
"Resistance is futile" and furthermore, "You will be assimilated".
The Borg-like psychic vampire Collective and its hive mind is apparently quite real.
Aardvark-Gnosis / May 31, 2019
Subversive everything ? Like the Mad Hatter, From Wikipedia
"The Hatter's riddle Edit
In the chapter "A Mad Tea Party", the Hatter asks a much-noted riddle "why is a raven like a writing desk?" When Alice gives
up trying to figure out why, the Hatter admits "I haven't the slightest idea!". Carroll originally intended the riddle to be without
an answer, but after many requests from readers, he and others -- including puzzle expert Sam Loyd -- suggested possible answers;
in his preface to the 1896 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
Carroll wrote:
Inquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's riddle can be imagined, that I may as
well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, "because it can produce a few notes, though they are
very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" This, however, is merely an afterthought; the riddle as originally
invented had no answer at all."
Me;
For all we know the Magic of Kabbalistic Zohar has formed a Golem image of The Trumpian REIGN many years in the past Now that
AIPAC controls the "Bankers War Machine" "Through deception we make war" The Massod Credo Deception is the whole game! In fighting,
Double speak, the latter, conjured the gods of dystopian rule by the rabbis of the Knesset , Wall Street, is owned by whom? As
well, Mainstream media, etc. Maybe by not one individual, but the collective has been operating on the planet for millennia slowly
through a design of martyred collective ideological sacrifice, do the fractures in the timeline of history become distorted and
manipulated by this Kabbalistic magic.
If anyone mentions the latter, the knee jerk reaction keeps the truth of who runs everything silent, What then is the racist
card that separates the masses into the left right dichotomy here the clusterfuck begins the "MADHATTERSINSANITY" bate the hook,
fix the gear, cast out the line and real in the guppy's that bite on the bate!
The thousand pound gorilla on the back of time is looking backwards:
White Rabbit
"When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head"
The best kept secret is the on right before everyone's eyes everyday, every Hour of the day!
Remember the USS COLE? swept under the rug of obsecurity, because of a fake ally in sheep's clothing.. and the ignorance of
the masses that worship a god they did not create those of the tribe that no longer exist, only in a fake and false ideological
sense. Believers that listen to evangelicals taught by the seminaries of structured dogma They should be called Cemeteries, where
the dead bury the dead and fill the heads of the latter with zombie mentalities conjures by the rabbis of illusion The priest
of confusion rule the planet!
The Trumpian dystopia has been engineered by the very royals that put the abomination of desolation in the middle east in 1948
Now, genocide is excepted by the zombie nation of false freedom and false economic means feeding that gorilla These are the magicians
of money for nothing a free lunch slavery incorporated, ideological psychosis and judicial double talk, and a fake we the people
document of no effect!
Yet, all are afraid to be demonized by the effects of a desolate nation of egotistical chosen ones that are a minority on planet
Rothschild Fear rules the economic viability of all who challenge the real haters of the human spirit. Human spirit )0( Zombies
(100)
jared / May 30, 2019
Agreed Caitlin.
Trump should be impeached not for canoodling with Russians but for
– Failure to follow through on his promises (doing the opposite)
– Incompetence
you're still taking the dominant narratives at their face value .
jared / May 31, 2019
I truly believe that Trump should be impeached. Would also like to see Bush tried as war criminal and assets seized.
Dan / May 30, 2019
I don't think Caitlin's "both sides do it" argument holds water. For over TWO YEARS the propaganda arm of the DNC– the mainstream
media– has been reinforcing the Deep State/Dem party lie that Trump is a tool/spy for the Russian gov't. Every day, "the walls
are closing in on Trump" was their go-to line. Only NOW that the curtains are being pulled back to see the perfidious machinations
of the Deep State, Dems and their handmaiden media are SOME conservatives saying a reckoning is around the corner.
The conservatives, while maybe premature, has a lot credibility, while the Democrat had exactly ZERO. In fact, it was a
treasonous attempt at a coup, engineered by heads of the FBI, DNC, DOJ, CIA, NSA and God know what other intelligence agencies.
There is no equivalency as Caitlin assumes.
John / June 4, 2019
What better 'defense' against the Swamp Drainer than to propagate that he too is part of their swamp?
You can tell a lot about a person by looking at those who oppose him
richard le sarcophage / May 30, 2019
The best way to get a quick idea of just how raving mad and Evil the ruling US elites are is to watch Fox News, then MSNBC (MSNBC
are rather more deranged). The barking insane presstitutes howl and bay at the moon, and accuse the other side of being liars,
criminals, morons, thugs etc. And, don't you know, they're both correct.
My favourite lunacy, that both snarl, is that there was 'massive interference' by 'Russia' in the 2016 election sham. A Big
Lie that Adolph H. would approve, and hypocrisy so gargantuan, coming from the greatest interferer in the affairs of other societies,
ever, by orders of magnitude, that it blows the mind.
John / May 30, 2019
Anybody who refuses to acknowledge that President DJT is being relentlessly, non-stop, 24/7 ATTACKED with HATE and FAKE NEWS is
willingly BLIND / looking the other way
Why do you think that is?? Because he colluded with Russia? He's racist? He's sexist? He's a Nazi? He's fascist? And the MSM
is just trying to inform and protect the public?
Can you name ANYONE ever, more ubiquitiously & relentlessly targeted by 'the Left,' and their comrade RINOS? Not even Hitler
is so detested as DJT.
Why is that?
I have to conclude that the man is a threat – and they're desperately firing all their last ammo before they get DRAINED
He pledged to DRAIN the SWAMP.
Not knock out the MIC, Big Pharma, Chemtrails, 9/11 and JFK conspirators.
Name someone who has a chance of doing any of those
And watch what happens before the 2020 election!
richard le sarcophage / May 30, 2019
Trump is, indeed a monster. But his enemies are even, God Bless 'em, worse. The clear conspiracy to derail his campaign, then
Presidency, with utterly fraudulent accusations of 'collusion with Russia', a plot involving the Clintons, Obama, elements of
the intelligence services in the USA (led by the fascist Brennan)the UK, Italy and even our own eponymous Alexander Downer, is
simply denied by the Democrazies, increasingly frantically, as Barr turns his beady eyes to their machinations. It's like watching
two rabid dogs getting stuck into each other. May they rip each other to shreds.
Aaron Russo's DVD "America, from freedom to fascism" and ingesting: Title 15 USC )[(-17 might help.
cutthecord / May 29, 2019
please check out George Galloway's short column and the video (RT, may 29, 2019) where Steve Bannon and Galloway are discussing
the neo-liberal globalist wars for the neo-liberal New World Order, and the peoples' revolt across the borders.
cutthecord / May 29, 2019
alliance between the real left and the real right against the "centrist" globalist elites is the key, what the MSM have desperately
been trying to prevent.
Peter in Seattle / May 29, 2019
Russiagate (a fabrication made of whole cloth) was an engineered diversion from the fact that Democratic Party leadership
had rigged the primaries and convention to steal the nomination from Bernie and Republicans had rigged the general in key swing
states to steal the election from Hillary. It worked.
Even dissident analysts (ahem) now forget to mention Russiagate's
original purpose while they crow their "told ya so's." Now that Russiagate is dead, Conspire-Against-Trumpgate (an allegation
I believe to be substantially true) pops up to take Russiagate's place as a diversion, but a diversion this time from a constant
underlying reality: the fact that both parties are working for the plutocratic corporatocracy, lining their pockets, feeding the
war machine, racing us headlong into global environmental collapse, and doing jack squat for the 99% who are doing the paying,
suffering, and dying.
I hate to say it, but the war against abortion rights (as important as they are) was relaunched in earnest to serve the same
diversionary end. Trust me: the Democratic Party is thrilled that abortion has been revived as a social-wedge issue. They
certainly can't point to any other issues that they are substantially better on than Republicans.)
According to columnist Paul Street, it was Upton Sinclair who said that Republicans and Democrats were two wings of the
same bird of prey. I can't confirm the citation, but I agree with it wholeheartedly.
Aquila / May 29, 2019
Yellow Vests are cheap, and available at many stores. Just saying.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
There was a movie back after the near revolution of the 60's called Network. A guy who stumbles into being a popular 'news anchor'
gets on the screen one night and starts yelling "I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not going to Take it Anymore." In the movie, people start
opening their windows and shouting the same, and as others hear their neighbors, they join in. In real life, there was a revolution
in Argentina that began with housewives banging pots and pans in the capital. Their Great Leader was on TV telling everyone that
more austerity measures were needed, and the people who'd had enough started making noise just to drown him out.
-- -- -- --
--
Both of which show that standing up and telling the world that you are angry can be a successful start to something. I'm not
saying that we need to copy the Yellow Vest idea, but choosing to go out on Saturdays and let everyone know that people are angry
both in the capital and across the country is obviously having at least some impact.
-- -- -- -- –
Old lyric from Joel Strummer and The Clash. "Anger can be power, Know that you can use that!" (Working for the Clampdown).
Start doing something that shows your anger, but in a peaceful and generally legal way, then see who wants to come join you. There
have been successful movements that began with just a handful or even one person going out and letting others know that they are
angry, mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore.
Aquila / May 29, 2019
Any real movement towards change will arise from the bottom and go up from there. What we see regularly for decades now is the
opposite. Some member of the 1% stands up and says Follow Me! They promise Change and Hope, or otherwise stand portrayed as the
member of the 1% who is an Outsider compared to the other 1%ers who they call Insiders. Then we end up with the 99% deciding to
back this 1%er, and their drive for power. And of course, every single time it turns out that the 1%er is just another member
of the 1% who wants a government of, by and for the 1%, and the 99%ers who followed he/she end up feeling betrayed (if they don't
stay permanently deluded which many do).
A real movement for change won't look like this. A real movement for change will see people coming together. Then, once they
start meeting and talking, they choose one of their own for a candidate. Such a candidate will look like one of us, will work
the sort of jobs we work, will live in our neighborhoods, will complain about the higher prices at the same stores at which we
shop. Such a movement can choose someone who will truly represent the movement.
This of course is the opposite of the current situation where some millionaire stands up and says Follow Me and I'll Take You
to the Promised Land. We know how that story ends. Neck deep in the Big Muddy.
Robyn / May 29, 2019
Absolutely right that it will never come from the swamp-dwellers, there's no incentive for them to give up their privilege. But
for it to come from the dispossessed, disappointed, and the disillusioned, takes two things.
1. all of the people kicked to the bottom of the pile have to be informed and that will never come from the MSM who are part
of the swamp. So sharing the work of Caitlin and other analysts of her calibre – chain letter style – to wake up as many people
as possible is something we can all do.
2. The awoken people need a rallying point or, dare I say it, a leader who speaks for them and who can get the masses behind her/him.
No such person will emerge from the swamp, it will be grassroots.
Meanwhile it's really gratifying to see Caitlin mentioned more and more often on blogs and see her articles published or linked
in more and more places.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
no, i don't expect either party to fix the system and make it good and just.
i just want them to exterminate each other and i do my very best to help them do so. really, i don't think i'm alone in this
game.
one of the most quotable reasons why some voted for Trump was exactly that: "if we the people can't take over the system, we
want to blow it up" figuratively speaking of course. Trump wasn't sent to DC to fix anything. he was sent to "blow it up". there
are many ways to do so, and his way may just work, especially with a little push from all of us.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
now, whether Trump himself sees his own role as such is beside the point. with or without intentions, he's been doing pretty good
so far. he just need some "help" from us who want it to be blown to pieces.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."-Emma Goldman
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."-Mark
Twain
Aquila / May 29, 2019
On the other hand, "Not Voting" is absolutely, guaranteed to change nothing at all.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
Your circular reasoning is ineffective. How do you know nothing will change?
"Suppose they gave a war and nobody came ?"
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
not all votings are equal. nobody had any illusion about Trump. he was a well known entity. what makes you think that you are
smarter than others?????
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
voting for Trump was a BDS vote, in a sense.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"voting for Trump was a BDS vote, in a sense."
lol whatever helps you sleep at night.
"They say arguing with an idiot makes two of them so, I'll just leave you alone on this one."
LSJohn / May 29, 2019
A friend of mine who can't stand Trump said, "I'm going to vote for him because trouble is what we need, and no one could cause
more."
"If you really want change, It's going to come from real people looking to each other and agreeing to say that enough is enough,
and use the power of their numbers to flush the corrupt power structure down the toilet where it belongs."
Don't expect Democracy to flush the Deep State down the toilet. The Deep State is the part of Government that doesn't have
to stand for elections – the CIA, the FBI, National Security Agency, Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, and all
the Armed Forces, National Guard and Police. The heads/Chiefs/Directors are appointed by the President, but all the rest sit safe
and secure in their comfortable offices with their pensions and healthcare plans. They are only interested in maintaining the
status quo, ensuring that the US is unchallenged in its domination of the world.
They will need to be strung up from lampposts, because they will always want to get back into control, as it is good for the
country.
Aquila / May 29, 2019
The story of Fidel and Che can teach us. Both were in Guatemala during a wave of freedom and glasnost there. IIRC, this was sometime
around 1954. But the Guatemalan leaders let their opposition remain. Within a couple of years, the CIA and United Fruit (now Chiquita)
had overthrown their democracy and put dictators back in charge. Fidel and Che obviously learned from being on the ground during
in Guatemala during those times.
mike k / May 29, 2019
The only hopes that need to be discarded are false hopes. Real hope is a precious resource that sustains us in a search for real
answers, or at least directions to pursue that have some valid reasons to believe may be fruitful.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
This is how Qtards, Russiagaters, and any other fool who falls for the fake wrestling of red team versus blue team lies of the
empire.
The politicians of the empire engage in kayfabe on a daily basis.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
" playing right along with the same WWE script."
And how is it not obvious that the Orange Clown's role(former WWE player/ reality show actor) in all of this, is to be the
heel?
In professional wrestling, a heel (also known as a rudo in lucha libre) is a wrestler who portrays a villain or a "bad guy"
and acts as an antagonist[1][2][3] to the faces, who are the heroic protagonist or "good guy" characters. Not everything a heel
wrestler does must be villainous: heels need only to be booed or jeered by the audience to be effective characters.
To gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking
rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely)
break rules, but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as
arrogance, cowardice or contempt for the audience. Many heels do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type
of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role, as heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given
heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face or the other way around, or to make the wrestler do
something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.
Note the Heel's latest move; Trump considers pardons for soldiers accused of war crimes
I still hear the rumblings from the bank bailouts of 2008 that made the public aware that the politicians worked for the criminal
bankers and not for the public!! The electorate is still rumbling but they are many miles away from any kind of revolt be it active
or passive!!! One thing that always crosses my mind is that anything might happen!!!
The place where we disagree, Caitlin, is precisely at the place where you seem to give up all hope. You simply choose to believe
that law is not really meant to be enforced and that, if you are high-enough up in some infernal food chain, you can expect to
live off the fat of the nation any way that you please. I disagree.
A fundamental sea-change began when Donald Trump, a well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire, decided to run
for political office. (He didn't need the money.) It continued when the American people elected a President who was unlike every(!)
one of his predecessors: neither a career politician nor a retired Army General. It was affirmed when a corrupt "swamp" unleashed
its every power against him – fully expecting him to be swiftly driven out of town wearing feathers. It has been further affirmed
when this didn't happen.
Caitlin, I very sincerely believe that future historians will write more books about Donald Trump than they wrote about Abraham
Lincoln. Is it possible for us to recognize "profound moments in the very-young history of our nation" when we are living in the
middle of them? Donald Trump presented the American nation – for the very first time in its history – with a truly unconventional
and remarkable choice, and an unprecedented resumé, The American people knowingly seized the day. Then, the man whom they elected
did likewise. Other nations around the world are taking similar bold chances – e.g. Ukraine just elected a comic who is no joke.
Even the Chinese people, not too many years ago, "gathered on a certain Square "
I fully recognize that crime and corruption are deeply set within the halls of power in Washington, DC and elsewhere, but I
do not share your forlorn opinion that our 21st Century is somehow pre-ordained to be just like the past. Instead, I maintain
hope. Every "organized crime ring," whether it ruled a city or a county or a state or a nation, "ruled only for a time." Then,
finally, the people turned against it – and prevailed.
mike k / May 29, 2019
If you are putting your hope on Trump, you might step back and clean your glasses, then take a look at all the harm this man has
already done.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
harm to whom and what? the system, the status quo, the neo-liberal New World Order?????? well you're missing the bigger picture.
the people have nothing more to lose in this swamp monsters fight.
Geo / May 29, 2019
If you are placing your hopes in a "well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire" to change the system I am sorry
to tell you that you have given up hope. And if you believe the myth that a guy who did Learning Annex "scaminars" for a paycheck
just over a decade ago and made phone calls posing as his own publicist is a real billionaire then you need to work on your critical
thinking skills.
He's a gifted conman. Don't feel bad he conned you too. Just don't let him keep conning you.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
well, i'm just hoping he cons other cons and go down together. i'm trying to expedite that process.
LSJohn / May 29, 2019
Keep expediting, but don't count on him for help. He'll be talked out of every decent impulse he might have. He's a slow-witted,
know-nothing child in a man's game.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
i think his cluelessness is his only strength. so please stop trying to stop him, because you're not helping anyone.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"Donald Trump, a well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire, decided to run for political office. (He didn't need
the money.)" Looool
The Orange Wrestling Clown has been drowning in debt since the 1990s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSDDMi3GUo Comfortable
billionaires don't sell steaks or start scam universities to keep their business afloat. This is why he sold his soul to the Khazarian
mafia. Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu have both fist so far up Trump's ass that John Bolton can shake hands with them through Trump's
open mouth.
As the MSM, Trumptards and parts of the alternative media focused on Russiagate, the real collusion with Israel is blatantly
out in the open. That 5000 pound gorilla could take a piss (start WW3) on collective humanity's head and they would say it's raining.
Yes, Orlando!! That is really hitting the nail on the head!!! Israel is running Donald Trump as well as running the United States
government!!!
Orlando / May 29, 2019
Furthermore it was Bill Clinton who convinced his good buddy DT to run for office. FYI: Billy Boy C and the Orange Dufus are both
good buds with Jeff Epstein.
Ishkabibble / May 29, 2019
Mr. Robinson (btw, I recommend keeping an eye on Mrs. Robinson), .. I agree with much of what you say, especially about how much
is going to be written about Agent Orange in the future.
..
ALREADY AO has done something unprecented with North Korea. Look at the abuse he has taken for that.
..
ALREADY AO went to Helsinki to shake hands with Mr. Putin. Look at the abuse he is still being subjected to for that.
..
..
To put it as briefly as possible, AO's "position" within the long line of US POTUSs will IMO be determined by what goes on in
the near future in Syria, Iran, Venzuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Palestine and the development of the US's relationships
with China and Russia. So far he has not started any new wars. The MIC and MSM and many members of congress are apoplectic because
of that. IMO, we will soon know all that is really important to know about Mr. Trump as POTUS.
STEVEN J MACKIE / May 28, 2019
I totally reject your demand that I stop hoping. If I wasn't a patient person and didn't know your intent to be good I would dismiss
you with a hearty fuck you! I do what I can to help my fellows extricate themselves from TDS. I'm active with other like minded
folks when time permits. I wish the evil could be stopped by me alone,but it can't, so I hope. My thoughts are with you to find
answers, because that's what you do so well. Meanwhile don't try to strip the choir of hope. Please It's not all black and white,
the higher you get in the deep-state food chain the grayer it gets.
mike k / May 29, 2019
Actually, the higher you get in the deep state food chain, the darker and darker it gets. It's damn near jet black at the top.
mike k / May 29, 2019
Actually, the higher you get in the deep state food chain, the darker it gets. At the top it is like almost jet black.
Geo / May 29, 2019
She's not taking away your hope, she's redirecting it. Putting your hope is Mueller or Barr to change a system they are entrenched
in is like placing your hope in Geithner and Summers to fix Wall Street after the crash, or in Bolton to fix our quagmires in
the Middle East. It's lunacy.
As Caitlyn said, the hope lies in alternatives to the current system and its swamp creatures. And all this hysteria about the
impending collapse of one party or another is wishfulfilment. A system this entrenched will no go quickly or easily. It is a generational
struggle of small victories that hopefully build into revolutionary cultural changes over time.
If there is any way Caitlyn's writing withers hope it's in the knowledge that time is not on our side.
STEVEN J MACKIE / May 29, 2019
I never said I put my hope in Mueller or Barr. I don't look to individuals to find hope (Trump included). Hope for the defeat
of evil is what I'm talkin about. My belief is in the inherent goodness of most people and I hope we defeat the evil ones.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
stop him from doing what?
mike k / May 28, 2019
All you say is completely true and on target Caitlin, until the next to last paragraph where you summon the great American Public
to flush their entire government, MIC, CIA, Oligarchs etc, down the drain kerflooooosh!!
Ain't going to happen, and you know why. The "Great American Public" consists mostly of brainwashed zombies. Sorry that's how
it is, but the great mechanism of human history just does not turn on a dime. "Natura non facit saltum". Turning the Great Ship
headed for extinction around takes a lot of time – time we don't have.
Mike, I believe that the only hope we can have is that " the Washington, D.C. swamp " is on prime time TV as much as possible
so the United States public gets completely disgusted with it!! Because if my fellow citizens do not see it on TV than it is not
happening!!!
mike k / May 29, 2019
Ron, The trouble is that most Americans don't see how deeply evil the "swamp" actually is. Sure, they bitch about this and that
they don't like, but they don't get the terminal depth of corruption that permeates our mafia government. Take for instance most
folk's naive belief that voting will eventually produce good government. "Draining" this swamp would require removing almost everyone
involved in government in DC and elsewhere. Then one might begin designing a true and just government ..
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
you may be mis-underestimating the unwashed masses. if you're correct about the wisdom of the masses, well then we might as well
just commit a collective suicide now.
Some North Korean official said John Bolton was " defective human product " and I can not think of anything better to describe
him!!! Ms Johnstone, I am hoping that our political " swamp " implodes on itself the same way that the Russian " swamp " imploded
when the criminals went after one another!!! The best way to get the general public awoke and aware of our rotten government is
to show everyone just what these rascals are doing every day and just what they are capable of doing as well as what they have
already done over the years!!!
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
intentionally or not, that's what Trump has been doing: ripping the mask off the polite society, forcing the Deep State to reveal
itself.
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has told Verizon Communications Inc that
the U.S. carrier should pay licensing fees for more than 230 of the Chinese telecoms equipment
maker's patents and in aggregate is seeking more than $1 billion, a person briefed on the
matter said on Wednesday.
Verizon should pay to "solve the patent licensing issue," a Huawei intellectual property
licensing executive wrote in February, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier. The patents
cover network equipment for more than 20 of the company's vendors including major U.S. tech
firms but those vendors would indemnify Verizon, the person said. Some of those firms have been
approached directly by Huawei, the person said.
The patents in question range from core network equipment, wireline infrastructure to
internet-of-things technology, the Journal reported. The licensing fees for the more than 230
patents sought is more than $1 billion, the person said.
Huawei has been battling the U.S. government for more than a year. National security experts
worry that "back doors" in routers, switches and other Huawei equipment could allow China to
spy on U.S. communications. Huawei has denied that it would help China spy.
Companies involved, including Verizon have notified the U.S. government and the dispute
comes amid a growing feud between China and the United States. The licensing fee demand may be
more about the geopolitical battle between China and the United States rather than a demand for
patent fees.
Huawei and Verizon representatives met in New York last week to discuss some of the patents
at issue and whether Verizon is using equipment from other companies that could infringe on
Huawei patents.
Verizon spokesman Rich Young declined to comment "regarding this specific issue because it's
a potential legal matter."
However, Young said, "These issues are larger than just Verizon. Given the broader
geopolitical context, any issue involving Huawei has implications for our entire industry and
also raise national and international concerns."
Huawei and U.S. wireless carriers T-Mobile US Inc and AT&T Inc did not respond to
Reuters' requests for comment. Sprint Corp declined to comment.
The United States last month put Huawei on a blacklist that barred it from doing business
with U.S. companies on security grounds without government approval, prompting some global tech
firms to cut ties with the world's largest telecoms equipment maker.
Washington is also seeking the extradition of Huawei Chief Financial Executive Meng Wanzhou
from Canada after her arrest in Vancouver last December on a U.S. warrant.
China has since upped the pressure on Canada, halting Canadian canola imports and in May
suspended the permits of two major pork producers.
(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by
Anil D'Silva, Sriraj Kalluvila and Sandra Maler)
This just in from the Big Island. The natives seem restless.
"Imagine if you will, in a few short years, that information on current events will only be available from a narrow band of sources
sanctioned by the government/corporate media. And this Orwellian future will be embraced by the majority of people because it
provides security, both ideological and emotional.
Any dissension, criticism, whistle-blowing, anti-exceptionalism coming from critical voices will be labeled extremist. And
this has been embraced by the two monopoly political parties.
I just received a questionnaire from the Democrats posing the question, "What's the most important issue in the upcoming
election?"
The very first multiple choice answer to pick from was - "Russian aggression and increasing global influence" Russia, a country with a small population and an economy that is a fraction of the US or Europe is our dire threat? Let's
just ignore the expansion of NATO onto Russia's borders, or that the US State Dept. spent 5 billion dollar to change the politics
of Ukraine.
Second most important issue asked on the questionnaire, "Protecting America from foreign cyber attacks" Let's ignore
the fact that the NSA is spying on all Internet traffic, that the CIA has misinformation programs like, "Operation Mockingbird"
and many other covert activities to influence perceptions domestically.
The third Democratic Party priority question is "China's increasing economic and military strength" China's state controlled
mercantile success lies directly on the twin shoulders of the US Government and it's multi-national corporations. The US granted
China, Most Favored Nation status in 1979, which gave it exposure to US markets with low tariffs. Almost immediately, corporations
went to China and invested in factories because of the cheap Chinese labor while abandoning the US worker. And in May 2000 Bill
Clinton backed a bipartisan effort to grant China permanent normal trade relations, effectively backing its bid to join the WTO.
We live in a country whereby the US Government has made it possible for corporations to pay little or no taxes, to be deregulated
from government laws designed to protect the public, and allow corporate crimes to go unpunished while maintaining vast influence
over the political system through campaign contributions and corporate ownership of the mass media.
This US Government/corporate partnership smells a lot like Fascism. Instead of Mussolini we have Trumpolini. And so our time's
brand of corporatism has descended over the eroding infrastructure of America."
"... "When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise -- to deny the political character of the modern corporation -- is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error." ..."
"There
was time when average Americans could be counted upon to know correctly whether the country was going up or down, because in those
days when America prospered, the American people prospered as well. These days things are different.
Let's look at it in a statistical sense. If you look at it from the middle of the 1930's (the Depression) up until the year
1980, the lower 90 percent of the population of this country, what you might call the American people, that group took home 70
percent of the growth in the country's income. If you look at the same numbers from 1997 up until now, from the height of the
great Dot Com bubble up to the present, you will find that this same group, the American people, pocketed none of this country's
income growth at all.
Our share of these great good times was zero, folks. The upper ten percent of the population, by which we mean our country's
financiers and managers and professionals, consumed the entire thing. To be a young person in America these days is to understand
instinctively the downward slope that so many of us are on."
Thomas Frank, Kansas City Missouri, 6 April 2017
"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief,
it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise -- to deny the political
character of the modern corporation -- is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that
disguise are those we instruct in error."
John Kenneth Galbraith
One of the older male anchors on financial TV today noted, in a very condescending tone, that for some reason Elizabeth Warren
'has an attitude' when it comes to corporations.
I hope she and some of her like minded fellows get their opportunity to extend the hand of equal justice to these smug serial
felons, pampered polecats, and corporatist clowns. It has been a long time coming.
"... Despite special counsel Robert Mueller clearing Trump of collusion with Russia in 2016, Brennan still maintains the counterintelligence operation against the Republican nominee's campaign was more than justified. ..."
"... "I was there in the summer of '16 and it was very well predicated," the former intelligence official told MSNBC's Deadline host Nicole Wallace last month. "To launch this counterintelligence investigation about what the Russians were doing to interfere in our election and how among American citizens might have been working with them." ..."
"... Eventually 0bama will be asked when he authorized the spying on the 2012 election, and you can bet 0bama will toss Brennan under that proverbial bus. 0bama will have to answer the question, because there is a massive paper trail of evidence. ..."
"... President Trump weathered the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax storm. Those slow-moving wheels of real justice are finally starting to turn. ..."
Former CIA Director John Brennan has once against spoken out against President Donald
Trump, describing him in a recent interview as a "pathological deceiver" who "rankles" him "to
no end."
Speaking to the Irish Times over the weekend, Brennan discussed what he claims is the root of his
harsh and repeated criticism of President Trump. The longtime Deep Stater's attacks, he claims,
aren't driven as much by president's policy prescriptions but by his character.
"So my beef with Donald Trump is not because he has done some very foolish things –
like reneging on the Iran nuclear deal, or how he has handled the North Korea situation –
I find that many of his policies are deeply flawed and are purely tactical to give him a
political bounce," he
told interviewer Suzanne Lynch, the Times' Washington Correspondent.
"But if that was the only problem I had with him, I would be silent. What really just
rankles me to no end is his dishonesty, his lack of ethics and principles and character, the
way he demeans and degrades and denigrates individuals or institutions of government, what he
has done and said about the FBI and CIA and the former leadership, the fact that he wilfully
misleads not just the American people but the world," the former Obama spy chief
continued .
Brennan concluded his thoughts on Trump by
stating : "He is a pathological deceiver and that lack of ethical, principled behaviour is
something that I never thought I would see in the president of the United States who is the
most powerful person in the world, who should serve as a role model to all Americans.
Brennan's remarks come as his conduct during the U.S. government's Russia investigation is
under review by the Department of Justice. Last month, President Trump directed several federal
departments and agencies to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr's examination of the
Russia probe's origins, as well as the declassification of intelligence related to it.
Despite special counsel Robert Mueller clearing Trump of collusion with Russia in 2016,
Brennan still maintains the counterintelligence operation against the Republican nominee's
campaign was more than justified.
"I was there in the summer of '16 and it was very well predicated," the former
intelligence official
told MSNBC's Deadline host Nicole Wallace last month. "To launch this counterintelligence
investigation about what the Russians were doing to interfere in our election and how among
American citizens might have been working with them."
Brennan is worried about what President Trump is doing with the metric-tons of
#Spygate & #Obamagate evidence.
Eventually 0bama will be asked when he authorized the spying on the 2012 election, and you
can bet 0bama will toss Brennan under that proverbial bus. 0bama will have to answer the
question, because there is a massive paper trail of evidence.
They never thought Hillary could lose. Mueller's special counsel, was only a temporary
cover-up. President Trump weathered the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax storm. Those slow-moving
wheels of real justice are finally starting to turn.
"... "I feel duped," said the voter, Renee Elliott, who was laid off from her job at the Indianapolis Carrier plant. "I don't have a lot of faith in political candidates much anymore. They make promises. They make them and break them." ..."
"... Warren rose to her feet. "The thing is, you can't just wave your arms," the she said, gesturing energetically. "You've really got to have a plan – and I do have a plan." ..."
"... But despite the burst of momentum, Warren's path to the nomination has two major roadblocks: Sanders and Biden. Her success will depend on whether she can deliver a one-two punch: replacing Sanders as the progressive standard bearer while building a coalition broad enough to rival Biden. ..."
"... "She sounds like Donald Trump at his best," conservative Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told his largely Republican audience as he read from Warren's proposal during the opening monologue of his show this week. The plan calls for "aggressive intervention on behalf of American workers" to boost the economy and create new jobs, including a $2tn investment in federal funding in clean energy programs. ..."
"... His praise was all the more surprising because Warren has vowed not to participate in town halls on Fox News, calling the network a "hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists" ..."
The senator's 'I have a plan' mantra has become a rallying cry as she edges her way to the
top – but is it enough to get past the roadblocks of Biden and Sanders?
Elizabeth Warren at a campaign rally in Fairfax, Virginia, on 16 May. Photograph: Cliff
Owen/AP Plan by plan, Elizabeth Warren is making inroads
and gaining on her rivals in the 2020 Democratic race to take on Donald Trump.
This week a Morning Consult poll saw Warren break
into the double digits at 10%, putting her in third place behind Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
A recent
Economist/YouGov poll found Warren was making gains among liberal voters, with Democrats
considering the Massachusetts senator for the Democratic presidential nomination in nearly
equal measure with Sanders.
Her intense campaigning on a vast swathe of specific issues has achieved viral moments on
the internet – even including one woman whom
Warren advised on her love life – as well as playing well during recent television
events.
At a televised town hall in Indiana this week, Warren listened intently as a woman who voted
for Trump in 2016 described her disillusionment – not only with a president who failed to
bring back manufacturing jobs as he said he promised but with an entire political system
stymied by dysfunction.
"I feel duped," said the voter, Renee Elliott, who was laid off from her job at the
Indianapolis Carrier plant. "I don't have a lot of faith in political candidates much anymore.
They make promises. They make them and break them."
Warren rose to her feet. "The thing is, you can't just wave your arms," the she said,
gesturing energetically. "You've really got to have a plan – and I do have a plan."
That mantra – a nod to the steady churn of policy blueprints Warren's campaign has
released – has become a rallying cry for Warren as she edges her way to the top of the
crowded Democratic presidential primary field.
But despite the burst of momentum, Warren's path to the nomination has two major roadblocks:
Sanders and Biden. Her success will depend on whether she can deliver a one-two punch:
replacing Sanders as the progressive standard bearer while building a coalition broad enough to
rival Biden.
Warren began that work this week with a multi-stop tour of the midwest designed to show her
strength among working class voters who supported Trump. Ahead of the visit, Warren unveiled a
plan she described as "economic patriotism", which earned startling praise from one of Trump's
most loyal supporters.
"She sounds like Donald Trump at his best," conservative Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson
told his largely Republican audience as he read from Warren's proposal during the opening
monologue of his show this week. The plan calls for "aggressive intervention on behalf of
American workers" to boost the economy and create new jobs, including a $2tn investment in
federal funding in clean energy programs.
His praise was all the more surprising because Warren has vowed not to participate in town
halls on Fox News, calling the network a "hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to
racists and conspiracists".
The debate over whether
Democrats should appear on Fox News for a town hall has divided the field. Sanders, whose
televised Fox News town hall generated the highest viewership of any such event, argued
that it is important to speak to the network's massive and heavily Republican audience.
As Warren courts working-class voters in the midwest, she continues to focus heavily on the
early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. After jumping into the race on New Year's Eve 2018,
Warren
immediately set to work , scooping up talent and building a massive
operation in Iowa. Her campaign is betting a strong showing in the first in the nation
caucuses will propel her in New Hampshire, which neighbors Massachusetts, and then boost her in
Nevada and South Carolina.
But as Warren gains momentum, moderate candidates are becoming more vocal about their
concern that choosing a nominee from the party's populist wing will hand Trump the
election.
"If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the
answer," former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper told Democrats in California last weekend.
Though his comments were met with boos and jeers among the convention's liberal crowd, his
warning is at the heart of the debate over who should be the Democratic presidential
nominee.
Warren has pointedly distinguished herself as a capitalist as opposed to a socialist or a
democratic socialist, but she has not backed away from a populist platform that embraces
sweeping economic reforms.
In her address to the California Democratic party, Warren rejected appeals for
moderation.
"Some say if we all calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses," she said. "But
our country is in a time of crisis. The time for small ideas is over."
Trump is not a thinker, and never was. He is an impulsive narcissist. So the question is
whether the USA committed a blunder by unleashing open trade war with China, the war which now
extent the Cold War 2 to another nation (cementing emerging alliance between Russia and China
which is a death sentence to the USA global hegemony) and where the USA faces very resilient and
inventive opponent. And they will lose even if they win.
I actually am amazed by the level of reclines and arrogance the USA democratic is such topic.
I do not see multiyear preparation, mobilization of engineering talent and resources that is
needed for successfully procuring such a war. It looks like completely impulsive decision
partially based on the attempt to get some additional concessions from China. That attempt which
spectacularly failed and fueled very dangerous for the USA a wave of Chinese nationalists within
mainland china.
The key issue here is that is current stage of neoliberal decine the USA can't rely on
loyalty of its own key players and citizets ("greed is good" is the motto of neoliberalism; plus
Chinese have probably a very good access to Taiwan high technology industry, the access which is
impossible to cut). Such a low level loyalty previously existed just before the USA collapse,
when the CIA was able to tranfere to the West a mid level cipher officer from KGB headquarters (
Sheymov defected to
the United States in May 1980) and recruit at least one general (Kalugin). Actually KGB was at
the center and the main driving force of neoliberal counterrevolution in Russia (Trojan Horse so
to speak), as under Andropov they switch sides. So they were naturally allied with CIA at this
point
the point is that it does not take too much efforts for foreign intelligence agency now to
recruit the US citizens as the collapse of neoliberal ideology creates fertile ground for such an
efforts, much like the collapse of Bolsheviks ideology did for the USA. Some can just volunteer
appalled by the actions of neoliberal empire. In this sense cases of Manning and Snowen should
serve the US administration a stern warning sign that it is a very dangerous to rock the boat if
the country experience a collapse of imperial ideology (Neoliberalism). In this case the trade
war might be more difficult then they think.
China has more people and produce per year more engineers in STEM. So the USA does not hoild
allthe cards. it it has some advantages over the USA in the long term. Also the current
technologies are pretty established and "innovation" is often is limited to shriking the silicon
die and adding more core for CPUs.
Actually Intel CPUs have a horrible really outdated CISC instruction set and there might be
chance to use different instruction set with better overall chanracteristics. Only the billions
that Intel get from sales allow it to outpace the rivals. Failed stqrtup Transmeta, for exampel,
in late 1990th tried to emulate it via RISK. If throwing out emulation layer speeds up things
twice or more, why not to use this path giving enough man power, money and level of animosity
toward the USA?
The mechanism would "prevent and resolve national security risks", Xinhua said. Details
would be released soon, it added.
The announcement comes amid a souring of relations with the US after the most recent round
of trade negotiations ended without a deal in May.
Since then, the Trump administration has blacklisted Chinese telecommunications equipment
maker Huawei, while China has threatened to punish foreign companies that cut off ties with
Huawei by listing them as "unreliable".
The new Chinese regulations could prove similar to US export controls on strategic
technologies. Those controls -- covering military equipment, some encryption technologies, and
some dual-use products -- have long irked China. Chinese negotiators have often claimed that
their trade surplus could be trimmed if the US would relax controls on high-tech goods.
The mechanism will be developed by the National Reform and Development Commission under the
guidelines of China's national security law ,
passed in 2015, Xinhua said.
"This is a major step to improve [China's system] and also a move to counter the US
crackdown," tweeted Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid that
is sometimes used to float ideas that are not official policy. "Once taking effect, some
technology exports to the US will be subject to the control." Last month, the NDRC implied it
would block exports of rare earths , a material
with many strategic applications. After the trade talks broke down in May, Chinese president Xi
Jinping visited a manufacturer of rare earths magnets, used in electric vehicles and other new
technology applications, as a reminder that China holds some trump cards of its own.
READ Massages and free fish help east Europe tackle labour shortages
Rare earth are used in smartphones, lasers, instrument panels, wind turbines and MRI
machines and more than 90 per cent of hybrid and electric cars.
This is end of the classic neoliberal globalization and the start of isolation of the USA
from China and forming an alternative, led by China trading block, unless the deal is reached.
WTO rules were the door openers, which allowed Google and Facebook pollute millions of
smartphones outside the USA. By rejecting them the USA start the process of self-isolation. Now
local government who were afraid to act might want to get even and you can get a stronger
backlash then anticipated.
The only factor here is that while the USA citizens are afraid of their own government
snooping more then snooping by Chinese's government, the same is true to many foreign countries
too. Citizens of those countries move to Gmail because they care less about the USA snooping then
the snooping of their local government by the local webmail providers. This is a widespread
illusion. They should use foreign based ISP for that.
Removal of Facebook is actually a big plus which increases attractiveness of Huawei phones.
But truth be told the value of smartphone is exaggerated. Combination of a tablet and basic flip
flop phone works even better. The same but to lesser extent is true with Google spying
applications, especially Gmail. Only complete idiot uses Gmail as Web client, as Gmail is the
central point of collection of data for both Google and the US government (actually all "Five
eyes" goverments). It is like giving keys for you home or apartment to them. Not the Microsoft is
much better. Using your own Internet Service Provider (ISO) is the best option in the current
environment. It also allows more effectively to combat spam. Unless you want to be a bug under
microscope -- no Google on you your phone is a good, sound policy
Notable quotes:
"... These actions add to the potential fallout for American companies to reckon with. US tech enterprises will lose out on sales to Huawei ..."
"... Restrictions could boomerang back on Google and Facebook, which count on their apps being widely installed around the world to collect data and sell advertising against. And then there's the potential for damaging retaliation by China, which could blacklist important US companies like Apple that do business there. ..."
"... And if the crackdown lasts (an important if -- some expect the Huawei restrictions to be lifted should a trade deal be reached) and the Chinese telecom comes out intact, it could emerge even stronger, having been forced to develop new technology in-house. If the American blacklist fails to strangle Huawei, it could come out stronger and more innovative than it was before. ..."
The US crackdown on Huawei was bound to have unintended consequences. Some of them are
starting to come to the surface.
The Trump administration is looking to shut out the Chinese telecom company from selling its
technology in the US, as well as banning American firms from selling products to the company.
Now Google, which banned Huawei from updates of its ubiquitous Android operating system, is
warning that the restriction could become a national security issue, according to the
Financial Times
(paywall). That's because Huawei, the world's No. 2 handset maker, will likely move quickly to
develop its own parallel version of Android, which could have more software bugs and be more
susceptible to hacking.
That's just one of many potential consequences as the US clampdown ripples through
everything from semiconductor supplies to ambitions for self-driving cars. The American
government blacklisted Huawei for long-simmering
espionage concerns after trade talks between the world's two largest economies broke down.
The Trump administration has since given companies a 90-day window to adjust to the new
restrictions.
In the meantime, chipmakers including Qualcomm, Intel, and Xilinx are reportedly
halting sales of technology (paywall) to Huawei. The embattled Chinese company has
responded by stockpiling chips and components and ramping up its development of
alternatives.
Facebook, which has more than 2 billion users around the world, will no longer allow its app
to come preinstalled on Huawei phones,
according to Reuters . Huawei phone buyers can still download the app from the Google Play
store for now, but that option will go away if Google's relationship with the Chinese company
is severed.
These actions add to the potential fallout for American companies to reckon with. US tech
enterprises will lose out on sales to Huawei, and the ban could also slow the implementation of
new technologies around the world. The rollout of self-driving cars, for instance, may get a
boost from 5G gear, and Huawei appears to be the only supplier that can provide reliable 5G kit
widely and at low cost. Restrictions could boomerang back on Google and Facebook, which
count on their apps being widely
installed around the world to collect data and sell advertising against. And then there's
the potential for
damaging retaliation by China, which could blacklist important US companies like Apple that
do business there.
And if the crackdown lasts (an important if -- some expect the Huawei restrictions to be
lifted should a trade deal be reached) and the Chinese telecom comes out intact, it could
emerge even stronger, having been forced to develop new technology in-house. If the American
blacklist fails to strangle Huawei, it could come out stronger and more innovative than it was
before.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled down on vilification of Сhinese telecoms giant Huawei as "an
instrument of government" suggesting that the company was a national security threat by acting as an
agent for Beijing.
Like his boss, President Trump, and many others in Washington, Pompeo seems blind to an alternative
glaring reality. The US government is the consummate instrument of American corporations. Its
congenital service to corporate profit-making is the real national security risk to American citizens
and a global security threat for all people of the world due to the wars that Washington unswervingly
pursues on behalf of US corporate interests.
The irony could not be richer. President Trump has
banned Huawei from US markets by executive order on the grounds that the company's smartphones could
be spying devices for the Chinese government. This move by a nation whose government espionage
agencies were
exposed
using every US telecom, tech and social media company as a conduit for their global
harvesting of private citizens' data as well as that of foreign heads of state.
Moreover, the White House claim that Huawei is an instrument of Beijing state authorities is a
risible form of guilt projection. The Trump administration's ban on Huawei is nothing more than US
government abusing its state power to hamper a Chinese competitor from outperforming American tech
corporations. Huawei's products are reputedly cheaper and smarter than US rivals. Some observers also
point out that the Chinese technology is invulnerable to hacking by the American spy agency, the NSA,
further adding to its consumer appeal. Outperformed on market principles, the US government takes a
legalistic, propagandistic sledge hammer to smash Huawei from the marketplace in order to bestow an
unfair advantage to inferior American corporations.
So, just who exactly is being an instrument for whom?
Governments in all nations of course use their legislative, fiscal and policy resources to try to
build up key companies for their national economic development. It's standard practice throughout
history and the world over. Governments can use subsidies and grants to boost companies, or tariffs to
shield them from foreign competition.
The US, however, is a stellar example of how government intervenes strenuously at every stage in
the market to benefit private corporations. Without massive injections of public money for grants, tax
deductions, subsidies, and so on, American corporations would not have risen to the scale they have,
as Michael Parenti documents in 'Democracy for the Few'. This relationship, of course, negates the
myth of US "
free market capitalism
." In reality, American corporations are publicly supported
entities whose profits go to private shareholders. The overarching agent for this process of
centrally-planned corporate capitalism is the American government.
From its earliest days as a European colony, it was the newfound federal authorities who rolled
back frontiers with the native Americans through genocidal wars in order to benefit cattle and cereal
companies, mining magnates, transport and telecoms, oil firms, and firearms manufacturers.
In its young years as an imperial power, it was Washington that organized and dispatched federal
troops to wage wars in the Caribbean and Latin America – all for the sole benefit of Wall Street and
the expanding agro-industry. Retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler, in his 1930s book 'War is a
Racket', described the American military as a henchman for US corporate profits. But without the
government acting as recruiter, financier and commander-in-chief, the US Army could not function as a
henchman for the corporations.
Let's take a few specific examples in history to illustrate the instrumental role of the US
government in advancing or defending corporate interests. In 1953, President Eisenhower authorized the
coup in Iran organized by the CIA and Britain's MI6. A main objective of that intervention was to
seize Iranian oil. Five US corporations subsequently exploited the Iranian feast, until the revolution
in 1979 kicked them out along with the American puppet dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It's a
fair bet that current military threats from the Trump administration against Iran are prompted by a
strategic desire to reclaim American corporate interests.
In 1954, Guatemala's elected leader Jacobo Arbenz set out to nationalize underused agricultural
land to benefit the rural poor. His land reforms involved expropriating properties belonging to the
American-owned United Fruit Company, as William Blum details in 'Killing Hope.' Acting on United's
interests, Washington intervened with a CIA-backed coup against Arbenz, which subsequently led to
decades of mass murder of indigenous Guatemalans under US-backed military dictatorships.
Following the Cuban revolution in 1959, one of the main protagonists for US military invasion of
the island and for covert sabotage operations was the American soft drinks industry, headed up by
Coca-Cola and Pepsi. They feared the nationalization of sugar plantations by the Castro government
would hit their profits.
There are also
suggestions
that President John F Kennedy may have been assassinated by powerful US state forces,
working in cahoots with American corporate interests, because he didn't adopt a sufficiently
aggressive policy towards Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Related to JFK's assassination
was his reluctance to go to war in Vietnam in the early 1960s, which big oil companies and weapons
manufacturers were all avidly pushing. His successor, the Texan Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was
close to both industries, duly obliged by paving the way for all-out war in Indochina after 1964. Up
to two million Vietnamese were killed, as were some 58,000 US troops. Millions more maimed. The
corporations made huge profits from the decade-long slaughter. But the US economy began a long descent
that continues today from incurring fiscal debts over Vietnam, which prompted Washington to abandon
the gold standard, and heralded the age of funny money with the dollar acting as an overrated
international reserve currency.
Many more examples could be cited to illustrate how US government – both the White House and
Congress – are agents for corporate profits, often to the horrendous detriment of international peace
and the common good of ordinary Americans.
The 2003 war on Iraq – killing over one million civilians and maiming tens of thousands of
Americans – was widely seen as a pretext for grabbing Iraqi oil for US corporations like Halliburton,
for whom then vice president Dick Cheney was previously an executive board member.
The present warmongering towards Venezuela by Washington is openly touted by White House National
Security Advisor John Bolton as being about US corporate lust for the country's oil reserves – which
are reckoned to be the biggest on the planet.
Out of the top 12 corporate financial
donors
to politicians in Washington, three of them are weapons companies: Boeing, Lockheed Martin,
and Northrop Grumman; a fourth is oil titan Exxon-Mobil. There is an obvious correlation between
corporate bidding and foreign policies embarked on by US governments which leads to conflict and wars,
which in turn repays these corporations with soaring profits.
The American government is the best instrument that corporate money can buy.
Thus, when Trump, Pompeo and other Washington political (and media) prostitutes pontificate and
rail against Huawei, just remember: these talking heads are bought and paid for – lock, stock and
barrel.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Citizens can be appalled by outside of rare moment of social upheaval that does not matter:
iron law of oligarchy suggests that the state in ruled in the interests of oligarchy not common
citizens. It was as true fro the USSR as is the USA now.
Notable quotes:
"... We are appalled by these actions of the military and government officials. You are being unfair, totally inaccurate and perpetuating a false notion, as to how the great majority of citizens feel about all that is happening around the world, with those who are involved with the pathos that is being experienced by other human beings. ..."
You are very wrong when you assert that most American citizens want this and are as blood
lust as these agencies and other government and military leaders.
We are appalled by these actions of the military and government officials. You are being
unfair, totally inaccurate and perpetuating a false notion, as to how the great majority of
citizens feel about all that is happening around the world, with those who are involved with
the pathos that is being experienced by other human beings.
It is a constant never ending source of pain, frustration, rage and disbelief that our
nations leaders are acting the way that we are now all very aware of, thanks to those who
have exposed the travesty.
What in God's name do you expect from the citizens who are also suffering extremely dire
circumstances because of how the greedy criminals have left many homeless, hungry and dying
because of not having enough money for healthcare. We are also being abused, abandoned, and
marginalized into oblivion.
Many who are well off enough, are trying to appeal to the government to take control of
their part of any global and national crises. It is all everyone is capable of doing to bring
about change.
We are not " them, " so stop making such reprehensible comments about an entire
nation of mostly good people who care very deeply, and are effected very grievously.
These people should all be in prison. The preposterous theory that government officials have
immunity from prosecution is absolute B.S. How do they get away with these treasonous
acts!!?? When "commoners" (average Americans) break the law we go to prison. This "too big to
fail" and individuals "too important" to prosecute mentality of Erich Holder just proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that "the United States Government has become an entity by itself,
for itself and of itself and could care less about the American people"
(the quotations are mine).
The USG spends close to a TRILLOIN DOLLAS A YEAR on the so called "Black Budget" so they
can fund private armies that act outside the law to go around the globe and kill anyone that
disagrees. This is an ongoing criminal enterprise, and the taxpaying citizens are footing the
bill.
I reality think that the RICO. (racketeer influenced corrupt organization act) law fits
them perfectly: 1) they are organized in subverting the Constitution, committing crimes
around the world breaking international law, 2) they are definitely corrupt, 3) they just
happen to run the country and think they are "immune" to prosecution. If they do get caught
they spend a couple years in a "club-fed" prison, then go on the talk show circuit and make
millions of dollars like Ollie North.
How do "We the people" prevail against this rampant evil? Where are we to go to get
justice when the ones entrusted to be the champions of the people, are the perpetrators of
the problem?
Former CIA Director John Brennan warned Republicans who support President Trump that they
are on a sinking ship, in an appearance Wednesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"I'm waiting for the Republicans to realize that the Trump ship is a sinking one," he
said.
"There are still rats on that ship, and there are individuals who are not going to separate
themselves from Trump. They do so at their own peril. They need to fulfill their obligations,
irrespective of their political affiliations. This is now the presidency and institutions of
government we rely on to keep us safe and secure."
MIKE BARNICLE: Last week, there was another continued swipe ordered by the president of the
United States, who whatever he says is a megaphone and resonates throughout the country
because of the way it is carried, in which he basically said that people like you and several
other people in the intelligence community were responsible for trying to participate in a
coup, to undermine the presidency of the United States and to remove the president of the
United States. What does it do -- nevermind to you personally -- what does it do to
institutions like the NSA, the CIA, the FBI.
JOHN BRENNAN: It continues to show Mr. Trump's disdain for the intelligence and law
enforcement communities, who are trying to do their jobs irrespective of political winds that
might be blowing in Washington. It really is demoralizing for Mr. Trump to continue to say
there is this "deep state" that tried to launch a coup, and that he is trying to "clean the
swamp," while in fact, it is those professionals within the intelligence community, law
enforcement community, who are trying to carry out their duties and responsibilities to the
American people. Mr. Trump just continues to go down this road. I think it is having a very
damaging impact.
WILLIE GEIST: What do you think, Director Brennan, happens from here? I think people
watching want to know. They say, okay, Mueller didn't like how the report was characterized
by the attorney general. Fine, on the issue of obstruction of justice. Now, what? Is it
Mueller sitting before the Senate and answering specific questions about what is inside the
report? What is the outcome of this?
JOHN BRENNAN: Barr has to be interrogated.
WILLIE GEIST: That starts this morning at 10:00.
JOHN BRENNAN: And then Bob Mueller has to get in front of Congress, then Congress has to
do its job.
And I'm still waiting for the Republicans to realize that the Trump ship is a sinking one.
There are still rats on that ship, and there are individuals who are not going to separate
themselves from Trump. But they do so at their own peril. And they need to fulfill their
obligations, irrespective of their political affiliations. And to do it now rather than to
allow this continued sinking of not just the presidency, but of these institutions of
government that we rely on to keep us safe and secure.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight. Let's begin
tonight with a thought experiment: What if the Republican leadership here in Washington had
bothered to learn the lessons of the 2016 election? What if they'd cared enough to do that.
What if they'd understood, and embraced, the economic nationalism that was at the heart of
Donald Trump's presidential campaign? What would the world look like now, two and a half years
later? For starters, Republicans in congress would regularly be saying things like this.
Quote:
"I'm deeply grateful for the opportunities America has given me. But the giant 'American'
corporations who control our economy don't seem to feel the same way. They certainly don't act
like it. Sure, these companies wave the flag -- but they have no loyalty or
allegiance to America. Levi's is an iconic American brand, but the company operates only 2% of
its factories here. Dixon Ticonderoga -- maker of the famous №2
pencil -- has 'moved almost all of its pencil production to Mexico and China.'
And General Electric recently shut down an industrial engine factory in Wisconsin and shipped
the jobs to Canada. The list goes on and on. These 'American' companies show only one real
loyalty: to the short-term interests of their shareholders, a third of whom are foreign
investors. If they can close up an American factory and ship jobs overseas to save a nickel,
that's exactly what they will do -- abandoning loyal American workers and
hollowing out American cities along the way. Politicians love to say they care about American
jobs. But for decades, those same politicians have cited 'free market principles' and refused
to intervene in markets on behalf of American workers. And of course, they ignore those same
supposed principles and intervene regularly to protect the interests of multinational
corporations and international capital. The result? Millions of good jobs lost overseas and a
generation of stagnant wages, growing inequality, and sluggish economic growth. If Washington
wants to put a stop to this, it can. If we want faster growth, stronger American industry, and
more good American jobs, then our government should do what other leading nations do and act
aggressively to achieve those goals instead of catering to the financial interests of companies
with no particular allegiance to America.... The truth is that Washington policies --
not unstoppable market forces -- are a key driver of the problems American
workers face. From our trade agreements to our tax code, we have encouraged companies to invest
abroad, ship jobs overseas, and keep wages low. All in the interest of serving multinational
companies and international capital with no particular loyalty to the United States....It's
becoming easier and easier to shift capital and jobs from one country to another. That's why
our government has to care more about defending and creating American jobs than ever
before -- not less. We can navigate the changes ahead if we embrace economic
patriotism and make American workers our highest priority, rather than continuing to cater to
the interests of companies and people with no allegiance to America."
End quote. Now let's say you regularly vote Republican. Ask yourself: what part of that
statement did you disagree with? Was there a single word that seemed wrong? Probably not.
Here's the depressing part: Nobody you voted for said that, or would ever say it. Republicans
in congress can't promise to protect American industries. They wouldn't dare. It might violate
some principle of Austrian economics. It might make the Koch brothers angry. It might alienate
the libertarian ideologues who, to this day, fund most Republican campaigns. So, no, a
Republican did not say that. Sadly.
Instead, the words you just heard are from, and brace yourself here, Senator Elizabeth
Warren of Massachusetts. Yesterday, Warren released what she's calling her "plan for economic
patriotism." Amazingly, that's pretty much exactly what it is: economic patriotism. There's not
a word about identity politics in the document. There are no hysterics about gun control or
climate change. There's no lecture about the plight of transgender illegal immigrants. It's
just pure old fashioned economics: how to preserve good-paying American jobs. Even more
remarkable: Many of Warren's policy prescriptions make obvious sense: she says the US
government should buy American products when it can. Of course it should. She says we need more
workplace apprenticeship programs, because four-year degrees aren't right for everyone. That's
true. She says taxpayers ought to benefit from the research and development they fund. And yet,
she writes, "we often see American companies take that researchand use it to manufacture
products overseas, like Apple did with the iPhone. The companies get rich, and American
taxpayers have subsidized the creation of low-wage foreign jobs." And so on. She sounds like
Donald Trump at his best. Who is this Elizabeth Warren, you ask? Not the race hustling, gun
grabbing, abortion extremist you thought you knew. Unfortunately Elizabeth Warren is still all
of those things too. And that is exactly the problem, not just with Warren, but with American
politics. In Washington, almost nobody speaks for the majority of voters. You're either a
libertarian zealot controlled by the banks, yammering on about entrepreneurship and how we need
to cut entitlements. That's one side of the aisle. Or, worse, you're some decadent trust fund
socialist who wants to ban passenger cars and give Medicaid to illegal aliens. That's the other
side. There isn't a caucus that represents where most Americans actually are: nationalist on
economics, fairly traditional on the social issues. Imagine a politician who wanted to make
your healthcare cheaper, but wasn't ghoulishly excited about partial birth abortion. Imagine
someone who genuinely respected the nuclear family, and sympathized with the culture of rural
America, but at the same time was willing to take your side against rapacious credit card
companies bleeding you dry at 35 percent interest. Would you vote for someone like that? My
gosh. Of course. Who wouldn't? That candidate would be elected in a landslide. Every single
time. Yet that candidate is the opposite of pretty much everyone currently serving in congress.
Our leadership class remains resolutely libertarian: committed to the rhetoric of markets when
it serves them; utterly libertine on questions of culture. Republicans will lecture you about
how payday loan scams are a critical part of a market economy. Then they'll work to make it
easier for your kids to smoke weed because, hey, freedom. Democrats will nod in total
agreement. They're on the same page.
Just last week, the Trump administration announced an innovative new way to protect American
workers from the ever-cascading tidal wave of cheap third-world labor flooding this country.
Until the Mexican government stops pushing illegal aliens north over our border, we will impose
tariffs on all Mexican goods we import. That's the kind of thing you'd do to protect your
country if you cared about your people. The Democrats, of course, opposed it. They don't even
pretend to care about America anymore. Here's what the Republicans said:
MITCH MCCONNELL: Look, I think it's safe to say – you've talked to all of our
members and we're not fans of tariffs. We're still hoping this can be avoided.
"We're not fans of tariffs." Imagine a more supercilious, out of touch, infuriating
response. You can't, because there isn't one. In other words, says Mitch McConnell, the idea
may work in practice. But we're against it, because it doesn't work in theory. That's the
Republican Party, 2019. No wonder they keep losing. They deserve it. Will they ever change?
If Barr represent different faction of CIA then Brennan, Brannan might pay with his head for his artistic inventions in
fomenting Russiagate color revolution and Steele dossier. Not very likely, though...
They spied on Trump because they thought it was a guaranteed win and Hillary could cover
it up. They started the witch hunt to make it look like it was a legit investigation.
"Surveillance". Would you buy a used car from Jim Comey?. Time for issuing a number of
orange jumpsuits and for the ones at the top?. A sharp drop and a sudden stop.
They spied on Trump because they thought it was a guaranteed win and Hillary could cover
it up. They started the witch hunt to make it look like it was a legit investigation.
"Surveillance". Would you buy a used car from Jim Comey?. Time for issuing a number of
orange jumpsuits and for the ones at the top?. A sharp drop and a sudden stop.
Spying Work for a government or other organization by secretly collecting information
about enemies or competitors. investigating Carry out a systematic or formal inquiry to
discover and examine the facts of (an incident, allegation, etc.) so as to establish the
truth. What a bunch of idiots
If you have to make up reasons to investigate, it becomes spying. With this logic, we can
investigate anyone! As long as we make sure to cover our tracks in lies! Perfect!
That's Judicial Watch's definition of the Deep State! It's not just a few politicians and
judges, it's almost all of Washington and many in government around the country. The Deep
State will just take its time, put it off, forget about it, make mistakes implementing it,
and so on and so forth.
Technoimperialism is effective, but what it Huawei can switch to some derivative CPU and
chipsets?
Notable quotes:
"... Authored by Fan Yu via The Epoch Times, ..."
"... A wide-ranging ban similar to the one imposed on Huawei and its affiliates would effectively bar other foreign companies whose products contain at least 25 percent U.S.-sourced technology from supplying the Chinese. ..."
"... What does this mean in practice? More companies may begin to adopt localized R&D and manufacturing practices. Instead of Chinese factories supplying the world when labor costs were low, localized operations to directly supply the China market may be set up. ..."
"... Around 33.2 percent of American companies operating in China are delaying or cancelling investments in China altogether, according to the most recent American Chamber of Commerce in China survey released on May 22. If the tariffs are more permanent in nature, U.S. companies will likely move production outside of China, which is increasingly seen as a prudent choice given rising political instability within China and growing labor costs. ..."
"... If Bibi ask Chump to drop the tariffs on China for the security of Israel, What do you think will be Chump's answer? ..."
During the Cold War ,
around half of the world ran on the technologies, machinery, and political ideologies developed
by the Soviet Union. The other half - the free world - adopted those of the United States and
its allies.
As trade war
tensions between the United States and China escalate, could we be on the cusp of a new
version of the cold war, one which is driven by technology and finance?
Since U.S. President Donald Trump has deemed Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies as a national
security threat and barred it from purchasing key U.S. equipment, Beijing has engaged in an
escalating tit-for-tat that could have lasting ramifications on the technology industry going
forward.
And Huawei may just be the beginning. Several other Chinese companies are being considered
to join the blacklist with Huawei.
If a technology cold war does come to pass, it would significantly alter the existing
technology landscape, dismantle global supply chains, and cleave off the global trade network that has underpinned
China's rise as a global economic power .
Decoupling of the Global Supply Chain
Global consumers are used to seeing this familiar description donning Apple products'
packaging for years: "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."
That's the model followed by most technology companies during the past few decades. American
companies develop new technologies and products in the United States, which are assembled by
comparatively cheap labor in China, and then shipped for sale globally.
Going forward, purchase orders would likely need to be rerouted.
A wide-ranging ban similar to the one imposed on Huawei and its affiliates would
effectively bar other foreign companies whose products contain at least 25 percent U.S.-sourced
technology from supplying the Chinese.
What does this mean in practice? More companies may begin to adopt localized R&D and
manufacturing practices. Instead of Chinese factories supplying the world when labor costs were
low, localized operations to directly supply the China market may be set up.
Around 33.2 percent of American companies operating in China are delaying or cancelling
investments in China altogether, according to the most recent American Chamber of Commerce in
China survey released on May 22. If the tariffs are more permanent in nature, U.S. companies
will likely move production outside of China, which is increasingly seen as a prudent choice
given rising political instability within China and growing labor costs.
Another 35.5 percent of respondents are adopting an "In China, for China" approach to
mitigate the impact of tariffs , according to the AmCham survey. That refers to manufacturing
products to be sold in China, within China. That strategy may be broadened in a full-on
technology cold war, as research and innovation may also need to be localized and companies may
need to erect internal information barriers.
Losers, Big and Small
Chinese companies will be the main losers -- there are no existing domestic replacements for
many U.S.-sourced components. For example, Huawei's chip-making arm HiSilicon currently derives
its Kirin chip architecture on license from UK-based semiconductor firm ARM Holdings. But in
May, ARM notified Huawei that it would stop licensing its chip designs to HiSilicon due to
having certain U.S.-sourced origins.
Huawei also lost access to Google's Android software platform, which is the main operating
system running on all Huawei smartphones. As of the end of May, the U.S. Commerce Department
gave Huawei a temporary, 90-day license to provide security patches to existing phones.
In addition, Huawei has been suspended from the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry standard-setting
body for technology protocols.
These events don't just hobble Huawei -- they effectively ground its ambitions to a halt.
Without access to these technologies, there's simply no way for Huawei to reach its goal of
overtaking Samsung as the world's No. 1 smartphone supplier. And on the networking front,
Japan's SoftBank became the latest potential customer to reject Huawei for 5G networking
equipment, announcing on May 31 that it would be turning to European telecom giants Nokia and
Ericsson instead.
Should similar bans extend to other Chinese companies -- many of which have far smaller
operational support and balance sheets than Huawei -- many of them could cease operations
altogether.
Comments
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China's empire is growing and the US empire s shrinking. Unfortunately many can't grasp
that and will deny it till the end instead of accepting it and working with the next world
power. All empires come to an end.
Our economy is a consumer based economy not a manufacturing based economy like it once
was. Can we return to a manufacturing based economy? Not sure if Americans are ready to push
their kids into getting a job at the factory making boots, footballs, washing machines......
instead of swaying them into going to college. Don't forget, someone has to work in the
factories if we are going to make stuff.
If you study high wage manufacturing driven economies like Germany, you will notice that
the productivity of their workers is sky high (as it has to be in order to remain
competitive). The plants are highly automated. Workers are very well trained and have expert
skills in keeping the production line running at peek pace and quality.
Frankly, I just don't think American workers have what it takes to adopt that kind of
model.
Not with the education system we have now....the Fed has killed off the industrial trades,
and everyone thinks they will can spend $100,000 a year for an education to sit behind a desk
and play solitaire......or become a politician.
Someone has to fix the machines and get their hands dirty. Not all our kids are IT
'coders'. Now we want the gooberment to give them 'free' college for a 'diversity degree' and
they graduate with NO SKILLS and no knowledge. So we drug up our youth with drugs imported by
China and open the flood doors for worker bees. Sounds like a plan.
The free world flourished during the cold war. it was great for the West. Technology
advanced by leaps and bounds and the middle class grew. Nothing bad about this at all.
So you believe Epoch Times, a Falun Gong publication? What's missing in the article is the
most obvious: the trade war will force China to climb the value chain a lot quicker. The most
like scenario is that China will become a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse before much, if
anything, is moved back to U.S.
What would make any sane person believe that stopping the ARM license would stop them
being made in China? Has that ever worked for anything else, ever?
their tech will fall behind as the US advances. Same thing happened with the Soviet Union
once they ran out of Germans and US tech. By '91, they were woefully behind the West--like 35
years.
There was never anything wrong with Research in the USSR, Development was their problem, now as Russia again they remain at the leading edge of Research, and seem to have finally gotten a handle on Development. They have never been behind in Research, any serious scientist in the West can and will read Russian just to keep up.
Its been that way all my life, the US seems to have
forgotten it though, because they believe they're exceptional and only they can do
research.Hubris will kill you.
The Russians are pulling way ahead because of that Ubermensch stupidity, laughing the whole time at it. That smirk of Putins, its there for a reason.
What would make any sane person believe that stopping the ARM license would stop them
being made in China?
No kidding. For instance, take this statement:
Chinese companies will be the main losers -- there are no existing domestic replacements
for many U.S.-sourced components.
Propaganda via lies of omission. This could easily be turned around to say:
American companies will be the main losers -- there are no existing domestic
replacements for many Chinese-manufactured "U.S.-sourced" components.
But hey, the Epoch Times is a propaganda mill for the Falun Gong cult which the Chinese
government banned 20 years ago, so it's kind of the anti-China equivalent of The
Gatestoned Institution .
the chinese domestic market is the new big dog on the block. it is big enough to dictate
what the rest of the world will use. the hubris of the usa is arrogance squared. the
consequences are potentially damning to usa tech. this is the dumbest move in business and
geopolitical history.
The West is in for a big surprise. China has technologically advanced neighbors (Russia,
India) and a host of countries who want to do business who are also technologically advanced.
The Silk Road is well advanced to supplant trade with North America. Germany is already in
place in Russia and China and will not lose sleep with the loss of North America. It is the
US that has the most to lose.
They cannot see past their own jingo. The Chinese just thanked Trump at the Moscow summit, for forcing them to do what inertia
stopped them doing years ago. Seems like its already backfiring, and now full dedollarization is now the official
agenda. Yuan futures in most everything, convertible to gold, were just announced at one press conference. The ruble looks around -95% undervalued right now.
umm--you do know that it wasn't so long ago that Russia defaulted on all of its loans,
right? and that no one with a brain is going back into that market again, right?
No worries, the PTB in our fed government (both sides) and the globalists want cheap labor
from the illiterates that are allowed to flood our country and Europe. We will look much like
the cheap labor in China. I find it funny that 'open border' morons like the D's demand
$15/hour min wage laws for flipping a hamburger. They are nuts. Can't have it both ways.
No they didn't, they were disconnected from Gargoyle Play.Android is open source and HW played a big part in its development. Maybe more than Gargoyle.. This kind of disinformation discredits the whole article, the author is a no nothing
hack, probably Mosley moonlighting from his janitors job.
My small anecdotal experience was back in 2008 when I worked for a US Company who made
large components for nuclear projects. Like AP1000. Within a year of my working there, we
were hosting the chinese and actually sending our engineers and quality people to live in
China for 6 months at a time to TEACH THEM HOW TO MAKE THE PRODUCT. The quality people came
back disgusted because they didn't care about 'tolerances'. I have since left there, but it
was eye opening how US companies willingly sell our technology to them.
In the meantime, the corp bosses built a huge addition onto our building with luxurious
soundproof walls/doors/windows to move in. Big bucks stuff. No expense spared.
Not really, the Chi-Com government OWNERSHIP of businesses is dramatic.
When a chinese government entity (think strawman, shell company, a "holding
company") answerable and subservient to the state party apparatus owns the majority of
any company's stock and/or gives it direction from on high, it cannot be said to be "a
private company". At least not by any kind of western standard of the meaning of the word
"private".
They're trying to fake people out (and succeeding to some degree) as the western mind may
misinterpret it as merely being crony-socialism but in fact it's communist via the shell
corps.
What you describe sounds like fascism i.e. capitalism is allowed, private companies are
allowed but are directly answerable to government.
Anyways you look at it, China has a strong capitalist element. They have private property
now. They have billionaires as a result of these companies FFS. They have a stock market .
They have realestate developers. That's no longer 'communism'.
The largest corporations are government owned and a "private company" is not given
direction by any government entity in what to supply or in what quantities to supply to "the
market", there are no government mandated quotas.
And you are confused (or being evasive) about what socialism and capitalism are, fascism
& communism are both Marxist.
With capitalism, the market decides all, from pricing to profits to wages and companies
rise & fall on what is sold into that market ...thats why rickshaws never caught
on here because people didn't have to eat their horses for meat and we eventually produced
affordable cars for transport...lol.
Need I remind you that the CCP means the Chinese Communist Party?
Perhaps they need some better capitalist marketers to "rebrand" their, ahem,
operation ;-)
"... Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. ..."
"... The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies. ..."
"... It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did. ..."
"... Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war. ..."
"... In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown. ..."
"... You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient. ..."
"... Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them. ..."
"... People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place. ..."
"... How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy? ..."
"... These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation. ..."
"... Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI. ..."
"... It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers. ..."
"... It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control. ..."
"... It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case. ..."
"... And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism ..."
"... The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance. ..."
"... Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA. ..."
"... Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants. ..."
"... John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves. ..."
"... A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror. ..."
"... Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses. ..."
"... Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments. ..."
"... While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it. ..."
Conspiratorially-minded writers envisaged the Shadow World Government as a board of evil sages surrounded by the financiers and
cinema moguls. That would be bad enough; in infinitely worse reality, our world is run by the Junior Ganymede that went berserk.
It is not a government, but a network, like freemasonry of old, and it consists chiefly of treacherous spies and pens-for-hire, two
kinds of service personnel, that collected a lot of data and tools of influence, and instead of serving their masters loyally, had
decided to lead the world in the direction they prefer.
German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the last head of the Abwehr, Hitler's Military Intelligence, had been such a spy with political
ambitions. He supported Hitler as the mighty enemy of Communism; on a certain stage he came to conclusion that the US will do the
job better and switched to the Anglo-American side. He was uncovered and executed for treason. His colleague General Reinhard Gehlen
also betrayed his Führer and had switched to the American side. After the war, he continued his war against Soviet Russia, this time
for CIA instead of Abwehr.
The spies are treacherous by their nature. They contact people who betrayed their countries; they work under cover, pretending
to be somebody else; for them the switch of loyalty is as usual and normal as the gender change operation for a Moroccan doctor who
is doing that 8 to 5 every day. They mix with foreign spies, they kill people with impunity; they break every law, human or divine.
They are extremely dangerous if they do it for their own country. They are infinitely more dangerous if they work for themselves
and still keep their institutional capabilities and international network.
Recently we had a painful reminding of their treacherous nature. Venezuela's top spy, the former director of the Bolivarian National
Intelligence Service (Sebin), Manuel Cristopher Figuera , had switched sides during the last coup attempt and escaped abroad
as the coup failed. He discovered that his membership on the Junior Ganymede of the spooks is more important for him than his duty
to his country and its constitution.
Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though
they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike
Whitney and Philip Giraldi described
the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. In
the conspiracy, foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, played an important role. As by law, these spies aren't
allowed to operate on their home ground, they go into you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back routine. The CIA spies in England
and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to
unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies.
It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal
to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is
good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the
Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians
and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did.
Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of
JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq
war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war.
Russian spooks are in a special relations mode with the global network – for many years. In Russia, persistent rumours claim the
perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982)
Yuri Andropov . He and his appointees
dismantled the socialist state and prepared the takeover of 1991 in the interests of the One World project.
Andropov (who had stepped into Brezhnev's shoes in 1982 and died in 1984) had advanced Gorbachev and his architect of glasnost,
Alexander Yakovlev . Andropov
also promoted the arch-traitor KGB General Oleg Kalugin
to head its counter-intelligence. Later, Kalugin betrayed his country, escaped to the US and delivered all Russian spies he knew
of to the FBI hands.
In late 1980s-early 1990s, the KGB, originally the guarding dog of the Russian working class, had betrayed its Communist masters
and switched to work for the Network. But for their betrayal, Gorbachev would not be able to destroy his country so fast: the KGB
neutralised or misinformed the Communist leadership.
They allowed Chernobyl to explode; they permitted a German pilot to land on the Red Square – this was used by Gorbachev as an
excuse to sack the whole lot of patriotic generals. The KGB people were active in subverting other socialist states, too. They executed
the Romanian leader Ceausescu and his wife; they brought down the GDR, the socialist Germany; they plotted with Yeltsin against Gorbachev
and with Gorbachev against Romanov. As the result of their plotting, the USSR fell apart.
The KGB plotters of 1991 had thought that post-Communist Russia would be treated by the West like the prodigal son, with a fattened
calf being slaughtered for the welcome feast. To their disappointment, the stupid bastards discovered that their country was to play
the part of the fattened calf at the feast, and they were turned from unseen rulers into billionaires' bodyguards. Years later, Vladimir
Putin came to power in Russia with the blessing of the world spooks and bankers, but being too independent a man to submit, he took
his country into its present nationalist course, trying to regain some lost ground. The dissatisfied spooks supported him.
Only recently Putin began to trim the wild growth of his own intelligence service, the FSB. It is possible the cautious president
had been alerted by the surprising insistence of the Western media that the alleged attempt on Skripal and other visible cases had
been attributed to the GRU, the relatively small Russian Military Intelligence, while the much bigger FSB had been forgotten. The
head of
FSB cybercrime department had been arrested and sentenced for lengthy term of imprisonment, and two FSB colonels had been arrested
as the search of their premises revealed immense
amounts of cash , both Russian and foreign currency. Such piles of roubles and dollars could be assembled only for an attempt
to change the regime, as it was demanded by the Network.
In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych.
They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad.
The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support
of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown.
In the US, the spooks allowed Donald Trump to become the leading Republican candidate, for they thought he would certainly lose
to Mme Clinton. Surprisingly, he had won, and since then, this man who was advanced as an easy prey, as a buffoon, had been hunted
by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry.
You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were
and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the
plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient.
Their knowledge of official leaders' faults gives them their feeling of power, but this knowledge can be translated into actual
control only for weak-minded men. Strong leaders do not submit easily. Putin has had his quota of imprudent or outright criminal
acts in his past, but he never allowed the blackmailers to dictate him their agenda. Netanyahu, another strong man of modern politics,
also had managed to survive blackmail. Meanwhile, Trump defeated all attempts to unseat him, though his enemies had used his alleged
lack of delicacy in relation to women, blacks and Jews to its utmost. He waded through the deep pond of Russiagate like Gulliver.
But he has to purge the alphabet agencies to reach safety.
In Russia, the problem is acute. Many Russian spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other
countries than to their fellow citizens. There is a freemasonic quality in their camaraderie. Such a quality could be commendable
in soldiers after the war is over, but here the war is going on. Russian spooks are particularly besotted with their declared enemies;
apparently it is the Christian quality of the Russian soul, but a very annoying one.
When Snowden reached Moscow after his daring escape from Hong Kong, the Russian TV screened a discussion that I participated in,
among journalists, members of parliament and ex-spies. The Russian spooks said that Snowden is a traitor; a person who betrayed his
agency can't be trusted and should be sent to the US in shackles. They felt they belong to the Spy World, with its inner bond, while
their loyalty to Russia was a distant second.
During recent visit of Mike Pompeo to Sochi, the head of SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Mr Sergey Naryshkin
proposed the State Secretary Mike Pompeo, the ex-CIA director,
to expand contacts between Russian and US special services at a higher level. He clarified that he actively interacted with Pompeo
during the period when he was the head of the CIA. Why would he need contacts with his adversary? It would be much better to avoid
contacts altogether.
Even president Putin, who is first of all a Russian nationalist (or a patriot, as they say), who has granted Snowden asylum in
Moscow at a high price of seriously worsening relations with Obama's administration, even Putin has told Stone that Snowden shouldn't
have leaked the documents the way he did. "If he didn't like anything at his work he should have simply resigned, but he went further",
a response proving he didn't completely freed himself from the spooks' freemasonry.
While the spooks plot, the scribes justify their plots. Media is also a weapon, and a mighty one. In Richard Wagner's opera
Lohengrin , the protagonist is defeated by the smear campaign in the media. Despite his miraculous arrival, despite his glorious
victory, the evil witch succeeds to poison minds of the hero's wife and of the court. The pen can counter the sword. When the two
are integrated, as in the union of spooks and scribes, it is too dangerous tool to leave intact.
In many countries of Europe, editorial international policies had been outsourced to the spooky Atlantic Council, the Washington-based
think tank. The Atlantic Council is strongly connected with NATO alliance and with Brussels bureaucracy, the tools of control over
Europe. Another tool is
The
Integrity Initiative , where the difference between spies and journalists is
blurred
. And so is the difference between the left and the right. The left and the right-wing media use different arguments, surprisingly
leading to the same bottom line, because both are tools of warfare for the same Network.
In 1930s, they were divided. The German and the British agents pulled and pushed in the opposite directions. The Russian military
became so friendly with the Germans, that at a certain time, Hitler believed the Russian generals would side with him against their
own leader. The Russian spooks were befriended by the Brits, and had tried to push Russia to confront Hitler. The cautious Marshal
Stalin had purged the Red Army's pro-German Generals, and the NKVD's pro-British spooks, and delayed the outbreak of hostilities
as much as he could. Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult
to deal with them.
If they are so powerful, integrated and united, shouldn't we throw a towel in the ring and surrender? Hell, no! Their success
is their undoing. They plot, but Allah is the best plotter, – our Muslim friends say. Indeed, when they succeed to suborn a party,
the people vote with their feet. The Brexit is the case to consider. The Network wanted to undermine the Brexit; so they neutralised
Corbyn by the antisemitism pursuit while May had made all she could to sabotage the Brexit while calling for it in public. Awfully
clever of them – but the British voter responded with dropping both established parties. So their clever plot misfired.
People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected
legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and
media men should know their place.
How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage
to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?
Spymasters are usually renowned for their inscrutability and for playing their cards close to their vests.
These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created
the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of
a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation.
Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution
to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI.
Forthcoming books will no doubt get into all the remarkable and bizarre details.
Donald Trump has demonstrated the ability to troll and goad many of his opponents into a state of imbecility. It's a negotiating
tactic -- knock them off balance, provoke them to lose control. No matter how smart they are, some people take the bait.
I am sitting here pointing to my nose. Spies run the world – contemporary history in a nutshell. A few provisos:
– It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes.
If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal
biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers.
– It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control.
The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control;
it's firmly IN control.
– There is a crucial difference between US and Russian spies. Russians can go over the head of their government to the world.
That's the only effective check on state criminal enterprise like CIA. Article 17 of the Russian Constitution says "in the Russian
Federation rights and freedoms of person and citizen are recognized and guaranteed pursuant to the generally recognized principles
and norms of international law and in accordance with this Constitution." Article 18 states that rights and freedoms of the person
and citizen are directly applicable, which prevents the kind of bad-faith tricks the USA pulls, like declaring "non-self executing"
treaties, or making legally void reservations, declarations, understandings, and provisos to screw you out of your rights. Article
46(3) guarantees citizens a constitutional right to appeal to inter-State bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms
if internal legal redress has been exhausted. Ratified international treaties including the ICCPR supersede any domestic legislation
stipulating otherwise.
Isn't it just collusion that holds certain elite groups together, including in some businesses where a lot of chicanery goes on.
The most important thing is to be in on it as one of them, not as a person who can be trusted not to say anything, but as one
of the gang. It's exactly how absenteeism-friendly offices full of crony parents with crony-parent managers work.
The only problem for the guy at the tippy top is what would happen if such a tight group turned on him / her? Maybe, some leaders
see the value in protecting a few brave individuals, like Snowden, letting any coup-stirring spooks know that some people are
watching the Establishment's rights violators, too. Those with technical knowledge have more capacity than most to do it or, at
least, to understand how it works.
In a country founded on individual liberties, including Fourth Amendment privacy rights that were protected by less greedy
generations, the US should have elected leaders that put the US Constitution first, but that is too much to ask in an era when
the top dogs in business & government are all colluding for money.
In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the
KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov.
FWIW, I have heard the exact same thing from Russian commenters myself. Some have insisted that, if Andropov had lived long
enough, he would have carried glasnost and perestroika himself.
Spies are loathsome bunch, with questionable loyalties and personal integrity. But I believe that overall they play a positive
role. They play a positive role because they help adversaries gain insight into their adversary's activities.
If it wasn't for the spies, paranoia about what the other side is doing can get out of hand and cause wrong actions to take
place. The problem with the spies is also that no one knows how much they can be trusted and on whose side they are really on.
It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected
to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism
– depending on the case.
And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money,
because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism.
The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial
espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage
them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR
close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance.
Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization
of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA.
An aspect of the rule of spies that Mr. Shamir does not touch on is the legitimization of this rule through popular culture.
This started with the James Bond novels and movies and by now has become ubiquitous. Spies and assassins are the heroes of the
masses. While secrecy is still needed for tactical reasons in the case of specific operations, overall secrecy is not needed nor
even desirable. So you have thugs like Pompeo actually boasting of their villainy before audiences of college students at Texas
A&M and you have the Mossad supporting the publication of the book Rise and Kill First which is an extensive account of their
world-wide assassination policy. They have the power; now they want the perks that go with it, including being treated like rock
stars.
dear mr Shamir, the criminals are not only stupid but also utterly wicked. they will be stricken down in the twinkling of the
eye and will cry out why God? all the righteous will shout for joy and give thanks to the Almighty for judging Babylon. woe unto
them! they will have no place to hide or run to.
Ezekiel 9 (NKJV)
The Wicked Are Slain
9 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a
deadly weapon in his hand." 2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his
battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood
beside the bronze altar.
3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He
called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; 4 and the Lord said to him, "Go through the midst
of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations
that are done within it."
5 To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity.
6 Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and
begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7 Then He said to them, "Defile the temple,
and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city.
8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord
God! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"
9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed,
and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see!' 10 And as for Me also,
My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."
11 Just then, the man clothed with linen, who had the inkhorn at his side, reported back and said, "I have done as You commanded
me."
E Michael Jones was just warning President Trump about the possibility of this in the Straits of Hormuz.
https://youtu.be/iIm3WuJAVEE?t=272
Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors,
but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor
is a spook and he does what he wants.
John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves.
@Antares that's because the Mossad
isn't like "our" spy agencies. it's closer to the old paradigm of the hashishim or true assassins. Mossad "agents" don't gad around
wearing dark glasses and tapping phones; they run proper deep cover operations. "sleepers" is a term used in the USA. they have
jobs. they look "normal". They integrate
Do spies run the world? No not really, bankers run the world.
Bankers constitute most of the deep state in the US/UK in particular and most of Europe. It is the bankers/deep state which
control the intelligence agencies. The ethnicity of a hefty proportion of said bankers is plain to see for anyone with functioning
critical faculties. How else can a tiny country in the middle east have such influence in the US? How else do we explain why 2/3
of the UK parliament are "friends of Israel" How come financial institutions can commit felonies and no one does jail time? why
is Israel allowed to commit war crimes and break international law with total impunity? who got bailed out of their gambling debts
at the expense of inflicting "austerity" on most of the western world?
How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage
to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?
A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks
who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country,
its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion
and terror.
Since winning, Trump has been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry. <fallacy is that Trump could have gained the assistence
of every American, had Trump just used his powers to declassify all secret information and make it available to the public, instead
he chases Assange, and continues to conduct the affairs of his office in secret.
Propaganda preys on belief.. it is more powerful than an atomic weapon.. when the facts are hidden or when the facts are changed,
distorted or destroyed.
Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their
fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule
making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence
of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses.
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/08/josh-gottheimer-democrats-yemen/
<i wrote IRT to the article, that contents appearing in private media supported monopoly powered corporations and distributed
to the public, direct the use of military and the willingness of soldiers of 22 different countries.
Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended
to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately
owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments.
I am bothered by you article because it looks to be Trumped weighted and failes to make clear it is these secret apolitical,
human rights abusers, that direct the contents of the media distributed articles that appear in the privately owmed, media distributed
to the public. Also not explained is how the cost of advertising is shared by the monopoly powered corporations, and it is that
advertising that is the source of support that keeps the fake news in business, the nation state propaganda in line, and the support
of robin -hood terror.
Monopoly powered global corporation advertising funds the fake and misleading private media, that is why the open internet
has been shut in tight. In order for the evil, global acting, high technology nomads to continue their extortion and terror activities
they need the media, its their only real weapon. I have never meet a member of any of the twenty two agencies that was not a trained,
certified mental case terrorist.
I think the interplay between the spooks and scribes warrants a deeper explanation. Covert action refers to anything in which
the author can disclaim his responsibility, ie it looks like someone else or something else. The handler in a political operation
cannot abuse his agent because the agent is the actor. The handler in an intelligence gathering operation can abuse his agent
because the agent merely enables action.
The political operations in this case are propaganda. The Congress of Cultural Freedom is the most clearly described one to
date. Propaganda is necessary in any mass society to ensure that voters care about the right issues, the right way, at the right
time. Propaganda can be true, false, or a mix of the two. Black propaganda deals in falsehoods, ie the Steele Dossier. Black propaganda
works best when it enables a pre-planned operation, but it pollutes the intelligence gathering process with disinformation.
Intelligence gathering is colloquially called investigative reporting. If anyone knows about Gary Webb, Alan Frankovich, or
Michael Hastings they know you can't really do that job well for very long. So how do the old timers last so long? It's a back
and forth. The reporter brings all of his information on a subject to his intelligence source (handler). The source then says,
"print this, print that, sit on that, and since you've been a good boy here's a little something you didn't know." The true role
of the investigative reporter is to conduct counterintelligence and package it as a limited hangout.
While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control.
They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care
as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it.
@Sean McBride And now Trump should
have then all rounded up and hung from the trees in the front of the Whitehouse. Anything less should be seen as encouragement.
The worst among us rule over the rest of us. As Plato said, this needs to change. How to do that? We don't know, but we desperately
need to find out ..
Obama was a very effective promoter of what might be called the "globalist" agenda. He of course didn't invent it but did appoint
those three.
Wayne Madsen gave a convincing account in his speculation that both Obama's parent's were CIA operatives. So it's "all
the family" and in the details one might conclude with the author that indeed "spies run the world."
Warren (D)(1): "Elizabeth Warren's latest big idea is 'economic patriotism'" [
Vox ].
"The specific Warren proposal on this score has three parts, a Green Apollo
Program, a Green Marshall Plan, and a Green Industrial Mobilization. The Apollo Program is a
ten-fold increase in clean energy R&D funding, the Marshall Plan is a $100 billion
program to help foreign countries buy American-made clean technology, and the Industrial
Mobilization (which it would perhaps be more natural to call a 'Green New Deal,' were that
name not already taken) proposes a massive $1.5 trillion federal procurement initiative over
10 years to buy 'American-made clean, renewable, and emission free products for federal,
state, and local use and for export.'
That's roughly the scale of federal spending on defense
acquisition and would of course turn the federal government into a huge player in this
market."
• I bet Warren's policy shop didn't copy and paste from other proposals
either
Readers here are brainwashed. Industrial policy is based on a partnership between
manufacturing, banks and finance, government, and workers. All of these relationships are
built on trust and all the members stand to profit. This is the secret of Germany's and
Scandinavia's over 200 years of success. It is called stakeholder capitalism. It includes all
members of society. Germany is the world's largest exporter for a reason. It has
approximately 1,500 banks, 70% of them are non-profit and restricted to lending for loans
that are productive - create jobs and add value.
The English/American model of capitalism is called shareholder capitalism. Shareholder
because the owners are absentee landlords. The financial markets rule, all other members
serve. The communities are shells - people are distrustful of each other and of the social
institutions. Shareholders don't live in the communities that add the value. They are the
elites, and are spread throughout the world.
Readers here might not like Elizabeth Warren, and that's ok. I don't really like her. But
her ideas are good. No Republican or corporate Democrat would ever embrace her ideas.
The irony is that Trump campaigned on similar ideas as Warren's. Why do you people think
Trump is engaging in all the trade war rhetoric? It's for the same ends as Warren's ideas,
except her ideas are more complete. Trump doesn't bring enough to the table. He needs to
include labor, banks, manufacturers, and government. He hasn't because his ideas are not
developed.
All the blabber mouths on Zero Hedge complaining about how full of **** academia is and
now is your chance to actually stand for something. Do you think industrial policy is built
on "snowflake" studies in Harvard?
No, it's in vocational schools and mentoring. Apprenticeships, and so forth.
Un-*******-believable. Zero Hedge is no different from Rush Limbaugh, a big fat closeted
queen.
What ever happened to states rights? Ever increasing central governmental control is not
the answer, and was never intended to be. The Democrats spout about "Democracy!!!". This is
nothing of the sort. They are perfectly happy to tell someone in Nebraska what to do, even if
they have no idea corn grows in dirt. Narcissistic sociopaths is what they are. It's time to
neuter them.
Unfortunately, a fair number of people are listening to her. The article below warns that
her push towards socialism as many progressives, liberals, or those simply left of center are
proposing, would be a grave mistake. Socialism is not the answer to combating inequality.
Well, down here in Australia we had a Federal election a couple of weeks ago, and the
opposition party, the Labor Party(ie the equivalent of your Democrats) was soundly defeated
partially because of their radical "climate change" policies.
Quite obviously the left cannot grasp the fact that not everybody buys into the climate
change hoax/industry. After the election many "journalists" who work for our national
broadcaster, the ABC, which is funded by the Feds, came out on social media describing the
result as a catastrophe for the climate and branded Australians as stupid. Sound familiar,
just like a certain someone who labeled half of America as deplorables.
Australians are not stupid, and realised that the changes Labor were proposing were too
radical. Their plan called for a 45 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. It should be
noted that despite rhetoric to the contrary by Labor, it is a well established fact that
Australia is far exceeding it's Kyoto & Paris targets.
Yet, the Labor party wanted to take these steps.
Labor, a party which is supposed to be in support of the workers, had they have won
governmengt, would have no doubt done everything in their power to prevent the Adani coal
mine in Queensland going ahead!
FFS, what sort of a world are we living in where coal mining is viewed by the left as a
criminal activity?
The result of Labor's insanity, they did not win back a single seat in Qld, and in the
Hunter Valley in NSW, a massive coal mining town, one particular seat there has been held by
Labor for 25 years with a healthy margin. The local Labor candidate, Joel Fitzgibbon, managed
to still hold onto the seat despite a 20 percent swing against him!
The fact is, as I am sure you are all aware being intelligent people on ZH, is you cannot
take radical steps like what was proposed by Labor & in the process destroy the economy.
These changes, if they are to be implemented, need to happen over the course of decades,
four, five, maybe six, I don't know.
But more importantly, there needs to be serious discussion as to whether man made "climate
change" is real because it does not seem to be, and obviously the vast majority of people are
not buying into it. much to the chagrin of the left.
In Australia, and I am sure the same happens in America, the only people buying the
climate change ******** are the cafe latte/upper class inner city snobs.
The other thing that escapes the minds of the left in Australia is simple mathematics. We
are a population of 24 million in a world of 7.5 billion, that makes us 0.33 of 1 percent of
the world population. Even if Australia cut it's emissions to zero tomorrow, it will make no
difference to the world when we have China & India building coal fired power
stations.
Ironically, the high priest of climate change, Al Gore, is down here at the moment, in
Queensland of all places where voters told the left where to get off, on a $300,000 taxpayer
funded love-in. From memory, didn't Al Gore state in his doco in 2006 that within 10 years
the Earth would be facing a climate catastrophe? lol
You go girl.... Lynn Rothschild will back you once she counts con-tracts and loans
filtered back into her " All Inclusive Capitalism" banking system... She's got your back. She
was was only kiddig about rewrting an ecconomic plan for Hillary and ditching yours....xoxo
Lynn
"on Tuesday Elizabeth Warren proposed
spending $2 trillion on a new "green manufacturing" program that would invest in research
and exporting American clean energy technology."
"In my administration, we will stop making excuses. We will pursue aggressive new
government policies to support American workers."
"In my administration, we will NOT stop making excuses. We will pursue aggressive new
government TOTALITARIAN policies to support American Stalinist ideals ."
US Color revolution: Chickens coming home to roost
We have spent decades developing a playbook identifying overseas threats and tactics on
how to overthrow rogue regimes and an internal infrastructure on how to do it. So why
wouldn't this infrastructure look to internal U.S. politicians and use the same playbook on
them?
So I disagree with MoA, an impeachment against Trump will not just be ruinous against
Democrats but against the U.S. in general. In fact, we will eventually disintegrate into the
same mess that we impose on other countries.
One of the ironic points of the playbook is to find a scapegoat when things go badly for
the regime that we overthrow (which is the usual outcome), we always find someone to blame
such as Russia or Iran. In the Trump impeachment charade, they are pinning it on Russia again
:-)
I have basically said what has been stated much more succinctly, 'He who digs a pit for
others will fall into that same pit'
The following article, from the Fort Russ News website, puts forward a very plausible
theory of what the calls for impeachment of Donald Trump may actually be leading to the US
being at war with Russia in Europe:
(I also posted this link on the "Mueller Punts On Obstruction Charges - Impeachment Would
Hurt The Democrats" thread of 29th May; sorry for repeating myself but I really think the
author of the article, Ronald Thomas West, is on to something.)
Another week and the empire carrousel is still spinning madly keeping all the plates of
obfuscation from falling.
I look at all the headlines and the trajectory they represent and keep looking for the
seminal event that brings it all to a halt. It is interesting to note that all the hooting
and hollering is happening in the MSM and not at the UN.
When is someone going to call BS on all the code words like "normal" and "rules based" and
cut to the chase of the public/private financial control war we are in?
I vote for some group from Haiti, that has and continues to be screwed by the West, to
acquire the tools necessary to disable an empire warship........ which might bring the
crazies to the table.
Hey empire, they don't hate you for your freedoms, the rest of the world hates you for
your fealty to the global private finance god.
"... Meanwhile on Thursday a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responded to the White House position at a moment Pompeo keeps up the pressure campaign on European allies, saying, the US has not offered proof that Huawei's products present a security risk. ..."
"... "We hope that the United States can stop these mistaken actions which are not at all commensurate with their status and position as a big country," said spokesman Geng Shuang, according to Reuters. ..."
"... And Huawei, for its part, is reportedly taking steps to block its employees from taking part in technical meetings with American contacts, which has even included sending home American employees that were based at its Chinese headquarters in Shenzen. ..."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has again put Germany and the rest of Europe on notice regarding China's controversial
telecom giant Huawei, warning they could be cut off from crucial US intelligence sharing over Huawei's 5G networks now
being built.
Pompeo issued the ultimatum following a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Friday, saying the decision
on whether to allow Huawei equipment would have severe consequences, according to
Reuters
. His
words came at the start of a five-day European tour: "They [Germany] will take their own sovereign decisions, [but we]
will speak to them openly about
the
risks
... and in the case of Huawei the concern is
it
is not possible to mitigate those anywhere inside of a 5G network
," Pompeo
said
.
Germany, alongside the UK and France, has refused to budge amidst the ratcheting pressure from the US over worries that
China's intelligence is using its next generation networks as "back door" for aggressive telecommunications
eavesdropping.
Pompeo told the news conference further:
"(There
is) a risk we will have to change our behavior in light of the fact that we can't permit data on private citizens or
data on national security to go across networks that we don't have confidence (in)."
As we reported previously the Trump administration
first
notified its Berlin counterparts
of the intelligence sharing concerns in early March, when US Ambassador to Germany
Richard A. Grenell told Germany's economics minister in an official letter that the European ally and intelligence
partner "wouldn't be able to keep intelligence and other information sharing at their current level if Germany allowed
Huawei or other Chinese vendors to participate in building the country's 5G network."
It was noted at the time the warning is
"likely
to cause alarm among German security circles"
amid persistent terror threat, largely the result of Merkel's
disastrous "Open Door" policies which allowed over 1 million middle eastern immigrants into he country. And yet it
appears Germany's national security state establishment has remained unmoved, or at least unable to prevail over
Merkel's government.
Meanwhile on Thursday a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responded to the White House position at a moment Pompeo
keeps up the pressure campaign on European allies, saying, the US has not offered proof that Huawei's products present a
security risk.
"We hope that the United States can stop these mistaken actions which are not at all commensurate with their status and
position as a big country," said spokesman Geng Shuang, according to Reuters.
And Huawei, for its part, is
reportedly
taking steps to block
its employees from taking part in technical meetings with American contacts, which has even
included sending home American employees that were based at its Chinese headquarters in Shenzen.
The Democrat establishment are bereft of any new policy ideas or the ability to advance any policy framework through the
House let alone bring along the Senate. Egged on by the TDS afflicted "fake news" media all they've got is politicization. Their
Mueller silver bullet failed. So they'll go with an impeachment with all the media hysteria accompanying it fully realizing
that they don't have the votes in the Senate convict.
I'm not certain how this will play out in the mid-west where the next election will be decided. OTOH, an impeachment would
possibly force Trump to get aggressive about releasing all the incriminating documents and communications about the attempted
coup by the Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence leadership. Of course they would claim that what Trump is
doing is purely political and that they were only doing their patriotic duty. We're going to be in for more TDS media frenzy.
The last time they lost an election with sure thing Hillary. Do they expect to win with the same tactics with Sleepy Joe and
his long track record of being in the pocket of the financial industry?
It looks like Barr may mean business. He seems to be pushing ahead trying to get to the bottom of how the Russia collusion
investigation began in the first place.
Listen to this interview of Barr. Very interesting. As someone who has always opposed the growth in the unfettered powers
of the national security surveillance state, the fact that a sitting attorney general is using words like "praetorian guard"
in an interview is of great interest. Let's see how this is going to shake out. There is a possibility that the tide is
turning and the investigators may actually be investigated.
"The American Dream" as well as the American "Middle Class" have always bee a puzzle to me. The Dream seems to mean owning
a house to a lot of people. The Middle Class is what, a European style bourgeoisie?
As an outsider, it has always seemed to be that a succinct definition of the "American Dream" is that your kids will be better
off (you define "better") than you were.
Not unique to the USA, of course, but the inspiration for many many immigrants.
I think Trump is a buffoon who should not be President but that is not an impeachable offense. I think the Democrats would
be stupid to try to impeach, it would fail miserably in the Senate and probably lead to a trump victory in 2020. Compared with
Bush and Cheney, Trump is a minor sinner. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached for putting together a false case for going
to war in Iraq. That is the kind of mistake that cost thousands of lives a couple trillion dollars. If ever there was a case
for impeachment - that was the big one we missed.
Dick Morris agrees that impeachment will destroy the Dems "what will destroy them is that they apparently have nothing else
to say" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnI64DKD6o0
Main reassons to impeach Trump are related to its behavior on foreign policy,... if in that he would not be fully supported
by the Democrat apparatus...
The harm he has done to the US word and image throughout the world is of epic proportions, one wonders if it would be recoverable
any time....
-Storming of foreign embassies, starting with the Russian ones amd following with Venezuela´s
-Appropiating of foreign assests on basis of not liking the sign of the countryés governments.
-Naming presidents in charge of foreign countries whose government he does not like.
-Giving away foreign cities which do not belong to him to alleged allies tied to his close family.
-Illegal presence of US troops in foreign countries even after calls by legitimate authorities of those counries to go.
-Threatening every country whose government he does not like through his Twitter account and officials, even with war.
-Going against every principle of free market, which the US economy is supposedly based on, by ordering fully protectionist
measures on Us products and to private companies to comply with his overextended sanctions on everybody who could compete in
anything with the US or do not submit to US designs...
Then it is his continuous refusal to show his tax return.....There is something there, for sure...
Congratulations!
This year your birthday coincided with Al Quds Day...May be a sign...
"... The long, dense economic relationship appears to have passed its peak, writes Patrick Lawrence. ..."
"... The fallout from these mutually imposed taxes on trade will be considerable all by itself. Global supply chains will inevitably be disrupted -- a potential threat to worldwide economic stability. U.S. importers are expected to start shifting purchases away from China in favor of alternative suppliers with lower cost structures. American investors are likely to reconsider the mainland as a production platform, in many cases diverting investment dollars elsewhere. ..."
"... In the financial markets, this process is termed "decoupling." The long, dense economic relationship between the U.S. and China, the reasoning runs, appears to have passed its peak. ..."
"... With bilateral trade talks stalled, both sides have begun to indicate -- directly or by inference -- that they are now prepared to draw blood. Once the long-term damage begins, as appears increasingly likely, it is difficult to see how there will be any turning back from it. ..."
"... The only known back door into Huawei systems was created by the National Security Agency, which hacked its servers at some point between 2010 and 2012; this was revealed in the documents Edward Snowden made public in mid -- 2013. In effect, the U.S. accuses China of doing what it has already done. ..."
"... "When it comes to policy caprice motivated by paranoia and Deep State lies, the attack on Huawei is in a class all by itself," David Stockman, the former White House budget director, wrote on his blog earlier this month. "The whole case has been confected by Washington-domiciled economic nationalists who think prosperity stems from the machinations of the state and that state-sponsored 'national champions' are essential to winning the race for global economic and technological dominance." ..."
"... Last week the president suggested that the Huawei dispute can be negotiated as part of a broader agreement on trade. At the same time, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, has been crisscrossing the country to warn U.S. companies, universities, and other institutions of the perils of doing business with China. Coats's focus is on the high-technology sector. ..."
"... There are two lessons to draw from this spectacle. Trump's position on Huawei gives the game away: If the company is truly a national security threat, it makes no sense to offer it as a chip to be bargained in trade talks with Beijing. Equally, Coats's barnstorming tour is a clear indication that the national security apparatus is actively seeking to cast China as a strategic threat to the U.S. -- as the Pentagon declared it to be in a defense review earlier this year. ..."
"... Turning off the supply of rare earths is not the "nuclear option" China may consider it, as there are alternative suppliers. At the same time, the mainland accounts for nearly three-quarters of world supplies. When it blocked sales to Japan during a diplomatic dispute in 2010, prices rose precipitously and there was mayhem among manufacturers dependent on Chinese supplies. ..."
"... Xi made a remark in Jiangxi that is not to be missed. "We are now embarking on a new Long March," he said, referencing the famous retreat Mao led after Chinese Nationalists defeated the Red Army in 1934. "And we must start all over again." ..."
"... Unless Washington opens to a more cooperative partnership with Beijing -- an unlikely prospect -- this could be the moment China begins to displace the U.S. as the preeminent power in the western Pacific. ..."
"... The US has to regain a real economy and stop the insane military spending. Regardless of China. ..."
"... ‘”Trump’s position on Huawei gives the game away: If the company is truly a national security threat, it makes no sense to offer it as a chip to be bargained in trade talks with Beijing.” Absolutely the case. Trump has been caught before in this same kind of contradictory stance, as with tariffs on steel and aluminum. ..."
"... Trump seems to think he can command the wind and the waves. He has an immense ego, and there is the fact that he is a good deal less clever than he thinks he is. ..."
"... Trump believes that by intimidation and threats, he can make something happen that cannot happen through the ordinary operations of the economies. In this we see him most like the thugs that came to run a number of European countries in the 1930s. ..."
"... Trump’s “MAGA” is nothing more than thinking you can make that heart-warming post-WWII slogan, “the American Dream,” come alive again, many decades later and in an entirely different set of circumstances. “The American Dream” was based in a world where almost every competitor was prostrate from war while America remained relatively unscathed. So, America supplied, for a while, a huge share of the world’s demands, but its share has been declining ever since. ..."
"... Naturally, many Americans want to believe otherwise. Trump’s base – the nation’s Wal-Mart shoppers and the residents of its huge gulag of trailer parks – certainly does, and its hopes comes tinged with everything from superstition to religiosity. ..."
"... America’s elites, the members of its power establishment, do not believe in the same way, but they are deeply concerned about America’s relative decline. ..."
"... They do believe that America’s still great remaining strength can be used to extract concessions from the world without sacrificing anything at home and without sacrificing its role as the center of world empire, a role that comes with many perks and privileges ..."
"... One thinks of the infamous German industrialists and bankers’ – as well as notable American ones – early support for Hitler, although I do not mean to say the situations are identical. ..."
"... You can try fighting by the methods Trump is using, but those methods risk, through acts like the blithe laying on of massive new tariffs and sanctions, not only reduced economic activity in the world, they risk ultimately real wars. ..."
"... The real pity is that Trump at his core is not that much different from the rest of the fools who have been leading this country for the past several decades. He’s just “old school” in his style: he doesn’t wear soft kid gloves whilst attempting to strangle his geopolitical competitors the way all his chums before him did, the sonorous Barack Obama included. ..."
"... Constant warfare is a big part of US consumption. ..."
"... It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is subject to an arms industry racket which is draining its resources and ruining its real potential. ..."
"... We are becoming a country of idle over-weight vets running around on motorcycles wearing red MAGA hats, supported by billionaires, while the rest toil. ..."
"... This will likely come to a head sooner rather than later, and the conflict can be understood in broader terms as between a hegemonic global model and a multi-polar global model ..."
"... While confidence that such measures can inflict enormous harm is justified, the corresponding confidence that America’s preeminent position atop the world’s economic structures is not subject to challenge or change is misguided. The challenge has been ongoing for over five years now, and the change will likely appear suddenly. The preference would be for the U.S. guided to a soft landing into a multi-polar world, but Washington’s policy hawks seem committed to rolling the dice. ..."
"... Washington’s policy setters are gangsters who operate largely through intimidation, extortion and racketeering. ..."
"... This trade war sounds dangerous – didn’t the Smoot Hawley tariffs precipitate the great depression? And the inevitable economic war (even if it is a faux war based on lies, driven by the neocons) could well lead to a real war if we let it….. ..."
"... But trade wars are easy to win! Our very smart cheeto-in-chief has told us. You wouldn’t doubt him would you? ..."
"... The US has abdicated their manufacturing and innovative technologies, shutting down heavy industry under Reagan and Bush I (replacing it with a “service economy”) while outsourcing high end technology and offshoring technical jobs, initially to China mostly under Clinton and Bush II. ..."
"... It’s tempting to conclude that tariffs and action against Huawei are part of the same strategy. I don’t think they are. The tariffs are playing to Trump’s voter gallery. ..."
"... So long as the Chinese can find a way to save face AND give face to Trump, compromise is possible. Huawei is about the Deep State being unable to access Huawei’s facilities. Its a double bluff. The NSA etc (via 5 Eyes) have great access to western controlled telecoms. ..."
The long, dense economic relationship appears to have passed its peak, writes Patrick
Lawrence.
Special to Consortium News
P resident Donald Trump's trade war with China is swiftly taking a decisive turn for the
worse.
Step by step, each measure prompting retaliation, a spat so far limited to tariff increases,
now threatens to transform the bilateral relationship into one of managed hostility extending
well beyond economic issues. Should Washington and Beijing define each other as adversaries, as
they now appear poised to do, the consequences in terms of global stability and the balance of
power in the Pacific are nearly incalculable.
The trade dispute continues to sharpen. Later this week Beijing is scheduled
to raise tariffs already in place on $60 billion worth of American exports -- the latest in
a running series of escalations Washington set in motion nearly a year ago. Two weeks later the
U.S., having increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products earlier this month, is
to consider imposing levies on an additional $325 billion worth of imports from the
mainland.
The fallout from these mutually imposed taxes on trade will be considerable all by
itself. Global supply chains will inevitably be disrupted -- a potential threat to worldwide
economic stability. U.S. importers are expected to start shifting purchases away from China in
favor of alternative suppliers with lower cost structures. American investors are likely to
reconsider the mainland as a production platform, in many cases diverting investment dollars
elsewhere.
For its part, China is already rotating its gaze westward toward the Middle East and Europe.
As if to underscore the point, the East Hope Group, a large Chinese manufacturer, announced
late last week that it plans to
invest $10 billion in Abu Dhabi's industrial sector. Beijing is already drawing Western
Europe into its trillion-dollar Belt
and Road Initiative . In time, Europe could begin to replace the U.S. as a source of the
foreign investment capital China needs.
Decoupling
In the financial markets, this process is termed "decoupling." The long, dense economic
relationship between the U.S. and China, the reasoning runs, appears to have passed its
peak.
With bilateral trade talks stalled, both sides have begun to indicate -- directly or by
inference -- that they are now prepared to draw blood. Once the long-term damage begins, as
appears increasingly likely, it is difficult to see how there will be any turning back from
it.
Two weeks ago, the White House issued an executive order barring
purchases of telecommunications equipment from any foreign company deemed to pose a threat to
U.S. national security. It also requires American companies to obtain licenses before exporting
U.S. telecoms technology to such firms. While an administration official described the order as
"company and country agnostic," it is all but explicitly intended to damage the global position
of Huawei, the highly competitive Chinese company that is a leader in cellular telephone sales
and 5G telecommunications networks.
Huawei has long been in Washington's sights. Chief among the allegations against it , the
company is accused of providing China with a "back door" into its telecoms networks, so
allowing Beijing to spy on any entity using Huawei equipment. The U.S. has never provided
evidence of this, and both Huawei and Beijing vigorously deny any such arrangement. The
only known back door into Huawei systems was created by the National Security Agency, which
hacked its servers at some point between 2010 and 2012; this was revealed in the documents
Edward Snowden made public in mid -- 2013. In effect, the U.S. accuses China of doing what it
has already done.
"When it comes to policy caprice motivated by paranoia and Deep State lies, the attack
on Huawei is in a class all by itself," David Stockman, the former White House budget director,
wrote on his blog earlier this month. "The whole case has been confected by
Washington-domiciled economic nationalists who think prosperity stems from the machinations of
the state and that state-sponsored 'national champions' are essential to winning the race for
global economic and technological dominance."
Contradictory Narrative
There is little question that freezing Huawei out of the U.S. market and depriving it of
U.S. -- made components will do damage, in all likelihood lasting, to the company. The
Eurasia Group terms the administration's executive order "a grave escalation with China
that at a minimum plunges the prospect of continued trade negotiations into doubt." But as it
has on other policy questions, the Trump administration is tripping over its own contradictory
narratives at this point.
Last week the president suggested
that the Huawei dispute can be negotiated as part of a broader agreement on trade. At the same
time, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, has been crisscrossing the country
to
warn U.S. companies, universities, and other institutions of the perils of doing business
with China. Coats's focus is on the high-technology sector.
There are two lessons to draw from this spectacle. Trump's position on Huawei gives the
game away: If the company is truly a national security threat, it makes no sense to offer it as
a chip to be bargained in trade talks with Beijing. Equally, Coats's barnstorming tour is a
clear indication that the national security apparatus is actively seeking to cast China as a
strategic threat to the U.S. -- as
the Pentagon declared it to be in a defense review earlier this year.
Beijing has so far shown restraint in its responses, but there are signs it is stiffening
its spine. On Friday it issued a draft of its own set of
tighter regulations governing potential cyber-security breaches.
Xi Jinping had earlier visited a rare-earth processing facility in Jiangxi Province -- a
move read as the Chinese leader's subtle suggestion that Beijing may consider blocking exports
of minerals that are essential components in a variety of high-tech devices.
Turning off the supply of rare earths is not the "nuclear option" China may consider it,
as there are alternative suppliers. At the same time, the mainland accounts for nearly
three-quarters of world supplies. When it blocked sales
to Japan during a diplomatic dispute in 2010, prices rose precipitously and there was
mayhem among manufacturers dependent on Chinese supplies.
Xi made a remark in Jiangxi that is not to be missed. "We are now embarking on a new Long
March," he said, referencing the famous retreat Mao led after Chinese Nationalists defeated the
Red Army in 1934. "And we must start all over again."
With formal talks lapsed for the time being, there is now no shortage of signaling from
either Washington or Beijing. But Xi, China's most assertive leader since the Great Helmsman,
appears to understand the moment as larger than mere gestures. U.S. -- China relations have
entered a decisive phase. America cannot win in a long-term confrontation with China.
Unless Washington opens to a more cooperative partnership with Beijing -- an unlikely
prospect -- this could be the moment China begins to displace the U.S. as the preeminent power
in the western Pacific.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time
No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist . His web site is www.patricklawrence.us.
Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you value this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
dean 1000 , May 31, 2019 at 11:12
The Empire the US built and acquired after WWII could not last no matter who is president.
We have been advised of this coming reality for 30 or 40 years. Washington can’t adjust
b/c it is controlled by a two party system that is owned by the 10%.
Since wall street bought a bunch of manufacturing companies and exported them to China the
US hasen’t had a real economy. It has been one bubble economy after another. A stock
bubble, tech bubble, dot com bubble, and a killer 8 trillion $ housing bubble, and a
completely unnecessary bank bailout.
The US has to regain a real economy and stop the insane military spending. Regardless of
China.
Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 06:14
Trump, in effect, is walling the US off from the rest of the world, as Ming-Qing dynasty
China did until 1911.it turned out badly for Chinese people. It’s likely to turn out
badly for the US.
Truth , May 29, 2019 at 17:27
One solution to rare minerals is to break the illegal clinton & bush era mining
agreements around the Grand canyon and Nevada which has turned our resources into cash from
russia and canada into the pockets of the deep state “elected” in D<C and
these states. It would be nice if every now and then a real journalist who publishes a full
story would get a complete story published. Consortium does better than most but still needs
to step up their game.
An article that includes explaining why all NAFTA and trade agreements since Kennedy have
been total sellouts of USA in exchange for party owned companies of the "elected"
‘”Trump’s position on Huawei gives the game away: If the company is
truly a national security threat, it makes no sense to offer it as a chip to be bargained in
trade talks with Beijing.” Absolutely the case. Trump has been caught before in this same kind of contradictory stance, as with tariffs on
steel and aluminum.
I think the truth is that he is a man ready to use any gimmick to get what he wants,
regardless of logic or facts or principle. Another way to say that is to speak of a criminal
mentality.
It is exactly what the mob has always done in making someone an offer they can’t
refuse. “Don’t want to pay protection money? Well, don’t be surprised if
your joint gets burned down.”
Trump essentially wants to transfer huge amounts of trade surplus from China to the United
States, not by any change in the economic activity or policies of the two countries but by
fiat.
But of course, the world doesn’t work that way.
The United States’ trade deficits are its own doing, not China’s. The United
States doesn’t save, and it doesn’t tax adequately. It consumes, and a productive
country like China is only too pleased to supply what it wants. That makes a flow of goods in
one direction and a flow of money in the other. Economics 101.
Trump seems to think he can command the wind and the waves. He has an immense ego, and
there is the fact that he is a good deal less clever than he thinks he is.
Trump believes that by intimidation and threats, he can make something happen that cannot
happen through the ordinary operations of the economies. In this we see him most like the
thugs that came to run a number of European countries in the 1930s.
He genuinely does not understand – or if he understands, he doesn’t care
– what is behind the surpluses and deficits and just insists that they will be changed
as a matter of his personal will. Does that not remind us of anyone from history?
At any rate, it comes down to his admiring “the strong man” and believing he,
and he alone, can play that role for the United States. And there are more than a few
Americans that believe him too. After all, the great American journalist and historian who
documented the rise and fall of the Nazis, William L. Shirer, once said that he thought the
United States might be the first country to go fascist voluntarily. He based that thought on
his observation of many attitudes and beliefs and trends in the United States.
Trump’s “MAGA” is nothing more than thinking you can make that
heart-warming post-WWII slogan, “the American Dream,” come alive again, many
decades later and in an entirely different set of circumstances. “The American
Dream” was based in a world where almost every competitor was prostrate from war while
America remained relatively unscathed. So, America supplied, for a while, a huge share of the
world’s demands, but its share has been declining ever since.
In today’s world, all the old competitors have not only come roaring back, but a lot
of new ones have come into being, and that reality is the future.
Naturally, many Americans want to believe otherwise. Trump’s base – the
nation’s Wal-Mart shoppers and the residents of its huge gulag of trailer parks –
certainly does, and its hopes comes tinged with everything from superstition to
religiosity.
America’s elites, the members of its power establishment, do not believe in the same
way, but they are deeply concerned about America’s relative decline. They have been
working away for years on the problem, as in their past bashing of Japan or China, but they
are not ready to work for fundamental change in America, as, for example, in its tax and
savings structures and its grotesque inequalities.
They do believe that America’s still great remaining strength can be used to extract
concessions from the world without sacrificing anything at home and without sacrificing its
role as the center of world empire, a role that comes with many perks and privileges. And
while most of them do not like Trump’s style or background, I think for now they are
willing to see whether he can get the ugly job done. One thinks of the infamous German
industrialists and bankers’ – as well as notable American ones – early
support for Hitler, although I do not mean to say the situations are identical.
You can try fighting by the methods Trump is using, but those methods risk, through acts
like the blithe laying on of massive new tariffs and sanctions, not only reduced economic
activity in the world, they risk ultimately real wars.
Even if they don’t go so far as war, they are shaking up some fundamental post-WWII
arrangements that America is going to miss. Decades-old allies, like some of those in Europe,
are beginning to re-think their relationship with such a hostile, single-minded America and
to glance around in other directions, as towards the very China Trump attacks and towards
Russia, a country whose openness to business would have resembled a miracle under the
communists and whose wealth of natural resources offers altogether new opportunities.
Realist , May 30, 2019 at 01:32
The real pity is that Trump at his core is not that much different from the rest of the
fools who have been leading this country for the past several decades. He’s just
“old school” in his style: he doesn’t wear soft kid gloves whilst
attempting to strangle his geopolitical competitors the way all his chums before him did, the
sonorous Barack Obama included.
The problem that bothers the US policy makers is real: what to do about the balance of
payments deficit? The Trump team seems to be nit-picking areas where imports can be reduced,
for instance by blocking Chinese tech exports.
All of these moves are nonsense because they
miss the real problem: the US economy has a long standing structural quandary. It devotes so
much of its resources to flashy, ornamental and useless defense high tech weapons and gismos
that it is running itself into the ground.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is
subject to an arms industry racket which is draining its resources and ruining its real
potential. What needs to be done is to cut the military budget in half and redirect the
resources to improving the infrastructure of the country and making investment once again
profitable inside the USA. Where is the politician who dares make these proposals? Wake up
America. We are becoming a country of idle over-weight vets running around on motorcycles
wearing red MAGA hats, supported by billionaires, while the rest toil.
bardamu , May 29, 2019 at 00:07
It is strange to discuss confrontation with China only in terms of trade deals so soon
after Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” Trump’s militarism with respect to
North Korea, and the militarism of both the Obama and Trump regimes as regards Russia and
also through western and central Asia, which are clearly areas in which China has no less
natural interest than the United States.
Among these, surely tariffs are the least of most anyone’s worries.
jaycee , May 28, 2019 at 16:27
This will likely come to a head sooner rather than later, and the conflict can be
understood in broader terms as between a hegemonic global model and a multi-polar global
model.
The hegemonic global model has been an American project since the demise of the Soviet
Union, usually presented in euphemism – “globalization”, the
“exceptional” nation, the “rule-based international system”, etc. In
recent years, US politicians have overstepped by a reckless use of the international
financial system to deter designated adversaries.
Presently moving through Congress are bills
designed to use sanctions (“maximum pressure”) to attack both Russia’s Nordstream natural gas pipeline to Europe and China’s claims in the South China Sea.
While confidence that such measures can inflict enormous harm is justified, the corresponding
confidence that America’s preeminent position atop the world’s economic
structures is not subject to challenge or change is misguided. The challenge has been ongoing
for over five years now, and the change will likely appear suddenly. The preference would be
for the U.S. guided to a soft landing into a multi-polar world, but Washington’s policy
hawks seem committed to rolling the dice.
Realist , May 28, 2019 at 17:41
Washington’s policy setters are gangsters who operate largely through intimidation,
extortion and racketeering. If you look up the definitions of those words you will see they
describe to a tee what the American government does. Shutting down Nordstream (and all the
other sanctions over transparently absurd claims) is meant entirely to damage the Russian
economy and destabilise the country’s government, plus to steal away customers in the
energy sector.
They are protecting nobody’s “rights of navigation” in the
South China Sea, rather they are telegraphing to Bejing that Chinese trade with the world can
be shut down on a moment’s notice by Uncle Sam, specifically they are trying to put the
kibosh on the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative.” The cusses in Washington have
gone so far as to tell Canada that it does not have control over the Northwest Passage, long
considered to be within its internal waters–you know, all those islands connected by
ice for most of the year. Hence forth, Washington decreed that they are international waters
and that it would control them. If that’s being a good neighbor to a country that has
supported your every crazed demand for over 200 years, the “Great White North”
needs to get a restraining order from the World Court against Uncle Sam, plus they need to
find better friends elsewhere on the planet.
I tend to substitute the euphemism “rogue nation” for those others.
Excellent comment.
Realist , May 28, 2019 at 16:22
India, Vietnam, and the Philippines will thank China for the opportunity to manufacture
schlock for sale at Wal*Mart and for the major investments that new Chinese shareholders will
have made in their companies. These countries will now have wares to trade along the Belt and
Road linking all of Eurasia where everyone keeps getting richer by the day. Since people the
world over, except for congenitally retarded neocons, know a good deal when they see one, all
these countries will start telling Uncle Sam to cram it when he keeps demanding they sanction
their new found friends and trading partners because freedom and democracy, Putin and the
other names on Sam’s shit list. They’ll start deciding that all those American
bases give them no clout, no influence, no pay-off and no security… nothing useful at
all, unless prosecuting the crimes and repairing the damage caused by the garrison soldiers
provides local entertainment. It will be time to relocate those rat-holes to the American
side of Trump’s Wall.
Will the silver lining be new American self-sufficiency in manufacturing? The development
of needed resources using new innovative technologies? A plethora of jobs at good pay for
working American men and women? Will American oligarchs once again begin investing in America
itself? If you can arrange that with American greenbacks now buying a tenth as many Yuans,
Euros, Yen, Rupees, Rubles and even Pesos than they once did because Trump decided to
“shake things up,” maybe you can sell all those treasuries needed to run the
government in Washington to the Tooth Fairy.
It’s not true that “you can never go
home again:” just watch the dollars come flooding back to North America when the whole
rest of the world stops trading in them. This whole bit of history should be engaging to
watch on some future television show similar to James Burke’s
“Connections.”
If only Barack Obama had eased up on the extreme Trump bashing at
that White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Harpo Kondriak , May 28, 2019 at 20:13
“Watch those dollars come flooding back” – when the real fun starts.
Those that don’t understand why there has been little inflation from the bank bailouts
will get their answer. And they won’t like it.
Seamus Padraig , May 28, 2019 at 14:46
As a life-long protectionist, I always believed that our foolish dependence on imports
would ultimately end in tears, and it is now clear how right I was. Just to think: we could
have saved ourselves all this trouble and misery simply by voting down NAFTA and declining to
extend Most-Favored Nation trade status (as it used to be called) to China 25 years ago. But
now, putting our industry back on track is really gonna hurt. Pity …
Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 06:39
Any US reindustrialization is likely employ robots. The homeless will just keep on
increasing.
Godfree Roberts , May 28, 2019 at 12:29
“Europe could begin to replace the U.S. as a source of the foreign investment
capital China needs.”?
China is the leading recipient of FDI but its need for foreign capital is rapidly diminishing
and it is the world leader in IP
Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 06:40
A fair amount of foreign investment is laundered bribe money from China.
evelync , May 28, 2019 at 11:28
This trade war sounds dangerous – didn’t the Smoot Hawley tariffs precipitate
the great depression?
And the inevitable economic war (even if it is a faux war based on lies, driven by the
neocons) could well lead to a real war if we let it…..
I can’t help but secretly imagine that perhaps the retaliation that Patrick Lawrence
writes about – namely China’s shift to other trade partners – happens
smoothly and quickly enough to deprive our neocons of their super power resources to put an
end to what Charles Misfeldt in his comments refers to as Crooks, liars, thieves, cowards and
traitors running things…..errr ruining things.
I know that’s not the answer because it could be devastating too.
It’s up to the electorate to shift away from the ideologues, both neoliberal and
neocons.
But will we demand better government?
Most politicians in power have been too afraid to challenge the idea of
“exceptionalism” which is used to keep the primitive war machine going.
Thanks for the article and the interesting and informative comments….much
appreciated…
Jeff Harrison , May 28, 2019 at 11:19
But trade wars are easy to win! Our very smart cheeto-in-chief has told us. You
wouldn’t doubt him would you?
Actually, one wonders why anyone takes the US and its accusations seriously. Especially by
the European vassal states. Yes, your equipment/software will have a backdoor if the US wants
one there. That much is clear from the Snowden releases. And a Reuters report this morning
gives a hint at how it’s done. Huawei apparently is continuing to make the mistake of
sending things out via FedEx. Magically, two of the parcels wound up in the US without the
benefit of Huawei changing their shipping request. Huawei would never have known if they
hadn’t looked at the routing of the parcel after they got it. Hopefully, there
wasn’t any sensitive information in the documents routed to the US because it’s a
sure thing that the USG now has copies of them. Same for the European vassals. Angela
Merkel’s phone hacked. Electronic interception equipment installed on undersea
telephone cables. That’s before we get to the NSA office in all the telecoms spying on
us. Most of the world’s telecommunications run through the US. So, not only do we get
to listen in on a phone call from Paris to Des Moines, we get to listen in on one from Paris
to Shanghai.
And the European vassals continue to toe the American line albeit a bit more
reluctantly.
michael , May 28, 2019 at 11:15
The US has abdicated their manufacturing and innovative technologies, shutting down heavy
industry under Reagan and Bush I (replacing it with a “service economy”) while
outsourcing high end technology and offshoring technical jobs, initially to China mostly
under Clinton and Bush II.
Short-term profits soared with the cheaper labor, but giving away
high end technologies leading to innovations for China was resoundingly stupid. Chinagate was
(is) much more dangerous than Russiagate to National Security.
Having given away
America’s capabilities to China, no amount of negotiating will “level the playing
field” . We can no longer compete with China not because of labor costs, but because of
the improvements the Chinese have made in so many fields over twenty years, while America sat
stagnant (except of course for overpriced weapons and surveillance tools to watch American
citizens).
Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 06:47
The US has always imported its Einsteins and Teslas. We Americans are educated to be
cannon fodder in wars of vanity. At best, we’re educated to be Trump – Romney
style connivrrs and crooks.
Historically, when two hegemonic powers clash the result is always war. What we are
witnessing between Washington and Beijing today is no different. But Washington will not
allow China to ‘displace the US as the preeminent power in the western Pacific.’
The trade war will become world war. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
does not have a valid certificate (Firefox warned me).
Charles Misfeldt , May 28, 2019 at 08:44
I look at this picture and see all the representative’s on America’s side of
the table are conservative scumbags who have no intention of engaging in behavior that
benefits myself or the majority in America. Crooks, liars, thieves, cowards and
traitors…
MichaelWme , May 28, 2019 at 06:55
“a spat so far limited to tariff increases”
Not quite. The US has announced that any Chinese person travelling outside of China can be
arrested, as it had Meng Wanzhou arrested in Canada for selling Huawei phones to Iranians.
China threatened to execute 3 Canadians in retaliation, so Canada released Ms Meng from
prison and put her under house arrest while the legal processes of extradition are now
thought to require many years.
China hasn’t executed the 3 Canadians, and Ms Meng is in
her C$20 million home, and is likely to remain there for the foreseeable future. What
happened to Ms Meng can happen to any Chinese executive who travels outside China to the EU
or the Americas or Japan.
E Wright , May 28, 2019 at 04:50
It’s tempting to conclude that tariffs and action against Huawei are part of the
same strategy. I don’t think they are. The tariffs are playing to Trump’s voter
gallery.
So long as the Chinese can find a way to save face AND give face to Trump,
compromise is possible. Huawei is about the Deep State being unable to access Huawei’s
facilities. Its a double bluff. The NSA etc (via 5 Eyes) have great access to western
controlled telecoms.
They don’t want to lose that access by allowing an outside
operator, so they accuse Huawei of what they are doing, on the assumption that Beijing does
what they do.
"... He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However, Congress can charge him thru impeachment" ..."
"... Russian spin is the key to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the election to get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda. Impeachment just serves to divide and distract, exactly what they want. ..."
"... Russia like China is a fake enemy. Fake conflict with the US serves them just as well as it does with the US. The people must have an enemy lest they focus attention on the government. So they all play along. ..."
"... we get the opportunity to vote for one clown or another, two max, is a mainstay (about the only one) of our "democratic" nation. And the wrong clown won! Damned Russians. ..."
What do you expect from the master of coverup himself?
He basically said in so many words "Russians hacked Hillary & I didn't find
Trump didn't collude with them, I just came up short on proof, and I never said he didn't
obstruct my probe, just that I wasn't allowed to charge it. However, Congress can charge
him thru impeachment"
Except for the Russian involvement that's the truth. But the Russian spin is the key
to maintaining Russia as a fake enemy and using their fake involvement in the election to
get support to suppress alt media and censor social media. This is a bipartisan agenda.
Impeachment just serves to divide and distract, exactly what they want.
Russia like China is a fake enemy. Fake conflict with the US serves them just as
well as it does with the US. The people must have an enemy lest they focus attention on the
government. So they all play along.
No wonder hollywood is producing crap now and messed up GOT finale. All the good writers
are engaged in scripting our reality under the guidance of the Deep State. Trumps nothing
more than an actor following a script.
The Dems can't believe Hillary lost all on her own. It must have been the Russians who
threatened US democracy and it's too bad we don't have the truth b/c Trump obstructed the
patriotic and sacred investigation according to a powerful person.
. . .Nancy Pelosi --
"The Special Counsel's report revealed that the President's campaign welcomed Russian
interference in the election, and laid out eleven instances of the President's
obstruction of the investigation. The Congress holds sacred its constitutional
responsibility to investigate and hold the President accountable for his abuse of power.
"The Congress will continue to investigate and legislate to protect our elections and
secure our democracy. The American people must have the truth. We call upon the Senate to
pass H.R. 1, the For The People Act, to protect our election systems.
"We salute Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team for his patriotic duty to seek
the truth." . . . here
After all, the quadrennial presidential election, when we get the
opportunity to vote for one clown or another, two max, is a mainstay (about the only one)
of our "democratic" nation. And the wrong clown won! Damned Russians.
Having been practically a recluse since since the 'fake dossier' alleging links between Donald Trump and Russia that he produced
was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, Christophe Steele has reportedly refused to cooperate with AG Barr's probes
Reuters reports that , according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Steele, a former Russia expert for the British
spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham , named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations
into Trump and his campaign team.
However, buried deep in
Reuters story is the same source claiming that Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department's Inspector
General into how U.S. law enforcement agencies handled pre-election investigations into both Trump and Clinton.
In the past Steele has cooperated, willingly being interviewed twice in the special counsel's investigation, and submitting answers
in writing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but apparently this time he is not willing.
With Steel refusing to cooperate, Joe DiGenova, former U.S. Attorney warned Monday on WMAL radio's
Mornings on the Mall radio show,
"this is full scale war," adding that "we are heading toward a gigantic, gigantic fight...
The intelligence community, which includes the FBI, is in full resistance to disclosing what they did during the presidential
campaign ."
Sara Carter reports that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on the FBI's handling of the
investigation into Trump within weeks.
These investigation will hold those in the intelligence and law enforcement community accountable, depending on what evidence
is discovered. This reporter is hearing from sources that it will be scathing. Those who abused their power and weaponized the tools
meant to target America's enemies against a political opponents should be held accountable . Tags
Politics Law Crime
It seems reasonable to demand Steele's extradition to America to explain his part in the conspiracy.
I mean is being a party to the conspiracy, attempted treason and sedition of the attempted overthrow of an elected President
not at least as important as Julian Assange who only made public some documents that someone else removed?
Oh these fuckers are scared to death. Comey lashing out at Trump...on and on. This is going to be great...and Trump will
play it perfect right into the election. And BIDEN was part of all of it. What a great next 6 years.
Funny, I was recently de-platformed on Twitter for tweeting to GCHQ (British Intelligence) that the UK's sordid involvement
in spying on the Trump campaign would be exposed and "no amount of British bluster could refute it...".
"I have been making this point for some time, that immigration leading to lower average
IQs, while bad, cannot logically lower scientific productivity because in absolute numbers
the talented fraction remains unaffected. There are still the same numbers of smart
people."
I wouldn't say that at all; or at least I would say the situation isn't quite what you may
think of it. Changing demographics* can certainly change economic/scientific/national policy,
perhaps disastrously so. Karlin's piece ends with an ominous reference to the Brazilian
president, but it just as easily might have been someone like America's AOC and her very
unwise 100% green energy in 10 years scheme. Changing demographics means more AOC's and more
turns at the economic disaster roulette wheel. In a democracy (or a representative republic),
it's easy for a lower IQ population to impose its disastrous ideas on the higher IQ former
majority; hence, the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the resultant economic
dysfunction.
In the future, not only will China produce quality scientific research, but efficiencies
conferred by its cultural and ethnic homogeneity may allow its corporations to out compete
American companies to a much greater degree than mere scientific discovery might otherwise
suggest. Additionally, China's economy will be so large that its companies will be able to
afford the massive R&D costs required for making ever more difficult discoveries. Their
smaller global competition likely won't be able to match spending, so China's corporations
could one day become far more dominant than you might anticipate. After all, it's really
about who can best exploit new discoveries and not just about who makes them first.
Otherwise, ancient China would have ruled the world; they invented paper, gunpowder, and the
compass.
Huawei was maybe 3% of the global smartphone market in Q4 of 2011 but it is set to pass
both Samsung and Apple in marketshare within the next five years. You see a bit of this
cultural/linguistic/ethnic homogeneity = efficiency phenomenon with the video game industry,
specifically in regards to competition between Sony and the much larger, but more
multicultural and less efficient Microsoft. Japan's Sony corporation dominates Microsoft in
sales just like their car companies dominate their American competition; GM was recently
chased out of Europe because it couldn't compete and none of these companies can sell
anything in Japan.
Also, notice that the EU core area has a white European population probably on par with
the white European-American population, but the US still has the greater share of scientific
discovery. I would posit this has much to do with the efficiency conferred by language
homogeneity in the United States (English) -- among other things. China in the future will
enjoy many of the same efficiencies the US has now, in terms of both language and culture.
And this is why India isn't as dynamic as some have predicted. Despite having a "smart
fraction", it is a low trust society deeply divided by color and class. Its leadership,
imposed by the lower IQ fraction, is also somewhat inept. The same fate awaits the United
States under current demographic trends.
*Has there been a single example of a global superpower in modern history that has lost
its ethnic majority but still retained functional status and prosperity over the long term?
Maybe Singapore (but they weren't a superpower), although I admittedly know little about that
country. Austria-Hungary? In any case, I would suspect the sample size here is far too small
to make any definitive prediction about the future of scientific discovery and resultant
economic success for the United States of America.
While the decision hasn't been made official, it was reported earlier this month by Canadian
military magazine Kanwa Asian Defense , which noted that Beijing won't just jump over to Linux
- and will instead develop their own over fears of US surveillance (and of course, in
retaliation for Huawei's blacklisting).
Thanks to the Snowden, Shadow Brokers, and Vault7 leaks, Beijing officials are well aware
of the US' hefty arsenal of hacking tools , available for anything from smart TVs to Linux
servers, and from routers to common desktop operating systems, such as Windows and Mac.
Since these leaks have revealed that the US can hack into almost anything, the Chinese
government's plan is to adopt a "security by obscurity" approach and run a custom operating
system that will make it harder for foreign threat actors -- mainly the US -- to spy on
Chinese military operations. -
ZDnet
The new OS will be developed by a newly established "Internet Security Information
Leadership Group" as reported by the
Epoch Times , citing Kanwa.
The group does not trust the "UNIX" multi-user, multi-stroke operating system either ,
which is used in some of the servers within the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Kanwa
reported. Therefore, Chinese authorities ordered to develop an operating system dedicated to
the Chinese military.
The group also believes that the German-developed programmable logic controller (PLC),
used in 70 percent of China's industrial control system today, poses huge risks to China's
national security . In its opinion, China is not a "network superpower," but merely a
"network giant," Kanwa reported. Therefore, Chinese authorities have laid out plans to
upgrade China's network -- to become more advanced in cyber technology. -
Epoch Times
Huawei, meanwhile, is dropping Android OS for its own operating system, code-named HongMeng.
It should be ready to launch in late 2019 domestically, and sometime in 2020 for international
markets, according to TechRadar .
Google announced on May 20 that it would partially cut off Huawei devices from using the
Android operating system, however the Mountain View - based company was given an extension
until August 19 by the White House. Other tech companies which have blacklisted Huawei include
Qualcomm, ARM, Micron and several tech industry standards organizations such as Bluetooth, SD
and WiFi alliances.
"Huawei knew this was coming and was preparing. The OS was ready in January 2018 and this
was our 'Plan B'. We did not want to bring the OS to the market as we had a strong relationship
with Google and others and did not want to ruin the relationship. Now, we are rolling it out
next month," said Huawei's Managing Director and VP of the Middle East Enterprise Business
Group.
The OS,
which could be called Ark OS when launched , is expected to be compatible with mobile
phones, computers, tablets, TVs, connected cars, smartwatch, smart wearables and others.
All applications that work with Android are expected to work with this new OS without any
need for further customization, Elshimy claims, adding that users will be able to download
apps from the Huawei AppGallery. - TechRadar
It is unknown whether apps available via Google's Play Store will be carried in Huawei's
store.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Project Syndicate) -- "When governments permit counterfeiting or copying
of American products, it is stealing our future, and it is no longer free trade." So said
President Ronald Reagan, commenting on Japan after the Plaza Accord was concluded in
September 1985.
Today resembles, in many respects, a remake of this 1980s movie, but with a
reality-television star replacing a Hollywood film star in the presidential leading role --
and with a new villain in place of Japan.
Back in the 1980s, Japan was portrayed as America's greatest economic threat -- not only
because of allegations of intellectual-property theft, but also because of concerns about
currency manipulation, state-sponsored industrial policy, a hollowing out of U.S.
manufacturing, and an outsize bilateral trade deficit.
In its standoff with the U.S., Japan ultimately blinked, but it paid a steep price for
doing so -- nearly three "lost" decades of economic stagnation and deflation. Today, the same
plot features China.
Notwithstanding both countries' objectionable mercantilism, Japan and China had something
else in common: They became victims of America's unfortunate habit of making others the
scapegoat for its own economic problems.
Like Japan bashing in the 1980s, China bashing today is an outgrowth of America's
increasingly insidious macroeconomic imbalances. In both cases, a dramatic shortfall in U.S.
domestic saving spawned large current-account and trade deficits, setting the stage for
battles, 30 years apart, with Asia's two economic giants.
Deficits made in America
When Reagan took office in January 1981, the net domestic saving rate stood at 7.8% of
national income, and the current account was basically balanced. Within two and a half years,
courtesy of Reagan's wildly popular tax cuts, the domestic saving rate had plunged to 3.7%,
and the current account and the merchandise trade balances swung into perpetual deficit.
In this important respect, America's so-called trade problem was very much of its own
making. Yet the Reagan administration was in denial. There was little or no appreciation of
the link between saving and trade imbalances. Instead, the blame was pinned on Japan, which
accounted for 42% of U.S. goods trade deficits in the first half of the 1980s.
Japan bashing then took on a life of its own with a wide range of grievances over unfair
and illegal trade practices. Leading the charge back then was a young deputy U.S. trade
representative named Robert Lighthizer. Fast-forward some 30 years and the similarities are
painfully evident.
Predictable decline in savings
Unlike Reagan, President Donald Trump did not inherit a U.S. economy with an ample
reservoir of saving. When Trump took office in January 2017, the net domestic saving rate was
just 3%, well below half the rate at the onset of the Reagan era. But, like his predecessor,
who waxed eloquently of a new "morning in America," Trump also opted for large tax cuts --
this time to "make America great again."
The U.S. national savings rate has fallen from 7.8% of GDP when Reagan took office to just
2.8% today. The result was a predictable widening of the federal budget deficit, which more
than offset the cyclical surge in private saving that normally accompanies a maturing
economic expansion. As a result, the net domestic saving rate actually edged down to 2.8% of
national income by late 2018, keeping America's international balances deep in the red --
with the current-account deficit at 2.6% of gross domestic product and the merchandise trade
gap at 4.5% in late 2018.
And that's where China assumes the role that Japan played in the 1980s. On the surface,
the threat seems more dire.
After all, China accounted for 48% of the U.S. merchandise trade deficit in 2018, compared
to Japan's 42% share in the first half of the 1980s. But the comparison is distorted by
global supply chains, which basically didn't exist in the 1980s.
Data from the OECD and the World Trade Organization suggest that about 35%-40% of the
bilateral U.S.-China trade deficit reflects inputs made outside of China but assembled and
shipped to the U.S. from China. That means the made-in-China portion of today's U.S. trade
deficit is actually smaller than Japan's share of the 1980s.
Like the Japan bashing of the 1980s, today's outbreak of China bashing has been
conveniently excised from America's broader macroeconomic context. That is a serious mistake.
Without raising national saving -- highly unlikely under the current U.S. budget trajectory
-- trade will simply be shifted away from China to America's other trading partners.
With this trade diversion likely to migrate to higher-cost platforms around the world,
American consumers will be hit with the functional equivalent of a tax hike.
Lighthizer as clueless today as he was then
Ironically, Trump has summoned the same Robert Lighthizer, veteran of the Japan trade
battles of the 1980s, to lead the charge against China. Unfortunately, Lighthizer seems as
clueless about the macro argument today as he was back then.
In both episodes, the U.S. was in denial, bordering on delusion.
Basking in the warm glow of untested supply-side economics -- especially the theory that
tax cuts would be self-financing -- the Reagan administration failed to appreciate the links
between mounting budget and trade deficits.
Today, the seductive power of low interest rates, coupled with the latest strain of voodoo
economics -- Modern Monetary Theory -- is equally alluring for the Trump administration and a
bipartisan consensus of China bashers in the Congress.
The tough macroeconomic constraints facing a saving-short U.S. economy are ignored for
good reason: there is no U.S. political constituency for reducing trade deficits by cutting
budget deficits and thereby boosting domestic saving.
America wants to have its cake and eat it, with a health-care system that swallows 18% of
its GDP, defense spending that exceeds the combined sum of the world's next seven largest
military budgets, and tax cuts that have reduced federal government revenue to 16.5% of GDP,
well below the 17.4% average of the past 50 years.
This remake of an old movie is disconcerting, to say the least. Once again, the U.S. has
found it far easier to bash others -- Japan then, China now -- than to live within its means.
This time, however, the movie might have a very different ending.
I use both. Up to Ubuntu with Mint. Plus Raspbian and Android.
But, for somethings, you can't beat Microsoft for ease of use and interoperability. I rip
and transcode my DVDs in Windows 7. I use Microsoft Office '13. Browse using Firefox, Thor
and Chrome. And I have some specific audio processing tools that only exist in Windows.
And if you are a Chinese military or other intelligence professional with access to a
"SIPR" class network it probably would be safe bet that US manufactured computer systems
and networking gear has been appropriately "modified" not to use those chipsets since long
before the "deal" of "deals" was made with the Yankee Dog ( http://www.911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html
) to send the remaining American technical manufacturing labor force out on the
street!...
Rinse and repeat for India's government intel and military professionals as well!....
Doesn't deal with the hardware back doors, but its a start. I do believe they have their own o/s already waiting after Kaspersky got banned a few years ago for finding both the hardware and s/w backdoors.
That hard disk firmware that called home was a classic.
Oh, yes. They're going to develop their own OS, just like Huawei. What ********. Huawei
will use vanilla android and China will pull an Apple, and rebrand Linux. But it sounds good,
to say you're going to crank out a brand new operating system, like it's a CRUD web app.
"... Since Apple gets 20% of its revenue from China and manufactures its iPhones (which generated 60% of its total 2018 revenue) there, few companies are as exposed to Beijing's retaliation. Apple has already been suffering in the region, seeing sliding revenue as consumers buy more phones from Huawei and other local brands. ..."
"... Citi warns that independent due diligence reveals " a less favorable brand image desire for iPhone and this has very recently deteriorated." As a result, Citi is materially lowering its sales and EPS estimates below consensus as China represents 18% of Apple sales "which we believe could be cut in half. " ..."
"Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems are at risk of experiencing demand
destruction due to collateral damage from the sales ban to Huawei."
U.S. companies such as Apple and Nike, which rely on China for a major part of their growth
and which have targets painted on their backs as Beijing and Washington ratchet up trade-war
tensions, are "bracing for China's retaliatory wrath" according to
Bloomberg
.
While Beijing has yet to formally retaliate after Trump blacklisted Huawei,
Chinese state media last week said China is "well armed to deliver counterpunches," without
giving specific details. And as companies await China's next move, there is rising, if
unwelcome, suspense over what form retaliation might take. Companies might "just have to
read the tea leaves on how their business operations are being treated,'' Erin Ennis, senior
vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said in an interview with Bloomberg
Television on Saturday.
As Bloomberg notes, one option China could use is from the 2017 "template" when relations
with South Korea deteriorated over Seoul's decision to deploy a missile shield. The
government curbed travel to South Korea, hurting cosmetics companies that rely on Chinese
tourists, while local authorities shut most of Lotte Shopping's China stores, alleging fire
safety violations. Consumers boycotted South Korean products, dealing a devastating blow to
Hyundai Motor sales. A similar pattern of action took place during the 2013 trade feud with
Japan which escalated over territorial disagreements in the East China Sea.
... ... ...
Since Apple gets 20% of its revenue from China and manufactures its iPhones (which generated 60% of its total 2018 revenue)
there, few companies are as exposed to Beijing's retaliation. Apple has already been suffering in the region, seeing sliding revenue
as consumers buy more phones from Huawei and other local brands. According to relatively optimistic research by Wedbush analyst Dan
Ives, blowback from Trump's Huawei ban could cost Apple about 3% to 5% of its iPhone sales in China.
... ... ...
Citi warns that independent due diligence reveals "
a less favorable brand image desire for iPhone and this has very
recently deteriorated."
As a result,
Citi is materially lowering its sales and EPS estimates below consensus as
China represents 18% of Apple sales "which we believe could be cut in half.
"
The article is devoid any technical substance and operated with value threat notion. As such this attempt of to spread FUD.
In this case the USA are fighting to preserve their technological edge by trying to destroy the leading China company which became a
competitor to domestic firms.
Control of Wi-Fi network is damaging to the targeted nation security. The question is: who would allow such a control? All
measures will be deployed against foreign powers exploitation.
But what about control of telecoms and putting NSA equipment directly in telecom data centers like the NSA practices
domestically and in vassal countries, for example, in Ukraine. And they manages to spy of Angela Merkel phone in Germany. Please
note that Germany is one of the most sophisticated technically nations in the world.
Notable quotes:
"... The anti-Huawei campaign intensified last week, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively banned the use of Huawei equipment in U.S. telecom networks on national security grounds and the Commerce Department put limits on the firm's purchasing of U.S. technology. Google's parent, Alphabet, suspended some of its business with Huawei , Reuters reported. ..."
"... The Americans are now campaigning aggressively to contain Huawei as part of a much broader effort to check Beijing's growing military might under President Xi Jinping. Strengthening cyber operations is a key element in the sweeping military overhaul that Xi launched soon after taking power in 2012, according to official U.S. and Chinese military documents. The United States has accused China of widespread, state-sponsored hacking for strategic and commercial gain. ..."
"... "Restricting Huawei from doing business in the U.S. will not make the U.S. more secure or stronger," the company said in a statement in response to questions from Reuters. Such moves, it said, would only limit "customers in the U.S. to inferior and more expensive alternatives." ..."
n early 2018, in a complex of low-rise buildings in the Australian capital, a team of government hackers was engaging in a
destructive digital war game.
The operatives – agents of the Australian Signals Directorate, the nation's top-secret eavesdropping agency – had been given a
challenge. With all the offensive cyber tools at their disposal, what harm could they inflict if they had access to equipment
installed in the 5G network, the next-generation mobile communications technology, of a target nation?
What the team found, say current and former government officials, was sobering for Australian security and political leaders: The
offensive potential of 5G was so great that if Australia were on the receiving end of such attacks, the country could be seriously
exposed. The understanding of how 5G could be exploited for spying and to sabotage critical infrastructure changed everything for
the Australians, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Mike Burgess, the head of the signals directorate, recently explained why the security of fifth generation, or 5G, technology was so
important: It will be integral to the communications at the heart of a country's critical infrastructure - everything from electric
power to water supplies to sewage, he said in a March speech at a Sydney research institute.
Washington is widely seen as having taken the initiative in the global campaign against Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a tech
juggernaut that in the three decades since its founding has become a pillar of Beijing's bid to expand its global influence. Yet
Reuters interviews with more than two dozen current and former Western officials show it was the Australians who led the way in
pressing for action on 5G; that the United States was initially slow to act; and that Britain and other European countries are
caught between security concerns and the competitive prices offered by Huawei.
The Australians had long harbored misgivings about Huawei in existing networks, but the 5G war game was a turning point. About six
months after the simulation began, the Australian government effectively banned Huawei, the world's largest maker of telecom
networking gear, from any involvement in its 5G plans. An Australian government spokeswoman declined to comment on the war game.
After the Australians shared their findings with U.S. leaders, other countries, including the United States, moved to restrict
Huawei.
The anti-Huawei campaign intensified last week, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively banned the
use of Huawei equipment in U.S. telecom networks on national security grounds and the Commerce Department put limits on the firm's
purchasing of U.S. technology. Google's parent, Alphabet,
suspended
some of its business with Huawei
, Reuters reported.
Until the middle of last year, the U.S. government largely "wasn't paying attention," said retired U.S. Marine Corps General James
Jones, who served as national security adviser to President Barack Obama. What spurred senior U.S. officials into action? A sudden
dawning of what 5G will bring, according to Jones.
"This has been a very, very fast-moving realization" in terms of understanding the technology, he said. "I think most people
were treating it as a kind of evolutionary step as opposed to a revolutionary step. And now that light has come on."
The Americans are now campaigning aggressively to contain Huawei as part of a much broader effort to check Beijing's growing
military might under President Xi Jinping. Strengthening cyber operations is a key element in the sweeping military overhaul
that Xi launched soon after taking power in 2012, according to official U.S. and Chinese military documents. The United
States has accused China of widespread, state-sponsored hacking for strategic and commercial gain.
If Huawei gains a foothold in global 5G networks, Washington fears this will give Beijing an unprecedented opportunity to
attack critical infrastructure and compromise intelligence sharing with key allies. Senior Western security officials say
this could involve cyber attacks on public utilities, communication networks and key financial centers.
In any military clash, such attacks would amount to a dramatic change in the nature of war, inflicting economic harm and
disrupting civilian life far from the conflict without bullets, bombs or blockades. To be sure, China would also be
vulnerable to attacks from the U.S. and its allies. Beijing complained in a 2015 defense document, "China's Military
Strategy," that it has already been a victim of cyber-espionage, without identifying suspects. Documents from the National
Security Agency leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that the United States hacked into Huawei's systems,
according to media reports. Reuters couldn't independently verify that such intrusions took place.
However, blocking Huawei is a huge challenge for Washington and its closest allies, particularly the other members of the
so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From humble beginnings in the
1980s in the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen, Huawei has grown to become a technology giant that is deeply embedded
in global communications networks and poised to dominate 5G infrastructure. There are few global alternatives to Huawei,
which has financial muscle – the company reported revenue for 2018 jumped almost 20 percent to more than $100 billion – as
well as competitive technology and the political backing of Beijing.
"Restricting Huawei from doing business in the U.S. will not make the U.S. more secure or stronger," the company said in a
statement in response to questions from Reuters. Such moves, it said, would only limit "customers in the U.S. to inferior
and more expensive alternatives."
For countries that exclude Huawei there is a risk of retaliation from Beijing. Since Australia banned the company from its
5G networks last year, it has experienced disruption to its coal exports to China, including customs delays on the Chinese
side. In a statement, China's foreign ministry said it treated "all foreign coal equally" and that to assert "China has
banned the import of Australian coal does not accord with the facts."
Tension over Huawei is also exposing divisions in the Five Eyes group, which has been a foundation of the post-Second World
War Western security architecture. During a trip to London on May 8, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a stark
warning to Britain, which has not ruled out using Huawei in its 5G networks. "Insufficient security will impede the United
States' ability to share certain information within trusted networks," he said. "This is exactly what China wants; they want
to divide Western alliances through bits and bytes, not bullets and bombs."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) is shown around the offices of Huawei in London by company founder Ren Zhengfei in 2015. Ren
has rejected allegations that Huawei would engage in espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. REUTERS/Matthew Lloyd/Pool
Employees work on a mobile phone production line at Huawei's factory campus in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan. Huawei has
eclipsed telecom equipment giants Ericsson and Nokia in terms of market share. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
Huawei's 74-year old founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a former officer in China's military, the People's Liberation Army. "Mr. Ren
has always maintained the integrity and independence of Huawei," the company said. "We have never been asked to cooperate
with spying and we would refuse to do so under any circumstance."
In an interview with Reuters at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen, Eric Xu, a deputy chairman, said Huawei had not
allowed any government to install so-called backdoors in its equipment - illicit access that could enable espionage or
sabotage - and would never do so. He said 5G was more secure than earlier systems.
"China has not and will not demand companies or individuals use methods that run counter to local laws or via installing
'backdoors' to collect or provide the Chinese government with data, information or intelligence from home or abroad," the
Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement in response to questions from Reuters.
Washington argues that surreptitious backdoors aren't necessarily needed to wreak havoc in 5G systems. The systems will rely
heavily on software updates pushed out by equipment suppliers - and that access to the 5G network, says the United States,
potentially could be used to deploy malicious code.
So far, America hasn't publicly produced hard evidence that Huawei equipment has been used for spying.
Asked whether the United States was slow to react to potential threats posed by 5G, Robert Strayer, the State Department's
lead cyber policy diplomat, told Reuters that America had long been concerned about Chinese telecom companies, but that over
the past year, as 5G loomed closer, "we were starting to talk more and more with our allies." Banning Huawei from 5G
networks remains "an end goal," he said.
"... The sort of result that's to be expected from a Fire-Aim-Ready approach to policy making ..."
"... They're trying real hard to take a large company out of business without any evidence of said company doing anything wrong. Never even looked at them before but this definitely makes me want to get a Huawei phone next. And to stay well clear of everything from any US based company. ..."
"... Nothing here is really Huawei's fault - they're just the coincidental closest target to impact point of a greater trade war. All the posturing against Huawei specifically is just that - posturing. ..."
"... Basically it's because Mr. President is paranoid and somewhat crazy. A sane president would not be so childish, ..."
"... It's an empire in decline fighting the was for global supremacy, the democrats are just as crazy, not that I like Trump ..."
"... It's often said that wounded animals are the most dangerous. That's what this looks like to me. The US empire might be near dead, but one swipe of its huge tail can still break you if you get in the way. ..."
"... The US will never be as dominant as it was in the decades after WW II, but that was a one shot deal mainly because it had the only large industrial base that hadn't been blown to smithereens by the end of the war. ..."
"... Indeed. And how much have we heard about backdoors in Cisco and others here of late - it's a multiple, not a percentage. They all need a bit of pointing and laughing in a sense. IIRC, the telnet "backdoor" required one to be inside the LAN already...while the other baddies the Reg has reported on did not. ..."
No cybersecurity rules means networks are destined to be balkanized
... ... ...
One possible consequence, Steven Weber, professor of political science and international relations at UC Berkeley, told The Register
, is a world where boundaries are shaped more by technology standards than geographic features.
That is to say, we may be headed toward nationalized technology stacks that don't interoperate and nationalized supply chains.
This defeats the entire purpose of an open internet
... ... ...
Google has suspended Huawei's license to use its Android mobile operating system. The decision prevents the Chinese company from
adding Google services like Gmail, Google Maps, Play Store and other Google apps to new devices, though existing ones
will continue to function . It also complicates
security updates and all but guarantees Huawei will forge ahead with its rumored fork of the Android Open Source Project.
Microsoft has pulled the Huawei MateBook X Pro from its online store; Huawei devices are no longer available at BestBuy.com. At
Amazon.com, however, Huawei laptops, tablets and phones can still be had.
Huawei forward
Huawei could open up a branch company in the USA. Design, program, manufacture, and market those USA products as a USA company.
Nothing left to target.
Of course, still sending the profits home.
Re: Huawei forward
Also Chinese investors could buy a significant number of shares of US companies, making them suspect of Chinese affiliation, and
the US government will be faced with the dilemma of closing US companies. Re: Huawei forward
Trump conveniently forgets..
Anything that doesn't accord with his very, very limited world view. He also tends to forget which lies he told last time and
will happily contradict himself.. Re: Huawei forward
Unless the Chinese govt rolls over and declares Trump the winner of his trade war, apparently. If that happens, all the security
worries will blow away like a fart in the wind.
How does that work, exactly? Well, since Trump has never bothered to spell out what he wants the Chinese to do, he can declare
victory at any moment, but he wants a statement of surrender to show the faithful.
They're trying real hard to take a large company out of business without any evidence of said company doing anything wrong.
Never even looked at them before but this definitely makes me want to get a Huawei phone next. And to stay well clear of everything
from any US based company.
Nothing here is really Huawei's fault - they're just the coincidental closest target to impact point of a greater trade war.
All the posturing against Huawei specifically is just that - posturing.
But that's not the same as saying the greater trade war is without merit. It absolutely makes a difference how overall trade
between the US and China is structured, and a certain segment of our market has been saying for a long time that we had the short
end of the stick here and needed to change things. Even the El Reg author acknowledged that.
Of course it's much more complex to ask whether this tactic is actually going to fix anything, or just make things worse. Your
mileage may vary.
And I can imagine that if you are neither an American nor a Chinese citizen, then you don't really stand to gain anything from
this fight no matter who wins, so it's understandable if you're more frustrated than anything else. I don't blame anyone for not
wanting to jump into a fight that doesn't affect them - just remember that it does affect someone else.
It will be interesting to see what the Chinese targets are going to be. Probably GM and farmers since that hits Trump's base
- just as electioneering starts for 2020.
Then wait for Boeing to be really suffering from the 737Max before announcing a ban on Boeing in China (airbus manufacture there)
There is a lot of 'good ole boy' stuff that goes into every Airbus plane no matter where it is made so Trump could easily stop
Airbus from operating in China.
China could retaliate by treatening to start calling in all the US Debt that it carries. That will sink the DOW in a flash.
The Trump bubble will burst and he'll be impeached (well that's what I hope)
The Yuan could easily replace the USD as the world's currency.
Trump had better watch out or this will end badly for him. His grasp of history relating to trade wars can probably be measured
on a pinhead.
It's often said that wounded animals are the most dangerous. That's what this looks like to me. The US empire might be near
dead, but one swipe of its huge tail can still break you if you get in the way.
I seem to remember the same being said in the 80s when it was Japan that had the huge trade advantage over the US. Now granted
China is FAR larger and will easily overtake the US as world's largest economy without its per capita GDP needing to exceed 30%
of the US's, but like Japan did with its aging population China has some demographic challenges awaiting it when the parents of
the two "one child" generations reach retirement age, which is just beginning.
The US will never be as dominant as it was in the decades after WW II, but that was a one shot deal mainly because it had the
only large industrial base that hadn't been blown to smithereens by the end of the war.
Indeed. And how much have we heard about backdoors in Cisco and others here of late - it's a multiple, not a percentage. They
all need a bit of pointing and laughing in a sense. IIRC, the telnet "backdoor" required one to be inside the LAN already...while
the other baddies the Reg has reported on did not.
What makes the Huawei router telnet backdoor (now patched) unusual is that for 8 long years GCHQ has been code-reviewing Huawei
products in a dedicated department. Didn't that include routers?
Japanese CPU designer Arm has a facility in Austin, Texas, USA, that validates Arm-compatible and licensed chip designs for
customers around the world, including those in China, and thus is restricted by the White House's latest crackdown.
Moral of this story. Don't do business with the US, they will turn on you whenever it's financially beneficial for them and
unilaterally break deals, without any means for recourse.
An unreliable partner. Like any other bully, best to let them play in the sandbox by themselves.
What is interesting is that Huawei got some fundamental patents in connection to 5G, without licensing these patents there
will be no 5G role out, and Nokia and Ericsson are at least 1 year behind Huawei in development of 5G ...
This is political, and is being used by Trump to get China to move on the Trade agreement, which he want to "fix", but it might
end up causing the rollout of 5G to be delayed by years.
"What are the Chinese going to do - sue them in Federal court ?"
What could happen is that Huawei starts to sue every competitor, in every market the competitor sells in, whose competing products
use the components they're not allowed to use on the basis of unfair competition, illegal government subsidy or whatever fits
in the jurisdiction. There are a lot more courts around the world than Federal courts.
As if the US is goi g to honour those patents when it's no longer convenient.
International law is for everyone else, just look at the US' violations of the the Venezuan embassy in Washington and railroading
the UN's investigation into US war crimes.
We have a US govt that thinks that 'might makes right'. Literally the definition of a rogue state.
"The 'backdoor' that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol that is commonly used by many vendors in the industry
for performing diagnostic functions. It would not have been accessible from the internet," said the telco in a statement to The Register,
adding: "Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network
in Italy'.
Remember it was Bloomberg that published the article about motherboards that were made in China having an extra chip that 'leaked'
stuff back to china.
Apple and Supermicro were the main targets (amongst others).
Both companies undertook extensive investigations and found no evidence of these chips.
Despite repeated appeals Bloomberg refused to relase their evidence to the world.
To me this implies that it was a bit of fiction designed to make certain stocks go down so that shorters could make a killing.
People may take it for granted that their 'phones work everywhere but it was not ever thus. I used to have to borrow a tri-band
'phone for visits to the US. My normal mobile worked everywhere except the US. Later on I had the same problem with South Korea.
There was a time (back in the analogue TV days) when a TV bought in one European country wouldn't work in many of the others.
Digital TV is based on common underlying compression standards. (Although, even here there is scope for creating artificial incompatibilities.)
Unfortunately there is no common transmission standard, although DVB satellite transmission schemes are fairly widely adopted.
People can now move almost anywhere in the world reasonably cheaply. Some of their gadgets are useless outside their home country.
Many of these problems are caused by "special interest groups", manufacturer inspired protectionism and plain political stupidity.
People can now move almost anywhere in the world reasonably cheaply. Some of their gadgets are useless outside their home
country.
Many outside electrical gadgets have problems in the USA. They use a different voltage and AC frequency from that used by developed
countries. Happily, that means that their stuff doesn't work outside the "land of the fee".
The Trump administration has started a trade war with China, which has responded in kind. Trade wars eventually come to an
end even if it takes a long time. The "Cold War" with the Soviet Union was carried out as both an arms race, and a trade war and
while that took 45 years to conclude, it did end.
Masking the US/China trade war as a security issue doesn't work very well. Threatening to stop the sale of mobile phones using
a US designed open source operating system because of concerns about security holes in a yet to be rolled out 5g core network
is a weak argument. If there are 5G issues, why not 4G?. Where is the evidence, given that Huawei have set up a joint venture
with GCHQ to examine the core network software.? Is this another "Weapons of Mass Destruction" report where we are asked to believe
without evidence. We all ended up with egg on our collective faces then. Tony Blair's reputation was, and still is, trashed. May's
reputation could similarly ............ (Ok, I concede that would be a stretch!)
The weakest part of the argument is that it denies itself a way out when the trade war ends (or is suspended). Donald and Xi
could come to a truce tomorrow (a beautiful victory?) but that would leave the declared security issues unresolved. If the US
removes the trade ban on Huawei surely they will be letting Chinese spying tools into strategic national networks. What about
the mobile phones?. They are said to be a security risk now because the US (parroted by 5 eyes) says so. That won't magically
disappear because the US and China come to an agreement on steel imports. Will the UK and other countries who have followed the
lead of the US similarly change track when the US and China make up. ?
We are following our special relationship partners down a deep rabbit hole based on the assertions of some highly suspect political
operators.
Well said. Much of this problem is due to the deregulation of Corporate financials. I'm not a finance person so am not sure
that's the correct term. What I'm talking about is at the time of globalization/free trade when RRSPs were allowed to participate
in corporate stock outside of national scope. Such was the case in Canada at the time. Since then, these corporations outsource
as much work as possible to developing economies to reduce cost and most no longer have any R&D worth mentioning, all in the name
of increasing profit for the Ponzi/Pyramid scheme that is the deregulated stock market and that is effect of changing the corporate
tax burden. Since the late 1970s corporations have been able to increasingly buy their own taxation system, it seems. The more
regulated, or in authoritarian regimes financially controlled, corporations still seem to have effective R&D.
The above boils down to the populace having been duped by bad faith politicians. As much I don't like Trump and his crazy train
this all started a long time before him.
Actually, the politicians themselves were duped by the bad faith bankers and in general people who got compensated in options.
It can even look like good intentions.
The deregulation that allowed for evil things like CDS (being able to buy fire insurance on your neighbor's house...without
his knowledge, and even get a can of gasoline in the deal) - was sold as a way to make getting loans easier for minorities so
they could buy homes and have a stake in society - a good thing that would result in less crime and violence and more self-policing.
What it actually was is more interesting - in the insurance biz it's illegal to sell insurance to other than the entity directly
involved, and there are also regulations that the insurance company has to keep the buck to pay claims in hand - this was all
missing from the Frank-Clinton removal of Glass Steagall.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, or at least can be sold as such.
In hindsight, we know that some of the financialization tech new instruments invented as a result by Blythe Masters of JP Morgan
and some others developed in the City of London turned out to be "weapons of financial mass destruction".
There was plenty of blame to go around (in this case the left side of the aisle started the ball rolling, but...no one was
at all innocent). From the banks making loans that were obviously never going to be paid off - no need to care as now Goldman
Sachs, AIG, JP Morgan, and of course Deutsche bank were standing there buying the loans to sell tranches at a profit - to the
people taking those loans, to the people buying the tranches of them....
If so I think it is time for China to take Taiwan back.
That wouldn't the US modus operandus. There'd need to be a false flag operation like the USS Liberty (but done without exposing
it's actually a false flag.
USS Liberty a false flag operation - ahh setting up a US intelligence vessel to be shot up by the Israelis. How did rhapsody
work or were they hit by US aircraft in disguise?
Wow. The Americans have certainly let their paranoia show immensely
But this move of what they have done is bassically similar to what the USA were claiming Huawei and China could do shutting
off 5G services because of their kit
America certainty have a paranoid schizophrenia mental illness building
"Are you now or were you ever a member of the Communist party" questions of the 1950's. The reds under every bed paranoia of
that age is alive and kicking.
Yeah, I had to answer that one for a security clearance in the '70's myself. One wonders how Brennan, Chief of CIA for the
previous admin, was an avowed communist yet still managed to get that job?
His role in the current thrashing is interesting to say the least.
Brennan is not an "avowed communist". That lie came about based on the fact that he voted for Gus Hall, the Communist Party
presidential candidate in 1976. There is no evidence that Brennan himself was ever a member of the Communist Party or even that
his political viewpoint is communist generally.
But that his political enemies consider calling him a communist to be an effective attack says a lot about American paranoia.
Ok: Trump is a nasty, corrupt, ignorant child and his motivations in this are probably as petty and wrong as is ever the case.
And you can't ignore the fact that this is happening in the context of a wider trade war, which, while it may have some logical
underpinnings (China does steal and cheat on a an epic scale) is also contaminated by the Orange Idiot's floundeing incompetence
and wayward spite.
So I am no apologist for Trump or his toxically incompetent administration: it may actually be almost as vile as the Chinese
regime at this point in time.
But the fact that the attack on Huawei is being mounted by people who are stupid, ignorant and explicitly odious doesn't mean
it is the wrong thing to do.
I've said before that it is irrelevant whether Huawei has been caught producing dodgy hard- or software and I have framed my
point in terms of capabilities and intentions: emphasising that capabilities are what count here.
It's simply this: China has an authoritarian, undemocratic, repressive, ofttimes murderous regime; it ruthlessly oppresses
minorities among its citizens; practises draconian censorship; has shown every sign of territorial aggressiveness and growing
military adventurism; is building up its armed forces at a worrying rate; is becoming ever wealthier and more powerful; and has
the ability both in technological know-how and in industrial capacity to supply a sizeable fraction of the free world's communications
and computing infrastructure. With no checks or balances or transparency, the Chinese state could compel any of its companies
to do whatever it wishes ("Make this happen for us, and keep your mouths shut about it, or next month you will be executed for
corruption"), and every aspect of its behaviour in the last 20 years proves that it will use technology -- a wonderful equaliser
in the world of asymmetric warfare -- for its own ends, lying, stealing and cheating at every turn. I don't see how this is even
a controversial statement by this point.
So the question is not what China intends, but what it can do, and this ought to worry us very badly. Given everything
we know of China's government, it would be suicidally stupid to gift it with power, influence or any kind of entry into
our just-about-free societies.
As the west wakes up to the threat of China, actual conflict becomes ever more likely (I would personally suggest, inevitable,
unless regime change occurs, which seems most improbable). China will become ever more strongly motivated to resort to technological
sabotage and espionage. Right now we don't want China stealing data on our (for example) nuclear submarine fleet. If it comes
to conflict, we don't want them bricking those boats while they're still dockside.
So Huawei is just the start. China certainly could use its companies for malign ends: so we must act protectively, as if it
is doing so, and will do so in the future.
"So the question is not what China intends, but what it can do"
This goes against pretty much every standard the Western world stands for. China COULD compel Huawei to put in backdoors. But
then again Huawei kit is probably the most closely-studied kit in the world, and it is trivially easy to compare firmware releases
to make sure that the kit you have is running the same version as a trusted reference version. It might be more difficult to check
that the hardware you get isn't a one-off specially modified version instead of the standard one, but the organisations likely
to be targeted in this way are either big enough to have the resources for deep checks or would not be buying Huawei kit anyway.
For the vast majority of commercial customers and 100% of retail customers, having eg GCHQ check out the kit is a perfectly
acceptable safeguard, indeed one which they do not even get from other vendors' kit (eg Cisco) which might be backdoored with
other countries' spying malware.
A, buy kit from china and check it for backdoors, weaknesses, vulnerabilities.
C, buy kit from a company HQ in Finland (but with chips made all over the world) and don't bother checking for any flaws, vulnerabilities
etc but trust it implicitly cos Finns are really nice people.
And therein is the problem. It is not pres Trump, he is only supporting the US 3 letter agencies and they are the ones with
the big problem. Their problem is that they want to put backdoors in Huawei networking equipment but if they do that it
means that the Chinese government will have samples of the US spying software and there is the big problem. The 3 letter agencies
can only see one way out of that and it is banning Huawei equipment, in their eyes that makes the problem go away and leaves their
spying on the population as normal using the so called American equipment.;
"deal with longstanding issues like government favoritism toward local companies"
How is it that that can be a point of contention ? Name me one country in this world that doesn't favor local companies.
These people company representatives who are complaining about local favoritism would be howling like wolves
if Huawei was given favor in the US over any one of them.
I'm not saying that there are no reasons to be unhappy about business with China, but that is not one of them.
Here's the problem. Lets say the sake of argument Huawei is not guilty of
putting spyware in their 5G stuff. How would they prove it? They basically given out there
source code, and apart from such slack security features nothing was found, but that was
apparently no enough.
Apart from proving a negative there is nothing they can do. I'm not saying that China is not
a repressive regime, but to be honest I don't think they have the resources to filter out the
juicy bits of the 5G traffic, and have enough on their hands just monitoring their internal
massive population without having to take on the US as well. And why should they, since the NSA
is already doing such a great job of it already.
The problem is that the great Orange one and is motley collection of right wing hawks are
thinking that is what i would do in China's place and getting themselves lathered up in a right
wing frenzy where they see reds under every bed.
If China was smart (and they are), what they should do is announce that all Apple phones are
banned in China and all Chinese companies are not allowed to do business with Apple, until
Apple can prove they do not provide back doors for the US government in their equipment. I
wonder what effect a 10% drop in apple share price and all those pension funds that depend on
them will have
"... The ban might actually provide a bit of a boost to other software developers, if it prompts users to look beyond the Google offerings that came with their phone and seek out some alternatives. In most cases, the alternatives are far better. ..."
Currently everybody else is losing. Forcing other countries (supposedly friends and
allies) to abandon equipment of one manufacturer for that of your own company is not very
nice and for us quite expensive. And that is not even factoring in the known fact that some
of these manufacturers had backdoors in their equipment - for which actual proof exists. So
considering our own national security we should forbid companies to do business with e.g.
Cisco...
Powerful is not the same as lawful, no matter what those in positions of power might claim
or like to imagine.
Is this a distinction worth making? Yes, because otherwise law enforcement officers come
to think that their word is law, and that they are themselves above the law. The result of
that is a police state.
Probably true. Huawei are probably just collateral damage in the inevitable socio-economic
conflict between the US and China. The US is used to running the world (not especially well
if you ask me). China with four times the population and an economy about the same size as
the US that is growing much faster doesn't actually seem to have that much interest in
running the world. But since the US is run by folks with no principles, poor memories, few
useful skills,and no planning ability whatsoever, I have to guess that the Chinese will "win"
in the long run.
Pretty irritating that Huawei is simply leverage while the US and China thrash out a trade
deal.
I have a Mate 10 Pro and the best phone I've had, was planning to go for the Mate 30 Pro
when it comes out.
Reckon I still will, I've already been reducing dependence on Google before this happened
anyway. I'll have to shift my business email over to ProtonMail like I already do with my
personal accounts. I'm trying out OSM instead of gmaps. I've already ditched gplay music.
Just need Proton calendar which is in development and that's another service binned off.
Not sure what's going to happen with apps I've bought through Google and have active subs
though...
The problem isn't the apps you use, there certainly are equivalents of the Google ones.
But they still mostly rely on the Google Play API to interface with your phones devices and
storage mechanisms. OSM is a pretty good replacement for gmaps, but will be of little use
without Google Location Services.
Will the ban actually prevent anyone using a Huawei device from accessing a Google service
(eg. Gmail) or just prevent them from downloading the official Google apps to do so? I
suspect the latter as the first would seem impossible to police. In which case there are
better alternatives out there.
The ban might actually provide a bit of a boost to other software developers, if it
prompts users to look beyond the Google offerings that came with their phone and seek out
some alternatives. In most cases, the alternatives are far better.
For email, try AquaMail. Easily handles my many email addresses split across Gmail, own
domains using Google's mailservers, Yandex and own domains using Yandex's mailservers.
OSMAnd+ provides as good mapping as Google Maps (better in remote and off-road areas), is
much more customiseable and you can download entire country maps to your phone, without
pissing about with Google Maps's silly area selection download. And its navigation is pretty
decent, lthough it lacks the Googley stuff like weather and nearest junk food shop
listings.
Wire is an encrypted messaging/video-calling/VOIP app, offering everything Hangouts (or
whatever Google's offering is called this week) does.
Yandex browser or Kiwi browser are Chrome but with added support for extensions
PulseSMS is text messaging with built in backup and the ability to send and receive SMS
through your phone from your laptop.
You can put backdoor in the router. The problem is that you will never be able to access it.
also for improtant deployment countires inpect the source code of firmware. USA is playing dirty
games here., no matter whether Chinese are right or wrong.
They're not necessarily silos. If you design a network as a flat space with all interactions
peer to peer then you have set yourself the problem of ensuring all nodes on that network are
secure and enforcing traffic rules equally on each node. This is impractical -- its not that if
couldn't be done but its a huge waste of resources. A more practical strategy is to layer the
network, providing choke points where traffic can be monitored and managed. We currently do
this with firewalls and demilitarized zones, the goal being normally to prevent unwanted
traffic coming in (although it can be used to monitor and control traffic going out). This has
nothing to do with incompatible standards.
I'm not sure about the rest of the FUD in this article. Yes, its all very complicated. But
just as we have to know how to layer our networks we also know how to manage our information.
For example, anyone who as a smartphone that they co-mingle sensitive data and public access
on, relying on the integrity of its software to keep everything separate, is just plain asking
for trouble. Quite apart from the risk of data leakage between applications its a portable
device that can get lost, stolen or confiscated (and duplicated.....). Use common sense. Manage
your data.
"... The real issue is the semiconductors - the actual silicon. ..."
"... China has some fabs now, but far too few to handle even just their internal demand - and tech export restrictions have long kept their leading edge capabilities significantly behind the cutting edge. ..."
"... On the flip side: Foxconn, Huawei et al are so ubiquitous in the electronics global supply chain that US retail tech companies - specifically Apple - are going to be severely affected, or at least extremely vulnerable to being pushed forward as a hostage. ..."
Internet, phones, Android aren't the issue - except if the US is able to push China out of
GSM/ITU.
The real issue is the semiconductors - the actual silicon.
The majority of raw silicon wafers as well as the finished chips are created in the US or
its most aligned allies: Japan, Taiwan. The dominant manufacturers of semiconductor equipment
are also largely US with some Japanese and EU suppliers.
If Fabs can't sell to China, regardless of who actually paid to manufacture the chips,
because Applied Materials has been banned from any business related to China, this is pretty
severe for 5-10 years until the Chinese can ramp up their capacity.
China has some fabs now, but far too few to handle even just their internal demand - and
tech export restrictions have long kept their leading edge capabilities significantly behind
the cutting edge.
On the flip side: Foxconn, Huawei et al are so ubiquitous in the electronics global supply
chain that US retail tech companies - specifically Apple - are going to be severely affected,
or at least extremely vulnerable to being pushed forward as a hostage.
"... The British aerospace sector (not to be confused with the company of a similar name but more Capital Letters) developed, amongst other things, the all-flying tailplane, successful jet-powered VTOL flight, noise-and drag-reducing rotor blades and the no-tailrotor systems and were promised all sorts of crunchy goodness if we shared it with our wonderful friends across the Atlantic. ..."
"... We shared and the Americans shafted us. Again. And again. And now *they* are bleating about people not respecting Intellectual Property Rights? ..."
"Without saying so publicly, they're glad there's finally some effort to deal with longstanding issues
like government favoritism toward local companies, intellectual property theft, and forced technology
transfers."
The British aerospace sector (not to be confused with the company of a similar name but more Capital
Letters) developed, amongst other things, the all-flying tailplane, successful jet-powered VTOL flight,
noise-and drag-reducing rotor blades and the no-tailrotor systems and were promised all sorts of crunchy
goodness if we shared it with our wonderful friends across the Atlantic.
We shared and the Americans shafted us. Again. And again. And now *they* are bleating about people not
respecting Intellectual Property Rights?
And as for moaning about backdoors in Chinese kit, who do Cisco et al report to again? Oh yeah, those
nice Three Letter Acronym people loitering in Washington and Langley...
A claimed deliberate spying "backdoor" in Huawei routers used in the core of Vodafone
Italy's 3G network was, in fact, a Telnet -based remote debug interface.
The Bloomberg financial newswire reported this morning that Vodafone had found
"vulnerabilities going back years with equipment supplied by Shenzhen-based Huawei for the
carrier's Italian business".
"Europe's biggest phone company identified hidden backdoors in the software that could have
given Huawei unauthorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy,"
wailed the newswire.
Unfortunately for Bloomberg, Vodafone had a far less alarming explanation for the deliberate
secret "backdoor" – a run-of-the-mill LAN-facing diagnostic service, albeit a hardcoded
undocumented one.
"The 'backdoor' that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol that is commonly
used by many vendors in the industry for performing diagnostic functions. It would not have
been accessible from the internet," said the telco in a statement to The Register ,
adding: "Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorized
access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'.
"This was nothing more than a failure to remove a diagnostic function after
development."
It added the Telnet service was found during an audit, which means it can't have been that
secret or hidden: "The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by
Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei."
Huawei itself told us: "We were made aware of historical vulnerabilities in 2011 and 2012
and they were addressed at the time. Software vulnerabilities are an industry-wide challenge.
Like every ICT vendor we have a well-established public notification and patching process, and
when a vulnerability is identified we work closely with our partners to take the appropriate
corrective action."
Prior to removing the Telnet server, Huawei was said to have insisted in 2011 on using the
diagnostic service to configure and test the network devices. Bloomberg reported, citing a
leaked internal memo from then-Vodafone CISO Bryan Littlefair, that the Chinese manufacturer
thus refused to completely disable the service at first:
Vodafone said Huawei then refused
to fully remove the backdoor, citing a manufacturing requirement. Huawei said it needed the
Telnet service to configure device information and conduct tests including on Wi-Fi, and
offered to disable the service after taking those steps, according to the document.
El Reg understands that while Huawei indeed resisted removing the Telnet
functionality from the affected items – broadband network gateways in the core of
Vodafone Italy's 3G network – this was done to the satisfaction of all involved parties
by the end of 2011, with another network-level product de-Telnet-ised in 2012.
Broadband network gateways in 3G UMTS mobile networks are described in technical detail in
this Cisco (sorry)
PDF . The devices are also known as Broadband Remote Access Servers and sit at the edge of
a network operator's core.
Plenty of other things (cough, cough, Cisco) to panic about
Characterising this sort of Telnet service as a covert backdoor for government spies is a
bit like describing your catflap as an access portal that allows multiple species to pass
unhindered through a critical home security layer. In other words, massively over-egging the
pudding.
Many Reg readers won't need it explaining, but Telnet is a routinely used method of
connecting to remote devices for management purposes. When deployed with appropriate security
and authentication controls in place, it can be very useful. In Huawei's case, the Telnet
service wasn't facing the public internet, and was used to set up and test devices.
Look, it's not great that this was hardcoded into the equipment and undocumented – it
was, after all, declared a security risk – and had to be removed after some pressure.
However, it's not quite the hidden deliberate espionage backdoor for Beijing that some
fear.
Twitter-enabled infoseccer Kevin Beaumont also shared his thoughts on the story,
highlighting the number of vulns in equipment from Huawei competitor Cisco, a US firm:
For example, a pretty bad remote access hole was discovered in some Cisco
gear , which the mainstream press didn't seem too fussed about. Ditto hardcoded root
logins in Cisco video surveillance boxes. Lots of things unfortunately ship with insecure
remote access that ought to be removed; it's not evidence of a secret backdoor for state
spies.
Given Bloomberg's previous history of trying to break tech news, when it claimed that tiny
spy chips were being secretly planted on
Supermicro server motherboards – something that left the rest of the tech world
scratching its collective head once the initial dust had settled – it may be best to take
this latest revelation with a pinch of salt. Telnet wasn't even mentioned in
the latest report from the UK's Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which savaged
Huawei's pisspoor software development practices.
While there is ample evidence in the public domain that Huawei is doing badly on the
basics of secure software development, so far there has been little that tends to show it
deliberately implements hidden espionage backdoors. Rhetoric from the US alleging Huawei is a
threat to national security seems to be having the opposite effect around the world.
With Bloomberg, an American company, characterising Vodafone's use of Huawei equipment as
"defiance" showing "that countries across Europe are willing to risk rankling the US in the
name of 5G preparedness," it appears that the US-Euro-China divide on 5G technology suppliers
isn't closing up any time soon. ®
Bootnote
This isn't shaping up to be a good week for Bloomberg. Only yesterday High Court judge Mr
Justice Nicklin
ordered the company to pay up £25k for the way it reported a live and ongoing
criminal investigation.
"... The US Department of Commerce said it would put Huawei on its so-called Entity List, meaning that the American companies will have to obtain a licence from the US government to sell technology to Huawei. At the same time, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring the US telecoms sector faced a "national emergency" -- giving the commerce department the power to "prohibit transactions posing an unacceptable risk" to national security . ..."
"... "The US has basically openly declared it is willing to engage in a full-fledged technology war with China," he said. ..."
"... Huawei has few alternatives for critical semiconductors to Qualcomm, which would likely be denied an export license if the US follows through on its threat of putting Huawei on the "Entity List" (the second most stringent category, but still sufficient for the US to bar licensing). One is Murata, but Japan has joined the US ban on Huawei 5G products, and would presumably fall in line if the US were to ask Japan to tell Murata not to sell semiconductors to Huawei. ..."
"... On top of that, Ethiopian Air's forceful criticism of the 737 Max gives China air cover. Unlike Lion Air, which is widely seen as a questionable operator, readers who fly emerging economy carriers give Ethiopian Air high marks for competence and safety. One even wrote, "I have flown Ethiopian Air. It's certainly far better than Irish-owned and operated Ryan Airlines (even though the latter has white pilots with nice Irish accents)." ..."
"... Chinese interests have made large investments many countries in Africa, so it's conceivable it could get other countries on the continent to follow its lead. Admittedly, China plus those countries collectively may not be large enough to do considerable damage to Boeing. But this action would break the hegemony of the FAA as certifier for US manufacturers, and that could prove crippling in the long run. ..."
The White House and US Department of Commerce took steps on Wednesday night that would in effect ban Huawei from selling technology
into the American market, and could also prevent it from buying semiconductors from suppliers including Qualcomm in the US that are
crucial for its production .
The US Department of Commerce said it would put Huawei on its so-called Entity List, meaning that the American companies will
have to obtain a licence from the US government to sell technology to Huawei. At the same time, US president Donald Trump signed
an executive order declaring the US telecoms sector faced a "national emergency" -- giving the commerce department the power to "prohibit
transactions posing an unacceptable risk" to national security .
Paul Triolo, a technology policy expert at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy, said it was a "huge development" that would not
only hurt the Chinese company but also have an impact on global supply chains involving US companies such as Intel, Microsoft and
Oracle.
"The US has basically openly declared it is willing to engage in a full-fledged technology war with China," he said.
Huawei has few alternatives for critical semiconductors to Qualcomm, which would likely be denied an export license if the
US follows through on its threat of putting Huawei on the "Entity List" (the second most stringent category, but still sufficient
for the US to bar licensing). One is Murata, but Japan has joined the US ban on Huawei 5G products, and would presumably fall in
line if the US were to ask Japan to tell Murata not to sell semiconductors to Huawei.
The advantages of China going after Boeing, as opposed to making life miserable for US technology companies, would be considerable.
Targeting, say, Microsoft would be an obvious tit for tat. By contrast, China was the first country to ground the 737 Max, and its
judgment was confirmed by other airline regulators and eventually the FAA. China does not have a credible competitor to Boeing, so
it could wrap continued denial of certification of the 737 Max in the mantle of being pro-safety, even if independent parties suspected
this was a secondary motive.
On top of that, Ethiopian Air's forceful criticism of the 737 Max gives China air cover. Unlike Lion Air, which is widely
seen as a questionable operator, readers who fly emerging economy carriers give Ethiopian Air high marks for competence and safety.
One even wrote, "I have flown Ethiopian Air. It's certainly far better than Irish-owned and operated Ryan Airlines (even though the
latter has white pilots with nice Irish accents)."
Chinese interests have made large investments many countries in Africa, so it's conceivable it could get other countries on
the continent to follow its lead. Admittedly, China plus those countries collectively may not be large enough to do considerable
damage to Boeing. But this action would break the hegemony of the FAA as certifier for US manufacturers, and that could prove crippling
in the long run.
Another issue that hasn't gotten the attention it warrants is that Boeing appears to lack the stringent software development protocols
necessary for "fly by wire" operations. Boeing historically has relied on pilots being able to reassert control over automated functions';
Airbus has "fly by wire" systems as far more prominent and accordingly the expectation and ability of pilots to override these systems
is lower.
However, many articles noted that MCAS took the 737 further into a fly-by-wire philosophy than it had been before. Yet Boeing
was astonishingly lax, having only two angle of attack sensors, of which only one would be providing input to MCAS, and then on an
arbitrary-seeming basis.
By contrast, the Airbus philosophy stresses redundancy, not only in hardware -- they use not three but four angle of attack sensors
-- but in software, and even software development. "Two or more independent flight control computing systems are installed using
different types of microprocessors and software written in different languages by different development teams" and verified using
formal methods (" Approaches
to Assure Safety in Fly-By-Wire Systems: Airbus Vs. Boeing ").
Microsoft will reportedly become the latest tech giant to 'suspend' its relationship with
Huawei, according to
the South China Morning Post .
One week after Washington first imposed strict limits on Huawei and its affiliates that will
make it almost impossible for American firms buy Huawei products or sell American-made
components to the company, a handful of chipmakers, telecoms companies and tech firms
(Alphabet) have reportedly scaled back or severed their relationship with Huawe.
Though Microsoft said yesterday that it hadn't made a decision, the SCMP reported Friday
morning that Microsoft had decided to stop accepting new orders from Huawei for operating
systems and other content-related services: Windows operating systems for laptops and other
content-related services. The US software giant has already removed Huawei laptops from its
online stores.
Just one more prime example why no companies should use Microsoft software.
The issue is clear as a bell. Become dependent on a US supplier and the Gov of the USSA
could cut off your contracts with impunity. That risk is too high for any manufacturing
entity.
I am not a fan of Linux. I do not like the way it manages memory. Also while it has gotten
better, it remains something of an unmade bed in that much of the software doesn't work
particularly well. But the same cold be said for Microsoft. How many times does Windows
OFFICE have to lock up before you comprehend the nightmarish patch system which has become
Windows?
GNU meaning not Unix never developed into a GUI. Ghost BSD looks interesting, BSD PC has
limited compatibility but UNIX is flatly superior in how it handles memory. Unix is
brilliant. I also love Open Office, it is better than Microsoft Office and you can save all
your files to the Microsoft format if you want. Open Office is perfect transitional software
and FREE! Why are school districts paying microsoft instead of using Open Office.
Win 10 is invasive garbage. I don't want anything managing my computer
"automatically".
Huawei is a real wakeup call for the world... the US is an unreliable trader. They can
never be trusted. This is not just about that lunatic Turmp. If AOC ever got to the White
House she could do the same under the New Green Deal NATIONAL SECURITY EMERGENCY.
The Constitution gave Congress the exclusive power over Commerce but over time, the
Congress delegated more and more power to the Exec with this kind of dreadful outcome.
Founding Fathers wanted checks and balances. But here you have one person, interrupting
commerce and contracts with the stroke of a pen that has never been approved by Congress.
That is simply too much risk.
The Chinese like anyone else make mistakes. BUT CHINA does not repeat the same mistake
twice unlike the USSA that seems to be caught in the revolving door of mistakes.
Better that this happens early in the life of Huawei than much later. China could actually
lead the world into the adaptation of open source destroying both Microsoft, Google and Apple
at the same time. Remember Apple took BSD and then made proprietary changes. That is the
APPLE OS which is much more stable than anything Windows ever made.
While people knock apple Iphone for cost, the Apple laptops are very stable and
essentially virus and worm immune. For a novice users that's why Apples are great.
I have had Unix based machines run for years with never being turned off, always rock
stable. It is head and shoulders above everything. FreeBSD
Here is a UNIX GUI. I know nothing about these guys but will check it out. A non power
user only needs a solid browser, and a good word processor, Open Office works with BSD.
Personally I don't think Apple should be grouped with Google and microsoft. I don't see as
Apple has done anything wrong other than selling their products at a premium to the novices.
That's not a crime and novices benefit. So quit packaging Apple in with Google and
Microsoft.
BTW, Blackberry OS is Unix based. It is a canadian company so likely a US poodle.
Huawei were attacked because they are a threat to Apple, not to "our national
security." The only thing Trump cares about are the profits of big companies.
Yes, but the real question is did you cut ties with the NBA, Nike, grape Kool-Aid,
McDonald's, Popeye's, your parole officer, KFC, crotch-grabbing, your six illegitimate
children and the local welfare office?
I knew Nokia was doomed when it partnered with Microsoft. They should have instead
partnered with and help fund the Open Source Software community. By now, we'd have
spectacular phones, free of logjams of spyware, bloatware, and ads.
Now you have Windoze PC's with logjams of spyware, bloatware, and ads. Well, unless you
hack it to make it a Workable PC. It's weird having to Hack your own PC to make it sane.
Why shouldn't Corning glass or Micron flash memory be sold to Huawei for use in phones
bound for Europe? Huawei sells 30 times more phone in Europe than USA. I bought Huawei phone
in Norway and I think is my best phone ever, I use Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in USA, but I carry
the Huawei for photos and for WiFi calls from Norway. Try to do wifi calls from the Galaxy
using Starbucks wifi and then using the same wifi try Huawei, you would see the difference
right away.
The US is going to sanction itself into economic irrelevance as the rest of the world says
F you. We only have two friends now, Israel and KSA. Nice work, Donnie.
"... However, nothing in the actual piece talks about security concerns. (I point this out because I perceive a trend towards such misleading summaries and headlines which contradict what the actual reporting says.) ..."
"... These companies do not have security concerns over Huawei. But the casual reader, who does not dive down into the actual piece, is left with a false impression that such concerns are valid and shared. ..."
"... South China Morning Post ..."
"... This move by Google-USG is mostly a propaganda warfare move. Huawei doesn't depend on smartphone sales to survive. It's American market was already small, while China's domestic market is huge. China is not Japan. ..."
"... Trump's heavy handed move against Huawei will backfire. The optic is unsettling; the US looks to be destroying a foreign competitor because it is winning. ..."
"... Until the reserve currency issue favoring the "exceptional" nation changes, the economic terrorism will continue.. ..."
"... What is funny in all these stories, is that there is little to no Huawei equipment (not the end-user smart phone, home router and stuff, but backbone routers, access equipment,..) anywhere in the US -- they are forbidden to compete. Most telcos are quite happy to sell in the US, as the absence of these Chinese competitors allows for healthy margins, which is no longer true in other markets. ..."
"... The US is trying desperately to quash tech success / innovation introduced by others who are not controlled by (or in partnership with) the US, via economic war, for now just politely called a trade war - China no 1 adversary. ..."
"... Attacking / dissing / scotching trade between one Co. (e.g. Huawei) and the world is disruptive of the usual, conventional, accepted, exchange functioning, and throws a pesky spanner in the works of the system. Revanchard motives, petty targetting, random pot-shots, lead to what? ..."
"... The war against Huawei is only one small aspect within the overall Trade War, which is based on the false premise of US economic strength. Most of the world wants to purchase material things, not financial services which is the Outlaw US Empire's forte and most of the world can easily forego. Trump's Trade War isn't going as planned which will cause him to double-down in a move that will destroy his 2020 hopes. ..."
However, nothing in
the actual piece talks about security concerns. (I point this out because I perceive a trend towards such misleading summaries
and headlines which contradict what the actual reporting says.)
The British processor company ARM, which licenses its design to Huawei, cites U.S. export controls as the reason to stop cooperation
with Huawei:
The conflict is putting companies and governments around the world in a tough spot, forcing them to choose between alienating
the United States or China .
Arm Holdings issued its statement after the BBC reported the firm had told staff to suspend dealings with Huawei.
An Arm spokesman said some of the company's intellectual property is designed in the United States and is therefore " subject
to U.S. export controls ."
Additionally two British telecom providers quote U.S. restrictions as reason for no longer buying Huawei smartphones:
BT Group's EE division, which is preparing to launch 5G service in six British cities later this month, said Wednesday it would
no longer offer a new Huawei smartphone as part of that service. Vodafone also said it would drop a Huawei smartphone from
its lineup. Both companies appeared to tie that decision to Google's move to withhold licenses for its Android operating software
from future Huawei phones.
These companies do not have security concerns over Huawei. But the casual reader, who does not dive down into the actual
piece, is left with a false impression that such concerns are valid and shared.
That the Trump administration says it has security reasons for its Huawei ban does not mean that the claim is true. Huawei
equipment is as good or bad as any other telecommunication equipment, be it from Cisco or Apple. The National Security Agency
and other secret services will try to infiltrate all types of such equipment.
After the sudden ban on U.S. entities to export to Huawei, chipmakers like Qualcomm temporarily stopped their relations with
Huawei. Google said that it would no longer allow access to the Google Play store for new Huawei smartphones. That will diminish
their utility for many users.
The public reaction in China to this move was quite negative. There were many calls for counter boycotts of Apple's i-phones
on social media and a general anti-American sentiment.
The founder and CEO of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, tried to counter that. He gave a
two hour interview (vid, 3 min excerpt with subtitles)
directed at the Chinese public. Ren sounds very conciliatory and relaxed. The Global Times and the South China Morning
Post only have shortexcerpts
of what he said. They empathize that Huawei is well prepared and can master the challenge:
I do not believe this is precisely what will happen. Huawei already has its licenses purchased. In addition they could decide
to disrespect the IP if this was the case.
Huaweis's suppliers in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (ROC), and Britain are examining if they can continue to make business with
Huawei, while some have already declared a suspension in cooperation.
The issue is that these non-American companies nonetheless use some American components of technology, and if they proceed
they will be sanctioned by the US themselves.
It is the same reason why Russia's Sukhoi did not in the end sell its SSJ-100 airliners to Iran -- East Asian tech companies
can hardly be expected to be more gung-ho on defying the US than Russia's leading defense plant......
@p #2 - Huawei surely has their processors *as of now*.
That - if USA would not ban Huawei (HiSilicon) processors, because of using that ARM technology. Thing is, Huawei would be
isolated from next-generation ARM processors. They are locked now in their current generation.
Even Qualcomm today, for what I know, bases their processors on ARM's "default" schemes, instead of doing their development
"from scratch", in a totally independent way. It would push for slow but steady decline as "top" smartphone vendor into "el cheapo"
niche.
Boeing is the counter-part in the contest to destroy Huawei. China has great leverage over Boeing's future. It is the nation with
the biggest market now and downstream for 10-20 years. China need planes, thousands of them.
As for Huawei's chief doubting the prowess of the Chinese students, he only needs to look at the rapidity of the conversion
of his nations' economy to a 98% digital economy. All that conversion was done by local, entrepreneurial innovators in the software
and hardware tech sector. It happened only in China and completely by Chinese young people who had phones and saw the future and
made it happen.
It has been Chinese minds building Chinese AI on Chinese Big Data.
Yes, they need Russian technologists and scientists. Those Russian minds in Russia, in Israel, in South Korea are proven difference
makers.
The need China now has will meet the solution rapidly. For five years, the Double Helix of Russia-China has been coming closer
in education and R&D institutes in both nations. China investors and Chinese sci-tech personnel are in the sci-tech parks of Russia,
and Russians are in similar facilities in China. More will happen now that the Economic War against China threatens.
Huawei will have solutions to replace all US components by the end of the year. It will lose some markets. but it will gain
hugely in the BRI markets yet to be developed.
In the long run, the US makers will rue the day Trump and his gang of Sinophobes and hegemonists took aim at Huawei and China's
tech sector.
This move by Google-USG is mostly a propaganda warfare move. Huawei doesn't depend on smartphone sales to survive. It's American
market was already small, while China's domestic market is huge. China is not Japan.
Besides, it's not like Europe is prospering either. Those post-war days are long gone.
And there's no contradiction between what the CEO said and the Government line: both are approaching the same problem from
different points of view, attacking it from different fronts at the same time. "Patriotism" is needed insofar as the Chinese people
must be prepared to suffer some hardships without giving up long term prosperity. "Nationalism" ("politics") is toxic insofar
as, as a teleological tool, it is a dead end (see Bannon's insane antics): the Chinese, after all, are communists, and communists,
by nature, are internationalists and think beyond the artificial division of humanity in Nation-States.
Talking Digital and security in the same sentence is laughable.... NOTHING Digital is 'secure',,, never has,,, never will.
Digital destroys everything it touches. At present, excepting for now the low wage States, it is destroying economies ever
so slowly one sector at a time. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with the dying West, especially the
USA which is trying desperately to save what's left of its production whether it be 5G, Steel plants or Nord Stream. The West
created China when it happily allowed and assisted Western corporations to move the production there in order to hide the inflation
that was being created for wars and welfare and now has to deal with the fallout which eventually will be their undoing.
A full-blown trade war was probably inevitable, driven by geopolitical concerns as much or more than economics.
One wonders what each of China and US has been doing to prepare. It seems like the answer is "very little" but since it's USA
that is driving this bus, I would think that USA would've done more to prepare (than China has).
PS It's not just Boeing. China also supplies the vast majority of rare earth minerals.
Her captivity and probable imprisonment in the US explain his attitude. She is a high profile pawn. The US must convict her
in order to justify what they have done to her so far. She may not serve time, in the US prisons, but she will be branded a guilty
person, guilty of violating the Empire's rules (laws).
Imagine Ivanka in the same situation. Her daughter singing in Mandarin would be little help. The Trump Family will be a number
one target for equal treatment long after "45" leaves office.
The US Empire is wild with Power. All of that Power is destructive. And all the globe is the battlefield, except USA. But History
teaches that this in-equilibrium will not last long.
We've seen how Europe caved to US pressure to stop trading with Iran. Now Japan and others are caving to pressure to stop trading
with China. There is already pressure and negotiation to stop Nordstream. And all of the above leads to questions about Erdogan's
resolve.
Trump's heavy handed move against Huawei will backfire. The optic is unsettling; the US looks to be destroying a foreign competitor
because it is winning.
The ramifications of trade war with China (where the supply and manufacturing chain of most consumer electronics is these days)
is disruptive. Trump has created uncertainty for many manufacturers since there is Chinese part content is just about everything
these days. Some manufacturers might relocate production to the US but most will try to simply decouple from the US entirely.
Exposure to the US is really the problem not exposure to China.
The trade war with Iran was also unlikely to persist. But it has persisted, and deepened as European poodles pretended to resist
and then pretended not to notice that they didn't.
A new Bloomberg opinion piece agrees with that view
No, it doesn't b. You say USA trade war will fail because it lacks international support. Bloomberg says USA should get international
support to make it more effective. The difference is that it is highly likely that USA will get international support. It already
has support from Japan.
USA has proven that it can effectively manipulate it's poodle allies. Another example is Venezuela where more than two dozen
countries recognized Guido only because USA wanted them to.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
It's not Trump but the US Deep State that causes US allies to fall in line. Any analysis that relies on Trump as President
is bound to fail as his public persona is manipulated to keep Deep State adversaries (including the US public) off-balance.
Like President's before him, Trump will take the blame (and the credit) until another team member is chosen to replace him
in what we call "free and fair elections".
What is funny in all these stories, is that there is little to no Huawei equipment (not the end-user smart phone, home router
and stuff, but backbone routers, access equipment,..) anywhere in the US -- they are forbidden to compete. Most telcos are quite
happy to sell in the US, as the absence of these Chinese competitors allows for healthy margins, which is no longer true in other
markets.
So the Huawei ban hits first and foremost the US' partners.
China can only undo the US-exceptionalsim if and when it can visibly project military power. The only way to achieve
that is tt has to make great haste in building a few fleets of aircraft carriers, fregats and destroyers, etc. It must
build a grand, visibly magnificent Chinese Navy.
Modi wins in India, another victory for the world oligarchs. Exactly mimicking conditions in the U$A. Media and governmental
capture by the uber wealthy...
The US is trying desperately to quash tech success / innovation introduced by others who are not controlled by (or in partnership
with) the US, via economic war, for now just politely called a trade war - China no 1 adversary.
Afaik, the entire smart-phone industry is 'integrated' and 'regulated' by FTAs, the WTO, the patent circuit, the Corps. and
Gvmts. who collaborate amongst themselves.
Corps. can't afford to compete viciously because infrastructure, aka more encompassing systems or networks (sic) are a pre-requisite
for biz, thus, Gvmts. cooperate with the Corps, and sign various 'partnerships,' etc.
sidebar. Not to mention the essential metals / components provenance, other topic. see
Attacking / dissing / scotching trade between one Co. (e.g. Huawei) and the world is disruptive of the usual, conventional,
accepted, exchange functioning, and throws a pesky spanner in the works of the system. Revanchard motives, petty targetting, random
pot-shots, lead to what?
As I wrote in the Venezuela thread, major US corps are already belt tightening by permanently laying off managers, not already
cut-to-the-bone production staff, and another major clothing retailer is closing its 650+ stores. And the full impact of Trump's
Trade War has yet to be felt by consumers. As Wolff, Hudson and other like-minded economists note, there never was a genuine recovery
from 2008, while statistical manipulation hides the real state of the US economy. One thing that cannot be hidden is the waning
of revenues collected via taxes which drives the budget deficit--and the shortfall isn't just due to the GOP Congress's tax cuts.
The war against Huawei is only one small aspect within the overall Trade War, which is based on the false premise of US economic
strength. Most of the world wants to purchase material things, not financial services which is the Outlaw US Empire's forte and
most of the world can easily forego. Trump's Trade War isn't going as planned which will cause him to double-down in a move that
will destroy his 2020 hopes.
Data for 2019 is probably slightly different, but the trends should keep on. That data also does not separate Android-based
phones from non-Android phones. So, segmenting Android into Google and China infrastructures would mean
1) Huawei retains a $152B market - China
2) Huawei retains an unknown share in $87B market - APAC
3) Huawei loses a $163,9B market - all non-China world.
At best Huawei looses 40,7% of world market. That if all APAC population would voluntarily and uniformly drop out of Google
services into Huawei/China services (which they would not). At worst Huawei retains 37,7% of the marker (if APAC population would
uniformly follow Google, which they would not either).
Dems only need few select states to campaign in and they will win elections all the time.
Everybody is playing the racists card when they do not like what is said or done!!
"... Launching a tech war or a trade war against any country is not appropriate, nor is it the best way to defend national security, Macron said. ..."
"... Out of the total of 70 billion U.S. dollars Huawei spent on buying components in 2018, some 11 billion dollars went to U.S. companies, the Reuters reported Friday. ..."
"... The spirit of openness is what helped the United States develop. However, Washington's restrictions on Huawei, based on unfounded allegations and political speculations, fall foul of the golden rules it once embraced ..."
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Xinhua) --
Washington last week declared a national emergency over what it claimed are technological
threats, and announced restrictions on sale and transfer of American technologies to China's
Huawei.
The telecom company has long been accused by the United States of being able to use its
network equipment to spy on foreign nations for the Chinese government. However, "no
intelligence service has published clear evidence that Huawei inserted 'backdoors' for Chinese
authorities to access the data that passes through its networks," according to a December 2018
article by U.S. media Politico.
Given the lack of proof that Huawei threatens U.S. security, last week's twin moves by
Washington -- the use of state apparatus to oppress a company -- are a reflection of nothing
but bullying.
The smearing campaign against Huawei aside, the United States has also been trying to rally
Europe to abandon Huawei products, citing security threats. It was not welcome.
"Europe must not be dragged into the trade dispute between China and the United States,"
Germany's powerful BDI industrial lobby group was quoted by media reports as saying in a
statement on Thursday.
France too refused to take orders from the United States. "Our perspective is not to block
Huawei or any company," President Emmanuel Macron told the VivaTech conference in Paris on
Thursday.
Launching a tech war or a trade war against any country is not appropriate,
nor is it the best way to defend national security, Macron said.
The ban on the supply of U.S.-made chips to Huawei is a lose-lose in any sense, as it poses
a threat to Huawei's viability and U.S. companies also pay the price.
Out of the total
of 70 billion U.S. dollars Huawei spent on buying components in 2018, some 11 billion dollars
went to U.S. companies, the Reuters reported Friday.
"The ban will financially harm the thousands of Americans employed by the U.S. companies
that do business with Huawei," said Catherine Chen, a Director of the Board at Huawei, in a The
New York Times article on Friday. "A total ban on Huawei equipment could eliminate tens of
thousands of American jobs."
Although Huawei does not do much business in the United States, the company is the sole
provider of networking equipment to many rural American internet providers, according to a CNN
article on Tuesday.
"Those companies have said it will take time -- or may be impossible -- to replace their
Huawei technology with a rival's," it added.
As a move to ease the repercussion of the ban, the U.S. Department of Commerce on Monday
issued a 90-day temporary license loosening restrictions on business deals with Huawei.
Huawei doesn't intend to isolate itself from others, but wants to make as many friends as
possible, its founder Ren Zhengfei told Chinese media on Tuesday when asked why Huawei didn't
use substitutes before the United States took the latest aggressive measures.
"We don't want to do harm to friends," he said. "We want to help them achieve good balance
sheets. Even if we make adjustments, we still ought to render help."
The spirit of
openness is what helped the United States develop. However, Washington's restrictions on
Huawei, based on unfounded allegations and political speculations, fall foul of the golden
rules it once embraced
.
For Washington to win in an era of cooperation and inter-dependence, it would be better to
revive the spirit of openness.
"... In a company-wide memo, ARM told employees that their designs contain "US origin technology," which would be affected by the Trump administration's May 15 Executive Order to "protect our country against critical national security threats." ..."
"... Also cunning thing would be to change brand name a bit like change/remove 1 letter. ..."
"... Yet, they find out they are buying from another vendor that complies with China's demands and poof there goes another company ..."
"... Xi should have listen to Deng Xiaoping. Keep your head down, go about your business and shut the **** up. But Xi the chest pounding panda declared Made in China 2025 and spooked everyone. China should de-robe him then hang him high! ..."
"... There has been a suspiciously sudden rise in China hawkishness among American citizens (e.g., commentators on these boards) coincident with what to outside observers has been a very obvious post-Russia tsunami of political and MSM anti-China propaganda (it's often easier to see propaganda from the outside than from the inside). ..."
"... Yes, but not all of China is restricted from using ARM. Only Huawei. Other phone manufacturers will be unaffected. ..."
Japanese-owned chip designer
ARM Holdings
has notified its staff to halt "
all active contracts,
support entitlements, and any pending engagements
" with Huawei and its subsidiaries in order to comply with the
recent US clampdown, according to the
BBC
. Based in the
UK and owned by Japan's Softbank, ARM designs and licenses processors used in all types of electronic devices, including
smart phones, tablets, laptops, televisions, automotive systems and more.
"
ARM is the foundation of Huawei's smartphone chip designs, so this is an insurmountable obstacle for Huawei
,"
said Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight, adding: "That said, with an abundance of companies in Huawei's supply chain already
having taken action to comply with the US order,
Huawei's ability to operate was already severely affected
."
In a company-wide memo, ARM told employees that their designs contain "US origin technology," which
would be affected by the Trump administration's May 15
Executive Order
to "protect our country against critical national security threats."
The US has argued that the Chinese government could force companies such as Huawei to install backdoors on their devices
to allow for spying on US networks - an accusation Huawei has repeatedly denied.
Softbank - which is also one of Japan's largest mobile carriers - has joined with
Japan's largest carriers
DoCoMo and KDDI in announcing that they will stop taking orders for Huawei handsets.
Nope, cross licensing is strictly forbidden under the licensing
ARM uses. If uou want to use ARM based designs, you have two
choices. Buy the chips already made, or license a core and fab the
package yourself.
If you fab it yourself, you have to market the cores and chips
as being nased on theirs.
That's it. I learned this when looking to have some Asics made
up for compute decices and decided to review all of my options. I
decided two things looking into that.
1 I wouldn't have anything made until I could have them made
here in the US. Still waiting for a FAB with older equipment to
for such things to pop up. I simply don't trust China.
2 I would start from scratch using a RISC design with MIT
license to avoid the decades of no development by actually having
a real open licensing scheme. The GPL crap sucks.
Licenses to independent third parties do not matter yet.
"ARM Holdings
has notified its staff to halt "
all
active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending
engagements
" with Huawei and its subsidiaries"
KASHGAR, China -- A God's-eye view of Kashgar, an ancient city in
western China, flashed onto a wall-size screen, with colorful icons
marking police stations, checkpoints and the locations of recent
security incidents. At the click of a mouse, a technician explained,
the police can pull up live video from any surveillance camera or
take a closer look at anyone passing through one of the thousands of
checkpoints in the city...
There's no such things a national security. This is U.S. corporate
security protecting the corporate interests of the other telecom
corporations that license to operate through the U.S. corporation.
Comprendo?
The way this gloal fraud operates really is a laughable
pathetic joke with what's hidden because is criminal. That includes
everything globally that alleged to be classified or some level of so
called top secret but none of it is. The sedtion and treason of the
government saw to those eliminations along with the cancellation of
all NDA's, or other similar docments to attempt to use threat,
coercion, murder as a consequence.
When is there going to be a fully functional so called smart phone
that is not hackable, trackable, fully compliant with all unalienable
rights, usable globally, with a degree of voice and data encryption
to ensure no possibility of interception or monitoring? Oh and free
phone w/ $25 unlimited voice and data monthly.
Xi should have listen to Deng Xiaoping. Keep your head down, go about
your business and shut the **** up. But Xi the chest pounding panda
declared Made in China 2025 and spooked everyone. China should
de-robe him then hang him high!
Simple! Send the Chinese navy to Venezuela at the time when the
U.S. is sending its naval forces to Iran. That should rattle
Washington greatly. That should up the ante greatly too. Then see
who blinks first.
There has been a suspiciously sudden rise in China hawkishness among
American citizens (e.g., commentators on these boards) coincident
with what to outside observers has been a very obvious post-Russia
tsunami of political and MSM anti-China propaganda (it's often easier
to see propaganda from the outside than from the inside).
A good
discussion of the opposing point of view has just aired on RT, among
the host, an American living in Russia, Fred Teng, President of the
America China Public Affairs Institute, and James Bradley (American),
author of The China Mirage. You may think this is just propaganda
from the opposite direction, but if so you will at least have two
poles to position yourself between rather than just one side of the
story. If you have an open mind.........it is well worth watching.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6C1kYnrm1cA
All you ignorant fuckers need to
take a one month vacation to China. Come back and lets talk then.
Your world outlook will have been greatly humbled and you would be
more willing to be of the cooperative model of world politics rather
than this senseless belligerence I see here.
I remember being photographed at every highway underpass. I
remember not being able to view You Tube or any video on Facebook
because it was blocked...
This is an major O'sh2t because all of China's cell phones use ARM!
China is now like African no internet village because they don't have
smart phones... LOL
"... And once trade talks had broken down, there was a 'scramble' to implement the measures against Huawei. ..."
"... this report effectively confirms that the administration wasn't being entirely truthful when it said there was 'no link' between Huawei and the trade talks. Trump said back in December that he would go so far as to intervene in efforts to extradite Meng Wanzhou if it would help with the trade talks. And although that would be extreme, we should rule it out just yet. ..."
If there was any lingering doubt that President Trump has treated Huawei like a 'bargaining
chip' during trade talks with the Chinese,
Bloomberg just put the issue to rest.
In a report sourced to administration insiders,
BBG reported that the Trump administration waited to blacklist Huawei until talks with the
Chinese had hit an impasse, because they were concerned that targeting Huawei would disrupt the
talks. Plans to punish Huawei - including possible economic sanctions - had been kicking around
for months. And prosecutors took their first tentative steps toward holding Huawei
'accountable' by convincing Canada to arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
And once trade talks had broken down, there was a 'scramble' to implement the measures
against Huawei.
Though BBG doesn't offer a definitive answer on this, it reports that some are suspicious
that Trump is pressuring Huawei to 'gain a negotiating edge' with Beijing (meanwhile, the
Chinese leadership are furious about the decision).
Timing of the U.S. action raised questions about whether President Donald Trump is
punishing the company in part to gain a negotiating edge with Beijing in a deepening clash
over trade. Talks between Beijing and Washington deadlocked this month as Trump accused China
of backing out of a deal that was taking shape with U.S. officials, saying China reneged on
an agreement to enshrine a wide range of reforms in law.
Another take on what happened suggested that the decision to hold back on Huawei actually
came from the bureaucracy, as administration officials were worried President Trump would just
scrap the measures as a favor to Xi, like he did last year with ZTE Corp. Those concerns
haven't entirely abated.
Washington has offered Huawei some wiggle room by suspending the new restrictions for 90
days. The company has been stockpiling chips, and reportedly already has enough to keep its
business running for three months.
But this report effectively confirms that the administration wasn't being entirely
truthful when it said there was 'no link' between Huawei and the trade talks. Trump said back
in December that he would go so far as to intervene in efforts to extradite Meng Wanzhou if it
would help with the trade talks. And although that would be extreme, we should rule it out just
yet.
EU and China struggle over key concerns ahead of summit😲
Yet the summit might not produce a joint statement - as previous Chinese pledges on
speeding-up talks on an investment agreement, plus opening up its markets more to European
companies, havefailed to materialise.
"We can certainly agree on a joint statement, the question is how substantive this will
be," a senior EU official said. The EU wants to see concrete steps from China.
Failing to agree on a joint statement, however, is a sign of the EU's unsuccessful bid
to commit China to give greater access of its markets to European companies, and engage
seriously in reforming global trade rules within the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The EU hoped to make China address longstanding European complaints, and to commit to
concluding an investment agreement that aims to secure better market access and fair
treatment for European companies in China by 2020.
The EU also hopes to achieve an agreement on indications of geographical origins to
protect European brands in China by the end of the year.
An EU official said that the recent foreign investment law adopted in China, does not
address all the issues of concern for Europeans,for instance on prohibited sectors,
dual regime for foreign and domestic operations, and on forced technological
transfer.
"We agree there has been a lot of promises, it is time for action, not only words.
[…] We want to make sure we have a modern framework for investment protection in a
binding agreement with mechanism to solve disputes," the EU official added.
“While the [European] Commission is getting tougher on China, at least for
now it does not seem to be aiming for a confrontation with China,” he said.
But even if the EU doesn’t fully align itself with the increasingly
hawkish Trump administration , a shift in China-EU relations seems inevitable.
“The EU has no interest in cooling its China relationship, but if it does not act
now to protect its economy from unfair state-owned enterprise competition in the EU market,
then the citizens of Europe might ask for more protection,” Wuttke said.
“[There is] growing realism in Europe and the end of naivety when it comes to
China.”
Exclusive: In China, the Party’s push for influence inside foreign firms stirs
fears😲
BEIJING (Reuters) - Late last month, executives from more than a dozen top European
companies in China met in Beijing to discuss their concerns about the growing role of the
ruling Communist Party in the local operations of foreign firms, according to three people
with knowledge of the discussions.
China got fucked the minute they agreed to invest trillions into US debt securities in
exchange for being given unlimited access to sell into the US market. This terrible
arrangement set them up to be crushed economically if the US were to close its doors to
Chinese exports, and to lose much of what they made from their trade surplus with the US if
they ever tried to unload their holdings.
Their main stock market now is down over 30% since the tariffs went into force last June,
and they are closing factories so fast that the price of oil to heat and power those
factories has fallen by the same 30+% as the Chinese stock market. And now, were the Chinese
to start off loading their US Treasury holdings, they would drive the bond market down about
10-20%, which would be another several hundreds of billions of dollars lost. A clean sweep
mop up operation would be done by the Fed and Anointed Banks in a afternoon. Answer this, why
is a good soldier to the PLA, HSBC advertising like crazy for deposit's in $ when they have
unlimited access to the Yuan? BOOM !!!
China's future access to U.S. dollars via their exports is the sword hanging above their
Chicom heads.
The Chinese were advised for a long time that they were going to have to make changes in
their trade policies if they were to avoid their present troubles. They were told not to hold
the US Treasury securities they were forced to buy, and instead sell them off slowly and
re-invest the capital into domestic infrastructure projects that would expand the size of the
Chinese middle class. And they were told to diversify their export markets, so that they
would not be so dependent on the US consumer to buy Chinese products, The Chinese did little
on the first initiative, and little on the second as well, although the second is difficult
to accomplish since there are not many consumer markets that can buy anywhere near what the
US can buy.
Not a pretty picture. But many saw this day coming. Unfortunately for China, not nearly
enough of the decision makers in the Forbidden City did. Xi Jinping played the card to walk
away from agreed upon section of the trade deal, he played his hand. Confusis say, you made
your bed now sleep in it...............
China would go from having the largest overall trade surplus in the world to having a
trade surplus smaller than Ireland if you take away the U.S. Trade Surplus China
Steals……….
Xi Jinping has now lost Face and the Entire Globe now knows it.
Well that should end the extradition case of Ms Weng. Clearly politically motivated. Her
attorney's Steptoe in DC are top drawer. This also means that Huawei may sue Trump for
damages.
That's because Steptoe never loses to the DOJ. There are three top firms in DC that are
DOJ killers. Steptoe is one of them. Williams & Connolly another. The Ted Stevens Case
was the greatest legal slaughter of the DOJ in history. 6 Gov attorney's sanctioned and
threatened by the Judge for disbarment. That's the way to kick the Gov ***. All six counts
dropped!
Meng is still in Canada so that is a Canadian Jurisdiction but the Canadian law is express
that political motivation is insufficient grounds for extradition. This is evidence of
precisely that.
All this over a charge of fraud... LOL. It doesn't get any weaker than that!
China will never do that. They are about business and they are not going to harm a
customer over politics. Trump does this routinely. He puts sanctions on Venezuela to harm the
women and children to soften up the Gov. He has done it with Russia. It is always indirect
attacks to get something unrelated. The cowardly conduct of a bully. Hitler did the same sort
of things. The siege of Stalingrad for example.
The damage Trump is doing to Google is incomprehensible. Huawei is one of Google's largest
customers. Can you even imaging the implications?
If you were a manufacturer of smartphones and were licensing an OS from Google and Trump
then blocks the license.... How many makers of smartphone do you think will want to be
dependent on this kind of lunatic gov? No country should want to deal with the US for
anything. Look at Russia, they were buying jet engines for their MC 21 and Trump Gov cuts
them off. Now they are making their own engines not buying US made engines. How does that
help the US manufacturer? Russia will make their engines and compete with the US makers.
"... China will only redouble its efforts to produce advanced technologies domestically. ..."
"... As a negotiating strategy, the decision makes even less sense. U.S. officials claim it had nothing to do with stalled trade talks, but it certainly looks like Trump wants to use Huawei as leverage, just as he did last year with ZTE Corp ..."
"... Worse, the decision undermines the implicit point of any U.S.-China trade deal: not just to increase commerce but to stabilize relations between the world's two most powerful nations. ..."
"... targeting Huawei so nakedly will only further marginalize the few moderates in the Chinese leadership and embolden hawks who see conflict as unavoidable ..."
"... Crushing Huawei, by contrast, simply looks like a strategic miscalculation -- and one with potentially disastrous consequences. ..."
Banning one of China's most high-profile companies from US networks makes sense. Putting it out of business does
not.
In its struggle with China over trade and national security, the US has many legitimate grievances, and a
variety of weapons for seeking redress. That doesn't mean it should use all of them.
The nuclear missile the U.S. just launched at Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is a case in point. Last week, the
Commerce Department placed Huawei and nearly 70 of its affiliates on an "
Entity
List
," which means that U.S. suppliers may now need a license to do business with them. Both Huawei's mobile
phones and its network equipment rely on American components, including advanced semiconductors. If the ban is
applied stringently, it
could drive
one of China's most high-profile companies -- employing more than 180,000 people -- out of business.
That would be a serious mistake. The U.S. has long argued that Huawei poses a national-security threat. And
there certainly are legitimate
reasons to worry
that incorporating Huawei gear into America's networks will leave them vulnerable both to
spying and, in the event of a conflict, sabotage. But the U.S. is already taking other prudent steps to prevent
Huawei equipment from being used domestically. Seeking to put the company out of business as well is both
disproportionate and deeply unwise.
For one thing, it will impose collateral damage. Blameless companies around the world -- including Huawei's
American suppliers
-- could lose business, face disruptions and incur significant new costs. Allies that have
resisted
U.S. pressure to shun Huawei's equipment will resent being backed into a corner: Even if President
Donald Trump loosens the noose a bit, they can hardly take the chance that restrictions won't be re-imposed later.
China will only redouble its efforts to produce advanced technologies domestically.
As a negotiating strategy, the decision makes even less sense. U.S. officials claim it had nothing to do with
stalled trade talks, but it certainly looks like Trump wants to use Huawei as leverage,
just as he did last year
with ZTE Corp. Trump has already
invoked
national security far too often in pursuing his scattered trade battles. Doing so here would set
another terrible precedent while almost certainly backfiring: It will aggravate the current impasse and give
Beijing little incentive to abide by any eventual agreement.
Worse, the decision undermines the implicit point of any U.S.-China trade deal: not just to increase commerce
but to stabilize relations between the world's two most powerful nations. While tensions are inevitable, a healthy
trading relationship should in theory restore ballance, reminding both sides of the benefits of cooperation and
strengthening constituencies that have reason to prefer peace to war. By contrast, targeting Huawei so nakedly
will only further marginalize the
few moderates
in the Chinese leadership and embolden hawks who see conflict as unavoidable. For ordinary
Chinese, it will be hard to avoid the impression that the U.S. is simply trying to limit their economic
possibilities.
Even on its own terms, finally, this gambit is likely to fail. To be effective, an assault on Huawei would need
to be embedded in a larger strategy with a clearer endgame in mind. That's nowhere in evidence: Is the aim to
cripple China's tech industry? Teach the country its place? Give a boost to non-Chinese suppliers? Provoke a
conflict? End one? Without a more focused goal, Trump risks simply alienating U.S. allies, infuriating average
Chinese and raising the chances of confrontation, all to no obvious end.
What the U.S. needs is a larger plan that seeks a healthier coexistence with China. That means building up
America's defenses, leveraging its competitive strengths, working with allies to pressure China to conform to
global norms, and taking the lead in writing new rules that can constrain its more disruptive behavior. Crushing
Huawei, by contrast, simply looks like a strategic miscalculation -- and one with potentially disastrous
consequences.
With $105 billion in global sales last year, Huawei has a vast web of customers and suppliers on
nearly every continent. The company is the world's largest provider of equipment used in 5G telecom networks, and the
second largest seller of cellphones. Last week, Huawei said that it spends more than $1 out of every $7 of its annual
$70 billion procurement budget buying equipment from U.S. companies.
Google said it would restrict Huawei's access to future updates of its Android operating
software, which powers many of Huawei's phones. Other U.S. manufacturers also began suspending business dealings with
the Chinese firm.
The markets punished many of those suppliers Monday, including Intel, Broadcom and Qualcomm, as
well as Micron and semiconductor manufacturer Cypress. Chip makers Qualcomm and Broadcom fell 6 percent. Intel
declined nearly 3 percent, and Lumentum Holdings shares fell more than 4 percent after the company said it would stop
selling to Huawei.
The United States said last week it was adding Huawei to a
trade blacklist
because the company "is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or
foreign policy interest." That punishment means U.S. firms aren't allowed to sell to Huawei unless they get special
approval from the government.
On Monday evening, the Commerce Department
slightly eased
the timing of the restrictions, saying it would allow some transactions to continue for 90 days,
to facilitate "certain activities necessary to the continued operations of existing networks and to support existing
mobile services." The temporary reprieve will allow Huawei to receive U.S. equipment to service existing Huawei
mobile phone users and rural broadband networks.
Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce Department and current partner at Akin Gump, called the
reprieve "very narrow." "It's not relief for exporters. It really is to prevent unintended operational problems with
existing networks," Wolf said.
The United States views Huawei as a security risk because it believes the company has close ties
to the Chinese government, which Huawei has denied. U.S. officials have said Huawei could potentially tap into and
monitor sensitive U.S. communications through its network technology.
Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, said that the U.S had underestimated his company as he
sought to dismiss the impact of the ban.
"The current practice of U.S. politicians underestimates our strength," Ren said in a group
interview with Chinese media Tuesday morning. Huawei had a stockpile of chips and "can't be isolated" from the world,
he said.
The 90-day extension "doesn't mean much" and Huawei is fully prepared for the American actions,
Ren said, even appearing to brag about luring workers away from U.S. companies.
"We are very grateful to the U.S. companies. They have made a lot of contributions to us," he
said in the comments, which were shared in real time by state media. "Many of our consultants are from American
companies like IBM."
Earlier, Huawei reacted to Google's decision to stop allowing updates by saying the Chinese
company had "made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around theworld."
"As one of Android's key global partners, we have worked closely with their open-source platform
to develop an ecosystem that has benefitted both users and the industry," said spokesman Joe Kelly, adding that
Huawei would continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to its existingsmartphone and tablet
products.
Google's announcement came at an awkward time for Huawei, which on Tuesday is expected to unveil
its Honor 20 series of smartphones in London, and security experts were divided on how quickly and severely the ban
could hurt Huawei.
Some said Huawei is bigger and better prepared for the blockade than its Chinese competitor ZTE
was last year when the Trump administration restricted ZTE from doing business with U.S. firms. The U.S.
later eased
ZTE's punishment.
Washington announced last week that it would impose new prohibitions on Huawei, including a
ban on US companies selling components or services to the telecoms giant. The seriousness of
these actions is difficult to understate, as Rosenblatt Securities analyst Ryan Koontz
explained. If Huawei is pushed to the brink of collapse, Beijing might label this 'an act of
war'.
"The extreme scenario of Huawei's telecom network unit failing would set China back many
years and might even be viewed as an act of war by China," Koontz wrote. "Such a failure
would have massive global telecom market implications."
But bringing a massive global Chinese firm to its knees is one way to demonstrate to
Beijing, and the rest of the world, which ignored Washington's warnings about Huawei, the true
reach of American economic power. And it's one way to put a timer on talks with Beijing,
ensuring that the trade skirmish won't drag on until the height of campaign season.
American firms weren't the only ones to act. In Europe, German chipmaker Infineon
Technologies said it would suspend deliveries to Huawei, at least until it has had a chance to
determine the significance of Washington's executive order (though company sources later denied
these reports and said shipments to Huawei would continue).
Since hostilities with the US began, Huawei has been stockpiling components. It now has
enough of a buffer supply to keep its business running without interruption for at least three
months.
Nikkei reported late last week that Huawei had reportedly asked suppliers to help it build
up enough stockpiles to last it a year, but it's unlikely that Huawei has accumulated enough
buffer stock to last it anywhere near as long.
If Washington refuses to back down, this three-month window might become the next critical
deadline for the trade talks.
If it wasn't clear before, we now know that President Trump wasn't kidding when he said late
last year that Huawei could become 'a bargaining chip' in the trade skirmish. Whether the
prosecution of Meng Wanzhou factors into it remains to be seen, but President Trump did tell
Fox News over the weekend that he wouldn't allow China to surpass the US on his watch.
Huawei's odds of finding replacement suppliers are slim, as Koontz explained. Huawei "is
heavily dependent on U.S. semiconductor products and would be seriously crippled without supply
of key U.S. components."
It's clear where Beijing stands on this. We wouldn't be surprised to see a 'consumer
movement' emerge in China where middle-class consumers ditch foreign phones and proudly
proclaim their support for Huawei.
On Sunday afternoon, President Trump threatened Iran with military intervention via tweet.
Yet, analysts blamed the growing pressure on Huawei for the risk-averse trading atmosphere.
US stocks were on track to open lower. Meanwhile, Huawei's dollar-denominated corporate
bonds tumbled again on Monday after one of their biggest declines in recent memory on Friday.
The selloff comes as fears of a Huawei bankruptcy are beginning to intensify.
Beijing has maintained its aggressive posture, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs warning
in response to news of the Google ban that China would do what it needed to do to protect its
companies' "legitimate rights", and also hinted at legal actions it might take. Over the
weekend, Beijing compared the trade skirmish with its actions in the Korean War, about as clear
a sign as any that we're in for a protracted conflict.
Whatever happens, it looks like the showdown over Huawei has eclipsed the broader trade-war
narrative. So much for the Huawei crackdown being a 'separate issue' from the trade talks, like
Trump officials had previously insisted.
Bottom line: If we don't get a deal by the end of June, this trade war is going to really
heat up.
So, Huawei is dependent upon Western semiconductor manufacturers. But I thought the
Chinese were the leaders in innovation? That's all I hear on here and elsewhere. Seems to me
that they should have invented and created their own semiconductor industry back in the
1800's when Westerners began to mess with them. One would think that the great and powerful
and super duper intelligent Chinese would have discovered and invented it first in the first
place. Certainly the Chinese or their pals in the USSR could have done so sometime in the
'50s, '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s? No?
The US might win this battle but it has already lost the war. It is in a position similar
to Ukraine which was the richest and most developed Sovjet republic after the breakup - but
which is now one of the biggest shitholes in the entire Galaxy, feasted upon by a bunch of
Zionazi oligarchs. Think of the US as an Ukraine on steroids.
Trump and his diverse actions will hurt Huawei. Maybe even badly. Long term, maybe even
short term, the US won't gain anything from it. It is in a position where it can only lose.
Not because the potential of the US isn't "terrific" (actually it coud be the most promising
country) - but because the US is designed to fail as it is basically a failed state
already.
Im confused, how would not choosing to do business with Huawei possibly be considered an
act of war?
Especially when China largely keeps their markets closed to the west?
After speaking to some Chinese immigrrants... according to them, they'll never come to any
kind of fair agreement with the west. They're not interested in a level playing field at all.
All they care about is making sure the Chinese state gets all the benefits in order to
further Chinas power and influence.
Great news. Huawei already has completed development of its own OS, no doubt an Android
clone. This finally gives us a path off of the Goolag/ Android OS. In 19 months Rabbi Trump
will be gone, which is good, but his destroying the Android monopoly may be his biggest
achievement.
An android clone? No way that would be stealing again. No they will make their own special
sauce OS that will electrocute the citizen if they don't adhere to the state directives.
There are so many other better ways to run a phone interface , I wonder if these two
systems have been kept as monopolies so that the Spooks at the NSA and CIA are able to find
their way around easily
The take away quote
"
Wang also reiterated the principled stand against the "long-arm jurisdiction" imposed by
the United States.
"
Empire is having its hand slapped back in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, ???
Where are they going to get their war on?
I see empire as a war junkie and they are starting to twitch in withdrawals which is
dangerous but a necessary stage. Trumps latest tweets show that level of energy.
The
spinning plates of empire are not wowing the crowds like before.....what is plan Z?
"... There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth. ..."
"... There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase. ..."
"... Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus. ..."
"... When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed. ..."
"... I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. ..."
"... If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. ..."
"... These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president. ..."
"... The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke. ..."
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the
right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a
minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"" – Bill Hicks
Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake-news
mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the "Us versus Them" narrative. It's
almost as if "they" are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill
Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire
continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda
techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their
assigned puppets.
Most people can't discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State
controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the
masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don't believe there is a chance in hell of
this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.
Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and
successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion,
pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP),
rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in
corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their
corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.
There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social
issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The
real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it
appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the
Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare.
Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort
whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The
proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as
the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of
Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out
"legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions.
The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote
against a defense spending increase.
Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing
from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too
Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy
in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as
people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.
When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are
bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed
billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge
tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in
every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no
legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.
I've never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line,
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". The "Us vs. Them" narrative
doesn't connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals
will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses,
thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true
libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public.
There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last
election by referencing another famous cynic.
"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one
who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking
and screaming into the White House." ― Bill Hicks
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey,
John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure
her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and
subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn't say Donald Trump
was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator
at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I'm not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.
As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be
good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV
ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The
vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed
this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and
disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over
Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.
I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. I hadn't voted for a Republican since
2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way.
I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign
stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I
don't worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not
their words.
Trump's first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news
CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The
Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He
provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is
difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.
I'm happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal
judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive.
Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and
renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep
energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing
to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have
gotten it done when he controlled both houses.
The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating
tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets
better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the
Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global
recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life
and doesn't have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global
recession and stock market crash would make Trump's re-election in 2020 problematic.
I'm a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle
class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to
mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received
little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many
cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.
With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their
coffers. They didn't repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn't go on a
massive hiring spree. They didn't invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock
to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave
themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered
winning in present day America.
The "Us vs. Them" issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises
unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards
as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard
response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with
a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being
a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don't matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the
day. Truthfulness not required.
The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the
performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has
become my standard response to everything I see, hear or he read. The incessant level of lies
permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant
criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to
corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the
land. It's interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human
trait over two hundred years ago.
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity
of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." – Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine's description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less
than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over
300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths
occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches,
and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans.
They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't
care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others.
They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their
unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of
controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every
politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head,
MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the
president.
The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question
will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning.
What I've noticed is the shunning of those who don't take an all or nothing position regarding
Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused
by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I
don't want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and
their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard,
Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don't prescribe to the cult of
personality school of thought. I didn't believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama
years, and I won't worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.
In Part II of this article I'll assess Trump's progress thus far and try to determine
whether he can defeat the Deep State.
"The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant
step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over
nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the
status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one
has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus,
despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will
probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and
manipulation of men. Nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and militarism,
cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general
relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here,
too, the atmosphere is heavy-laden with coercion and magic." --Eric Hoffer
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the
Trumpeteers
That's not true. When Trump kisses Israeli ***, most "Trumpeteers" are outraged. That does
not mean they're going to vote for Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden, or Honest Hillary because of
it, but they're still pissed.
These predators (((them))) need to fear the Victims, us! That is what the 2ND Amendment is
for. It's coming, slowly for now, but eventually it speeds up.
Any piece like this better be littered with footnotes and cited sources before I'm
swallowing it.
I'll say it again: this is the internet, people. There's no "shortage of column space" to
include links back to primary sources for your assertions. Otherwise, how am I supposed to
distinguish you from another "psy op" or "paid opposition hit piece"?
"The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them."
If you still ponder this question, then you are pretty frickin' thick. It is obvious at
this point, that he betrayed everything he campaigned on. You don't do that and call yourself
one of "us".......damn sure aren't one of "me".
If I couldn't keep my word and wouldn't do what it takes to do what is right.....then I
would resign. But I would not go on playing politics in a world that needs some real
leadership and not another political hack.
The real battle is between Truth and Lie. No matter the name of your "team" or the "side"
you support. Truth is truth and lies are lies. We don't stand for political parties, we stand
for truth. We don't stand for national pride, we take pride in a nation that is truthful and
trustworthy. The minute a "side" or "team" starts lying.....and justifying it.....that is the
minute they become them and not one of us.
Any thinking person in this country today knows we are being lied to by the entire
complex. Until someone starts telling the truth.....we are on our own. But I be damned before
I am going to support any of these lying sons of bitches......and that includes Trump.
Dark comedy. All the elections have been **** choices until the last one. Take a look at
Arkancide.com and start counting the
bodies.
Anyone remember the news telling us how North Korea promised to turn the US into a sea of
fire?? Trump absolutely went to bat for every single American to de-escalate that
situation.
Don't tell me about Arkancide or the Clintons. I grew up in Arkansas with that sack of
**** as my governor for 12 years.
NK was never a real threat to anyone. Trump didn't do ****. NK is back to building and
shooting off missiles and will be teaming up with the Russians and Chinese. You are a duped
bafoon.
I don't think anybody thought NK was an existential threat to the US. It has still been
nice making progress on bringing them back into the world and making them less of a threat to
Japan and S. Korea. Trump did that.
Dennis Rodman did that, or that is to say, Trump an extension thereof ..
Great theater..
Look, i thought it was great that Trump went Kim Unning. I mean after all, i had talked
with a few elderly folks that get their news directly from the mainstream of mainstream,
vanilla news reportage. Propaganda central casting. I remember them being extremely
concerned, outright petrified about that evil menace, kim gonna launch nukes any minute now.
If the news would have been announced a major troop mobilization, bombing campaigns, to begin
immediately they would have been completely onboard, waving the flag.
Frankly, it is only a matter of time, and folks can speculate on the country of interest,
but it is coming soon to a theater near you. So many being in the crosshairs. Iran i suspect
.. that's the big prize, that makes these sociopaths cream in their panties.
Probably. In the second term .. and so far, if ones honestly evaluates the "brain trust" /
current crop of dimwit opposition, and in light of their past 2 plus years of moronic
posturing with their hair on fire, trump will get his second term ..
Until the last one? You are retarded, the last election was a masterpiece of Rothschilds
Productions. The Illuminati was watching you at their private cinema when you were voting for
Trump and they were laughing their asses off.
The author does not realize that everyone in America, except Native American Indians, were
immigrants drawn towards the false promise of hope that is the American Dream, turned
nightmare..
Owning your own home, car, & raising a family in this country is so damn expensive
& risky, that you'd have be on drugs or an idiot to even fall for the lies.
I don't see an us vs them, I see the #FakeMoney printers monetized every facet of life,
own everything, & it truly is RENT-A-LIFE USSA, complete with bills galore, taxes galore,
laws galore, jails & prisons galore, & the worst fkn country anyone would want to
live in poverty & homelessness in.
At least in many 3rd world nations there is land to live off of & joblessness does not
= a financial death sentence.
Sure. Lets all go back to living in huts.....off the land....no cars.....no
electricity.....no running water......no roads....
There is a price to pay for things and it is not always in the form of money. We have
given up some of our freedom for the ease and conveniences we want.
The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare
because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want
to puke.
There is a balance. Don't take the other extreme or we never find balance.
This article is moronic. One can easily prove that Trump is not like all the others in the
poster. Has this author been living under a rock for the last 2.5 yrs? The past 5 presidents
represent a group that has been literally trying to assassinate Trump, ruin his family, his
reputation, his buisness and his future, for the audacity to be an ousider to the power
network and steal (win) the presidency from under their noses. He's kept us OUT of war. He's
dissolved the treachery that was keeping us in the middle east through gaslighitng and a
proxy fake war that is ISIS, the globalists' / nato / fiveys / uk's fake mercenary army
The greatest threat to the USA is its own dumbed down drugged up citizens who cannot
compete with anyone. America is a big military powerhouse but that doens't make successful
countries
Notice how modern narrative is getting manipulated. What is being reported and referenced
is completely different from how things are. And knowing that we can assume that the entire
history is a fabricated lie, written by the ruling class to support its status in the minds
of obedient citizens.
This article is garbage propaganda that proves that they think we aren't keeping score or
paying attention. The gaslighting won't work when it relies on so much counterthink, willful
ignorance, counterfacts and weaponized omissions
The reality is the de-escalation of wars, the stability of our currency and our economy,
and the moral re-grounding of our culture does not occur until we do what over 100 countries
have done over the centuries, beginning in Carthage in 250AD.
The congress are statusquotarians. If they solved the problems they say they would,they'd
be out of a job. and that job is sitting there acting like a naddler or toxic post turtle
leprechaun with a charisma and skill level of zero. Their staff do all the work, half of them
barely read, though they probably can
I still think 1st and 2nd ammedment is predicated on which party rules the house. If a Dem
gets into the WH, we're fucked. Kiss those Iast two dying amendments goodbye for good.
If we rely on any party to preserve the 1st or 2nd Amendments, we are already fucked. What
should preserve the 1st and 2nd Amendments is the absolute fear of anyone in government even
mentioning suppressing or removing them. When the very thought of doing anything to lessen
the rights advocated in these two amendments, causes a politician to piss in their pants,
liberty will be preserved. As it is now citizens fear the government, and as a result tyranny
continues to grow and fester as a cancer.
You may very well be right. I still hold out hope, but upon seeing what our society is
quickly morphing into, that hope seems to fade more each and every day.
If you think the 1st and 2nd amendments are reliant on who is in office, then you are
already done. Why don't you try growing a pair and being an American for once in your
life.
I will always have a 1st and 2nd "amendment" for as long as I live. Life is meaningless
without them.....as far as I am concerned. Good thing the founders didn't wait for king
George to give them what they "felt" was theirs.....by the laws of Nature and Nature's
God.
I hope the democrats get the power......and I hope they come for the guns......maybe then
pussies like you will finally have to **** or get off the pot......for once in your life.
There are worse things than dying.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Unless we get rid of *** influencing
from abroad and domestically. Getting rid of English King few hundred years ago was a joke!
this would be a challenge because dual-citizens masquerading as locals.
Last revolution (1776) we targeted the WRONG ENEMY.
We targeted King George III instead of the private bankers who owned of the Bank of
England and the issued of the British-pound currency.
George III was himself up to his ears in debt to them by 1776, when the bankers installed
George Washington to replace George III as their middleman in the American colonies, by way
of the phony revolution.
Phony because ownership of the central bank and currency (Federal-Reserve Banks,
Federal-Reserve notes) we use, remains in the same banking families' hands to this day. The
same parasite remains within our government.
It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of
rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are able to
manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms. The result is that the
Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution,
and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.
To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional
books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for
dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while
they are being manipulated.
Google has reportedly suspended its licences and product-sharing agreements with Chinese
communications giant Huawei, as Washington accuses the company of spying for Beijing. The
Silicon Valley tech giant has cut its business deals with Huawei that involve the transfer of
hardware and software, Reuters and The Verge report. Following the move, Huawei will lose
access to Android operating system updates, and its forthcoming smartphones will be shut out of
some Google apps, including the Google Play Store and Gmail apps. The Chinese firm however will
still have access to the open source version of the Android operating system.
We have confirmed this is genuine.
Huawei will only be able to use the public version of Android, and won't get access to
proprietary apps and services from Google
Huawei will have to create their own update mechanism for security patches https://t.co/7eTi4JvWsE
Washington repeatedly accused Huawei of installing so-called 'backdoors' into its products
on behalf of the Chinese government. The heads of six US intelligence agencies warned
American citizens against using Huawei products last year, and the Chinese company's phones
were banned from US military bases shortly afterwards.
"... What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." ..."
"... when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump." ..."
"... After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." ..."
"... A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. ..."
"... Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions. ..."
"... The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups. ..."
"... The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. ..."
"... Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long. ..."
An
honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very
relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has
dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors
leading to Trump's victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story
that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the
Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it's the
lofty but vague accusations of "obstruction of justice" along with renewed dirt digging. To
some it is a "constitutional crisis", but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.
Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues
Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as
income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police,
over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The
tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little
opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national
parks and women's equality while directing ever
more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising
living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military
which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic
establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and
related issues.
Immediately after the 2016 Election
In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie
Sanders
said , "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and
pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am
going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower
wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids
to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized
the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that.
But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic
Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white
working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people
where I came from."
Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled "
Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate ." The
author analyzed the results saying , "Donald Trump's stunning victory is less surprising
when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician." The
writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted "there will be
years of recriminations."
Russiagate replaced Recrimination
But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There
is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in "Russian Roulette" (p127),
when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic
National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR
strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited
the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election,
presumably to assist Trump."
After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in
the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the
communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up
. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian
hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."
This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the
election.
One Year After the Election
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned
with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled "
Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination ". Interestingly, there is not a single reference
to Russia. Key conclusions are that "it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from
the white non-college-educated voting bloc" and "Democrats must go beyond the 'identity
politics' versus 'economic populism' debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class
coalition " It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working
class.
A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in
Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of
the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why
traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party's undemocratic
practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking
in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says "The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically
and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of
public needs."
Two Years After the Election
In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled "
Autopsy: One Year Later ". It says, "The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms,
but corporate power continues to dominate the party."
In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some
in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than
give up control of the party.
What really happened in 2016?
Beyond the initial critiques and "Autopsy" research, there has been little discussion,
debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by
Russiagate.
Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because
Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband
President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill
Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their
thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton's support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another
indication of her policies.
What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of
enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with "welfare reform"
promoted by her husband. According to this study from
the University of Michigan, "As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households
with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a
given month The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth
has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare
reform. "
Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison
incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since
the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice
"reforms" initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it's understandable why they
were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans
being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as "bigoted paternalism" by blogger Teodrose
Fikremanian who says, "The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that
the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is
because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by
foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been
written by George Wallace."
How Clinton became the Nominee
Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby
Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the
Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the
party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the
pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and
decisions.
Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party
loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with
significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least)
about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and
Michigan Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.
Clinton had no response for Trump's attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false
promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working
class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party
voters. In short, it's likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the
accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?
The Relevance of 2016 to 2020
The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment
bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased
"electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which
groups.
Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ
Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article "
Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm? " Dionne speaks of the "strength he
(Biden) brings" and the "comfort he creates". In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in
his article "
Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump ". Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in
the working class because he joked about claims he is too 'hands on'. But while Biden may be
tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade
deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.
The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates
who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie
Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has
broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign
policy. She calls
out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast
with Rachel Maddow taunting
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been
denouncing Trump's collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel's Netanyahu, saying it's not in
US interests. Gabbard's anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant
support from US troops. A
recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and
Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.
This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump's
victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As
pointed out
here, "Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than
from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties."
Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given
them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to
analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over
working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and
foreign policy based on 'regime change' interventions.
There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat
of that disaster. As indicated in the
Autopsy , there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than
establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which
candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the
majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military
and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.
Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's
gone on far too long.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in
the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at [email protected] . Read other articles by Rick .
33 out 90 suppliers of Huawei are US companies. If Huawei do not buy from them who will buy
them? It's two way street.
Trump is breaking neoliberalism createing two camps of neoliberal countries hostile to each
other. Potential partners for China are Russia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and North
Korea so this would be a weaker, but still formidable in economic and military capacity
block.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring U.S. firms from
using telecom equipment made by companies accused of being a national security risk; this
includes Chinese tech giant Huawei. The U.S. Commerce Department questioned whether Huawei will
be able to continue purchasing components from its American suppliers. In response, the Chinese
Commerce Ministry said on Thursday
Huawei will survive with supply chain alternatives and reengineering designs, it will make
Huawei stronger with better products. American high tech products and parts suppliers can
wait until American companies come up with design to utilise their products, hopefully not
long enough to cripple all these high tech parts manufacturers.
lysias: A president doesn't have to obey the orders of the powers that be ...
Well, that's why they select the President beforehand to ensure there are no inconvenient
difficulties with a new President.
In fact, our President's have generally had a connection to CIA: Bush Sr. was CIA,
Clinton is said to allowed their flights into Arkansas, GW Bush was son of CIA, Obama is said
to have come from a CIA family (grandfather and probably mother) , and some have pointed to
Trump's first casino deal as a possible CIA tie (related to money laundering of CIA drug
money)
Pretending otherwise furthers the democracy works! narrative. Isn't it already
clear that the West is feudal and Empire First (aka globalist) - despite Trump's
faux populist pretense? US foreign policy has been remarkably consistent for over 20
years. US congressmen takes oaths to Israel. Western propaganda sing the Deep State tune.
US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over Huawei, which he has deemed a
national security threat. His new executive order makes it more difficult for US companies to
do business with the Chinese tech giant. RT America's Manila Chan chats with investigative
journalist Ben Swann, who says no evidence exists for the Trump administration's claim.
#RTAmerica#InQuestionRT#QuestionMore
U.S. cannot spy via Chinese made technology products. That is the problem. When did
competition against American technology get to be a national security threat? It is about
creating a monopoly of only certain products in America. I hope American companies fight
back. Prices in American stores have already started to rise. Monopolies mean high
prices.
In the age of technology...any country
who doesn't SPY on other countries or their own citizens is LYING thru their teeth! USA is NO
DIFFERENT than CHINA.....they both are rogue nations, competing for the same thing,
TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP! The problem is....HUAWEI just got the upper hand in 5G technology
before the US can compete...so as such, the US threatens other countries with scare tactics
until the US can develop and deploy 5G technology to compete with CHINA. It's all about MONEY
and BUSINESS.
USA has dishonestly gathered more data on it's own civilians than it can access or
understand in several lifetimes, they have the gaul to attack others without proof?
UNREAL
Boeing and Hollywood are two week stops that China can hit with impunity.
Notable quotes:
"... China has outspent the US on R&D since 2009 and now invests three times as much each year. ..."
"... The issue with these chips highlights just how ridiculous the American position is. The chips referred to are Intel processors they use in servers and qualcomm (arm core) processors in cell phones. Funny thing is, these processors are not even made in the US, and their replacement isn't that much of an issue, not for a company with the resources Huawei possesses. ..."
"... For government and other high security uses China has options like the MIPs based Loongson but that wouldn't work in the commercial environment so hopelessly devoted to x86 and windows. Probably the best solution would be to make an x86 analog like AMD markets, and it wouldn't take that long to do. ..."
"... The United States attacked China's largest telecom equipment maker Huawei. If China decides to retaliate, it could target chip giants like Qualcomm and Broadcom, which rely heavily on it for revenue, or tech giant Apple, which depends on them for iPhone manufacturing. ..."
"... Huawei's competitors Nokia and Ericsson would stand to win from the above ban as the United States and its allies would resort to them for 5G deployment. Nokia's and Ericsson's stocks rose more than 4% and 2% in early trading on May 16. . . here ..."
"... Chip fab is the only remaining significant technological lead that America retains anymore, but the raw engineering brainpower behind that industry in the US is mostly imported from China anyway. The Chinese have no shortage of brilliant engineers, they just have not really had the need to do without Intel and AMD before. Now they do. ..."
"... Within a year or so China will be producing chips as good as America's. Another year after that and America will be eclipsed in that industry. No longer will people be looking for "Intel Inside!" stickers on products but rather "Huawei Inside!" . ..."
"... What doesn't seem to be clear, or else ignored/excused here -- China is today just as globalist as the US and in fact the multinational corporations in control of both countries are inextricably linked, especially in the high tech sector currently under the intense MoA thread microscope. ..."
"... By our standards exploitation of workers in China is a grim picture , which compares with the grim blue collar conditions in the US, the equal and opposite result of the globalist equation wrt offshoring factory jobs endemic to capitalist production. ..."
"... MoA China "experts" should study the reality of globalization after removing the rose colored glasses if you wish to be considered analysts instead of merely wishful thinkers/cheerleaders of groupthink delusion. ..."
@William Gruff #75: China is already producing world-class ARM chips. HiSilicon 's latest Kirin
processors are on par with Qualcomm's Snapdragon and Samsung's Exynos processors. Apple's
A-series is ahead of them all, but what does it matter if Apple's rising prices and falling
quality are going to kill Apple anyway?
Per Reuters, Huawei spends $11b on US components, and its ability to withstand this hit will
vary by segment: "Huawei being unable to manufacture network servers, for example, because
they can't get key U.S. components would mean they also stop buying parts from other
countries altogether," said an executive at a Huawei chip supplier.
"They can relatively better manage component sourcing for mobile phones because they have
their own component businesses for smartphones. But server and network, it's a different
story," the executive said.
Are there any articles on how dependent Apple and Boeing are on Chinese components? This
strategy seems incredibly short-sighted.
Remember the "Asian pivot"? Did Huawei and other critical tech companies start making
independent chips back then? Or before? When were the tariffs planned? Speculation, anyone?
The issue with these chips highlights just how ridiculous the American position is. The chips
referred to are Intel processors they use in servers and qualcomm (arm core) processors in
cell phones. Funny thing is, these processors are not even made in the US, and their
replacement isn't that much of an issue, not for a company with the resources Huawei
possesses.
Huawei already has its own arm based soc's it uses in it's high end phones and they can
replace processors in it's low end phones with lesser versions of these.
The Intel processors will be tougher to do for the commercial market because of software
compatibility issues.
For government and other high security uses China has options like the MIPs based Loongson
but that wouldn't work in the commercial environment so hopelessly devoted to x86 and
windows. Probably the best solution would be to make an x86 analog like AMD markets, and it
wouldn't take that long to do.
The United States attacked China's largest telecom equipment maker Huawei. If China
decides to retaliate, it could target chip giants like Qualcomm and Broadcom, which rely
heavily on it for revenue, or tech giant Apple, which depends on them for iPhone
manufacturing.
Huawei uses Qualcomm's modems in its high-end smartphones and has been in settlement talks
with the chip supplier over a licensing dispute. Tensions between the United States and
Huawei could delay this licensing settlement, sending Qualcomm's stock down 4.4% on May
16.
Huawei's competitors Nokia and Ericsson would stand to win from the above ban as the
United States and its allies would resort to them for 5G deployment. Nokia's and Ericsson's
stocks rose more than 4% and 2% in early trading on May 16. . .
here
"Soon U.S. chip companies will have lost all their sales to the second largest
smartphone producer of the world. That loss will not be just temporarily, it will become
permanent." --b
This is a crucial and important development. So long as China is just developing their
domestic chip designs as an academic exercise they will forever trail behind the market
leaders by at least one technological iteration. Why try so hard with chip designs that will
only ever just be used in college degree theses papers and proof of concept models? Real
innovation comes from scratching an itch; from fulfilling an actual need. Chip fab is the
only remaining significant technological lead that America retains anymore, but the raw
engineering brainpower behind that industry in the US is mostly imported from China anyway.
The Chinese have no shortage of brilliant engineers, they just have not really had the need
to do without Intel and AMD before. Now they do.
In the short term the transition will be painful for China. The first few iterations of
their replacement chip designs will be buggy and not have the features of chips they could
have bought for cheaper from the US. They will also have problems ramping up capacity to meet
their needs. Typical growing pains, in other words. In the long term, though, this will be
seen as the point at which the end started for America's chip tech dominance. Within a
year or so China will be producing chips as good as America's. Another year after that and
America will be eclipsed in that industry. No longer will people be looking for "Intel
Inside!" stickers on products but rather "Huawei Inside!" .
Isnt it clear the US is globalist? Uhhm, well, yes, it's only been clear for the prior 75
years at least. In fact Lenin laid it all out during WWI so one could
say it's been clear for 100 years.
What doesn't seem to be clear, or else ignored/excused here -- China is today just as
globalist as the US and in fact the multinational corporations in control of both countries
are inextricably linked, especially in the high tech sector currently under the intense MoA
thread microscope.
Why aren't Huawei making making more smartphone chips in production? Because so many
Chinese component manufacturers are still heavily invested in churning out product for Apple.
These companies employ millions in "relatively high paying" factory jobs and account for a
large slice of Chinese export income and stock market capitalization. These corporate
oligarchs supported by the Chinese government retain a vested interest in the status quo.
This is not to minimize Huawei or Chinese growing ability to compete at the design and
innovation level as well as production, it is simply rightsizing the perspective to fit the
reality. Huawei production is growing worldwide but this doesn't mean Apple or Samsung will
evaporate or fall by the wayside and the Chinese need Apple and its markets too . In
fact, Huawei is now willing for the first time to sell microchips to third party cell phone
producers including Apple. Successful capitalist growth for China depends on increasing
production into new products, technologies and markets not replacing current platforms with
new. The product cycle will take care of itself in time anyway.
China is still in the industrial growth phase of its capitalist development, although
beginning to transition to the higher phase for sure. Of course.
MoA China "experts" should study the reality of globalization after removing the rose
colored glasses if you wish to be considered analysts instead of merely wishful
thinkers/cheerleaders of groupthink delusion.
Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference
Claims
Lavrov responded first to the question. He said that there is no evidence that shows any
Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He continued:
Speaking about the most recent US presidential campaign in particular, we have had in
place an information exchange channel about potential unintended risks arising in cyberspace
since 2013. From October 2016 (when the US Democratic Administration first raised this issue)
until January 2017 (before Donald Trump's inauguration), this channel was used to handle
requests and responses. Not so long ago, when the attacks on Russia in connection with the
alleged interference in the elections reached their high point, we proposed publishing this
exchange of messages between these two entities, which engage in staving off cyberspace
incidents. I reminded Mr Pompeo about this today. The administration, now led by President
Trump, refused to do so. I'm not sure who was behind this decision, but the idea to publish
this data was blocked by the United States. However, we believe that publishing it would
remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make
these exchanges public, but I would still like to make this fact known.
The communication channel about cyber issues did indeed exist. In June 2013 the Presidents
of the United States and Russia issued a Joint Statement about "Information and
Communications Technologies (ICTs)". The parties agreed to establishing communication
channels between each other computer emergency response teams, to use the direct
communication link of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers for cyber issue exchanges, and to
have direct communication links between high-level officials in the White House and Kremlin
for such matter. A Fact Sheet published by the Obama White House detailed the implementation
of these three channels.
One inference from Lavrov's statement is that the "fundamental understanding on this
matter" between the two presidents that has "not been fully implemented" is the release of
the communications about cyberspace incidents. The Russians clearly think that a release of
the communications with the Obama administration would exculpate them. That would also
exculpate Trump from any further collusion allegations. Why then does the Trump
administration reject the release? Who is blocking it?
Cont. reading: Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian
Interference Claims
"... That is an interesting transcript to read. Much of what it says dovetails with the conversation Peter AU 1 and Karlof1 were having in the comments forum attached to B's previous post (comments 85 - 87) and my addition @ 96 with regard to psychological projection and the phenomenon of shared psychosis, the latter which is now well known in Australia due to a case involving five members of a family in Victoria in 2016. ..."
"... Maybe there is also a class warfare aspect to Russiagate as well, just as there was to the mass hysteria directed at Communism: both phenomena focus on particular scapegoats made to represent the manifestation of the fears of a ruling class that knows it does not deserve its position in society. ..."
"... Because it would constitute a great moral error for Russia and a blow to its rapidly rising credibility and trustworthiness. Here are several maxims: First and foremost--The Golden Rule; Second--you don't stoop to the level of your opponent; rather, expose the difference as much as possible. Third, and almost as important as #1--Honor & Dignity. ..."
"... the information is simply deemed too damaging to the USA soft power, to the point even Trump doesn't want to release it to the public; and/or the deep state is essentially blocking it from going public for the same reason. ..."
"... this Russophobe situation is not all that bad to the political faction in Russia who wants it to remain sovereign relative to the USA (i.e. the Eurasianists). Trade between the two countries was already almost null before the sanctions (less than 5% of each country's total trade), so they aren't really affecting their economies. Besides, Russia gains the rationale to stifle its neoliberals at home (Yeltsin and the liberals) and maintain United Russia in power. It also gives Putin a legitimate excuse to dump US Treasury bonds, build its own internet servers, increase its relations with China and drive a wedge between Europe and the US. ..."
"... What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media retardations? ..."
Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference
Claimskarlof1 , May 16, 2019 3:44:02 PM |
link
On Tuesday Russia's President Putin again rejected U.S. claims that his country interfered
in the 2016 elections in the United States. Additional statements by Foreign Minister Lavrov
provide that there is more information available about alleged Russian cyber issue during the
election. He pointed to exchanges between the Russian and U.S. governments that Russia wants
published but which the U.S. is withholding.
On Tuesday May 14 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Sochi to meet with
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov and with the President of the Russian Federation
Vladimir Putin. It was Pompeo's first official visit to Russia. Pompeo's meeting with Lavrov
was followed by a joined
news conference . The statements from both sides touched on the election issue.
Here are the relevant excerpts from the opening statements with regard to cyber
issues.
Lavrov:
We agreed on the importance of restoring communications channels that have been suspended
lately, which was due in no small part to the groundless accusations against Russia of
trying to meddle in the US election. These allegations went as far as to suggest that we
colluded in some way with high-ranking officials from the current US administration. It is
clear that allegations of this kind are completely false. [...] I think that there is a
fundamental understanding on this matter as discussed by our presidents during their
meeting last year in Helsinki, as well as during a number of telephone conversations. So
far these understandings have not been fully implemented .
Pompeo:
[W]e spoke, too, about the question of interference in our domestic affairs. I conveyed
that there are things that Russia can do to demonstrate that these types of activities are
a thing of the past and I hope that Russia will take advantage of those opportunities.
During the Q & A Shaun Tanron of AFP asked Pompeo about the election issue:
[I]f I could follow up on your statement about the election, you said that there are things
that Russia could do to show that election interference is a thing of the past. What are
those things? What do – what would you like Russia to do? Thank you very much.
Lavrov responded first to the question. He said that there is no evidence that shows any
Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He continued:
Speaking about the most recent US presidential campaign in particular, we have had in place
an information exchange channel about potential unintended risks arising in cyberspace
since 2013. From October 2016 (when the US Democratic Administration first raised this
issue) until January 2017 (before Donald Trump's inauguration), this channel was used to
handle requests and responses. Not so long ago, when the attacks on Russia in connection
with the alleged interference in the elections reached their high point, we proposed
publishing this exchange of messages between these two entities, which engage in staving
off cyberspace incidents. I reminded Mr Pompeo about this today. The administration, now
led by President Trump, refused to do so. I'm not sure who was behind this decision,
but the idea to publish this data was blocked by the United States. However, we believe
that publishing it would remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will
not unilaterally make these exchanges public, but I would still like to make this fact
known.
The communication channel about cyber issues did indeed exist. In June 2013 the Presidents
of the United States and Russia issued a
Joint Statement about "Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)". The parties
agreed to establishing communication channels between each other computer emergency response
teams, to use the direct communication link of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers for cyber
issue exchanges, and to have direct communication links between high-level officials in the
White House and Kremlin for such matter. A
Fact Sheet published by the Obama White House detailed the implementation of these three
channels.
One inference from Lavrov's statement is that the "fundamental understanding on this
matter" between the two presidents that has "not been fully implemented" is the release of
the communications about cyberspace incidents. The Russians clearly think that a release of
the communications with the Obama administration would exculpate them. That would also
exculpate Trump from any further collusion allegations. Why then does the Trump
administration reject the release? Who is blocking it?
Pompeo did not respond to Lavrov's points. His next meeting that day was with President
Putin.
Putin let him wait for three
hours. Both sides issued short opening statements. The English translations of what Putin
said differ. In the version provided by Russia Putin explicitely
denies the alleged election interference:
For our part, we have said many times that we would also like to restore relations on a
full scale. I hope that the necessary conditions for this are being created now since,
despite the exotic character of Mr Mueller's work, he should be given credit for conducting
what is generally an objective inquiry. He reaffirmed the lack of any trace or collusion
between Russia and the current administration , which we described as sheer nonsense from
the very start. There was no, nor could there be any interference on our part in the US
election at the government level. Nevertheless, regrettably, these allegations have served
as a reason for the deterioration of our interstate ties.
The State Department
version does not include the Russian denial of election interference but doubles the
rejection of the collusion claim:
On our behalf, we have said it multiple times that we also would like to rebuild fully
fledged relations, and I hope that right now a conducive environment is being built for
that, because, though, however exotic the work of Special Counsel Mueller was, I have to
say that on the whole he had a very objective investigation and he confirmed that there are
no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration , which
we've said was absolutely fake. As we've said before, there was no collusion from our
government officials and it could not be there. Still, that was – that was one of the
reasons certainly breaking our (inaudible) ties.
An English language live translation of that paragraph (vid) by the Russian sponsored
Ruptly does not include the word 'election' in the highlighted sentence, nor does a
live translation (vid) by
PBS.
It seem that the Kremlin later inserted the explicit denial of election interference into
Putin's statement. It is quite possible that Putin, who did not read from a prepared paper,
mangled the talking point that Lavrov had already made.
After the meeting Putin, Pompeo held a short press availability with the U.S.
journalists accompanying him. There is no mentioning of Lavrov's point.
There were secret communications between the Obama administration and the Russian
government about the alleged election interference and 'hacks' of the DNC and of Clinton's
campaign manager Podesta. They are not mentioned in the Mueller report nor in any other open
source. As Russia wants these communications released it might be possible to file a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request to press for their publication. The Trump administration
response to such a FOIA request could at least reveal the reasons why it is withholding
them.
The allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections are partly based on the fact
that a commercial Russian enterprise used fake characters on Facebook
to sell advertisement . A review
of the themes and
ideological positions those fake characters provided demonstrates that they were not
designed to influence the U.S. elections.
In contrast to those Russian fakes other fake characters on Facebook, provided by an
Israeli company and revealed today, were clearly
designed to influence elections :
Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at
disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in
spreading disinformation.
...
Many were linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and
lobbying firm that boasts of its social media skills and ability to "change reality."
...
On its website, Archimedes presents itself as a consulting firm involved in campaigns for
presidential elections.
Little information is available beyond its slogan, which is "winning campaigns
worldwide," and a vague blurb about the group's "mass social media management" software,
which it said enabled the operation of an "unlimited" number of online accounts.
Don't expect any protest from Washington DC about such obvious election interference in
other countries.
"... a release of the communications with the Obama administration would " be the
logical, necessary first step in removing all the anti-Russian sanctions, theft of diplomatic
property, and so forth--except--that isn't what the actual policy is toward Russia: Russia's
the declared "existential threat" #1 of 2 to Outlaw US Empire National Security; so, any
actual accommodation--"normalization of relations/communications--with Russia remains off the
table.
Why?
The Controlling Oligarchy still believes it can overcome what's becoming an Eurasian
Alliance to its Zero-sum plan for the planet. Such a conclusion clearly isn't determined by
facts or logic but by the long entrenched metaphysical dogma in the Controlling Oligarchy's
exceptionalism and that its God of Mammon is on its side. Fantastical delusion, certainly,
that only operates within the alternative reality the Controlling Oligarchy's constructed for
itself and its slaves/disciples. That construct has its roots in the ongoing denial of
historical reality over the past 2,000+ years, whose true reality was recovered by Michael
Hudson's Peabody Museum Team.
... There you have it, one glorious president, same guy different year. But Lavrov, again
shows grace under fire. This guy is amazing. He is more than a match for Trump, or any low
brow now representing the USA.
Trump does engage in a lot of kayfabe - like his "fake news" conflict with our controlled
press.
But the new McCarthyism is much more. This is a serious Deep State-approved policy to
weaken Russia, kettle Europe, and stifle dissent.
lysias , May 16, 2019 4:46:00 PM |
linkReally? , May 16, 2019 4:46:10 PM |
link
"And i know all the points made that Russia could not have hacked them, but all the opposing
evidence is much stronger IMHO, "
This statement is quite worrisome.
It is akin to the Mueller investigation itself: evidence-free, or evidence bending and
distorting.
IMO any hypothesis/theory of the crime has to account for all available physical evidence and
forensics. If it doesn't either there is something wrong with the hypothesis, or with the
evidence. Unless you can provide counter-evidence to Binney's assessment and evidence that
there was a leak, not a hack, then I don't think your conclusion has much value--becomes a
garbage in, garbage out situation.
The problem with Jackrabbit's @3 account is that it takes seriously the notion that Trump is
a "nationalist," which he's not. His rhetoric is nationalist, as is arguably his "trade war"
with China, but every major foreign policy action he's undertaken could have been undertaken
by any of the last four Presidents and most would have been undertaken by Clinton. I agree
with Jackrabbit that the correct inference to draw from the Trump administration's failure to
publish the exonerating correspondence is that the new McCarthyism is policy, on some level.
The only difference between Trump and Clinton is that she knew this was the new policy going
into the election and even had a hand in creating its pretext, while Trump was informed only
later.
Why is this policy? Not because Henry Kissinger says so. It is because the last years of
the Obama presidency leading into the 2016 election witnessed a noticeable rise of social and
political disaffection among Americans due to rapidly increasing inequality post the 2008-09
bailout and this was perceived as threatening the viability (ie propagandistic utility) of
the two major parties and corporate media narratives, these being the two institutions most
captured by and useful for the oligarchic elites. The Russia-meddling narrative would have
been put forward even if Clinton had won, though probably under a different guise. Its main
function was to recapture domestic politics and party stability by creating a foreign enemy
that could be presented to the masses as the cause of American social unrest. The masses,
being stupid and gullible, would soon fall into line, and yearn for a "return" to the
"normalcy"--ie the status quo iniquities--of the political order. This, in fact, is the very
premise of Biden's--the favored restorationist's-- presidential campaign.
If there is a "reason" that Trump was allowed to be elected, it is probably that the
collapse of the Democratic Party poses a bigger threat to the elite than the collapse of the
Republican Party does, because the Democratic Party is meant to absorb and neuter social
democratic movements coming from the Left. Hence there needed to be a mechanism whereby
Democratic Party allegiance was strengthened. Russia-meddling narrative did exactly this. It
successfully present social democratic critiques of Party leadership as suspicious and
illegitimate and presented the Party itself as the victim of nefarious influence, thereby
reinspiring the allegiance of its
members.
The whole theater surrounding the 2020 election is to prevent the populist upsurge of the
2016 election from taking hold. It is largely working. I suspect Biden will be nominated as
Democratic nominee during the second ballot of the election, and he will narrowly beat it
narrowly lose to Trump. Of course there are multiple parties that benefit from the
Russia-meddling narrative. But I think that reestablishing narrative control over domestic
politics was the chief purpose of the narrative, not Kissinger's foreign policy op ed.
I think that events subsequent to 2016 support this narrative.
The problem is with the artificial construct of "election interference" which lots of
countries do in the US by funding certain politicians. The Clinton Foundation is a big
elephant.
Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense
contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.' A
freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought
services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years.
In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the "provision of external training".
Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the "procurement of target audience
analysis".
In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a 'list X' contractor for the MOD. A
List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government
information marked as 'confidential' and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to
hold British government secrets on its premises.
Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an
official, this was to provide "research and analytical support in connection with our
mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas." This was not the only
work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added...
So Britain interfered in the US elections in two ways - as a psychological warfare company
laying a trail to Russia and as a "private" secret service company - Orbis - claiming that
there was a Russian conspiracy.
In order to believe that Russia tried to influence the US election by releasing information
to American voters, you would have to believe that
1) Russia preferred one candidate over the others, (although Putin has pointed out that US
policy marches on, unencumbered by any particular front man in the White House)
2) That Russia believes that American voters carefully research the candidates and base their
votes on facts and reason. Why would Russia believe this? I certainly don't. And the reaction
of the Dems to the Mueller Report makes it particularly obvious that facts don't penetrate
into the minds of Dems. (It should go without saying that Reps are equally resistant to
facts.)
3) That Russia knew that the DNC had emails which showed that the Clinton campaign rigged the
primaries against Sanders. Why would Russia know that? And did Russia also shoot down Seth
Rich, in order to make it look like Clinton racked up another body? As Jackrabbit points out,
above, we are told that Clinton actually got 3 million more votes than Trump, so clearly, the
leaks, the information and the dead body meant very little to American voters.
I also agree with Jackrabbit that this hysteria against Russia started before the 2016
election. Does no one remember the coup in Ukraine? The propaganda started then.
And the purposes of this propaganda push are obvious, and are playing out now.
A big part is the attempt of our owners to regain access to the wealth of Russia, as they
had under their drunken puppet Yeltsin, in the 90s. The sanctions, the NATO expansion, the
military "exercises" on the border...all justified (in their propaganda) by the "Russian
threat".
Also to push for censorship and control over social media. Listen to their speeches, watch
their actions, and it is very clear that they intend to shut down the horizontal flow of
information between humans around the world that social media made possible, for a few, brief
years.
And the ramping up of the divisions in the US population, by calling anyone who voted for
Trump a "racist", which annoys the hell out of people, leading to anger and increased
hostility, which is then blamed on the Russians, in a transparent (to normal people) case of
psychological projection. They are pushing for civil war, in order to divide and conquer the
people, and they are blaming the obvious increase of tensions on the Russians.
The "Russian interference" theory is useful for diverting attention away from the Israeli
interference FACT. Trump is a willing stooge of the Israelis and therefore will do nothing
substantial to bury the Russian interference theory.
You raise some good points. Russiagate is very much about Narrative Control and thus about
Masses Control since that's Narrative Control's purpose. However, enough insurgents were
elected who are quite savvy and fearless, and who are getting media exposure to advance their
issues. Furthermore, reality is crushing Narrative Control, and the insurgents are very good
to link real life context to the issues they champion--that FOX in some respects is no longer
a member of BigLie Media (Tucker Carlson, Sanders Town Hall, and others) is very important.
Toss in the 737-MAX scandal and its immediate connections to 2008, and the Controlling
Oligarchy has more than one big problem. As for Biden, IMO his association with Obama and
Clinton along with his own gaffs will sink him well before the Convention.
Like many, I hadn't read Kissinger's "Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World
Order" since it resided behind the WSJ's paywall. And it's hidden there for a very good
reason--it's premised on a totally false version of the post-WW2 world and the actions of the
Outlaw US Empire. Indeed, it's an excellent example of the alternative reality believed by
the Controlling Oligarchy, which is the essay's intended audience. Here's a whopper from
paragraph 2:
"The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward
peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching
goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and
substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries."
Please compare that with the actual events--covert and overt--immediately following WW2
and the implementation of the UN Charter and Organization. The Cold War was already ongoing
policy; the fundamental tenets of the UN Charter were already being undermined, and
unilateral action was seen as required to control peoples deemed unreasonable--because they
didn't want to follow the diktats of their former colonial masters. And that's just the
beginning of a complete, utter fabrication of history.
Here's the paragraph that introduces the notion of a Rules-based Order:
"A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and
cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon rules, can be our hope and should
be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of
intermediary stages."
Of course, such an order already exists--the UN and its and additional codices of
International Law. Is Kissinger trying to remind his audience of the #1 policy goal of the
Outlaw US Empire--Full Spectrum Domination--since enthusiasm for it was waning thanks to the
Ukraine Crisis (which was deemed a crisis because Crimea wasn't taken)?
What pathology is Kissinger displaying? He's clearly lying deliberately, but how many in
his intended audience know he's lying? Chomsky famously noted that delusional ideas can still
be rational. I'm sure others will comment now that Kissinger's essay's no longer hidden.
That is an interesting transcript to read. Much of what it says dovetails with the
conversation Peter AU 1 and Karlof1 were having in the comments forum attached to B's
previous post (comments 85 - 87) and my addition @ 96 with regard to psychological projection
and the phenomenon of shared psychosis, the latter which is now well known in Australia due
to a case involving five members of a family in Victoria in 2016.
It's possible that what we have been seeing in Washington DC for decades (and what we are
still seeing in one form or another) is a form of shared psychosis or mass hysteria. The
hysteria over Communism during the 1950s never really went away; it has transformed into the
Russiagate scandal of today with its focus on the Trump government.
Maybe there is also a class warfare aspect to Russiagate as well, just as there was to the
mass hysteria directed at Communism: both phenomena focus on particular scapegoats made to
represent the manifestation of the fears of a ruling class that knows it does not deserve its
position in society.
"Why would it be so bad if Russia finally did hit back the same way it has been
treated?"
Because it would constitute a great moral error for Russia and a blow to its rapidly
rising credibility and trustworthiness. Here are several maxims: First and foremost--The
Golden Rule; Second--you don't stoop to the level of your opponent; rather, expose the
difference as much as possible. Third, and almost as important as #1--Honor &
Dignity.
In the eyes of the genuine International Community, Russia and China have striven
extremely hard to differentiate themselves and their goals from that of the Outlaw US Empire
and can now count @2/3s of the world's nations behind them, and that number grows daily while
the reputation of the West sinks. Even stalwarts of the West admit this as Merkel did earlier
today, which I linked on the previous thread. Thirty years ago, the USSR was coming apart at
its seams because for decades it tried to continue a fantasy, a non-reality. Putin and his
cadre demand honesty, reality, and accountability. Today Putin took part in the plenary
session of The Truth and Justice Regional and Local Media Forum, which is part of an ongoing
series aimed at the uplifting of Russia and Russians, and to try and attain the desired
results, Putin must have unimpeachable credibility. And he does.
Assuming this theory is right (and I doubt it), then there's two main possibilities as to 1)
why the USA is witholding it and 2) why Russia is in no hurry to release it. My guess is a
combination of:
a) the information is simply deemed too damaging to the USA soft power, to the point even
Trump doesn't want to release it to the public; and/or the deep state is essentially blocking
it from going public for the same reason.
b) this Russophobe situation is not all that bad to the political faction in Russia who
wants it to remain sovereign relative to the USA (i.e. the Eurasianists). Trade between the
two countries was already almost null before the sanctions (less than 5% of each country's
total trade), so they aren't really affecting their economies. Besides, Russia gains the
rationale to stifle its neoliberals at home (Yeltsin and the liberals) and maintain United
Russia in power. It also gives Putin a legitimate excuse to dump US Treasury bonds, build its
own internet servers, increase its relations with China and drive a wedge between Europe and
the US.
c) if Russia released unilaterally, it would be born lifeless, since the Western MSM would
accuse this info was fake news fabricated by the "Russian propaganda machine", thus defeating
its own purpose.
d) it would hurt Trump's own base, since his doctrine is that of the "Clash of
Civilizations", i.e. that the world is defined at a macro level by a cultural war, whose
ultimate antagonism lies between the Caucasian "Western Civilization" (Christian and white
plus their honorable whites: the Japanese and South Korean) and the "Yellows" (Chinese). If
the info released could paint a picture of cooperation between those "LGBT-loving" Democrats
and the "Strong, Orthodox" Russians, then this fantasy world would shatter to pieces.
vk
, May 16, 2019 7:40:12 PM |
linkCurtis , May 16, 2019 7:43:27 PM |
link
The MSM portrayed this NOT as Russian denial of interference but Russia using US interference
as an excuse for their own. It's the usual spin.
Haaretz. Isn't it amazing what they can print but our own media won't touch? That's why
the alt-media in the US does so well and why the MSM and tech giants fight it.
Piotr @7: The Russian
transcript which matches the Russian words Putin is shown speaking on video) does indeed
speak specifically of elections [выборы]. That seems an
important difference, and it is possible that Putin included that comment off-script. In
which case, the english-language media, rather than actually translating what was said,
simply transcribed a pre-conference script document prepared for them in advance.
Given the way the English-speaking media behaves, such behavior seems like it would be
true-to-form.
What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the
Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media
retardations?
You underestimate your opponents. Which makes a lot of your analyses garbage. And i don't
like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses, please.
You're right, Trump is not actually a nationalist. I've often written that he's a faux
populist . Trump was the only MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist on the right. His hiring of Manafort furthered the 'Russian collusion' narrative as well as his very
public requests that Russia deliver Clinton emails and his praise of Putin. Trump said he wouldn't prosecute Hillary within days of winning, saying "they've been
through a lot" and has strangely brought friends and has associates of his Deep State
enemies into his Administration:
VP Pence was close to McCain;
CIA Director Gina Haspel is associated with Brennan;
AG Wm Barr is a long-time friend of Mueller (and Mueller is Comey's mentor);
"And i know all the points made that Russia could not have hacked them, but all the opposing
evidence is much stronger IMHO, including analysis and inside knowlegde from current
intelligence personal at SST."
Hmm, you sound just like all of the many clowns who have have been peddling the risible
Russiagate hoax for the last 2 & 1/2 years! Always chirping about big fat masses of
"evidence" that somehow they just can't reveal to the sorry unwashed masses of us, you know,
"for reasons of national security," although they, just like you, evidently, will generously
deign to provide us with "analysis and knowlegde [sic] from current intelligence personal
[sic] at SST," -- whatever the Hell that silly esoteric acronymn is supposed to denominate,
-- who are, of course, to be believed implicitly even though they have a very
well-documented, seventy year record of spouting the most egregious lies in their quest to
maximize their own increasingly mafia-like power. No thanks, "Don't believe either
propaganda" I personally don't find your non-evidentiary propaganda nearly so compelling as
the meticulous VIPS' refutation of the whole nonsense about "Russian hacking" of the DNC, a
refutation which, by the way, has also been repeatedly corroborated by Julian Assange, whose
record of veracity, I dare say, would put to shame any comparable record that could possibly
be produced by you, or even any of the other self-appointed "analysts" at your so trusted
"SST," -- if indeed that acronym refers to anything at all!!
... also, per what Putin actually said, "Mueller confirmed the absence of any kind of
traces and any kind of arrangements between Russia and the current administration, which
[russia] has characterized since the beginning as total nonsense."
I am constantly dissatisfied with the quality of Russian-to-English translation from such
official sources. It's no 'overload' button, but still , precision in words and
grammar matters....
Mr. Lavrov said, "we believe that publishing it (emails between the two entities
communicating about cyberspace issues) would remove many currently circulating
fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make these exchanges public..."
I haven't seen the fabrications to which he is referring. Has anyone seen the fabrications of
the messages he is speaking about?
This is the part that's relevant to Trump as the MAGA candidate:
Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America's
exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside
their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course.
This is his prescription given after listing all the problems facing his cherished
international order.
I was skeptical of Kissinger's Op-ed of March 5th, saying (on April 28th): "Kissinger
penned a "lets be reasonable" Op-ed in an attempt to head off Russian action and maintain
the gains made via "facts on the ground".
Kissinger again feels the need to join the public conversation but I see his
contribution very differently than Banger. My reading is that Kissinger is asserting that
the US can and should do whatever it takes to keep the US preeminent – even if that
means ignoring allies and/or the post-war international structure (UN, UNSC). That
exceptional! message comes through loud and clear despite his 'triage' formalism. And it is
a message that is comforting to the elite who read the WSJ (before a holiday weekend),
though it should give Joe Sixpack nightmares if fully understood.
There is a lot more there which would take much longer to unpack. But I'll point to
one more thing: Note how he forms an equivalence between all the troubles that the 'West'
now face, and ignores US/Western actions that have contributed to these conflicts by
conflating them. NC readers understand this via Merschemer's (in today's links) work on
Ukraine and many links regarding ISIS (like this one).
This comforting message is needed because the Ukraine gambit has failed miserably
– as many independent oberservers [sic] predicted– and a deeper conflict
with Russia (possibly extending to others) is now in the cards. Like the true neocon that
he is, Kissinger has doubled down on Nuland's obnoxious and misguided "f*ck the EU" with an
exceptional! "f*ck the World".
@ Passer 44 India joined the US and betrayed Iran. MK Bhadrakumar (who is not a fan of the US) himself
admits it. . . i don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses,
please.
MKB didn't "admit it," he rued it. You left that part out.
Delhi falls in line with the US diktat on Iran sanctions, which of course will hit the
Indian economy very badly, while the US is also at the same time aggressively demanding
that India should open up its market for American exports. Why can't the Modi government
prioritise India's economic concerns?. . . here
And MKB chastised India as cowards:
The running theme in all this is that India's strategic ties with Iran, Russia and China
are coming under challenge from Washington. But the big question is how come Washington
regards the "muscular" Modi government with a 56″ chest to be made of such cowardly
stuff? Are the ruling elites so thoroughly compromised with the Americans? There are no
easy answers.
I don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analysis, please.
Modi, if he gets reelected and given this decision that's a huge IF, India's economy will
crash as Iranian oil was being bought at a discount. Also, this will greatly damage future
BRI prospects and a host of other matters. IOW, Modi did NOT act in his or India's
fundamental interest. Of course, it's even more likely now that he'll lose and the flow of
Iranian oil will resume in order to keep India's economy alive. A more apt title for that
item would be Modi's suicide.
Aside from the burden of proof you need to provide to back up your belief that the DNC
emails were hacked by Russians - which others here have pointed out is not supported by
available evidence - you need to say why you believe the moral and right thing for Russia to
do is to get involved in a tit-4-tat cycle of revenge for wrongs both real and perceived.
The other problem with your argument is that it appears to be based on a narrow range of
sources, and quite dubious sources at that, which happen to agree with one another. Intel
agencies are as likely to rely on rumour, innuendo and fake news, to the extent of shaping
reports of real events into something completely different, if they believe that will advance
their aims.
This is why the CIA was mightily upset when in 2017 Wikileaks revealed the infamous
hacking tools known as Vault
7 that the agency uses to hack information and then attach fake metadata to its hacking
efforts to cover them and implicate foreign agencies.
A
HREF="http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3646994">MFA
transcript
The word Lavrov used,
"измышления", means more
literally, "things that have been made up". You are reading nuances into a word that was
poorly-chosen as a translation.
@ karlof1 52
As MKB pointed out, it's also in India's fundamental interest to retain its interests in Iran
regarding the Chabahar port entrance into central Asia, in competition with China &
Pakistan's Gwadar port. Modi is basically an anti-Muslim loser, keeping in mind that India
has about as many Muslims as Pakistan has. I suppose he thinks it will help him in the
election.
As I wrote, Kissinger was knowingly lying. If he actually believed those myths, he's more
delusional than I imagined.
I highly suggest reading the transcript james linked @35. Kissinger can be lumped in with
all the other deniers.
As I wrote above, the USSR crashed into an impenetrable wall called Reality. The USA is in
the process of doing the same although the results will differ. Trump isn't MAGA; he's
MAW--Make America Worse as that's the reality.
Thanks for adding that. Our assessments of Modi are quite similar. I hope he's replaced.
India has so much potential, but it's rarely had a leader to match.
@ karlof1 59
Yes India has potential, but meanwhile is quite backward especially compared to China in
terms of transport and infrastructure. It's too bad, the people are wonderful, Hindus,
Muslims and Christians getting along with no help from Modi.
Did i say that they are not cowards? Does it matter? Does it matter if MK did not like
it?
Are you an idiot? What kind of low quality thinking is that?
The point (at least for me) is not whether MK likes what happened or not. Or whether i
like it. Sometimes in life bad things happen, no matter what your side is.
The point is already mentioned in the second part of my first comment.
karlof1 | May 16, 2019 8:26:07 PM | 52
Yes, India already has plenty of issues with BRI, especially CPEC. They refused to
participate recently in one of the forums if i remember correctly. Yes, there is no doubt
that there is a price to pay for India. Yet you can see what is happening with India and
Brazil. The US is working towards the weakening of BRICS and multipolarity in general.
So: how do you explain the US gaining power in India and Brazil if the US is collapsing?
Unless they are stronger than some people think.
@37 jen.. yes - a bit like the previous conversation, but of relevance here too... i don't
know how much of it is intentional, or a result of all drinking the same kooaid for so long,
they become immune to an alternative viewpoint.. lots of room for speculation..
In a word--Corruption. I'll leave it to you to explain to the hundreds of homeless I just
finished walking amongst in Portland, Oregon, and the additional million+ nationwide that the
USA isn't "collapsing."
In continuation of our discussion on the psychological issues at play within the Outlaw US
Empire, I offer this
assessment just published by The Saker which is filled with links to prove his
assertions:
"[Sidebar: this issue is crucial to the understanding of the United States. The US is an
extremely developed country, but not a civilized one. Oscar Wilde (and George Clemanceau) had
it right: "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between". There are signs of that everywhere in the USA: from the feudal
labor laws, to the lack of universal healthcare, to absolutely ridiculous mandatory criminal
sentences (the Soviet Penal Code under Stalin was MUCH more reasonable and civilized than the
current US laws!), to the death penalty, to the socially accepted torture in GITMO and
elsewhere, to racial tensions, the disgusting "food" constituting the typical "SAD" diet, to
the completely barbaric "war on drugs", to the world record of incarcerations, to an immense
epidemic of sexual assaults and rapes (1/5 of all women in the USA!), homosexuality accepted
as a "normal and positive variation of human sexuality", 98 percent of men reported internet
porn use in the last six months, – you can continue that list ad nauseam. Please don't
misunderstand me – there are as many kind, intelligent, decent, honorable, educated,
compassionate people in the USA as anywhere else. This is not about the people living in the
USA: it is about the kind of society these people are living in. In fact, I would argue the
truism that US Americans are the first victims of the lack of civilization of their own
society! Finally, a lack of civilization is not always a bad thing, and sometimes it can make
a society much more dynamic, more flexible, more innovative too. But yeah, mostly it sucks
]"
Passer by, are you alright? It is just...I don't know...you sound a bit disturbed. Who said
retarded other than you? Are you retarded? Hmmmm...
Now if you asked whether there are corrupt and worthless "leaders" in India and other
places who are either too frightened or too greedy to stand up to murican demands.... oh
wait, never mind....
On the other hand, the US has many secular and religious groups doing what they can alleviate
the suffering that surely exists, a very civilized behavior. Community groups in action, the
kind of society we live in, in areas where the government has failed. . .But I do feel left
out, 98 percent of US men reported internet porn use in the last six months and I didn't get
any. . . Had to do it myself!
In his book, The Dönmeh Jews, D. Mustafa Turan writes that Wahhab's grandfather, Tjen
Sulayman, was actually Tjen Shulman, a member of the Jewish community of Basra, Iraq. The
Iraqi intelligence report also states that in his book, The Dönmeh Jews and the Origin
of the Saudi Wahhabis, Rifat Salim Kabar reveals that Shulman eventually settled in the
Hejaz, in the village of al-Ayniyah what is now Saudi Arabia, where his grandson founded the
Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Iraqi intelligence report states that Shulman had been banished
from Damascus, Cairo, and Mecca for his "quackery." In the village, Shulman sired Abdul
Wahhab. Abdel Wahhab's son, Muhammad, founded modern Wahhabism.
the house of saud is kosher chabad stamp seal approved
And it is still meaningless. You deliberately confuse the people of a nation with their
leaders. What I said is on firmer ground and you know it's true. There will always be men who
favor lining their own pockets in the short run rather than sticking to a course that pays
off better in the long.
I see a problem with rose colored articles or over optimistic assessments. That's it.
Indrid Cold | May 16, 2019 9:37:52 PM | 73
I do see leaders as some kind of representation of their people. Did't they say that
people get the leaders they deserve? What you said is that their elites are corrupt or
worthless.
Well, what i say is that if there are so many worhless elites on this world, in the
various parts of it, it is no wonder the US has been ruling it for some time.
karlof1 shared the link peter au was looking for.. i know it is some effort to read others
comments, and i am as guilty as the next, but if you want to read the link see @29 karlof1
where he shares what kissinger says in the wsj...
india is in the middle of an election.. it happens this weekend... politicians at election
times have a habit of saying things that they don't necessarily keep... i think you overlook
important details like this here... i think it makes your commentary that much weaker.
No, sadly, a people get the leaders they get...that is all. The choices are just not there. I
mean, we got a choice between an orange freak of a reality show host and a gangland
matriarch. Wonderful times! American leadership is the most corrupt in the world, no wonder
their kindred souls in other lands gravitate towards them.
Russia was instrumental in causing US to back down from their planned bombing of Syria in
September 2013.
In February 2014 forces friendly to the West seized control of Ukraine. Nuland was
recorded planning for the new Ukrainian government and saying "fuck the EU!". But Russia
acted to support pro-Russian elements in Ukraine. Kissinger attempted to intervene as a
'voice of reason' saying that Russia and US should seek the least worst outcome for the two
of them. But Russia didn't back down and accept the "facts on the ground". Crimea voted to be
part of Russia in May and the Donbas rebels beat back Ukraine's army for the last time in
August.
This was very different behavior that what the West had come to expect from Russia. It
became clear that Russia had outsmarted the West (the parts of Ukraine the West got was a
basket case) and was willing to act decisively when their interest were threatened. The
Russia-China alliance was suddenly realized to be a real threat to Western NWO hegemony.
American leadership is the most corrupt in the world.
A big part of the "leader" problem is that we really don't need them, especially in a
claimed (not actual) democracy. The president is constitutionally supposed to be an
executive, one who executes laws.
Edward Abbey: "No man is wise enough to be another man's master. Each man's as good as the
next -- if not a damn sight better."
I have always regarded Passer by as a troll. Usually he is ignored. He scored a lot of
engagement tonight. Who could have guessed that such an obviously confrontational and
insulting approach would cause others to waste their time on him. It's a trick straight out
of the manual.
I never understand why confrontational language prompts a response. One would think that
in a world of courteous discourse, it would prompt complete disregard.
Then you are lucky because i won't bother you for the rest of the day like i'm supposed
to. I will just say that i get called names in various places, even in places i'm supportive
of. I'm pretty critical person and do not easily agree with others. This is how i'm. From
time to time, not very often, i'm may come here, when i feel disturbed by something in
geopolitics, to see what intelligent people think. That's it.
@ Grieved
I understand not responding to confrontation; I was responding to misstated facts. They
shouldn't be allowed to stand. I didn't touch "Are you an idiot." . . .How would I know? :)
Thank you for that link to the transcript of the Aaron Maté interview with Gabor,
his father. I had downloaded the interview but not found time to watch it. Wonderful
perspective from Gabor.
I think I've now read the first true diagnosis of US society and polity and they grapple
with the appalling fact of Trump. All the terms he uses to describe the nation are terms we
are very familiar with in describing individuals, but not quite with nations.
If this were an individual we were describing - an individual deeply traumatized and
seeking to blame the external rather than to own the internal - them we would say the
recommendation is for emotional intelligence. This is what we're seeing the US needs in its
societal and institutional life: emotional intelligence. And the obvious lack of it describes
the current time of the US perfectly.
@ Grieved
The "appalling fact of Trump" was entirely due to the appalling facts that caused Americans
to vote for him, including professional politicians who entirely disregarded the populace in
deference to themselves, especially starting wars and exporting jobs.
2018 - Guys, Russia is in deep trouble. No wonder Putin is so silent, there will never
be S-300 for Syria, Israel can bomb whatever it wants and russian officials are begging for a
meeting with Trump. [...]
2018 - Is Putin capitulating? Pro US Alexei Kudrin could join new government to
negotiate "end of sanctions" with the West.
Regular themes of incredibly weak Russia vs amazingly strong US
2018 - Do you know what the way for weakening the US is? Israel and the Zionists. You
should tacitly support them...
Russia should actually covertly support AIPAC in the US.
Somebody in the pissant apartheid state believes this is a clever approach. Obama-style
eleven dimensional chess?
karlof1 @ 61 Oscar Wilde (and George Clemanceau) had it right: "America is the only country that went
from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between"
What a great line.
I move from Trump losing the next election to Trump winning the next election each time
another Democrat steps in the ring. The whole phony Russia interference story has left many
around me disappointing and disillusioned. Shell shocked may be a better description. It was
impossible to reason with them and talk things out. I made many enemies to the point of
losing work just trying to discuss the silliness of the allegations from day 1.
I have long ago put the whole thing behind me but I see the Turd is turning the other way
with the investigations on the investigators. He has two years to strategically trickle
information out while the harebrained media makes martyrs out the purveyors of this trash to
cover their own asses.
The average US voter literally has no clue as to how these type of operations work
historically. They are driven by emotion and hysteria but many are seen thru the BS. More
than I have ever seen in my lifetime.
I read Passer by as reminding us that the US continues to hold continents in its thrall
while carrying out world-scale crimes and injustices with impunity. For all the talk of the
"weakening" of the Anglo-Zionist empire--talk that is to some extent objectively rooted in
fact but that also, if we are being honest with ourselves, is driven by our desire that it be
true -- it still remains the most coordinated networked aggressive juggernaut of destruction
on the planet. Delays and setbacks on one or two fronts here or there have not stopped its
ongoing machinations and have not led other countries to withstand or counter its coercion.
(The European and Indian capitulation on Iran being a case in point.) I take it that Passer
by is angered at all this and means to counter what he/she takes to be somewhat rosy-eyed
prognoses of the empire's imminent internal collapse. Maybe such anger leads Passer by to
launch the occasional ad hominem, which I don't seek to justify but can certainly
understand--having had a few intemperate internet exchanges of my own over the years. I don't
think Passer by is a troll. I think Passer by is a pessimist. There is a place for honest
pessimism in any ongoing dialectic that seeks understanding in my view. I sometimes don't
like to read what Passer by writes because I would prefer that what he/she writes not be
true. Maybe my fear that it *is* true--or is just as true as what I hold--is what irks
me.
"I conveyed that there are things that Russia can do to demonstrate that these types of
activities are a thing of the past"
What is this fallacy called, is it Begging the Question? The same as "Have you stopped
beating your wife?"?
In any event it strongly reminds me of a similar rhetorical trick used by US politicos and
pundits from all across the ideological spectrum, concerning those still (and ever at any
time) held in Gitmo. Things such as " the danger if we release them without trial, to
willing countries, is that they'll return to the battlefield ". That's what the trial
would be! To find out whether they were ever actually ON "the battlefield" in the first
place! Instead of pointed to for a $50 reward by desperate or spiteful locals.
Their guilt, the prior assumption, that all of them were "on the battlefield" is simply
assumed, even in the very same context that laments that the US has no actual evidence to
convict them on that assumption. This kind of BS is infuriating, and even moreso since I
can't recall it ever being questioned by the "most left" Democrat or pundit, to the "most
libertarian" etc. A website I found a couple years ago that's been around much longer than my
being ignorant, FAIR, does a good job paying attention to these little rhetorical and diction
choices. "Regime" vs. "government, and so on. And there are probably books on this I haven't
read so maybe this is redundant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the
Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media
retardations?
You underestimate your opponents. Which makes a lot of your analyses garbage. And i don't
like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses, please.
Posted by: Passer by | May 16, 2019 7:53:20 PM | 44
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Consider:
=/ You underestimate your opponents. /=
Probably most of the individuals commenting here are USans, or are friends of the USans.
So you are implying that we are somehow our own opponents. Such is not the case. We are
opponents of the CIA Mafia that has taken control of our governments.
If we had real elections with strategic hedge simple score voting we might be able to cast
away these parasitic usurpers. So until we get real democracy (and defeat the ranked choice
voting (RCV/IRV) conspiracy) we will continue to object to the monstrous policies being
foisted upon us by the CIA Mafia.
"... United States is neither a Republic and even less Socialistic. US, in the technical literature, is called a Polyarchy (state capitalism). Polyarchy (state capitalism) idea is old, it goes back to James Madison and the foundation of the US Constitution. A Polyarchy is a system in which power resides in the hands of those who Madison called the wealth of the nation. The educated and responsible class of men. The rest of the population is to be fragmented and distracted. They are allowed to participate every couple of years by voting. That's it. The population have little choice among the educated and responsible men they are voting for. ..."
"... Polyarchy (state capitalism) it is a system where small group actually rules on behalf of capital, and majority's decision making is confined to choosing among selective number of elites within tightly controlled elective process. It is a form of consensual domination made possible by the structural domination of the global capital which allowed concentration of political powers. ..."
Uh, no, Tom, she won't be collecting a lot of voters, well, at least not near enough. Biden
has already been "chosen" like Hillary was over Bernie last time. You should know by now Tom,
we don't select our candidates, they're chosen for us for our own good. 2 hours ago
This is going to take a long time. You just can't turn this ship around overnight.
US Political System:
United States is neither a Republic and even less Socialistic. US, in the technical
literature, is called a Polyarchy (state capitalism). Polyarchy (state capitalism) idea is old,
it goes back to James Madison and the foundation of the US Constitution. A Polyarchy is a
system in which power resides in the hands of those who Madison called the wealth of the
nation. The educated and responsible class of men. The rest of the population is to be
fragmented and distracted. They are allowed to participate every couple of years by voting.
That's it. The population have little choice among the educated and responsible men they are
voting for.
This is not an accident. America was founded on the principle, explained by the Founding
Father that the primary goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against
the majority. That is how the US Constitution was designed sort of ensuring that there will be
a lot of struggle. US is not as the same as it were two centuries ago but that remains the
elites ideal.
Polyarchy (state capitalism) it is a system where small group actually rules on behalf of
capital, and majority's decision making is confined to choosing among selective number of
elites within tightly controlled elective process. It is a form of consensual domination made
possible by the structural domination of the global capital which allowed concentration of
political powers.
A republic is SUBORDINATE to democracy. Polyarchy can't be subordinated to any form of
Democracy. 2 hours ago Is the author, to use an English term, daft? Tulsi Gabbard won't get out
of the primaries, much less defeat Sanders or Biden. Farage achieved his goal (Brexit), then
found out (SHOCK!) that the will of the people doesn't mean anything anymore.
If Luongo had wanted to talk about the people's uprising, he should've mentioned the Tea
Party. 3 hours ago Gabbard appears to have some moral fibre and half a backbone, at least for a
politician, regardless of their views, Farage is a slimy charlatan opportunistic populist shill
3 hours ago (Edited) I like Tulsi Gabbard on MIC stuff (and as a surfer in my youth - still
dream about that almost endless pipeline at Jeffreys Bay in August), but...
On everything else?
She votes along party lines no matter what bollocks legislation the Democrats put in front
of Congress. And anyone standing full-square behind Saunders on his socialist/marxist
agenda?
Do me a favour. 1 hour ago (Edited) Farage left because he saw what UKIP was becoming...a
zionazi party.
Also Gabbard is a CFR member. 3 hours ago Gold, Goats and Guns? Certainly not guns under
President Gabbard! Here's her idea of "common sense gun control:"
I'm totally against warmongering, but I have to ask - what good is it to stop foreign
warmongering, only to turn around and incite civil war here by further raping the 2nd
Amendment? The CFR ties are disturbing as hell, too. And to compare Gabbard to Ron Paul? No,
just...no! 3 hours ago Always been a fan of Bernie, but I hope Gabbard becomes president. The
world would breathe a huge sigh of relief (before the assassination). 4 hours ago By this time
in his 1st term, Obama had started the US Wars in Syria and Libya and has restarted the Iraq
War.
Thus far Trump has ended the War in Syria, pledged not to get us dragged into Libya's civil
wars and started a peace process with North Korea.
Venezuela and Iran look scary. We don't know what Gabbard would actually do when faced with
the same events. Obama talked peace too.
Uh, no, Tom, she won't be collecting a lot of voters, well, at least not near enough. Biden
has already been "chosen" like Hillary was over Bernie last time. You should know by now Tom,
we don't select our candidates, they're chosen for us for our own good. 2 hours ago
This is going to take a long time. You just can't turn this ship around overnight.
US Political System:
United States is neither a Republic and even less Socialistic. US, in the technical
literature, is called a Polyarchy (state capitalism). Polyarchy (state capitalism) idea is old,
it goes back to James Madison and the foundation of the US Constitution. A Polyarchy is a
system in which power resides in the hands of those who Madison called the wealth of the
nation. The educated and responsible class of men. The rest of the population is to be
fragmented and distracted. They are allowed to participate every couple of years by voting.
That's it. The population have little choice among the educated and responsible men they are
voting for.
This is not an accident. America was founded on the principle, explained by the Founding
Father that the primary goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against
the majority. That is how the US Constitution was designed sort of ensuring that there will be
a lot of struggle. US is not as the same as it were two centuries ago but that remains the
elites ideal.
Polyarchy (state capitalism) it is a system where small group actually rules on behalf of
capital, and majority's decision making is confined to choosing among selective number of
elites within tightly controlled elective process. It is a form of consensual domination made
possible by the structural domination of the global capital which allowed concentration of
political powers.
A republic is SUBORDINATE to democracy. Polyarchy can't be subordinated to any form of
Democracy. 2 hours ago Is the author, to use an English term, daft? Tulsi Gabbard won't get out
of the primaries, much less defeat Sanders or Biden. Farage achieved his goal (Brexit), then
found out (SHOCK!) that the will of the people doesn't mean anything anymore.
If Luongo had wanted to talk about the people's uprising, he should've mentioned the Tea
Party. 3 hours ago Gabbard appears to have some moral fibre and half a backbone, at least for a
politician, regardless of their views, Farage is a slimy charlatan opportunistic populist shill
3 hours ago (Edited) I like Tulsi Gabbard on MIC stuff (and as a surfer in my youth - still
dream about that almost endless pipeline at Jeffreys Bay in August), but...
On everything else?
She votes along party lines no matter what bollocks legislation the Democrats put in front
of Congress. And anyone standing full-square behind Saunders on his socialist/marxist
agenda?
Do me a favour. 1 hour ago (Edited) Farage left because he saw what UKIP was becoming...a
zionazi party.
Also Gabbard is a CFR member. 3 hours ago Gold, Goats and Guns? Certainly not guns under
President Gabbard! Here's her idea of "common sense gun control:"
I'm totally against warmongering, but I have to ask - what good is it to stop foreign
warmongering, only to turn around and incite civil war here by further raping the 2nd
Amendment? The CFR ties are disturbing as hell, too. And to compare Gabbard to Ron Paul? No,
just...no! 3 hours ago Always been a fan of Bernie, but I hope Gabbard becomes president. The
world would breathe a huge sigh of relief (before the assassination). 4 hours ago By this time
in his 1st term, Obama had started the US Wars in Syria and Libya and has restarted the Iraq
War.
Thus far Trump has ended the War in Syria, pledged not to get us dragged into Libya's civil
wars and started a peace process with North Korea.
Venezuela and Iran look scary. We don't know what Gabbard would actually do when faced with
the same events. Obama talked peace too.
"... BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP. ..."
"... As one example, in its FISA application, the bureau repeatedly and incorrectly assured the court in a footnote that it "does not believe" British ex-spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion, and instead asserted that the Yahoo article provided an independent basis to believe Steele. - Fox News ..."
"... Graham noted a report by The Hill 's John Solomon that the FBI was specifically told that Steele was "keen" to leak his salacious dossier for the purpose of influencing the 2016 US election . The agency also knew that the document's claims were either unverified or disproven , yet it was used anyway against Trump and his campaign. ..."
"... Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are now blaming Loretta Lynch for the botched Hillary/email investigation. ..."
FBI-CIA Dispute Erupts Over Whether Comey Or Brennan Pushed Steele Dossier
by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/16/2019 - 10:25 0 SHARES
Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
A dispute has erupted over whether former FBI Director James Comey or his CIA counterpart, John Brennan, promoted the unverified
Steele dossier as the Obama-era intelligence community targeted the Trump campaign.
According to Fox News , an email chain exists which indicates that Comey told bureau subordinates that Brennan insisted on the
dossier's inclusion in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference . Also interesting is that the dossier
was referred to as "crown material" in the emails - a possible reference to the fact that Steele is a former British spy.
In a statement to Fox, however, a former CIA official "put the blame squarely on Comey ."
"Former Director Brennan, along with former [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, are the ones who opposed James
Comey's recommendation that the Steele Dossier be included in the intelligence report," said the official.
"They opposed this because the dossier was in no way used to develop the ICA," the official continued. "The intelligence analysts
didn't include it when they were doing their work because it wasn't corroborated intelligence, therefore it wasn't used and it wasn't
included. Brennan and Clapper prevented it from being added into the official assessment. James Comey then decided on his own to
brief Trump about the document. "
James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan are starting to publicly argue who was pushing the dossier that ended up in the
intelligence community assessment on Russian interference. The RATS are beginning to turn on each other.
Former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy - a longtime
defender
of the FBI - told Fox News ' Martha MacCallum on Tuesday night that "Comey has a better argument than Brennan, based on what
I've seen."
In March, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested over Twitter that Brennan had "insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier"
be included in the January 2017 ICA .
BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included
in the Intelligence Report... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP.
The dossier was ultimately not included in the ICA according to
previous testimony by Clapper. Meanwhile, word that Comey
had briefed President Trump personally on the dossier - "because he understood reporters already had that information and it could
become public soon if journalists had a "news hook," according to the
Associated Press . And as it so happens - the
fact that Comey briefed Trump is what CNN and Buzzfeed caim
legitimized
their decision to publicly release the salacious and unverified dossier.
Whether the FBI acted appropriately in obtaining the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to Trump campaign
aide Carter Page is now the subject not only of U.S. Attorney John Durham's new probe, but also the ongoing review by Justice
Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber has been conducting his own investigation separately,
although details of his progress were unclear.
As one example, in its FISA application, the bureau
repeatedly and incorrectly assured the court in a footnote that it "does not believe" British ex-spy Christopher Steele was
the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion, and instead asserted that the Yahoo article
provided an independent basis to believe Steele. -
Fox News
On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News that he was pushing to declassify documents which would expose the FBI's dismal
efforts to verify the claims within the dossier.
"There's a document that's classified that I'm gonna try to get unclassified that takes the dossier -- all the pages of it --
and it has verification to one side," said Graham. "There really is no verification, other than media reports that were generated
by reporters that received the dossier."
Graham noted a report by The Hill 's John Solomon that the FBI was specifically told that Steele was "keen" to leak his salacious
dossier for the purpose of influencing the 2016 US election . The agency also knew that the document's claims were either unverified
or
disproven , yet it was used anyway against Trump and his campaign.
The Italian prime minister has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies: DIS,
AISI and AISE. This was all after I outed Mifsud in Rome and the president called the Italian prime minister. Italy has flipped
and are giving up Brennan.
The Italian prime minister has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies:
DIS, AISI and AISE. This was all after I outed Mifsud in Rome and the president called the Italian prime minister. Italy has flipped
and are giving up Brennan.
U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber has been on the job for some months yet narry a peep out of him. There's not even any indication
that he gets out of bed in the morning.
He's a member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, I imagine that should he ever get out of bed, he will whitewash whichever
agency has the most Mormons who might be affected by this scandal.
Back in the sixties, Jack Anderson, a serious investigative journalist and Mormon, noted that to Mormons the US Constitution
is a sacred document given to the founding fathers by God himself. Let's hope Huber honors this Mormon tradition.
Comey was going to blackmail Trump and be the white knight he thinks he is. Even if it were true (which it isn't) Trump didn't
give a ****. Especially after all the lies after lies of trash the Dems have sunk to (like with Kavanaugh). Never be ashamed of
**** you do, and you will be blackmail proof....except for the pedophiles in DC. We know they are there, and when we find out
who they are we will kill them. Comey's a douche.
If you kill all the pedophile in and associated with Washington, the streets will run with blood.
Imagine you or me. If we have a little sexual kink--even a little one--there is little we can do about it but fantasize or
find an occasional person/animal/or vegetable to accommodate us. But if you hold great power or are super-rich, you don't need
to fantasize. You can act out your little kink with impunity. If you hold great power or are super-rich and you have a very, very
evil kink, you can exercise it with impunity. I often thought of that looking at **** Cheney's eyes. They're the eyes of a madman.
He could have sliced and diced a man, woman, child or beast a day and gotten away with it. President Trump can grab them by the
***** (adult women) and why not. It's just a very personal way of shaking hands. But I see no insanity in his eyes at all. Hillary's
eyes remind me of Norman Bates on a bad day. And Biden. . . . Wow! A pervert of the first water but also a complete coward. Thank
God! One less sex monster in action.
Everyone knows that FBI, CIA, NSA etc., are all in the business of being in business. Helps that insider trading is not illegal
for Congress. Corporate America directs intelligence outfits. My opinion...well, ok, my chickens told me.
The hits just keep coming. It's not just Comey vs. Brennan. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are now blaming Loretta Lynch for the
botched Hillary/email investigation. Bruce Ohr is blaming DOJ and FBI officials for ignoring his "warnings" about Christopher
Steele and the dossier.
Comey is bashing Strzok, Page, and now Rosenstein. Rosenstein is firing back at Comey. Andrew McCabe is attacking anyone pretty
much with a pulse.
She's trying to protect herself. She already testified and spilled the beans about herself and her husband. And they threw
a criminal referral at her anyway. MARK MEADOWS REFERS NELLIE OHR TO DOJ FOR INVESTIGATION
This just gets juicier and juicier. Adm. Rogers of the NSA had found that FBI contractors were overusing the NSA database to
run searches/spying so he shut them down. In April 2016! Friends, Fusion GPS wasn't hired just to fabricate dirt on Trump, they
were hired to create cover for the spying that was already happening when they knew they got caught by Rogers. They were terrified
of what Rogers would do. Enter Fusion/Steele/dossier/European & Australian intelligence. The cover-up will be the death of them.
Wait until we find out who else they were spying on during this time.
Admiral Michael S. Rogers is a hero. He has everything. He knows exactly who was being spied on and when.
EDIT: So who the hell approved the original spying? We know Brennan pushed the dossier but who pushed Brennan? I smell Barry.
Warren (D)(1): "Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country" [
Politico ].
West Virginia: "It was a startling spectacle in the heart of Trump country: At least a dozen
supporters of the president -- some wearing MAGA stickers -- nodding their heads, at times
even clapping, for liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren . LeeAnn Blankenship, a 38-year-old
coach and supervisor at a home visitation company who grew up in Kermit and wore a sharp pink
suit, said she may now support Warren in 2020 after voting for Trump in 2016.
'She's a good ol' country girl like anyone else,' she said of Warren, who grew up in Oklahoma. 'She's
earned where she is, it wasn't given to her. I respect that.'"
Also: "The 63-year-old fire
chief, Wilburn 'Tommy' Preece, warned Warren and her team beforehand that the area was 'Trump
country' and to not necessarily expect a friendly reception. But he also told her that the town would welcome anyone, of any party, who wanted to address the opioid
crisis ." ( More on West
Virginia in 2018 .
Best part is a WaPo headline: "Bernie Sanders Supporter Attends Every
DNC Rule Change Meeting. DNC Member Calls Her a Russian Plant." • Lol. I've been saying
"lol" a lot, lately.)
Warren (D)(2): "Our military can help lead the fight in combating climate change"
[Elizabeth Warren,
Medium ]. "In short, climate change is real, it is worsening by the day, and it is
undermining our military readiness. And instead of meeting this threat head-on, Washington is
ignoring it -- and making it worse . That's why today I am introducing my
Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act to harden the U.S. military against the threat
posed by climate change, and to leverage its huge energy footprint as part of our climate
solution.
It starts with an ambitious goal: consistent with the objectives of the Green New
Deal, the Pentagon should achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and
infrastructure by 2030 .. We don't have to choose between a green military and an effective
one . Together, we can work with our military to fight climate change -- and
win." • On the one hand, the Pentagon's energy footprint is huge, and it's a good idea
to do something about that. On the other, putting solar panels on every tank that went into
Iraq Well, there are larger questions to be asked. A lot of dunking on Warren about this. It
might play in the heartland, though.
On Wednesday, DJT declared a national emergency by executive order over alleged threats to
US technology.
He invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, giving the president authority
to regulate commerce in response to alleged threatening emergency conditions.
According to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders:
The order "protect(s) America from foreign adversaries who are actively and increasingly
creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology
infrastructure and services in the United States (sic)."
Huawei responded saying: "Restricting (the company) from doing business in the US will not
make the US more secure or stronger." i
"(I(nstead, this will only serve to limit the US to inferior yet more expensive
alternatives, leaving the US lagging behind in 5G deployment, and eventually harming the
interests of US companies and consumers."
"We are ready and willing to engage with the US government and come up with effective
measures to ensure product security."
The Trump regime has been pressuring, bullying, and threatening other countries not to adopt
Huawei's 5G technology.
Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang responded to Trump's order, saying it's
directed against "specific Chinese companies," calling it "disgraceful and unjust," adding:
"We urge the US side to stop oppressing Chinese companies under the pretext of security
concerns and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for their normal
investment and operation."
According to the Eurasia Group, the latest Trump regime action is "a grave escalation with
China that at minimum plunges the prospect of continued trade negotiations into doubt,"
adding:
"Unless handled carefully, this situation is likely to place US and Chinese companies at new
risk."
Beijing will surely react strongly to this latest action, making it all the harder to
resolve major differences between both countries.
"... Department of Commerce Announces the Addition of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to the Entity List ..."
"... Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement President Donald Trump backed the decision that will "prevent American technology from being used by foreign owned entities in ways that potentially undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests." ..."
"... in a move that is seen as aimed at keeping the Chinese company Huawei out of the US market, President Trump has declared a "national emergency" to protect U.S. communications networks giving the federal government broad powers to bar American companies from doing business with certain foreign suppliers. ..."
"... As we detailed earlier, in what appears to be the US government's latest salvo in its war against Huawei, President Trump is reportedly preparing to sign an executive order that would prohibit American firms from using equipment made by foreign telecom companies that pose a 'security threat', according to Bloomberg , which sourced its report to administration insiders. ..."
"... "This is neither graceful nor fair," ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a news briefing in Beijing. "We urge the U.S. to stop citing security concerns as an excuse to unreasonably suppress Chinese companies and provide a fair and equitable and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to operate in the U.S." ..."
"... As Huawei pushes to assume a global leadership position in 5G, the US's efforts to try and discredit the company have included successfully pushing for the arrest of its CFO, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada, on charges she helped the company violate US sanctions on Iran. ..."
"... After the Iraq invasion of Kuwait there was a throng of viciously victimized people who claimed examples of Iraqi's bayoneting babies in incubators, raping nurses and killing patients in hospitals. It was all a lie and it was propagated by Western PR companies paid with the gold and silver coins of the Kuwaiti government. ..."
"... Since you have such insight perhaps you want to share with us fools the reason why Huawei is so dangerous? Being an arm of the Chinese government is a bit vague and it's easy to argue that Google and Facebook are arms of the US government. ..."
"... The US is becoming outright hostile. Soon companies will avoid the US altogether out of fear of being persecuted and accused of violating US national security without any proof or even venue to address the accusations. It's amazing how fast the US has gone from having been a freedom principled nation with the rule of law to a tyrannical police state with out of control lawmakers contradicting their own constitution. ..."
"... the last time the US did this with chips, China simply obtained the equipment to make their own.......a permanent loss of what was a good business for the US. ..."
"... Companies spend exorbitant amounts on building their businesses, sales, assembly lines and supply chains. Trump comes along and just wipes out years of work and profitability with the stroke of a pen. He doesn't seem to "get" that those products are still going to be built and sold, just not with US parts anymore and maybe not in the US, but sales will still increase throughout Asia, etc.........and by doing what he's done, those Asian markets will simply shun US products. ..."
Reuters reports that the
U.S. Commerce Department is adding Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and 70 affiliates to its
so-called "Entity List"
- a move that will make it much more difficult for the telecom giant to buy parts and components
from U.S. companies. U.S. officials said the decision would also
make it difficult for Huawei to sell some products
because of its reliance on U.S. suppliers.
Department of Commerce Announces the Addition of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to the Entity List
WASHINGTON – Today, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it will be
adding Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and its affiliates to the Bureau's Entity List.
This action stems from information
available to the Department that provides a reasonable basis to conclude that Huawei is engaged in activities that are
contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest
. This information includes the activities alleged in
the Department of Justice's public superseding indictment of Huawei, including alleged violations of the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), conspiracy to violate IEEPA by providing prohibited financial services to Iran, and
obstruction of justice in connection with the investigation of those alleged violations of U.S. sanctions.
The sale or transfer of American technology to a company or person on the Entity List requires a license issued by
BIS,
and a license may be denied if the sale or transfer would harm U.S. national security or foreign policy
interests. The listing will be effective when published in the Federal Register.
"This action by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, with the support of the President of the
United States, places Huawei, a Chinese owned company that is the largest telecommunications equipment producer in the world,
on the Entity List. This will prevent American technology from being used by foreign owned entities in ways that potentially
undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests,"
said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. "President
Trump has directed the Commerce Department to be vigilant in its protection of national security activities. Since the
beginning of the Administration, the Department has added 190 persons or organizations to the Entity List, as well as
instituted five investigations of the effect of imports on national security under Section 232 of the Trade Act of 1962."
Additions to the Entity List are decided by the End-User Review Committee which is comprised of officials from the Department
of Commerce, Department of Defense, State Department, and Department of Energy. Under § 744.11(b) of the Export Administration
Regulations, persons or organizations for whom there is reasonable cause to believe that they are involved, were involved, or
pose a significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy
interests of the United States, and those acting on behalf of such persons, may be added to the Entity List.
The Bureau of Industry and Security's mission is to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives by
ensuring an effective export control and treaty compliance system and promoting continued U.S. strategic technology
leadership.
BIS is committed to preventing U.S.-origin items from supporting Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
projects, terrorism, or destabilizing military modernization programs.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement President Donald Trump backed
the decision that will "prevent
American technology from being used by foreign owned entities in ways that potentially undermine U.S. national security or
foreign policy interests."
Under President Trump's leadership, Americans will be able to trust that our data and
infrastructure are secure.
#ICTSupplyChain
Update (1645ET):
Confirming what we previewed earlier,
in a move that is seen as aimed at keeping the
Chinese company Huawei out of the US market, President Trump has declared a "national emergency" to protect U.S.
communications networks giving the federal government broad powers to bar American companies from doing business with certain
foreign suppliers.
"The president has made it clear that
this administration will do what it takes to keep America safe and
prosperous, and to protect America from foreign adversaries who are actively and increasingly creating and exploiting
vulnerabilities
in information and communications technology infrastructure and services in the United States," the
statement said.
The order authorizes the commerce secretary to block transactions involving communications technologies built by firms
controlled by a foreign adversary that puts U.S. security at "unacceptable" risk -- or poses a threat of espionage or sabotage to
networks that underpin the day-to-day running of vital public services... which would include the Chinese firm Huawei.
As WaPo details, Trump's executive order
instructs the commerce secretary to develop an enforcement regime and permits
the secretary to name companies or technologies that could be barred,
according to officials.
The order acknowledges that, although an open investment climate is generally positive, the United States needs to do more to
protect the security of its networks.
The national emergency declaration comes a day after a congressional hearing in which senators from both parties
joined administration officials in calling out the risks of doing business with a company like Huawei.
They emphasized
that the problem was less about the company than the authoritarian country whose system of laws, which lacks due process and
transparency, it must obey.
"It's not about overseeing Huawei. It's about overseeing China,"
said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.),
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearing on 5G security.
But, of course,
"The executive order is company and country agnostic,"
replies a senior White House
official when asked if the executive order targets Huawei and China (h/t @W7VOA)
* * *
As we detailed earlier, in what appears to be the US government's latest salvo in its war against Huawei, President Trump is
reportedly preparing to sign an executive order that would prohibit American firms from using equipment made by foreign telecom
companies that pose a 'security threat', according to
Bloomberg
, which sourced its report to administration insiders.
The official who spoke with Bloomberg insisted the order wasn't intended to single out any country or company, but anybody who
has been following the ongoing spat with Huawei should instantly recognize that this simply isn't true (though, with the trade
negotiations at a very delicate impasse, we understand why the administration needs to maintain this pretense). Though Huawei and
its fellow Chinese telecoms giant ZTE already face serious restrictions on selling their products in the US, Huawei still
maintains a US subsidiary in Texas.
The order, which could be signed as soon as Wednesday, wouldn't outright ban sales to US entities, but it would grant the
Commerce Department more authority to review products and purchases made by firms with connections to adversarial countries (we
doubt that's directed at Ericsson and Sweden).
China's foreign ministry has already lashed out at the US over reports of the executive order.
"This is neither graceful nor fair," ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a news briefing in Beijing. "We urge the
U.S. to stop citing security concerns as an excuse to unreasonably suppress Chinese companies and provide a fair and equitable
and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to operate in the U.S."
Washington has been campaigning for months to stop its allies around the globe from allowing Huawei products to be used in
their 5G networks, but to little avail. Yesterday, Huawei promised
to sign a "no spy"
pledge
to governments like the UK that are still deciding how much reliance on Huawei they are willing to stomach.
As Huawei pushes to assume a global leadership position in 5G, the US's efforts to try and discredit the company have
included successfully pushing for the arrest of its CFO, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada, on charges she helped the company violate US
sanctions on Iran.
American lawmakers suspect Huawei's equipment could be used for spying - and not without reason.
Just last month,
Ars
Technica
found a backdoor like vulnerability in Huawei's Matebook laptop series which could have allowed remote hackers to
gain access to the system. Chinese law also could technically compel companies like Huawei to cooperate with authorities.
But even if the order is signed on Wednesday, it might not take effect for six months, as it would take time for the Commerce
Department to "fashion an approach" to the order.
In the meantime, Verizon and other US telecoms firms are still way behind in the war to dominate the global market for 5G
networking equipment.
"Stop suppressing our companies, you unreasonable, evil bullies!
The Chinese people will not be treated with such indignity!"
-China, as they suppress foreign companies.
All the time back doors into Huawei equipment are found and all
the time Huawei claims it was an accident and that they are
complying with countries' privacy and telecommunication laws. Of
course they spy! Everybody spies on everybody.
And do we really
need faster internet? 5G is also rather intrusive. Due to the high
frequencies involved, more base stations, repeaters and antennas
need to be used, operating at higher output levels. Do we really
want to expose our bodies to these kinds of frequencies and power?
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Bloomberg's Lie-Chips fable:
"
This
did not happen
.
There's no truth to this
."
Apple's Tim Cook Calls For 'Bloomberg' To Retract Story About
Chinese Spy Chips. The word from everyone willing to go on record about the
Bloomberg
spy chip story is that
it didn't happen. U.S. National Intelligence Director, Dan Coats, added his voice
to the chorus of officials denying any knowledge of the matter and
finding no reason to believe the story.
The one named source for the story expressed extreme
doubts about the story's validity
. To spare their
credibility,
Bloomberg
needs to produce evidence or a
retraction. Tim Cook has made it abundantly clear what he thinks
about
Bloomberg
's only path forward.
OMG Huawei's 5G could be used for SPYING! You know, sort of like
what the U.S. government and private corporations are already
doing.
Seriously though, let's look into a crystal ball. Let's say
China becomes the techno leader for alot more things in the coming
future. So what is the U.S. going to do? Block a ton of new
technology, while U.S. citizens remain in the stoneage, while
China forges ahead?
All those millions of Mexicans the U.S. let in, will not be
creating the newest tech for the world in the future. So get used
to a lagging 3rd-world-like stance.
After the Iraq invasion of Kuwait there was a throng of viciously
victimized people who claimed examples of Iraqi's bayoneting
babies in incubators, raping nurses and killing patients in
hospitals. It was all a lie and it was propagated by Western PR
companies paid with the gold and silver coins of the Kuwaiti
government.
Anyone who believes that Huawei is not an arm of
the Chinese government is a fool. First of all, almost all
companies in China serve as agents of the Chinese government, this
is a fact. Second, some are more government than others and some
are an inner working of the strategy, a key player...a knight.
Huawei is a knight not a rook.
I have been there many times and I have spent a lot of time
with Chinese people in business. Huawei is an agent of the
government just like James Bond served Her Secret Service. Huawei
is a stealth fighter, make no mistake.
"Doth lady protests too much, me thinks". That's the planned,
contrived and paid for wailing of the PR industry that has been
thrown the gold and silver coins by the Chinese. Those are
Western companies selling their souls to deliver the virgin Huawei
to the West. Buyer beware.
Since you have such insight perhaps you want to share with us
fools the reason why Huawei is so dangerous? Being an arm of
the Chinese government is a bit vague and it's easy to argue
that Google and Facebook are arms of the US government.
Good. Trump should block these fools. Just another nail in the
coffin of the Chinese machine.
Enjoy your depression, China.
You earned it.
By the way folks...Barr has the IG Report by Horrowitz...and it
is
DEVASTATING!!!
The US is becoming outright hostile. Soon companies will avoid the
US altogether out of fear of being persecuted and accused of
violating US national security without any proof or even venue to
address the accusations. It's amazing how fast the US has gone
from having been a freedom principled nation with the rule of law
to a tyrannical police state with out of control lawmakers
contradicting their own constitution.
The rest of the world may
soon abandon the US because the risks outweigh the benefits of
dealing with a country that behaves this way. I don't know if
American lawmakers and leaders realize this because the standard
notion seems to be that the US is number one in everything and the
rest of the world who live in mud huts are all desperately trying
to either reach the US or will do anything to do business with the
US. That is a paranoid and self delusional notion and view.
Get your gddamn act together USA and stop going down this path
of ever more conflict and war, it really doesn't suit you. The
spirit of the Unites States was always that of individual freedom,
liberty and opportunity. Where has that optimistic can-do attitude
and zest for life gone?
I guess no one has told
him that there are only 4 major Telecom Wireless Networking
companies left in the world. They are
Huawei (China), Ericsson
(Sweden), Nokia (Finland), and ZTE (China)
.
Lucent
, formerly of AT&T Bells was brought out by Nokia,
and
Cisco
has dropped out of Telecom equipment entirely,
and is focused on Enterprise Networking Solutions.
Although, Ericsson (Sweden), Nokia (Finland) are not Chinese
companies, but they have extensive sales and operations in China.
About
20%
of their sales are derived in the Chinese Telecom
markets. They also have extensive research and manufacturing
facilities in China, to take advantages of the local engineering
talents and low cost electronic manufacturings.
Currently, 90% of Ericsson and Nokia telecom equipments are
made in China. Cisco also has extensive manufacturing and
suppliers in China.
I challenge the
Orange Dotard
to ban Ericsson, Nokia,
and Cisco and their extensive networks of suppliers, affiliates,
and associates in China.
I don't see why, they will not be a National Security Threat,
if Huawei and its suppliers are a National Security Threat.
Totally agree. And the last time the US did this with chips,
China simply obtained the equipment to make their own.......a
permanent loss of what was a good business for the US.
"........ a move that will make it much more difficult for the
telecom giant to buy parts and components from U.S. companies.
U.S. officials said the decision would also
make it
difficult for Huawei to sell some products because of its
reliance on U.S. suppliers.
"
And if Chinese companies can't buy a part out of the US, do
you suppose they will just do what they always do?........start
making their own and cause US companies to lose even more
business?
Trump and his minions never seem to think things through
past the initial attack to the potential consequences of their
actions. Wonder how long it will take for China to restrict
sales of rare earths to the US.
"And if Chinese companies can't buy a part out of the US,
do you suppose they will just do what they always
do?........start making their own and cause US companies to
lose even more business?"
Huawei is not like other
Chinese companies, such as ZTE, that relies on US Companies
for their chips. They make their own chips.
Yes, Huawei has suppliers in US, but they are not
unreplaceable. Trumpturd just killed their business with
Huawei, that's all.
Honest to god, Asoka, there are days where I think the
real, true, unstated goal of Trump is to destroy the US
one sector at a time. To what end, I truly don't know.
There is no way that these actions against Huawei will be
good for US businesses affected. Every step Trump takes
takes away one more piece of hard-earned profitable
business from US companies, farmers, etc, with no end in
sight.
Companies spend exorbitant amounts on building their
businesses, sales, assembly lines and supply chains.
Trump comes along and just wipes out years of work and
profitability with the stroke of a pen. He doesn't seem
to "get" that those products are still going to be built
and sold, just not with US parts anymore and maybe not in
the US, but sales will still increase throughout Asia,
etc.........and by doing what he's done, those Asian
markets will simply shun US products.
And, because of what he's done, more supply chains are
going to move AWAY from US parts to mitigate risk of
Trump doing this again to yet another industry.
"Totally agree. And the last time the US did this with
chips, China simply obtained the equipment to make their
own.......a permanent loss of what was a good business for
the US."
Yes, O'Bomer banned the sales of
high-performance chips for Supercomputers, to Chinese
companies. But he didn't know that China already
has high-performance chips, but they don't have the low
price that comes from high volume to compete with Intel's
Chips. So Chinese Companies just keep buying from Intel in
huge quantities, like millions of them to make
Supercomputers.
By banning the sales to China, O'Bomer has handed the
Intel's Chinese Market (worth billions each year) to local
Chinese Chip Companies. With half of their global market
gone, Intel were forced to close down their Xeon chip
production lines.
There are a few more large companies in the space like Intel,
Qualcomm, Samsung and Hewlett Packard and a long list of
smaller ones with 5G specialized niches. The space needs
healthy competition especially to find solutions to the
environmental and health concern that are associated with 5G
systems and which are very valid.
well hey the chinese are very patient but i'd say goodbye
Starbuck, Apple, and of coz no rare earths for the US anymore. to
begin with. Then liquidate US debt and see if Trump isnt
assassinated by the MIC...
"Update (1645ET):
Confirming what we previewed
earlier, in a move that is seen as aimed at keeping the Chinese
company Huawei out of the US market,...."
What's not said in
this article, Huawei left the U.S. in 2013. Huawei announced at
the end of April 2013 that it had given up trying to
compete in the US telecoms equipment market. "We will focus on the
rest of the world, which is reasonably big enough and is growing
significantly."
I am not a heavy cell phone user at all. Basic plan.
But the
Huawei model had the features at a lower price (bought on Ebay)
with some performance better that the competition. I've been very pleased with it, but again I'm a basic user.
Charges fast and holds the charge well.
"Waiting for China to impose heavy tariffs on
Hollywood films. "
Why not ? They are total CIA
inspired BS or Just pyrotechnic Nonsense. Plus Holly
Wood is just a *** store front so why support those
a$$holes. Frankly I'\d sooner watch a good European,
Korean movie etc because I can read the sub titles.
Much better quality acting.
It must be terrible being Chinese and knowing you're smarter than
those Americans. But those basetards always have a new scam to
follow the last one. Fact is, the Chinese would do the NSA thing
if they were on top. These people understand political history. A
culture persists as long as it "provides for the national
defense".
Lest you forget, great nations take liberties with the
truth. Just ask the American Indians, Mexicans, Spanish, English,
Black people and everybody else who got played to enrich the
nation. Same thing today.
Plenty of examples of rats within all the cultures you named
that were willing to sell out their own for a buck. In fact it
is probably the reason they are not on top in the first place.
That doesn't count the Subsidiaries already here in the state's,
because selling and buying is a two sided coin....so now the
Demopublicans can with hold licensing until the correct
Tribute/Campaign Contribution is paid to some off shore account
that only our Congressional Salons can manage to have...it's
always only about the Benjamins Bro...next to come, Operation
Iranian Liberation......
Joe Biden was a part of this Obama mafia who was trying to take down Trump ...
Graham still buying Russiagate nonsense, so it is only half-right.
Notable quotes:
"... Who are the idiots now? Will, since this report has been revealed, like the Democrats screamed about, saying it that would expose Trump. It actually exposes Hillary and several others....and now is heading Obama's way. Put them behind Barrs! ..."
Who are the idiots now? Will, since this report has been revealed, like the Democrats
screamed about, saying it that would expose Trump. It actually exposes Hillary and several
others....and now is heading Obama's way. Put them behind Barrs!
No Senator Graham, you're not going to find out that Russia provided the
dossier. You are going to find out that Nellie Ohr (who is a CIA agent, one of Brennan's
corrupt crew), and Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, constructed the dossier.
They then took it
and washed it through the Ohr's buddy Christopher Steele. That was to give it a cache of
foreign provenance. And then they got other willing participants like John McCain, and the
lying media to do their part in forwarding the pretense that the dossier had some sort of
legitimacy and the corrupt FBI leadership put it in front of a FISA judge to deceive them
into granting the FISA warrant which allowed the FBI to spy all through the entire Trump
campaign, and even to keep spying on Trump when he was seated in the Oval Office.
They
participated in sedition and treason. ALL OF THEM should be hanged for this crime against the
American people.
Bob Mueller is an Establishment STOOGE who, Along with James Comey, have been covering up
for the Deep State and Shadow Government (SES) Cronies for over 20 years!!!
Joann Tague, 2 weeks ago
The man that bleached the computers and the lady that physically destroyed 2 computers with a hammier needed to be
arrested......That is a start! Hillary Clinton is guilty of all the charges Trump was investigated for. President Trump is
totally innocent.
So it's back to the Clinton Emails to start. Lets see how the news media reports that. The democrats are truly evil and
dishonest.
darlingUSA, 12 weeks ago
Strzok and Page - those two people are your typical Clinton and Obama supporters. What does that say about her supporters.
Only those two knew that as POTUS, Trump was going to do what was best for the People, not pay for play and not cover tracks
of corrupt politicians. That's what they hated. That and the People of the U.S.A.
Jen X, 2 weeks ago
Dems want Barr to resign because he didn't give them the results they wanted. If Mueller and Barr found collusion, the
Dems would say they did their job, and they did a fine job, and would say that we should accept it and move on.
kens 616, 1 week ago (edited)
Obama their coming after you.. This Russian hoax did not start at the bottom...it came from the top. You OBAMA..
Her call for impeachment procedures is a blunder. She is trying to play the dominant mood of the Dems crowd, not
understanding that in this case Biden will be the winner.
Notable quotes:
"... Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to collude with the Russian government," will not fare much better. ..."
"... Sen. Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she predicts one moment that Trump is heading to jail , declares the next that voters don't care about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter issues, and then calls for dragging Congress into the impeachment morass regardless. ..."
Besides Fox News – whose ratings have soared while Russia-obsessed CNN’s have plummeted – the chief beneficiary is Trump.
Post-Mueller, the man has the wind in his sails. Come 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders could cut through his phony populism with ease.
But if Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post succeeds in tarring him with Russia the same way it tried to tar Trump, then the Democratic
nominee will be a bland centrist whom the incumbent will happily bludgeon.
Former Vice President Joe Biden – the John McCain-loving, speech-slurring, child-fondler who was for a wall along the Mexican
border before he was against it – will end up as a bug splat on the Orange One’s windshield.
Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who
declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a
doubt, sought to collude with the Russian government," will not fare much better.
Sen.
Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she predicts one
moment that Trump is
heading to jail , declares the next that voters
don't care about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter
issues, and then calls for dragging Congress into the
impeachment morass regardless.
Such "logic" is lost on voters, so it seems to be a safe bet that enough will stay home next
Election Day to allow the rough beast to slouch towards Bethlehem yet again.
"... Thanks to USA govt publicity, Huawei phones are selling like hot cakes in Europe. Apple fans are jumping ship ..."
"... American lawmakers are compromised by the Israeli government & the military security state. It's the US that wants a back door to China's 5G. China pays with smears but it won't matter. China has 5G and the US doesn't. ..."
In
Latest Move Against Huawei, Trump To Order New Restrictions On Foreign Telecom Companies
by
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/15/2019 - 11:04
0
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In what appears to be the US government's latest salvo in its war against Huawei, President Trump is reportedly
preparing to sign an executive order that would prohibit American firms from using equipment made by foreign telecom
companies that pose a 'security threat', according to
Bloomberg
, which sourced its report to administration insiders.
The official who spoke with Bloomberg insisted the
order wasn't intended to single out any country or company, but anybody who has been following the ongoing spat with
Huawei should instantly recognize that this simply isn't true (though, with the trade negotiations at a very delicate
impasse, we understand why the administration needs to maintain this pretense). Though Huawei and its fellow Chinese
telecoms giant ZTE already face serious restrictions on selling their products in the US, Huawei still maintains a US
subsidiary in Texas.
The order, which could be signed as soon as Wednesday, wouldn't outright ban sales to US entities, but it would grant
the Commerce Department more authority to review products and purchases made by firms with connections to adversarial
countries (we doubt that's directed at Ericsson and Sweden).
China's foreign ministry has already lashed out at the US over reports of the executive order.
"This is neither graceful nor fair,"
ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a news briefing in
Beijing. "We urge the U.S. to stop citing security concerns as an excuse to unreasonably suppress Chinese companies
and provide a fair and equitable and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to operate in the U.S."
Washington has been campaigning for months to stop its allies around the globe from allowing Huawei products to be
used in their 5G networks, but to little avail. Yesterday, Huawei promised
to sign a
"no spy" pledge
to governments like the UK that are still deciding how much reliance on Huawei they are willing to
stomach.
As Huawei pushes to assume a global leadership position in 5G, the US's efforts to try and discredit the company have
included successfully pushing for the arrest of its CFO, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada, on charges she helped the company
violate US sanctions on Iran.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4855
American lawmakers suspect Huawei's equipment could be used for spying - and not without reason.
Just last month,
Ars Technica
found a backdoor like vulnerability in Huawei's Matebook laptop series which could have allowed remote
hackers to gain access to the system. Chinese law also could technically compel companies like Huawei to cooperate with
authorities.
But even if the order is signed on Wednesday, it might not take effect for six months, as it would take time for the
Commerce Department to "fashion an approach" to the order.
In the meantime, Verizon and other US telecoms firms are still way behind in the war to dominate the global market
for 5G networking equipment.
Trump is not good for Chinese business.
China knows its coming.
Can only make a deal with obama/clinton/bush. Clearer motive for
China Collusion vs Russian Collusion.
Sad to imagine the US technology security under
obama/clintons/bush. USA will be up for sale while we sleep.
Major credit to Pres. Trump is hard to swallow by the left.
ZH is thoroughly infested with Hasbara trolls trying to ensure
that the Orange *** - aka Israel's Best Buddy - gets defended.
There are at least 5 or 6 kikes on this thread alone.
"This is neither graceful nor fair,"
ministry spokesman
Geng Shuang said at a news briefing in Beijing.
The irony of them saying it's not graceful or fair when they do
the same thing to foreign companies in China. I mean they don't
even allow youtube or instagram in China among many others. What
is the big threat of instagram other than flat out protectionism?
Then you expect other countries to be open?
Hopefully no one. The world doesn't need it. What is it
about "we don't want your ****" that you don't understand?
You going to force us to buy it? Give it a shot 李娜.
A recent exploration trip to the bottom of the Mariana
Trench - the deepest spot on Earth, found human trash on
the floor of the ocean - an old tire, metal pieces,
plastic, even fabric that looked like men's pants.
China's garbage is everywhere in the Earth's oceans. The
US needs to stop exporting our trash for China to dump,
and start controlling our production of plastic waste in
particular. We are doing a far better job than China or
India, but not enough.
True. I saw those reports. I'm not even sure why this
is a difficult concept for the Chinese. The US economy
is not here to serve China. We're not "beholden" to
buy Chinese products. The mood (and tide) has shifted.
Every trip to Walmart is another 20 gallons of paint
for a Chinese warship. WTF is wrong with us? I avoid
Chinese products whenever possible--even if it means I
pay significantly more.
I had a Chinese neighbor when I was in college. He
used to always leave his garbage outside his door. The
dumpster was 50 feet away. Used to bug the **** out of
me.
Ha,Ha!!! And to think American companies are not a security
threat, like Cisco and others cooperating with NSA, which Edward
Snowden has said to be.
This is just the latest continuation
of America's war on Huawei since 2003. Huiwei saw this coming
back in January, and has asked its compontent suppliers to move
out of the U.S.,. I am sure that angered the Trump
administration, but there is nothing Trump can do about that, if
they leave. Not only do they take the technology with them, but
also all those jobs. So, thinking he was going to retaliate
against Huawei, Trump wants to sign an executive order from "using
Huawei's equipment", which means, Trump has just encourage
Huawei's suppliers to take Huawei's earlier advise and leave the
U.S., if they want to stay in business. Trump's executive order
is sort of like cutting your nose off to spite your face.
What's not said in this article, Huawei left the U.S. in 2013.
Ren Zhengfei put the US's attitude down to jealousy at Huawei's
technical superiority over US rivals such as Cisco. Huawei
announced at the end of April 2013 that it had given up trying to
compete in the US telecoms equipment market. "We will focus on the
rest of the world, which is reasonably big enough and is growing
significantly."
By discouraging US telecoms companies from buying Huawei
equipment out of fear that it would open the country's key
infrastructure up to cyberespionage, the government would deny
domestic carriers access to market-leading technology.
Ren also said: U.S. concerns over cyber-espionage has been
mounting at a time when Huawei has done next to no business with
leading American carriers.
"If you look at Huawei's total market share in the US telecoms
equipment market, it is close to 0%. Given that we have virtually
no presence in the US telecoms infrastructure market, there is no
connection between Huawei and any information security incident
that has occurred in the country".
Again to remind you, Ren said this in 2013! Here it is, 6
years later, and the U.S. is still trying to put Huawei out of
business, to satisfy its own spying needs. If anyone is worried
about security, then it should be against the U.S., not Huawei.
It has been proven over and over that Hulawei imbeds exploits
in its hardware. Countries that were STUPID enough to install
their equipment have been retrofitting and spending fortunes
trying to test and close all the back doors and exploits that
expose them to theft and much worse.
Yeah, Hulawei probably
figured out the US was on to them - the FBI clearly was, and
figured if they could infest our partner countries with their
Trojan horses they could attack us through them.
Clever. But indefensible. They deserve to be sanctioned and
punished under international law for cyber crimes of the
highest order.
Back in early 2017 I attended a presentation by Bill Priestap,
Deputy Director of Counterintelligence at the FBI (yes THAT
Priestap) in which he laid out how the US Intelligence Community
had been screaming at the Obama Administration for 8 solid years
that China was the single greatest threat to the US and Western
democracies, and they were achieving their goals through IP theft,
backdoor spyware, commercial, industrial and military espionage,
corruption, and massively imbalanced trade policies. He was
stunned by the HRC/BHO/Kerry resistance to DO anything or even
slow the train down, and said he HOPED the Trump Administration
would pay attention. He laid out the 20 biggest threats.
Ugh. Might be too late. In certain tech like CCTV, you can't
escape Huawei. They started cranking out hisilicon a few years
ago and now those chips are in lots of application specific
systems. Most Taiwanese, Korean, etc. brands now use them as
designed from their Chinese partners. There are no other IP
camera systems out there now.
'American lawmakers suspect Huawei's equipment could be used for
spying - and not without reason."
American lawmakers are
compromised by the Israeli government & the military security
state.
It's the US that wants a back door to China's 5G. China pays
with smears but it won't matter.
China has 5G and the US doesn't.
ChiComs do not believe in Profit but they do believe in
accepting billions of dollars from foolish global investors
trying to "get in on the ground floor on a fantastic Asian
investment opportunity!!" Suckers are going to lose their shirts as a result of
their ChiCom lending. Good.
In the immortal words of little Georgie Jr, 'bring it on'...
right? Isn't this Trumpy's role in his puppet masters script of
global chaos, regime change? to 'out their OWO and introduce us
to their NWO before Mother Nature arrives?
Isn't it best if the
puppets don't see those strings jerking them around stage? Isn't
this why the saying exists here in 'purgatory', no pain, no gain?
Isn't this how we learn, the hard way? We are witnessing the rug
being pulled on the OWO... enjoy the show.
Good domestic policy suggestions and debate skills. Horrible understanding of foreign policy
(he completely subscribes to the Russiagate hoax)
His capitulation to Hillary in 2016 still linger behind his back despite all bravado. he
betrayed his followers, many of who put money of this while being far from rich. he betrayed them
all. As such he does not deserve to run.
Warren and Tulsi are definitely better options then Sanders for 2020.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., became a household name in 2016 when he ran a progressive
campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination -- and came close to securing it. He's back
in the 2020 race, but this time up against more than 20 other candidates. Sanders sits down
with Judy Woodruff to discuss trade with China, health care, student debt, Russian election
interference and more.
When Trump called the Mueller investigators "
18
angry Democrats
," he wasn't kidding.
According to
73 pages
of records obtained by
Judicial Watch
,
Mueller special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the hiring effort
for the team that investigated the Trump campaign
.
Notably, Weissman attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, and wrote a positive
email to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates when she refused to defend the Trump
administration's travel ban. And as you will see below,
he was on a mission to recruit
a politically biased fleet of lawyers for the Mueller probe
.
"These documents show Andrew Weissmann, an anti-Trump activist, had a hand in hiring key members
of Mueller's team – who also happened to be political opponents of President Trump," said Judicial
Watch President, Tom Fitton. "These documents show that Mueller outsourced his hiring decisions to
Andrew Weissmann. No wonder it took well over a year to get this basic information and, yet, the
Deep State DOJ is still stonewalling on other Weissmann documents!"
Weissman's calendar shows that
he began interviewing people for investigator jobs on
the Mueller operation almost immediately after it was announced that he had joined the team in
early June
.
On June 5, 2017, he
interviewed
former
Chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of
New York
Andrew
Goldstein
. Goldstein was a
Time
magazine reporter.
Goldstein contributed a
combined
$3,300
to
Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
His wife, Julie Rawe, was a reporter and editor
for
Time
for 13 years, until 2013. He became a lead prosecutor for Mueller.
The next day, on June 6, 2017 Weissmann had a meeting with "FARA [Foreign Agents Registration
Act] counsel."
Weissmann
interviewed
another
prosecutor,
Kyle
Freeny
, from the DOJ Money Laundering Section for the team on June 7, 2017.
She
contributed
a
total of $500 to Obama's presidential campaigns and $250 to Hillary Clinton's.
She was
later detailed to the Mueller investigation.
He
interviewed
a
trial attorney who worked with him in the Criminal Fraud Section,
Rush
Atkinson
, on June 9, 2017.
Records show that Atkinson donated
$200
to
Clinton's campaign in 2016. He is a registered Democrat and contributed
$200
to
Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign
. Atkinson also became part of the Mueller team.
Weissmann
interviewed
DOJ
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Greg
Andres
for the team on June 13, 2017.
Andres
donated
$2,700
to the campaign for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in 2018 and $1,000 to the campaign for
David Hoffman (D) in 2009.
Andres is a registered Democrat. His wife,
Ronnie
Abrams
, a U.S. district judge in Manhattan, was nominated to the bench in 2011 by Obama. He
joined the Mueller team in August 2017. -
Judicial
Watch
"Judicial Watch
previously
released
documents showing strong support by Weissmann for former Acting Attorney General Sally
Yates' refusal to enforce President Trump's Middle East travel ban executive order. Weissmann
reportedly
also
attended Hillary Clinton's Election Night party in New York," the report concludes.
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Consider, who better to find the President not guilty of collusion
and obstruction than "18 Angry Democrats"? It's damn near perfect.
The Dems can't find fault with any of the investigators who found
the President did not violate the law.
Weissman, Goldstein, et alia, all jews in a fabricated jewish
drama to further demoralize us and to separate us from what was
our Republic form of government. What we need is an immediate
ubiquitous epiphany regarding these sleazy, slimy kikes and in the
words of Andrew Jackson...
"You are a den of vipers and
thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will
rout you out."
Originally from WaPo, January 4, 2018 "The people that have been hired are
all Hillary Clinton supporters. Some of them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean the whole thing
is ridiculous, if you want to know the truth, from that standpoint."- President Donald Trump,
interview with "Fox & Friends," June 23, 2017 Recommended Video
In June, The Fact Checker examined claims by President Trump and his surrogates that the
special counsel team headed by former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was tainted by the
fact that several of the prosecutors were supporters of Clinton or even worked for her. We dug
into the political contributions of eight team members and found that four had made political
contributions and four had no record of making such contributions. We ended up giving Trump
Three Pinocchios because not all of the people hired had a record of supporting Clinton and it
was false to claim that some had worked directly for Hillary Clinton.
A reader asked us to provide an update, given that many more of the team members had been
identified. We now have a list of 15 team members; one of the people whose background we had
previously checked (FBI lawyer Lisa Page) has since left the team. So that's an additional
eight names.
(Another former team member, FBI official Peter Strzok, was removed by Mueller after the
discovery of politically charged texts exchanged with Page, with whom he was romantically
involved. But Strzok was not part of our original list.)
Let's take a look, breaking the team up into three categories.
The Facts
As we have noted before, federal regulations prohibit the Justice Department from
considering the political affiliation or political contributions of career appointees,
including those appointed to the Special Counsel's Office. So Mueller is legally prohibited
from considering the political affiliations of the people he has hired. Deputy Attorney General
Rod J. Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, also has told Congress that it is not a
disqualification for a lawyer in the Special Counsel's Office to have made a political
donation.
Mueller, meanwhile, was a registered Republican when he was nominated to be FBI director in
2001, but is also considered apolitical. "A Justice Department senior staff meeting went quiet
this year when Mueller ran through a list of people he considered qualified for top temporary
jobs, most of them Democrats," The Washington Post reported at the time. "It had never occurred
to him that Democrats and the new Republican administration might not mesh."
Mueller made two donations totaling $450 to then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld's Senate
campaign in 1996; Weld at the time was a Republican but he was the vice presidential nominee on
the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016.
---
WilmerHale colleagues
Three members of the team came with Mueller from the law firm WilmerHale: James Quarles III,
Jeannie Rhee and Aaron Zebley.
Zebley, a former counterterrorism FBI agent and assistant U.S. attorney, appears to have no
record of donations, but he once represented Clinton aide Justin Cooper. But Quarles and Rhee
have been noteworthy political donors.
Quarles, who was an assistant prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, donated
to the last four Democratic presidential nominees: $2,700 to Hillary Clinton in 2016, $4,600 to
Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008, $1,500 to John F. Kerry in 2003 and 2004 and $500 to Al Gore in
1999. He donated at least $15,000 to various other Democratic campaigns, but also gave $2,500
in 2015 to then Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and
$250 to then-Sen. George Allen, R-Va., in 2005.
Meanwhile, Rhee, who had a top post in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel
under Obama, was an early donor to the Clinton and Obama campaigns and even maxxed out on her
Clinton contributions. Rhee donated a total of $5,400 to Clinton's campaign in 2015 and 2016,
and a total of $4,800 to a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund (Obama Victory Fund)
in 2008 and 2011. She also made smaller donations to various Democrats and the DNC totaling
$1,750. Rhee is part of the team listed as working on the George Papadopoulos case.
At WilmerHale, Rhee was a partner on the defense team representing the Clinton Foundation in
a lawsuit over Clinton's use of her private email server.
(WilmerHale has also represented Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, son-in-law
Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump.)
---
Prosecutors
Andrew Weissmann, described as Mueller's "legal pit bull" by the New York Times, served
previously with Mueller, when he was general counsel of the FBI. He has also donated to
Democrats - $2,300 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008, $2,000 to the DNC in 2006 and $2,300 to
the Clinton campaign in 2007.
Weissmann, who is involved in the case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort,
has come under sustained attacks by Republicans after an email of his to then-acting attorney
general Sally Yates was discovered. "I am so proud and in awe. Thank you so much. All my
deepest respects," he wrote on Jan. 30, 2017, after she instructed the Justice Department not
to defend the travel ban in the courts. Trump fired Yates, but the version she refused to
defend was blocked in court.
Andrew D. Goldstein was the public corruption chief in New York under U.S. Attorney Preet
Bharara, who was fired by Trump. He donated $3,300 to Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012. He is
listed as working on the Papadopoulos case.
Greg Andres, a former mob prosecutor who was a white-collar criminal defense attorney at the
Davis Polk & Wardwell firm, is another veteran of the Obama Justice Department, where he
headed the fraud unit from 2010 to 2012. He donated $2,700 to the campaign for Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in 2017 and $1,000 to the unsuccessful Senate campaign of David Hoffman, D,
in 2009. He is also part of the team on the Manafort case.
Other prosecutors made minor or no contributions, federal records show.
Brandon Van Grack, a veteran national security prosecutor listed as involved in the guilty
plea of Michael Flynn, donated $287 to Obama's campaign in 2008.
Kyle Freeny, a Justice Department trial attorney since 2007, most recently specializing in
money laundering, made political contributions to Democratic presidential candidates after they
clinched the nomination: $250 to both of Obama's presidential campaigns and $250 to Clinton's
campaign in 2016. She is part of the team on the Manafort case.
Lawrence "Rush" Atkinson, a trial attorney in the Justice Department's fraud section,
donated $200 to Clinton's campaign in 2016.
Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, is working on the Papadopoulos case.
Federal records show he has made no political donations.
Zainab Ahmad, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York with a stellar
record in counterterrorism cases, is part of the team working on the Flynn case. Federal
records show she has made no political donations.
---
Appellate attorneys
The appellate attorneys are probably not on the front lines of prosecuting cases but provide
legal advice and help evaluate whether federal laws have been broken. Only one of these lawyers
have made political donations.
Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant solicitor general, donated $250 each to Clinton's campaign
and the Obama Victory Fund 2016 and 2012.
Michael Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases before the
Supreme Court, is essentially Mueller's legal counsel. He has made no political donations,
though federal records list a man in Chicago with the same name.
Adam Jed, an appellate lawyer from the Justice Department's civil division, and Scott
Meisler, an appellate attorney with the Justice Department's criminal division, round out the
team. Federal records show neither have made political donations.
The Pinocchio Test
It now turns out that nine members of Mueller's team have made political donations to
Democrats, compared to six with no record of such donations. Five of the 15 known members -
Rhee, Quarles, Freeny, Prelogar and Atkinson - contributed to Hillary Clinton's 2016
campaign.
So this leaves the team more unbalanced than the 4-4 split we found last June. But we are
going to reaffirm the Three-Pinocchio rating. Trump asserted that the people who had been hired
were "all Hillary Clinton supporters" and that obviously is not the case.
Moreover, Trump said "some of them worked for Hillary Clinton." But that is clearly wrong.
Rhee, who donated the maximum amount to Clinton's campaign, represented the Clinton Foundation
in a 2015 lawsuit. Zebley, who made no political donations, represented a Clinton aide at one
point. That's not the same as working for Clinton.
In any case, the DOJ is legally barred from discriminating career appointees based on
political affiliation. Mueller took action against Strzok when texts expressing anti-Trump
sentiments were discovered. But he can't inquire about political leanings before hiring.
Here's a summary of the day thus far: Donald Trump praised attorney
general William Barr for opening what appears to be a broad investigation of the Russia
counterespionage investigation that swept up the Trump campaign. Barr appointed a US attorney
to lead the inquiry and reportedly has got the CIA and DNI involved.
Senator Elizabeth Warren took a "hard pass" on an offer to do a Fox News town hall event,
calling the network "hate-for-profit".
Warren definitely have the courage to put forward those important proposals. Lobbyists like
Cory Booker of course attack them.
Notable quotes:
"... It's called Anti-Trust laws not her "opinions"... ..."
"... Let's be honest, Booker isn't fit to shine Warren's shoes! I wonder if Cory's ass is jealous of all the shit that just came out of his mouth!! SMDH ..."
"... CB bought and paid for by drug companies. Of course he doesn't like Warren. But ask him about Americans right to free speech and he puts after the needs of any foriegn country ..."
"... He who looks like a slick bouncer for the big money monopolies, is looking to get a piece of it ..."
Cory- .Most Americans will NOT think you are Presidential Caliber.Where's the MONEY coming
from? Small donor contributions? I don't even think you'll get the Black & hispanic
vote.Why do this?
You are stealing the votes from way more qualified candidates. Bad idea if
you want to have Democratic POTUS in 2020
CB bought and paid for by drug companies. Of course he doesn't like Warren. But ask him
about Americans right to free speech and he puts after the needs of any foriegn
country
After that Trump remark, Cory can bite my butt. Whatever disagreements I may have with
Warren, she has some very daring, intelligent, and discussion-worthy policies. We need her in
the next administration, whether as potus or in the cabinet. Sheesh, Cory, burn your bridges,
sir.
"... Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators) ..."
"... Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State" ..."
"... In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation ..."
"... the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world ..."
"... Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind. ..."
"... Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate. ..."
"... The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage. ..."
"... Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them. ..."
The F.B.I. surveillance didn't come out until after the election. Therefore it couldn't impact the election. McConnell threatened
to shriek "partisan politics!" if Obama said anything publicly about the Russian issue. Obama didn't. Claims of partisan behavior?
Bullshit.
What about proven attempts of entrapments and inserting spies into Trump campaign?
Mifsud and Halper's stories come to mind (Halper's story has an interesting "seduction" subplot with undercover FBI informant
Azra Turk). FBI and Justice Department brass acted as dirty mafia style politicians. McCabe and Brennan are two shining examples here. Probably guided personally by Obama, who being grown in a family of CIA operatives
probably know this color revolutions "kitchen" all too well.
BTW Hillary did destroy evidence from her "bathroom server" while under subpoena.
Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of
Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially
Stzkok was one of his investigators)
Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal
elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State"
Which looks like classic Mussolini Italy with two guiding principles of jurisprudence applied to political enemies:
(1) To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law (originated in 1933) .
(2) Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime (that actually comes from Stalinism period of the USSR, but the spirit is the
same) .
It was actually Barr who saved Trump from obstruction of justice charge. He based his defense on the interpretation of the
statuses the following (actually very elegant) way:
In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did
not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired
a fruitless investigation
Of course, that upset DemoRats who want President Pence to speed up the destruction of the USA and adding a couple of new wars
to list the USA is involved.
Mueller was extremely sloppy and one-sided in writing his final report. Which is given taking into account his real task: to
sink Trump. As Nunes aptly observed about his treatment of Mifsud as a Russian agent :
"If he is, in fact, a Russian agent, it would be one of the biggest intelligence scandals for not only the United States,
but also our allies like the Italians and the Brits and others. Because if Mifsud is a Russian agent, he would know all kinds
of our intelligence agents throughout the globe
likbez , May 4, 2019 10:11 pm
run75441,
Yes, of course, in the current neo-McCarthyism atmosphere merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes
you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans and colliding with Russian government ;-).
It looks like you are unable/unwilling to understand the logic behind my post. With all due respect, the situation is very
dangerous -- when the neoliberal elite relies on lies almost exclusively as a matter of policy (look at Kamala Harris questioning
Barr -- she is not stupid, she is an evil, almost taken from Orwell 1984, character), IMHO the neoliberal society is doomed. Sooner
or later.
Currently, the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the
USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world and Democrats look like Italian Fascists in 30th: a party hell-bent of dominance
which does not care about laws or legitimacy one bit and can use entrapment and other dirty methods to achieve its goals.
Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision
to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé
at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind.
Neoliberals and neoconservatives joined ranks behind Russiagate and continue to push it because otherwise they need to be held
accountable for all the related neoliberal disasters in the USA since 1980th including sliding standard of living, disappearance
of "good" jobs, sky-high cost of university education and medical insurance, and the last but not least, Hillary fiasco.
Trump ran to the left of Clinton in foreign policy and used disillusionment of working close with neoliberal Democratic Party
to his advantage promising jobs, end of outsourcing, end of uncontrolled immigration, and increased standard of living. He betrayed
all those promises, but, still, that's why he won.
And that why the neoliberal establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would
be forced to admit that the bipartisan consensus around both financialization driven economics (casino capitalism) and imperial,
war on terror based interventionism that are the foundation of the USA neoliberal elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster
for most ordinary Americans -- of all political persuasions.
Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters
and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate.
The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win
in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him.
Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented
neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation
in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage.
Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting
to crash all around them.
"... The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, instead it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS. ..."
Papadopoulos was first targeted when he worked for the Carson campaign. The spying was obviously much broader. Bongino is killing
it on his podcast.
Paul Surovell, May 10, 2019 at 01:08
Two corrections:
Carter Page in his testimony before the House Intelligence committee said he had never met Igor Sechin. He said that he saw
Dmitry Peskov in an RT studio and "nodded" at him, but never spoke or otherwise interacted with him.
Regula, May 9, 2019 at 21:09
Great reporting, thank you.
There is one facet in this entire dirty scheme that gets overlooked: a number of the actions by the Dems and the FBI served
for the exclusive purpose to force Trump to fire his best campaign managers and secretary of defense and other persons in his
campaign and presidency:
The Dems were afraid Trump would win with Manafort as his campaign manager, and acted to force Trump to fire him just as earlier,
one of his managers who turned out to be effective, was besmeared by a reporter of having forced her to fall when she clearly
didn't, just to besmear Trump as being a mysogenist.
The same was done to Flynn, who was in favor of good relations with Russia. Flynn really didn't do anything wrong other than
to endanger the Dem's agenda to topple Putin. In the same vein, Bannon and two other of the more populist advisors who wanted
a more peaceful conduct for the US, got eliminated by the earlier chief of staff Kelly until he got fired himself.
The same repeated with AG Barr, who is clearly a threat to the entire Dem cabal, but hasn't been successfully far despite shameful
congressional inquiries during Barr's testimony.
Looked at in tandem with the Russiagate accusations and Mueller's investigations, it is obvious that this entire web of lies
and repeated attempts at entrapment of Trump employees was constructed by Clinton in complicity with not just the FBI and CIA,
but with the DNC and the entire deep state, to either oust, impeach or incarcerate Trump and, if that didn't work, to force him
and corner him into continuing Obama/Bush's agenda against Russia.
Sadly, Trump fell for it and the US policies which he pursues are the same now as always: hegemony with regime change wars
to keep the MIC in control of the entire US economy.
O Society, May 8, 2019 at 18:48
Excellent interview here with Aaron Mate and his father Gabor on the psychology of the mass hallucination we call Russiagate.
Same as Consortium News, Aaron was out in front of the propaganda snow machine calling the hoax like it is from its inception.
The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both the 2016 Presidential election and
the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November. Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did.
Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016 elections. Had Hillary won, the world
would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with China, Russia, and Iran.
Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they don't hide it. They can't control
him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ.
Peter Halligan, May 8, 2019 at 15:06
The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even
possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been
completed in 6 months, instead it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its
conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked
the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS.
The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in all sorts of nefarious activity
during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies, from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think
about why Clinton instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State emails by using "a
cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor
in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice (remember
also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his
tarmac antics). The smoke screen consisted of the classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully,
those guilty of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and the activities of the
crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality.
Just because a poltical party has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for organized
crime.
Pablo Diablo, May 8, 2019 at 15:03
Trump is a "loose cannon". This whole Mueller investigation was an attempt to "control" him. It worked. Got the Neocons back
in power and fed The War Machine very well.
"... Before digging into the details it is important to note this is a DOJ/FBI entrapment operation being conducted in 2017 by the special counsel ; this is not prior to the 2016 election. The detail surrounds a series of events previously discussed { Go Deep } where George Papadopoulos was approached by a known CIA operative named Charles Tawil. ..."
"... In interviews Papadopoulos said he was uncomfortable with the way the encounters had taken place. He became suspect of Tawil's motives; something didn't feel right. Instead of keeping the cash, Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S. on July 27th, 2017. ..."
"... Upon arrival at Dulles airport on July 27th, 2017, Robert Mueller had FBI agents waiting. Papadopoulos was stopped and his bags were searched; however, he did not have the cash because he smartly left it in Greece with his lawyer. Papadopoulos was detained overnight by FBI agents, and questioned. ..."
"... [W]hen he was arrested [detained] at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint . The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved by Howell in Washington. ..."
"... All of it suggests something of a scramble, rather than a carefully prepared plan to take Papadopoulos into custody. ( more ) ..."
"... Papadopoulos has stated the special counsel threatened him with charges of acting as a unregistered agent for Israel. There's a clear picture here . ..."
"... #1) Papadopoulos was lured to Israel and paid in Israel to give the outline of a FARA premise (ie. Papadopoulos is an agent of Israel). #2) Bringing $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting, is a violation of U.S. treasury laws. Add into that aspect the FARA violation and the money can be compounded into #3) laundering charges. ..."
"... Andrew Weissmann was conducting an entrapment scheme that would have ended up with three violations of law: (1) Treasury violation; (2) FARA violation; (3) Money laundering . All it needed was Papadopoulos to carry the undeclared cash into the U.S. ..."
"... Lastly, to repeat, this entire scenario was constructed by the DOJ/FBI team operation in 2017. The members of the Special Counsel were running the entrapment operation; the FBI agents were participating in the operation. This is not *investigating* criminal conduct; this is manufacturing criminal conduct. ..."
"... Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was in charge of the Mueller Special Counsel. ..."
"... The only way DAG Rosenstein and Robert Mueller didn't know about the operation is if they both claim that Andrew Weissmann was completely rogue and in control over the FBI agents. ..."
Recently release FOIA documents into the special counsel team of Robert Mueller reveal the remarkable trail of a 2017 entrapment
scheme conducted by Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann to target George Papadopoulos.
Before digging into the details it is important to note this is a DOJ/FBI entrapment operation being conducted in 2017 by
the special counsel ; this is not prior to the 2016 election. The detail surrounds a series of events previously discussed {
Go Deep } where George Papadopoulos was approached by a
known CIA operative named Charles Tawil.
In 2017 George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona were approached in Greece by a
known CIA/FBI operative , Charles Tawil.
Mr. Tawil enlisted George as a business consultant, under the auspices of energy development interests, and invited him to Israel.
On June 8th, 2017, in Israel under very suspicious circumstances, where Papadopoulos felt very unnerved, Mr. Tawil hands him $10,000
in cash for future consultancy based on a
$10k/month retainer .
On June 9th, 2017, according to his book, Papadopoulos and Tawil fly back to Cyprus.
... ... ...
In interviews Papadopoulos said he was uncomfortable with the way the encounters had taken place. He became suspect of Tawil's
motives; something didn't feel right. Instead of keeping the cash, Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling
back to the U.S. on July 27th, 2017.
Upon arrival at Dulles airport on July 27th, 2017, Robert Mueller had FBI agents waiting. Papadopoulos was stopped and his
bags were searched; however, he did not have the cash because he smartly left it in Greece with his lawyer. Papadopoulos was detained
overnight by FBI agents, and questioned.
[ ] Stanley said Papadopoulos arrived on a Lufthansa flight from Munich that touched down at about 7 p.m . on July 27, and
the FBI intercepted him as soon as he got off the plane.
"He was arrested [detained] before he got to Customs and he was then held at the airport before being brought to
a law enforcement office," Stanley recalled. (
link )
[W]hen he was arrested [detained] at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors
had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint . The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved
by Howell in Washington.
And when prosecutors filed the complaint the next day they got a spoken order from Howell to seal it, but followed up with
a written request that they could take to the magistrate in Alexandria, where they showed up almost an hour later than she expected.
All of it suggests something of a scramble, rather than a carefully prepared plan to take Papadopoulos into custody. (
more )
Here's where the recent revelations come in. According to Andrew Weissmann's schedule on June 13th, 2017, he was in conversations
surrounding the basis of a Cyprus Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT):
6/8/17 US intelligence asset Charles Tawil gives George $10K cash in Israel 6/9/17 George Papadopoulos flies to Cyprus w $10K 6/13/17
Andrew Weissmann starts series of "Cyprus MLAT" meetings with FBI 6/13/17 Andrew Weissmann phone call w/ FBI Money Laundering and
Asset Recovery "MLARS" section of FBI.
It would appear Weissmann was well aware of the Cyprus "Tawil operation" and engaged in communication regarding Cyprus. Additionally,
he was discussing "Money Laundering and Asset Recovery" w/ FBI. [MLARS Link
]
Taken in combination with hindsight of the search for the cash, and lack of a pre-existing warrant at the airport, this is clear
evidence of a coordinated operation to entrap Papadopoulos.
Remember, the preferred approach toward targeting Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos surrounded FARA (Foreign Agent
Registration Act) lobbying violations. Papadopoulos has stated the special counsel threatened him with charges of acting as a
unregistered agent for Israel. There's a clear picture here .
#1) Papadopoulos was lured to Israel and paid in Israel to give the outline of a FARA premise (ie. Papadopoulos is an agent
of Israel). #2) Bringing $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting, is a violation of U.S. treasury laws. Add into
that aspect the FARA violation and the money can be compounded into #3) laundering charges.
[A "laundering" charge applies if the money is illegally obtained. The FARA violation would be the *illegal* aspect making the
treasury charges heavier. Note: the use of the airport baggage-check avoids the need for a search warrant.]
Andrew Weissmann was conducting an entrapment scheme that would have ended up with three violations of law: (1) Treasury violation;
(2) FARA violation; (3) Money laundering . All it needed was Papadopoulos to carry the undeclared cash into the U.S.
However, because Papadopoulos suspected something, and left the money in Greece with his lawyers, upon arrival at the airport
the operation collapsed in reverse . No money means no treasury violation, no laundering and no evidence of the consultancy
agreement (which would have been repurposed in the DOJ filing to mean lobbying for Israel via Mr. Tawil who would have become
a confidential informant and witness).
That operational collapse is why the FBI agents were "scrambling" at the airport and why they had no pre-existing criminal complaint.
The entrapment's success was contingent upon the cash.
Lastly, to repeat, this entire scenario was constructed by the DOJ/FBI team operation in 2017. The members of the Special
Counsel were running the entrapment operation; the FBI agents were participating in the operation. This is not *investigating* criminal
conduct; this is manufacturing criminal conduct.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was in charge of the Mueller Special Counsel.
The only way DAG Rosenstein and Robert Mueller didn't know about the operation is if they both claim that Andrew Weissmann
was completely rogue and in control over the FBI agents.
Oh, wait, what does the Mueller report say about the FBI agents and their chain-of-legal guidance and command?
... ... ...
With events happening in June/July 2017 Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller, former FBI legal counsel Jim Baker, former Deputy FBI
Director McCabe, together with current FBI legal counsel Dana Boente and current FBI Director Wray were what? Hoodwinked?
"... They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller's operation, and even had a hand in his final report, because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media. ..."
"... Mueller's reliance on the Steele dossier is raising questions because it occurred long after FBI Director James B. Comey described the dossier as "salacious and unverified." U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the report should be renamed "The Mueller Dossier," because he says it contains a lot of similar innuendo. ..."
"... Steele's 17-memo dossier alleged that the Trump campaign was involved in "a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. It claimed this conspiracy "was managed on the Trump side by Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was using foreign policy adviser Carter Page and others as intermediaries." ..."
"... Specifically, the dossier accused Page of secretly meeting with Kremlin officials in July 2016 to hatch a plot to release dirt on Hillary Clinton. And it accused Manafort of being corrupted by Russian President Vladimir Putin through his puppets in the Ukraine. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside
contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office
refuses to say who they were. While it's not unusual for special government offices to
outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile
"investigative reports" and other "information."
The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others
to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special
counsel's office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research
firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.
They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller's operation, and even
had a hand in his final report, because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet
with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017.
Also, Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from
Fusion with the media.
Raising additional suspicions, Mueller's report recycles the general allegations leveled in
the dossier. And taking a page from earlier surveillance-warrant applications in the Russia
investigation, it cites as supporting evidence several articles -- including one by Yahoo! News
-- that used Steele and Fusion as sources.
Mueller even kept alive one of the dossier's most obscene accusations -- that Moscow had
"compromising tapes" of Trump with Russian hookers -- by slipping into a footnote an October
2016 text Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received from a "Russian businessman," who cryptically
intimated, "Stopped flow of tapes from Russia."
Lawyers for the businessman, Giorgi Rtskhiladze (who is actually a Georgian American), are
demanding a retraction of the footnote, arguing Mueller omitted the part of his text where he
said he did not believe the rumor about the tapes, for which no evidence has ever surfaced.
Mueller's reliance on the Steele dossier is raising questions because it occurred long after
FBI Director James B. Comey described the dossier as "salacious and unverified." U.S. Rep.
Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the report should be
renamed "The Mueller Dossier," because he says it contains a lot of similar innuendo.
Even though Mueller failed to corroborate key allegations leveled in the dossier, Nunes said
his report twists key facts to put a collusion gloss on events. He also asserted that it
selectively quotes from Trump campaign emails and omits exculpatory information in ways that
cast the campaign's activities in the most sinister light.
Steele's 17-memo dossier alleged that the Trump campaign was involved in "a well-developed
conspiracy of cooperation" with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election in
Trump's favor. It claimed this conspiracy "was managed on the Trump side by Campaign Chairman
Paul Manafort, who was using foreign policy adviser Carter Page and others as
intermediaries."
Specifically, the dossier accused Page of secretly meeting with Kremlin officials in July
2016 to hatch a plot to release dirt on Hillary Clinton. And it accused Manafort of being
corrupted by Russian President Vladimir Putin through his puppets in the Ukraine.
Likewise, Mueller's report focuses on Manafort and Page and whether they "committed crimes
by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts
to interfere with the 2016 presidential election." Though the investigation did not establish
that Page coordinated with the Russian government, the Mueller report implies there may be a
kernel of truth to the dossier's charges.
"In July 2016, Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page traveled in his personal capacity
to Moscow and gave the keynote address at the New Economic School," according to the section on
him. "Page had lived and worked in Russia between 2003 and 2007. After returning to the United
States, Page became acquainted with at least two Russian intelligence officers, one of whom was
later charged in 2015 with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of Russia."
"Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow and his advocacy for pro-Russian foreign policy drew media
attention," Mueller's narrative continued. "July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first
released emails stolen by the GRU [Russian intelligence] from the DNC." "Page acknowledged that
he understood that the individuals he has associated with were members of the Russian
intelligence services," the report added, implying that Page in the 2015 case (referenced
above) knowingly cavorted with Russian spies, which echoes charges Steele made in his
dossier.
But federal court records make it clear that Page did not know that those men were Russian
agents. Mueller also left out of his report a detail RealClearInvestigations has previously
reported: that Page was a cooperating witness in the case in question, helping the FBI
eventually put a Russian agent behind bars in 2016.
Nor did Mueller see fit to include in his report another exculpatory detail revealed in
agent Gregory Mohaghan's complaint and reported earlier by RCI -- namely, that the Russians
privately referred to Page as "an idiot" who was unworthy of recruitment. Excluding such
details is curious, given that the Mueller report quotes from the same FBI complaint and cites
it in its footnotes. Similarly, in its section dealing with Manafort, the Mueller report echoes
the dossier's claims that the Trump campaign chairman was in cahoots with the Kremlin, even
though Mueller never charged him with conspiring to collude with Russia
The special prosecutor's report indicated that one of Manafort's Kremlin handlers was
Konstantin Kilimnik. "Manafort briefed Kilimnik on the state of the Trump Campaign and
Manafort's plan to win the election," it said. "That briefing encompassed the Campaign's
messaging and its internal polling data. It also included discussion of 'battleground' states,
which Manafort identified as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota."
Except that this wouldn't have been an unusual conversation: Kilimnik was a longtime
Manafort employee who ran the Ukraine office of his lobbying firm. Footnotes in Mueller's
report show that Manafort shared campaign information to impress a former business partner,
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was suing him over financial losses. Mueller failed to tie
the information exchange to Russian espionage. He also failed to mention that Deripaska is an
FBI informant.
Mueller's team worked closely with dossier author Steele, a long-retired British
intelligence officer who worked for the Clinton campaign. Mueller's investigators went to
London to consult with Steele for at least two days in September 2017 while apparently using
his dossier as an investigative road map and central theory to his collusion case. Steele now
runs a private research and consulting firm in London, Orbis Business Intelligence.
It's not clear if Mueller's office paid Steele, but recently released FBI records show the
bureau previously made a number of payments to him, and at one point during the 2016 campaign
offered him $50,000 to continue his dossier research. Steele was also paid through the Clinton
campaign, earning $168,000 for his work on the dossier.
Expenditure statements show that the Special Counsel's Office outsourced "investigative
reports" and "information" to third-party contractors during Mueller's investigation into
alleged Russian "collusion" during the 2016 presidential election. Over the past few months,
Mueller's office has rejected several formal requests from RealClearInvestigations for contract
details, including who was hired and how much they were paid.
Washington-based Judicial Watch suspects Mueller's office may have farmed out work to the
private Washington research firm Fusion GPS or its subcontractor Steele, both of whom were paid
by the Clinton camp during the 2016 presidential election. Several law enforcement and Hill
sources who spoke with RCI also believe Steele and Fusion GPS were deputized in the
investigation.
The government watchdog group has requested that the Justice Department turn over the
contracting records, along with all budget requests Mueller submitted to the attorney general
during his nearly two-year investigation. It's also requested all communications between the
Special Counsel's Office and the private contractors it used. A Judicial Watch spokesman said
its Freedom of Information Act request is pending.
Special counsel spokesman Peter Carr declined comment when asked specifically if Mueller's
team hired or collaborated with Fusion GPS or any of its subcontractors. Mueller took over the
FBI's Russia probe in May 2017, whereupon he hired many of the agents who handled Steele and
pored over his dossier.
For the first reporting period ending Sept. 30, 2017, and covering just four months, the
Special Counsel's Office reported paying $867 to unnamed contractors for "investigative
reports/information," along with $3,554 in "miscellaneous" payments to contractors. In the next
reporting period ending March 31, 2018, the office stopped breaking out investigative reports
and information as a separate line item, lumping such contractual services under the category
"Other," which accounted for a total of $10,812, or more than 4% of the total spending on
outside contracts.
For the six months ending Sept. 30, 2018 -- the latest reporting period for which there is
data -- Mueller's office showed a total of $310,732 in payments to outside contractors. For the
first time, it did not break out such expenses into subcategories, though it noted that the
lion's share of the $310,000 was spent on "IT services."
Mueller concluded his investigation and delivered his final report in March. The next
expenditure report, for the period October 2018-March 2019, will cover contract work directly
tied to compiling the report. Asked if the contracting details were classified, Carr demurred.
If the information is not deemed classified, it must be made public, Judicial Watch
maintains.
Republican critics on the Hill say Mueller's written narrative was slanted to give the
impression there still might be something to the dossier's most salacious allegations, even
though Mueller found no evidence corroborating them or establishing that Trump or his campaign
coordinated or cooperated with Russian meddling in the election.
"Whoever wrote the report leaves you with the idea there's still something to all the
allegations of collusion that were first promoted by the dossier," said a witness who was
interviewed by Mueller's investigators late in the probe and is referenced in the report.
In a section on Donald Trump Jr., moreover, the report gives the misimpression that the
president's oldest son was collaborating with WikiLeaks on the release of the Clinton campaign
emails. "Donald Trump Jr. had direct electronic communications with WikiLeaks during the
campaign period," it stated.
In fact, Trump got an unsolicited message through his Twitter account from WikiLeaks. He
described the outreach as "weird" in an email to senior Trump campaign staff at the time. Other
contemporaneous messages make it clear he had no advance knowledge about any Clinton emails
released by WikiLeaks.
The FBI first began receiving memos from Steele's dossier in early July 2016 and used the
documents as the foundation for its October 2016 application for a warrant to wiretap the
private communications of Page. These milestones are missing from the Mueller report's
chronology of events. In fact, neither Steele nor his dossier is mentioned by name anywhere in
the first half of the report dealing with collusion, though their allegations are hashed
out.
Some Mueller critics are focused on the role played by his top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann,
a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter with longstanding ties to Steele and Fusion GPS.
"Weissman had a lot to do with the way the report was written," said author Jerome Corsi,
who, as a friend of Trump confidant Roger Stone, was targeted by Mueller. "That's why it's
basically a political document." Corsi said he spent more than 40 hours with Mueller's
prosecutors and investigators, who grilled him about possible ties to WikiLeaks but never
charged him with a crime.
Formerly a top Justice Department official under Obama, Weissmann not only donated to
Clinton's presidential campaign but also attended her election-night party in New York City in
November 2016. Three months earlier, he was briefed on Steele's dossier and other dirt provided
by the Clinton contractor and paid FBI informant.
In early 2017, Weissmann helped advance the Russia collusion narrative by personally sharing
Steele's and Fusion's dirt on Trump and his advisers with Washington reporters. In an April
2017 meeting he arranged at his office, Weissmann gave guidance to four Associated Press
reporters who were investigating Manafort, according to internal FBI documents.
Among other things, they discussed rumors that Manafort used "some of the money from shell
companies to buy expensive suits." A month later, Weissmann became the lead prosecutor handling
the Manafort case for Mueller. His February 2018 indictment of Manafort highlights, among other
things, the Trump adviser's taste for expensive suits. Attempts to reach Weissmann for comment
were unsuccessful.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said there are signs Mueller may have hired
"researchers" like Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who worked with Steele on the dossier,
along with Edward Baumgartner and Nellie Ohr, who have worked for Fusion GPS, which originally
hired Steele in June 2016 after contracting with the Clinton campaign.
"I ran into Glenn at the 2017 Aspen Security [Forum], and I distinctly remember him leaning
in and claiming he was working for the government," said one associate, who wished to remain
anonymous. Congressional investigators say Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has
been feeding Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate investigative tips regarding Trump
and his associates, including Manafort. In 2017, for instance, he urged Democrats specifically
to look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank, which has financed some of Trump's businesses,
because he suspected some of the funding may have been laundered through Russia.
Around the time Simpson began coordinating with Democratic investigators looking into
Trump's bank records, Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for financial records for Manafort and
other individuals affiliated with Trump. Simpson did not return calls and emails seeking
comment.
Founded by the journalist-turned-opposition researcher, Fusion has rehired Steele to
continue his anti-Trump work with millions of dollars in left-wing funding from The Democracy
Integrity Project, a Washington-based nonprofit started in 2017 by former FBI analyst Daniel
Jones, who also worked for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In March 2017, Jones met with FBI agents to provide them data he collected from IT
specialists he hired to analyze web traffic between servers maintained by the Trump
Organization and a Russian bank mentioned in the dossier. The traffic turned out to be
innocuous marketing emails, or spam.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry is a regular contributor to RealClearInvestigations
and has written news or op-ed pieces for the New York Post, New York Times and Wall Street
Journal. His books include 'The Great American Bank Robbery' (2011), and 'Crude Politics: How
Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism' (2003).
It might well be that Trump treatment of 9/11 as unsolved investigation was one of the red flag for establishment
(and personally Brennan) which led to launching of Russiagate.
Notable quotes:
"... But why was Brennan so anti-Syria and anti-Ukraine? What personal motives did he have? ..."
"... Can someone please explain what it was about Donald Trump at the time that this all began, that Brennan would set all of this in motion? ..."
"... For one thing, Trump, early in his campaign stated that he had suspicions regarding official explanations of 9/11. ..."
But why was Brennan so anti-Syria and anti-Ukraine? What personal motives did he have? Why
target two regimes esp hated by Jews?
It seems he's like McCain. A mean nasty son of a bitch who likes to play world politics.
It's his bullying nature. But he has no vision or compass. Like a dog, he will hunt and maul
anything that is approved by the Power. And that Power is Jewish.
Dogs love to hunt but only get to hunt what the master orders it to. If the master orders
the dog to love rabbits and hunt raccoon, it will do just that. If the master orders it to
love raccoon and hunt rabbits, it will do that. In the end, the dog doesn't care what it
hunts as long as it's given a chance to hunt something.
Same with these goy cuck dogs. Their lives feel fulfilled only in Big Power bully mode.
They need to beat up on something. But they have no vision or compass, no agency. They look
over their shoulders to the Power to tell them what to love(Israel and Saudis) and what to
hate(Iran and Syria and Russia).
Dogs growl at dogs, not at their masters. When Trump came around, Brennan didn't see him
as the new master but as a bad dog(or even wolf) displeasing his master, the Jews. Like
McCain, a very loyal dog. Also, a dog feels jealousy that the master may take to a new dog
over him.
I have to think that the pyramid goes higher still Brennan working for Hillary and Hillary
working for the combined plutocratic imperialist elite that make up the core of the Clinton
Foundation's billions these scumbags will never be touched for buying Killary, but maybe
Killary will end up in an orange jumpsuit, right beside her gopher Brennan
And maybe Trump finally has his hands untied to start doing the things he promised time
will tell
But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the
hapless sad sack who was left holding the bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant
follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's
premier intelligence agency, the CIA.
suspect you are correct
Brennan seems like the real evil, Comey just a doofus
@R Boyd
"Can someone please explain what it was about Donald Trump at the time that this all began,
that Brennan would set all of this in motion?"
He was not truly compromised thus controlled by the spooks. So they were trying to achieve
that, and it appears based on Trump's behavior, that they did achieve that
@ Laquerre 60 My impression was that the intellectual class (my contacts) still hate the Islamic regime
as much as they ever did. Iran is a divided country.
Is that unusual, for people to be divided and for some to hate their government?
I think not.
The US is certainly divided currently. France too, and others.
According to the Real Clear Politics US polls:
--President Trump job approval 45%
--Direction of country wrong track 54-50% here
Also, 42% of US the voting-eligible population did not vote in the 2016 election
Bottom line: The US with its many domestic problems including historic racism and
mysoginism should keep its nose out if others peoples' domestic affairs.
"... Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts. ..."
"... This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration? ..."
"... Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member. ..."
"... At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions. ..."
Trump was after a good deal from Russia. A new partnership would have reversed deteriorating relations between the powers by encouraging
their alliance against ISIS and recognising the importance of Ukraine to Russia's security. Current US paranoia about everything
Kremlin-related has encouraged amnesia about what President Barack Obama said in 2016, after the annexation of the Crimea and Russia's
direct intervention in Syria. He too put the danger posed by President Vladimir Putin into perspective: the interventions in Ukraine
and the Middle East were, Obama said, improvised 'in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp' (
5 ).
Obama went on: 'The Russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country,
their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.' What he feared most about Putin was
the sympathy he inspired in Trump and his supporters: '37% of Republican voters approve of Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald
Reagan would roll over in his grave' ( 6 ).
By January 2017, Reagan's eternal rest was no longer threatened. 'Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,' Putin
concluded ( 7 ). Historians will study
this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any
entente between Moscow and Washington.
Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump
and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe
an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails
fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' (
8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts.
The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their
middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture (
9 ). So they were searching for any information
or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, everyone
had his particular motive for striking the same victim.
The intrigue developed quickly as these four areas have fairly porous boundaries. The understanding between Republican hawks such
as John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the military-industrial complex was a given. The architects
of recent US imperial adventures, especially Iraq, had not enjoyed the 2016 campaign or Trump's jibes about their expertise. During
the campaign, some 50 intellectuals and officials announced that, despite being Republicans, they would not support Trump because
he 'would put at risk our country's national security and wellbeing.' Some went so far as to vote for Clinton (
10 ).
Ambitions of a 'deep state'?
The press feared that Trump's incompetence would threaten the US-dominated international order. It had no problem with military
crusades, especially when emblazoned with grand humanitarian, internationalist or progressive principles. According to the press
criteria, Putin and his predilection for rightwing nationalists were obvious culprits. But so were Saudi Arabia or Israel, though
that did not prevent the Saudis being able to count on the ferociously anti-Russian Wall Street Journal, or Israel enjoying
the support of almost all US media, despite having a far-right element in its government.
Just over a week before Trump took office, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story that revealed the mass
surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency, warned of the direction of travel. He observed that the US media had
become the intelligence services' 'most valuable instrument, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with
hidden intelligence officials.' This at a time when 'Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as
well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing
-- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging
those behaviours might be' ( 11 ).
The anti-Russian coalition hadn't then achieved all its objectives, but Greenwald already discerned the ambitions of a 'deep state'.
'There really is, at this point,' he said 'obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in
Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president
on the other.' One suspicion, fed by the intelligence services, galvanised all Trump's enemies: Moscow had compromising secrets about
Trump -- financial, electoral, sexual -- capable of paralysing him should a crisis between the two countries occur (
12 ).
Covert opposition to Trump
The suspicion of such a murky understanding, summed up by the pro-Clinton economist Paul Krugman as a 'Trump-Putin ticket', has
transformed the anti-Russian activity into a domestic political weapon against a president increasingly hated outside the ultraconservative
bloc. It is no longer unusual to hear leftwing activists turn FBI or CIA apologists, since these agencies became a home for a covert
opposition to Trump and the source of many leaks.
This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses
the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia.
Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no
one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but
by the Obama administration?
The silence was once broken when the Republican representative for North Carolina, Tom Tillis, questioned former CIA director
James Clapper in January: 'The United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II.
That doesn't include coups or the regime changes, some tangible evidence where we have tried to affect an outcome to our purpose.
Russia has done it some 36 times.' This perspective rarely disturbs the New York Times 's fulminations against Moscow's trickery.
The Times also failed to inform younger readers that Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, who picked Putin as his successor
in 1999, had been re-elected in 1996, though seriously ill and often drunk, in a fraudulent election conducted with the assistance
of US advisers and the overt support of President Bill Clinton. The Times hailed the result as 'a victory for Russian democracy'
and declared that 'the forces of democracy and reform won a vital but not definitive victory in Russia yesterday For the first time
in history, a free Russia has freely chosen its leader.'
Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining
resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President
Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute
to Montenegro, NATO's newest member.
No longer getting his way
But the Times, far from worrying about these provocative gestures coinciding with heightened tensions between great powers
(trade sanctions against Russia, Moscow's expulsion of US diplomats), poured oil on the fire. On 2 August it praised the reaffirmation
of 'America's commitment to defend democratic nations against those countries that would undermine them' and regretted that Mike
Pence's views 'aren't as eagerly embraced and celebrated by the man he works for back in the White House.'
At this stage, it doesn't
matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own
conclusions.
George Papadopoulos's story on why he thinks that the RussiaGate probe was started is something out of The Parallax View but,
alas, rings true: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, stopping Brexit, and abandoning an Atlanticist foreign policy were opposed by a
CIA and corporate political establishment, who created the fake Steele dossier to bring down Trump (the TPP, and also Brexit, I believe,
were in the dossier as reasons why "Putin" wanted Trump to win)
"... "The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." ( "How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News) ..."
"... "Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." ( "The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip Giraldi) ..."
"... According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.): "GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian) ..."
"... Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his report, right? But he didn't. Why? ..."
"... Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story. ..."
Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the
origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient
justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion
probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching
the investigation. The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump
campaign– seem to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for
spying on the campaign of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment. In any
event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate scandal and
mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution for their
role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.
Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:
"The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments,
to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called
Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in
the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." (
"How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)
Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in
his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether
the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already
knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain
warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their
counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was
unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign
enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing
or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their
power to discredit him and have him removed from office. His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to
the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the
CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps, even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain
the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears to be serious about finding out.
Here's Barr again: "Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant
.I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence
effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."
In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what
happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research
"hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had
concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened
already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how
trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or
force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".
The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director
who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious
hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new
evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report
by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were
shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later,
used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written
proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd
call a premeditated felony.
But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the
bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the
nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More
on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:
(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White
House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree
head spin.
"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on
a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA
director.
In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA
sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher
Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New
York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more
than an FBI counterintelligence case." (
"James Comey
is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)
Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous
White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all
appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??
Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan,
the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise
to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's
strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni
militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering
a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why
Brennan hates Trump?
Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade.
It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together
the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election
chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was
chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while
still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan
was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining
of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:
"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve
several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the
British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan
was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the
concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence
sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped.
And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." (
"The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip
Giraldi)
Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped
them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus
"intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these
foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's
ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.
According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.): "GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters)
played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called
the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia
", The Guardian)
Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative
ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his
report, right? But he didn't. Why?
Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence
so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's
campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't,
because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.
Here's more from the same article:
"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team
and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)
"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???
Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president
of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.
There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says:
"One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to
shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."
Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of
his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved
in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have
been retroactively classified?
Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents
in April 2017.
"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might
explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks."
-Peter Strzok.
Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan
wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.
All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William
Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly
obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going
to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.
Bottom line: The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable
for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are
about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."
"... In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well. ..."
"... Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign. ..."
"... Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas. ..."
"... Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center "put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort." ..."
"... In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks" with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event. ..."
"... A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms. ..."
"... Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign." ..."
"... Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism." ..."
"... Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?" ..."
Manafort's work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked
in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant,
for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records,
though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC's arm for engaging expatriate
Democrats around the world.
A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine,
Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching
Manafort's role in Yanukovych's rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych's political party.
In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative
journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle
centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign
began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well.
She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 -- months
before Manafort had taken any role in Trump's campaign -- Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump's campaign,
"I felt there was a Russia connection," Chalupa recalled. "And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved
in this election," said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was "Putin's
political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections."
he said she shared her concern with Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar,
during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very
much on his radar, but that he wasn't particularly concerned about the operative's ties to Trump since he didn't believe Trump stood
much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.
That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump's ties to Russia -- let alone Manafort's -- were not
the subject of much attention.
That all started to change just four days after Chalupa's meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired
Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort's
hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC's communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative
familiar with the situation.
A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an "informal conversation," saying "'briefing' makes it sound way too formal,"
and adding, "We were not directing or driving her work on this." Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the
situation agreed that with the DNC's encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko
might discuss Manafort's ties to Yanukovych.
While the embassy declined that request, officials there became "helpful" in Chalupa's efforts, she said, explaining that she
traded information and leads with them. "If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to
follow up with." But she stressed, "There were no documents given, nothing like that."
Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right
directions. She added, though, "they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think
they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It's
a political issue, and they didn't want to get involved politically because they couldn't."
Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining "we were
stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to
interfere into the campaign affairs."
Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote
Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian
Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne
Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.
Shulyar said her work with Chalupa "didn't involve the campaign," and she specifically stressed that "We have never worked to
research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort."
But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help
Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. "Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people
who did, then I should contact Chalupa," recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. "They were coordinating
an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa," he said, adding "Oksana was keeping it all quiet,"
but "the embassy worked very closely with" Chalupa.
In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide
an update on an American media outlet's ongoing investigation into Manafort.
Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, "If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump's involvement
with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September."
Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort's hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation
with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian
Caucus. But, Chalupa said, "It didn't go anywhere."
Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a "touchy subject" in an internal email to colleagues that
was accidentally forwarded to Politico.
Kaptur's office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission
to investigate "possible outside interference in our elections." The office added "at this time, the evidence related to this matter
points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections."
•••
Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself
the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.
Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what
became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that "state-sponsored actors"
were trying to hack into her emails.
She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with
a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional
agency called the Open World Leadership Center.
Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures "that our delegations hear from both sides
of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information." She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials
in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, "Open World's program manager for Ukraine
did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress."
Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center
"put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort."
In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended
an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the
event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch
related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks"
with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event.
Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined
to comment.
Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that
she intended to share "offline" with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including "a big Trump component you and Lauren
need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." Explaining that she didn't
feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about "state-sponsored"
hacking on her account, explaining, "Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo
account despite changing my password often."
Dillon and Miranda declined to comment.
A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher.
She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its
dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties
to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.
Nonetheless, Chalupa's hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia
likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.
Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia
. She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to "a lot of journalists" working on stories related to Manafort
and Trump's Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.
... ... ...
•••
While it's not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging
Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign -- and certainly for Manafort -- can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.
Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency -- and publicized by a parliamentarian -- appeared to show $12.7
million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.
The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers' existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were
"a focus" of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an
overlapping inquiry.
Clinton's campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats' argument that Trump's campaign was closely linked to Russia. The
ledger represented "more troubling connections between Donald Trump's team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine," Robby Mook, Clinton's
campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump "disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort's and all other campaign employees'
and advisers' ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump's employees or advisers are currently representing
and or being paid by them."
A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part
of Poroshenko's party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively
investigate Manafort.
"I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law -- we have the proof from these books," Leshchenko
said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. "If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he
has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,"
Leshchenko added.
Manafort
denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger
by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO "I was just caught in the crossfire."
According to a
series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump's opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting
with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized "substantial kickback payments
to Manafort." But according to the report, which was
published Tuesday
by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin "that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide
clear evidence of this" -- an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.
The scrutiny around the ledgers -- combined with that from
other stories about his
Ukraine
work -- proved too much, and he
stepped down from the
Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.
At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. "For me, it was important to show not only
the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world," Leshchenko
told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump's candidacy had spurred "Kiev's
wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,"
and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine's politicians are "on Hillary Clinton's side."
But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, "I didn't care who won the U.S. elections.
This was a decision for the American voters to decide." His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was "to raise these issues
on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation."
In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko's efforts
and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created
in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement
with the FBI in late June -- less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.
The bureau is "fully independent," the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration
there was "no targeted action against Manafort." He added "as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal
opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko's faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction," the spokesman said, adding,
"it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort."
But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that
either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his
closest allies.
"It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to," said the operative.
And, almost immediately after Trump's stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the
ledgers -- and the ledgers themselves.
An official with the anti-corruption bureau told a Ukrainian newspaper, "Mr. Manafort does not have a role in this case."
And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a "general investigation [is] still ongoing" of the ledger,
it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. "As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law
couldn't investigate him personally," the bureau said in a statement.
Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might
have been doctored or even forged.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated
with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the
handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington
with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign."
And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the
ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication "a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was
public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady."
He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing "all my efforts were
focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West." He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the
European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. "In no case was I ever involved in anything
that would be contrary to U.S. interests," Manafort said.
Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry charged
that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.
"Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump's election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul
Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs," Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing,
according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry's website. "All of you have heard this remarkable story,"
she told assembled reporters.
•••
Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn't exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during
the campaign.
The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which
the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian territory of
Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.
"That was like too close for comfort, even for them," said Chalupa. "That was something that was as risky as they were going to
be."
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had "challenged the very values of the free world."
Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that
Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism."
Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a
dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called
Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to
Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?"
The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on
the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates,
but scored only a meeting with Clinton.
Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country's ambassador in Washington, had actually
instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump's campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump's leading GOP
rival, Ted Cruz.
"We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position
on Crimea and the conflict," said Telizhenko. "I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump," he said, adding, "The ambassador
said not to get involved -- Hillary is going to win."
This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent,
who said, "The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows -- this is from the Ukrainian side." He called the strategy "bad
and short-sighted."
Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump's team during
the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.
"It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy," Artemenko said. "They did everything from organizing meetings
with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. I think that they simply didn't meet because they thought
that Hillary would win."
Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it "had different
diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain
from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to,
but where another colleague was involved."
And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump's foreign
policy team "to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S."
Despite the outreach, Trump's campaign in Cleveland gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for
the U.S. to provide "lethal defensive weapons" for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged.
The outreach ramped up after Trump's victory. Shulyar pointed out that Poroshenko was among the first foreign leaders to call
to congratulate Trump. And she said that, since Election Day, Chaly has met with close Trump allies, including Sens. Jeff Sessions,
Trump's nominee for attorney general, and Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while the ambassador
accompanied Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine's vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to a round of Washington
meetings with Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), an early Trump backer, and Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, which played
a prominent role in Trump's transition.
•••
Many Ukrainian officials and operatives and their American allies see Trump's inauguration this month as an existential threat
to the country, made worse, they admit, by the dissemination of the secret ledger, the antagonistic social media posts and the perception
that the embassy meddled against -- or at least shut out -- Trump.
"It's really bad. The [Poroshenko] administration right now is trying to re-coordinate communications," said Telizhenko, adding,
"The Trump organization doesn't want to talk to our administration at all."
During Nalyvaichenko's trip to Washington last month, he detected lingering ill will toward Ukraine from some, and lack of
interest from others, he recalled. "Ukraine is not on the top of the list, not even the middle," he said.
Poroshenko's allies are scrambling to figure out how to build a relationship with Trump, who is known for harboring and prosecuting
grudges for years.
A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians allied with Poroshenko last month traveled to Washington partly to try to make inroads
with the Trump transition team, but they were unable to secure a meeting, according to a Washington foreign policy operative familiar
with the trip. And operatives in Washington and Kiev say that after the election, Poroshenko met in Kiev with top executives from
the Washington lobbying firm BGR -- including Ed Rogers and Lester Munson -- about how to navigate the Trump regime.
Weeks later, BGR reported to the Department of Justice that the government of Ukraine would pay the firm $50,000 a month to "provide
strategic public relations and government affairs counsel," including "outreach to U.S. government officials, non-government organizations,
members of the media and other individuals."
Firm spokesman Jeffrey Birnbaum suggested that "pro-Putin oligarchs" were already trying to sow doubts about BGR's work with Poroshenko.
While the firm maintains close relationships with GOP congressional leaders, several of its principals were dismissive or sharply
critical of Trump during the GOP primary, which could limit their effectiveness lobbying the new administration.
The Poroshenko regime's standing with Trump is considered so dire that the president's allies after the election actually reached
out to make amends with -- and even seek assistance from -- Manafort, according to two operatives familiar with Ukraine's efforts
to make inroads with Trump.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko's rivals are seeking to capitalize on his dicey relationship with Trump's team. Some are pressuring him
to replace Chaly, a close ally of Poroshenko's who is being blamed by critics in Kiev and Washington for implementing -- if not engineering
-- the country's anti-Trump efforts, according to Ukrainian and U.S. politicians and operatives interviewed for this story. They
say that several potential Poroshenko opponents have been through Washington since the election seeking audiences of their own with
Trump allies, though most have failed to do do so.
"None of the Ukrainians have any access to Trump -- they are all desperate to get it, and are willing to pay big for it," said
one American consultant whose company recently met in Washington with Yuriy Boyko, a former vice prime minister under Yanukovych.
Boyko, who like Yanukovych has a pro-Russian worldview, is considering a presidential campaign of his own, and his representatives
offered "to pay a shit-ton of money" to get access to Trump and his inaugural events, according to the consultant.
The consultant turned down the work, explaining, "It sounded shady, and we don't want to get in the middle of that kind of stuff."
Looks like Chalupa was an important player in Steele dossier. That suggests Ukrainian diaspora, and possibly Ukrainian SBU links.
Notable quotes:
"... Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia. ..."
"... That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role ..."
"... We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? ..."
"... Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing. ..."
"... "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion. ..."
"... Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign." ..."
Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment
that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources
in Russia.
That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it
would not rule him out in a more peripheral role.
We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too..
Was someone paid a fee to say something?? your last comment-conclusion is very shaky at best..
Could you give a link to the source of that info? Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much
store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability
to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing.
"A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for
researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous
dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion.
Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko
about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in
Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established
in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign."
"... Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m
..."
"... And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the
sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.
..."
"... Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The
Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org,
and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra. ..."
(if that's too 'in the weeds' for you, ask your tech guys to read and verify)
And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council -
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa
why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family
is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.
Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel
Stopfake.org She is a
Ukrainian Diaspora
leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through
the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra.
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network ..."
"... In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency." ..."
"... Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list. ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the
2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial
to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike
that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is
an "as is" statement showing this.
The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and
this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific
parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to
be investigated for real crimes.
For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one
other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe
is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy
Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.
The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to
trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian
involvement?
The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It
doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT
28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.
This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of
rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to
be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that
every private actor in the information game was radically political.
The
Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this
intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed,
the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an
attack on the power grid or a missile strike.
According
to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI
and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.
"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators
of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The
report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other
private security firms."
In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global
surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the
entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and
how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They
seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"
According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company
dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across
the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.
Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the
self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to
the armies in Donbass instead.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee.
Asked to comment on Alperovitch's
discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his
experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the
Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably,
maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "
Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."
The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or
using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian
losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC.
According to NBC the story reads like this."
The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report
publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is
Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a
Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on
his communications and determine his position through geo-location.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence
agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is
believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is
believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."
The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be."
According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that
"intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use
it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to
make it work.
In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that
geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means,
someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are
seeing at any given moment.
Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an
advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would
you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If
you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and
possibly up to something.
If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better
choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they
overpaid?
According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app
plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get
information this way.
Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day.
In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain
a map of their locations and track them individually.
From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take
photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to.
Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB,
anyone could
take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download
the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB,
GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?
In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app,
allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops'
position.
In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and
other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the
conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late
2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The
Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."
In late 2014,
I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the
Ukrainian civil war.
I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking
Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently."
Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.
When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no
telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the
documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine
was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped
with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.
Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had
Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would
question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be
Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about
it.
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have
been in deep trouble.
How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and
still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some
very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?
According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when
you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern
Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but
specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would
target these artillerymen."
That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the
CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get
beyond the threshold of maybe.
Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for
the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is
closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political
organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology
to protect themselves."
Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further?
Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.
Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of
interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.
His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information
we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating
these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is
said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC,
linking the two together."
Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at
the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved.
While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy
of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues
and not get investigated yourself?
If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies
to Russia.
After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a
criminal conspiracy.
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the
election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri
Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US
Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years.
Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows
for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a
reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to
carry this out?
Real Fancy Bear?
Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian
positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they
didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and
most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet
services.
These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their
homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas
Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and
kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian
servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.
This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and
arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news
video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people
probably caught up in the net accidentally.
This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line.
The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target
the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.
The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her
voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim
and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going
to get a medal for this?"
Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know.
It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This
has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides
of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."
Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that
armored personnel carriers had just driven by.
Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what
unit was there and how many artillery pieces.
One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on
the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack
since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to
the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.
When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go
back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.
Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev.
At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people
living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including
starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded
in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's
done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If
unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should
look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC
hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch
and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the
skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
In the last article exploring the
DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and
Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international
attention in the first place.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "
After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter
to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within
the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians,"
said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the
hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her
research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister
Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking
investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the
work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and
obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror
Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should
have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election
in a new direction.
According to Esquire.com ,
Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the
past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said
the measures taken were directly because of his work.
Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with
the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state
supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that
tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
In my
previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point
review looks like this.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start
a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements
were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera
wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform
that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust
memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed
There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and
want an authoritarian fascism.
Alexandra Chalupa- According
to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following
the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra
Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money
for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian
emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima
Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and
Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper
Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows
clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that
show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital
Maidan by both Chalupas is a
clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25
year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described
Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that
founded Euromaidan
Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav
Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian
nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director
position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the
foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh
Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had
to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on
videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to
speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene
Chalupa. From her bio – Irena
Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has
worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the
Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the
news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian
emigre leader.
According to
Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in
a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the
CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with
Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict
of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton
needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland
Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could
change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to
groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal
conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a
major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and
clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects
the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he
found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups
is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet
for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of
a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm
and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?
Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC
hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and
Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network.
Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network
In an interview with
Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA
amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a
quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon
Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets
site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't
want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.
Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence)
tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian
Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.
Trying to keep it hush hush?
This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of
Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him
and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared.
If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared
heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves
and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the
portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and
directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to
promote the story of Russian hacking.
Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the
hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy
Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the
Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that
Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian
hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we
need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or
any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out
for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian
language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the
tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US
intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war
between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst.
Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he
and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the
government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal
in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have,
the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I
have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is
not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict
with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests.
He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of
interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real
Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.
By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of
the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
From the Observer.com , " Andrea
Chalupa -- the sister of DNC
research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on
social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton
conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because
Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically
tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV
show The Americans
, about two KGB spies living in America, is real."
Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved
party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian
Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly
have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access
to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access.
After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for
truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has
released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for
inconvenient truth telling."
"Foreign agents introduced Ukranian politician to US political figures in secretive
lobbying arrangement" [
OpenSecrets ]. "Foreign agents and lobbyists accused of orchestrating a disinformation
campaign attacking former Ukrainian Prime Minister and 2019 presidential candidate Yulia
Tymoshenko actually introduced her to key U.S. political players last year, an investigation
by the Center for Responsive Responsive Politics has found. New FARA records reveal foreign
agents and lobbyists on the payroll of Livingston Group, a lobbying firm run by former Rep.
Bob Livingston (R-La.), played a previously unreported role in Tymoshenko's meetings with
lawmakers during a December 2018 trip to Washington, D.C., including House Intelligence
Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)." • Mostly
Republicans, to be sure, but Schiff's presence is interesting. UkraineGate. SaudiGate.
UAEGate .
"... It's not obvious to me that universal access to college education is a progressive goal. ..."
"... I think it is extremely important to understand where Warren is coming from on this. Warren initially became active in politics because she recognized the pernicious nature of debt and the impact it had on well-being. I ..."
"... Warren's emphasis in this particular initiative, it seems to me, is to alleviate debt so that individuals can pursue more advanced functionings/capabilities. ..."
"... The more a college degree is the norm, the worse things are for people without one. Making it easier to get a college degree increases the degree to which its the norm, and will almost inevitably have the same impact on the value of a college degree as the growth in high-school attendance (noted by Sam Tobin-Hochstadt above) had on the value of a high school degree. ..."
"... The debate on this subject strikes me as misguided because it says nothing about what students learn. A good high school education should be enough to prepare young people for most kinds of work. In most jobs, even those allegedly requiring college degrees, the way people learn most of what they need to know is through on the job training. Many high school graduates have not received a good education, though, and go to college as, in effect, remedial high school. ..."
by Harry on May 6, 2019 Ganesh Sitaraman argues in
the Garun that, contrary to appearances, and contrary to the criticism that it has earned,
Elizabeth Warren's college plan really is progressive, because it is funded by taxation that
comes exclusively from a wealth tax on those with more than $50 million in assets. Its
progressive, he says, because it redistributes down. In some technical sense perhaps he's
right.
But this, quite odd, argument caught my eye:
But the critics at times also suggest that if any significant amount of benefits go to
middle-class or upper-middle class people, then the plan is also not progressive. This is
where things get confusing. The critics can't mean this in a specific sense because the plan
is, as I have said, extremely progressive in the distribution of costs. They must mean that
for any policy to be progressive that it must benefit the poor and working class more than it
benefits the middle and upper classes. T his is a bizarre and, I think, fundamentally
incorrect use of the term progressive .
The logic of the critics' position is that public investments in programs that help
everyone, including middle- and upper-class people, aren't progressive. This means that the
critics would have to oppose public parks and public K-12 education, public swimming pools
and public basketball courts, even public libraries. These are all public options that offer
universal access at a low (or free) price to everyone.
But the problem isn't that the wealthy get to benefit from tuition free college. I don't
think anyone objects to that. Rather, the more affluent someone is, on average, the more they
benefit from the plan. This is a general feature of tuition-free college plans and it is built
into the design.
Sandy Baum and Sarah Turner explain:
But in general, the plans make up the difference between financial aid -- such as the Pell
Grant and need-based aid provided by states -- and the published price of public colleges.
This means the largest rewards go to students who do not qualify for financial aid. In plans
that include four-year colleges, the largest benefits go to students at the most expensive
four-year institutions. Such schools enroll a greater proportion of well-heeled students, who
have had better opportunities at the K-12 level than their peers at either two-year colleges
or less-selective four-year schools. (Flagship institutions have more resources per student,
too.) .
For a clearer picture of how regressive these policies are, consider how net tuition --
again, that's what most free-tuition plans cover -- varies among students at different income
levels at four-year institutions. For those with incomes less than $35,000, average net
tuition was $2,300 in 2015-16; for students from families with incomes between $35,000 and
$70,000, it was $4,800; for those between $70,000 and $120,000, it was $8,100; and finally,
for families with incomes higher than $120,000, it was more than $11,000. (These figures
don't include living expenses.)
Many low-income students receive enough aid from sources like the Pell Grant to cover
their tuition and fees. At community colleges nationally, for example, among students from
families with incomes less than $35,000, 81 percent already pay no net tuition after
accounting for federal, state and institutional grant aid, according to survey data for
2015-16. At four-year publics, almost 60 percent of these low-income students pay
nothing.
If you take progressivism to mean "improvement of society by reform", Warren's plan is
clearly progressive. It reduces the pie going to the rich, greatly improves the lot of
students who are less than rich, and doesn't harm the poor.
Who cares – as long as this plan -(and hopefully an even more extended plan) puts an
end to a big part of the insanity of the (stupid and greedy) US education system?
In other words – let's call it "conservative" that might help to have it passed!
The difficulty with the plan as proposed is not whether it is progressive or not but that it
targets the wrong behavior – borrowing for education. If the goal is to make education
more accessible – subsidize the university directly to either facilitate point of
admission grants in the first place or simply bring down tuition cost to all attendees.
Under this proposal (assuming one thinks Warren would win and it could get passed) the
maximizing strategy is to borrow as much as one possibly can with the hope/expectation that
it would ultimately be forgiven. If that's the "right" strategy, then it would benefit those
with the greatest borrowing capacity which most certainly is not students from low income
families but is in fact families which could probably pay most of the cost themselves but
would choose not to in order to capture a benefit they couldn't access directly by virtue of
being 'too rich' for grants or other direct aid.
"Rather, the more affluent someone is, on average, the more they benefit from the plan. "
This doesn't seem like a fair description of what's going on. If Starbucks gives a free muffin to everyone who buys a latte, it's theoretically helping
the rich more than the poor under this way of looking at things. The rich can afford the
muffin; the poor can't. So the rich will get more free muffins. But the rich don't give a
crap. They can easily just buy the damn muffin in the first place. They're not really being
helped, because the whole damn system helps them already. They're just about as well off with
or without the free muffin.
Same here. My kid's going to Stanford. I'm effin rich and I don't give a crap about
financial aid. If it was free I'd have an extra 75k a year, but how many Tesla's do I need
really? How many houses in Hawaii do I need? But when I was a kid I was lower middle class. I
didn't even apply to Stanford because it was just too much. Yeah, I could have gone rotc or
gotten aid, but my parents just couldn't bust out their contribution. Stanford just wasn't in
the cards. And Stanford's a terrible example, it had needs blind admissions and can afford
to just give money away if it wants.
I don't understand the fear, in certain areas of what's apparently the left, of giving
benefits to people in the middle of the income/wealth curve.
The expansion of the term "middle class" doesn't help with this, nor does the expansion of
education. These debates often sound as if some of the participants think of "middle class"
as the children of physicians and attorneys, who moreover are compensated the way they were
in the 1950s.
The ability to switch between "it's reasonable to have 100% college attendance within 5
years from now" and "of course college is only for the elite classes" is not reassuring to
the average more or less educated observer (who may or may not be satisfied, depending on
temperament and so on, with the answer that of course such matters are above her head).
The actual plan is for free tuition at public colleges. So not "the most expensive
four-year institutions" that Baum and Turner discuss. [HB: they're referring to the most
expensive 4-year public institutions]
There's also expanded support for non-tuition expenses, means-tested debt cancellation,
and a fund for historically black universities, all of which make the plan more progressive.
And beyond that, I could argue that, for lower-income students on the margin of being able to
attend and complete school, we should count not only the direct financial aid granted, but
also the lifetime benefits of the education the aid enables. But suffice it to say, I think
you're attacking a caricature.
the college plan does not actually offer 'universal access'
Given that something like one third of Americans gets a college degree, Warren's plan
seems good enough. It's not obvious to me that universal access to college education is a
progressive goal.
I think it is extremely important to understand where Warren is coming from on this. Warren
initially became active in politics because she recognized the pernicious nature of debt and
the impact it had on well-being. If you are trying to get out from under the burden of debt
your capabilities for flourishing are severely restricted, and these restrictions can easily
become generational. One of the more difficult debts that people are facing are student
debts. This was made especially difficult by the 2005 bankruptcy bill which made it close to
impossible for individuals to get out from under student debt by entering in to Chapter 7
bankruptcy.
Warren's emphasis in this particular initiative, it seems to me, is to alleviate debt so
that individuals can pursue more advanced functionings/capabilities. So if you think that the
definition of progressive is creating situations where more individuals in a society are
given greater opportunities for flourishing then the plan does strike me as progressive (an
Aristotelian interpretation of Dewey such as promoted by Nussbaum might fall in this
direction). There is another issue however that might be closer to the idea of helping those
from lowest social strata, something that is not being discussed near enough. Internet
technologies helped to promote online for profit universities which has (and I suppose
continues to) prey and those most desperate to escape poverty with limited resources. The
largest part of their organizations are administrators who help students to secure loans with
promises of high paying jobs once they complete their degrees. These places really do prey on
the most vulnerable (homeless youth for instance) and they bait individuals with hope in to
incurring extremely high debt. The loan companies are fine with this I am guess because of
the bankruptcy act (they can follow them for life). This is also not regulated (I think you
can thank Kaplan/Washington Post for that). Warren's initiative would help them get out from
under debt immediately and kick start their life.
I agree k-12 is more important, but it is also far more complicated. This plan is like a
shot of adrenaline into the social blood stream and it might not even be necessary in a few
years. I think it dangerous to make the good the enemy or the perfect, or the perfect the
critic of the good.
– and how cynical does one have to be – to redefine a plan canceling the vast
majority of outstanding student loan debt – as some kind of ("NON-progressive") present
for "the rich"?
But even apart from that, the argument of the post seems like it would suggest that many
things that we currently fund publicly are not progressive in a problematic way. Everything
from arts to national parks to math research "benefits" the rich more than the poor. There's
possibly a case that public provision of these goods is problematic when we as a society
could spend that money on those who are more disadvantaged. But that's a very strong claim
and implicates far more than free college.
Finally, it's worth comparing the previous major expansion of education in the US. The
point at which high school attendance was as widespread as college attendance is now (about
70% of high school graduates enroll in college of some form right away) was around 1930, well
after universal free high school was available. I think moving to universal free college is
an important step to raise those rates, just as free high school was.
It strikes me that the argument made here against a universal program of tuition free college
is not all that different than an argument made against social security -- that the benefits
go disproportionately to middle class and professional class individuals. Since in the case
of Social Security, one has to be in gainfully employed to participate and one's benefits
are, up to a cap, based on one's contributions, middle class and professional class
individuals receive greater benefits. Poor individuals, including those who have not been
employed for long periods of time, receive less benefits. (There are quirks in this 10 second
summary, such as disability benefits, but not so much as to alter this basic functioning.)
Every now and again, there are proposals to "means test" social security, using this
functioning as the reasoning. A couple of points are worth considering.
First, it is the universality of social security that makes it a political 'third rail,'
such that no matter how it would like to do away with such a 'socialist' program, the GOP
never acts on proposals to privatize it, even when they have the Presidency and the
majorities that would allow it to get through Congress. The universality thus provides a
vital security to the benefits that poor and working people receive from the program, since
it makes it politically impossible to take it away. Since social security is often the only
pension that many poor and working people get (unlike middle class and professional class
individuals who have other sources of retirement income), the loss of it would be far more
devastating to them. There is an important way, therefore, that they are served by the
current configuration of the system, even given its skewing.
Second, and following from the above, it is important to recognize that the great bulk of
proposals to "means test" Social Security come from the libertarian right, not the left, and
that they are designed to undercut the support for Social Security, in order to make its
privatization politically viable.
Most colleges and universities "means test" financial aid for their students, which is one
of the reasons why it is generally inadequate and heavily weighted toward loans as opposed to
grants. I think it is a fair generalization of American social welfare experience history to
say that "means tested" programs are both more vulnerable politically (think of the Reagan
'welfare queen' narrative) and more poorly funded than universal programs.
There are additional argument about the skewing of Social Security benefits, such as the
fact that they go disproportionately to the elderly, while those currently living in poverty
are disproportionately children. This argument mistakes the positive effects of the program
-- before Social Security and Medicare the elderly were the most impoverished -- for an
inegalitarian design element.
The solution to the fact that children bear the brunt of poverty in the US is not to
undermine the program that has lifted the elderly out of poverty but to institute programs
that address the problem of childhood poverty. Universal quality day care, for example,
provides the greatest immediate economic benefits to middle class and professional class
families who are now paying for such services, but it provides poor and working class kids
with an education 'head start' that would otherwise go only to the children of those families
that could afford to pay for it. And insofar as day care is provided, it makes it easier for
poor and working class parents (often in one parent households) to obtain decent
employment.
So the failings of universal programs are best addressed, I would argue, by filling in the
gaps with more universal programs, not 'means testing' them.
To the extent that Warren's 'free tuition' proposal addresses only some of the financial
disadvantages of poor and working people obtaining a college education, the response should
not be "oh, this is not progressive," but what do we do to address the other issues, such as
living expenses. It is not as if there are no models on how to do this. All we need to do is
look at Nordic countries that provide post-secondary students both free tuition and living
expenses.
Having grown up and gone to university in Germany it is simply incomprehensible to me that
there is tuition supporters on the political left in the U.S. It's true that free college
isn't universal in the same sense free K-12 education is. But neither are libraries (they
exclude those who are functionally illiterate completely, and their services surely go mostly
to upper middle class people who have opportunity and education to read regularly), for
example. Neither are roads – the poor overwhelmingly live in inner cities, often take
public transport – it's middle class suburbanites that mostly profit. Speaking of
public transport, I assume Henry opposes rail; it is very middle class, the poor use buses.
(The last argument actually has considerable traction in Los Angeles, it's not completely far
fetched.)
I agree that Warren's free college and debt forgiveness plans would not be very progressive,
but I'd propose that I think the dynamic mechanism built in would make it worse than a static
analysis shows.
(Note that most of my siblings and in-laws do not have college degrees; this perspective
is based on my own observations.)
The more a college degree is the norm, the worse things are for people without one. Making
it easier to get a college degree increases the degree to which its the norm, and will almost
inevitably have the same impact on the value of a college degree as the growth in high-school
attendance (noted by Sam Tobin-Hochstadt above) had on the value of a high school degree.
(We're already seeing this: many positions that used to require a college degree now require
a specific degree, or a masters degree.) This will increase age discrimination, and further
worsen the position of the people for whom college is unattractive for reasons other than
money.
To give a particular example of a mechanism (idiosyncratic, but one I know specifically).
Until a couple decades ago, getting a KY electrician's license required 4 years experience
under a licensed electrician, and passing the code test. Then the system changed; now it
requires a 2-year degree and 2 years experience, OR 8 years experience. This was great for
colleges. The working electricians don't think the new electricians are better prepared as
they used to be, but all of a sudden people who don't find sitting in a classroom for an
additional 2 years attractive are hugely disadvantaged. Another example would be nursing
licenses; talk to any older LPN and you'll get an earful about how LPN's are devalued as RNs
and BSNs have become the norm.
I suspect tuition reform will be complex, difficult and subject to gaming. Being simple
minded I offer an inadequate but simple palliative. Make student loan debt dischargeable in
bankruptcy. You can max out your credit cards on cars, clothes, booze or whatever and be able
to discharge these debts but not for higher education.
The inability to even threaten bankruptcy gives all the power to collection companies.
Students have no leverage at all. The threat of bankruptcy would allow for negotiated
reductions in principal as well as payments.
Bankruptcy does carry a lot of negative consequences so it would offset the likely
objections about moral hazards, blah, blah. I would also favor an additional method of
discharging student debt. If your debt is to a for-profit school that can't meet some minimum
standards for student employment in their field of study then total discharge without the
need for bankruptcy. For-profit vocational schools intensively target low income and minority
students without providing significant value for money.
Progressivity looks much better if the program sticks to free community college, at least
until there is universal access to 4-year schools. That's what Tennessee did (IIRC the only
example that is actually operational).
Harry: it doesn't seem as if you responded to my comment. I'll try again.
1. A policy is progressive if it is redistributive.
2. Warren's plan is redistributive.
3. Thus, Warren's plan is progressive.
Comments about how effective the redistribution is are fine, but to claim a non-ideal
distribution framework invalidates the program's claims to being progressive seems spurious.
And I don't think this definition of progressive is somehow wildly ideosyncratic.
To whine that free college is somehow not progressive because not everyone will go to college
is a ridiculous argument, one of those supposedly-left-but-actually-right arguments that I
get so tired of. To assume that the class makeup of matriculators will be unchanged with free
college is to discount knock-on effects. This is a weird, weird post. I guess I'm going back to ignoring this site.
The debate on this subject strikes me as misguided because it says nothing about what
students learn. A good high school education should be enough to prepare young people for
most kinds of work. In most jobs, even those allegedly requiring college degrees, the way
people learn most of what they need to know is through on the job training. Many high school
graduates have not received a good education, though, and go to college as, in effect,
remedial high school.
Readers who attended an average American high school, as I did long ago, will know that
there are certain students, especially boys, who are itching to be done with school. It is
far more productive to give them a decent high school education and have them start working
than to tell them they need another two to four years of what to them is pointless
rigamarole.
Rather than extending the years of education, I would reduce the high school graduation
age to 17 and reduce summer vacations by four weeks, so that a 17 year old would graduate
with as many weeks of schooling as an 18 year old now. (Teachers would get correspondingly
higher pay, which should make them happy.)
Harry Truman never went to college. John Major became a banker and later prime minister of
Britain without doing so. Neither performed noticeably worse than their college-educated
peers. If a college education is not necessary to rise to the highest office in the land, why
is it necessary for lesser employment except in a few specialized areas?
An experiment that I would like to see tried is to bring back the federal civil service
exam, allowing applicants without college degrees who score high enough to enter U.S.
government jobs currently reserved for those with college degrees.
If prophecy does not happen, Russiagaters like typical members of "Doomsday
cults" just became more bound to their sect as admitting this means destroying self-respect.
Notable quotes:
"... What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues? ..."
"... I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one. ..."
"... Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then there's projection. ..."
"... And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process. ..."
"... ("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016) ..."
"... ("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017) ..."
"... ("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... ("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over the last few centuries?' ..."
"... (FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003) ..."
"... ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material. ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number one. ..."
"... ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our attention on some foreign devil again. ..."
"... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the progressive candidate? ..."
"... Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails. Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either. Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates? ..."
"... We screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never merited because he was interesting news and sold copies. ..."
"... AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real alternative policies to Donald Trump. ..."
"... If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the power structure. ..."
AARON MATÉ : So we've just been through this two-year ordeal with
Russiagate. It's in a new phase now with Robert Mueller rejecting the outcome that so many were
expecting, that there would be a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Your sense of how this whole thing
has gone?
GABOR MATÉ : What's interesting is that in the aftermath of the Mueller thunderbolt
of no proof of collusion, there were articles about how people are disappointed about this
finding.
Now, disappointment means that you're expecting something and you wanted something to
happen, and it didn't happen. So that means that some people wanted Mueller to find evidence of
collusion, which means that emotionally they were invested in it. It wasn't just that they
wanted to know the truth. They actually wanted the truth to look a certain way. And wherever we
want the truth to look a certain way, there's some reason that has to do with their own
emotional needs and not just with the concern for reality.
And in politics in general, we think that people make decisions on intellectual grounds
based on facts and beliefs. Very often, actually, people's dynamics are driven by emotional
forces that they're not even aware of in themselves. And I, really, as I observed this whole
Russiagate phenomenon from the beginning, it really seemed to me that there was a lot of
emotionality in it that had little to do with the actual facts of the case.
... ... ...
What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in
believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions
and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do
we address those issues?
... ... ...
I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to
the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one.
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : So even if it's true what the Russians have even if it's the worst thing
that's alleged about the Russians is true, it's not even on miniscule proportion of what
America has publicly acknowledged it has done all around the world. And so this rage that we
project, then, and this bad guy image that we project onto the Russians, it's simply a mirror a
very inadequate mirror of what America publicly and openly and repeatedly does all around the
world.
Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing
politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we
do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then
there's projection.
And then, there's just something in people. I can tell you well, your mother can tell you
this that in relationships it's always easier to see ourselves as the victims than as the
perpetrators. So there's something comforting about seeing oneself as the victim of somebody
else. Nobody likes to be a victim. But people like to see themselves as victims because it
means they don't have to take responsibility for what we do ourselves.
AARON MATÉ : I can relate to that, too.
GABOR MATÉ : Yeah. I'm just saying the effect of somebody else. So this functions
beautifully in politics. And populist politicians and xenophobic politicians around the world
use this dynamic all the time. That whether it's Great Britain, or whether it's France with
their vast colonial empires, they're always the victims of everybody else. The United States is
always the victim of everybody else. All these enemies that are threatening us. It's the most
powerful nation on earth, a nation that could single handedly destroy the earth a billion times
over with the weapons that are at its disposal, and it's always the victim.
So this victimhood, there is something comforting about it because, again, it allows us not
to look at ourselves. And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this
Russiagate process.
Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the
Trump Era
("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016)
KEITH OLBERMANN : The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread. And the military
apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum who are beholden to scum,
Russian scum. As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration but rather the
end of the United States as an independent country
("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017)
RACHEL MADDOW : But the important thing here is that that Bernie Sanders lovers page run
out of Albania, it's still there. Still running. Still operating. Still churning this stuff
out. Now. This is not part of American politics. This is not, you know, partisan warfare
between Republicans and Democrats. This is international warfare against our country.
("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018)
JERROLD NADLER : Imagine if FDR had denied that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor
and didn't react, that's the equivalent.
CHRIS HAYES : Well, it's a bit of a different thing. I mean --
JERROLD NADLER : No, it's not.
CHRIS HAYES : They didn't kill anyone.
JERROLD NADLER : They didn't kill anyone, but they're destroying our country, our
democratic process.
CHRIS HAYES : Do you really think it's on par?
JERROLD NADLER : Not in the amount of violence, but I think in the seriousness it is very
much on par. This country exists to have a democratic system with a small D, that's what the
country's all about, and this is an attempt to destroy that.
("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018)
ROB REINER : We have been invaded in such a subtle way because we don't see planes hitting
the buildings. We don't see bombs dropping in Pearl Harbor. But we have been invaded as
Malcolm [Nance] points out. We are under attack, but we don't feel it. But it's like walking
around with high blood pressure and then all of a sudden you're not aware of it and you drop
dead.
So it's insidious, and it has affected our blood stream. And if we don't do something
about it – and that's why, guys like John Brennan and James Clapper are running around
with their hair on fire because they're trying to wake people up to tell them: We have to do
something about it. We have to protect ourselves and if we don't, our 241 years of democracy
and self-governance will start to collapse.
GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia
was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if
you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United
States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of
external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over
the last few centuries?'
So it shows to me a real shock reaction. And what has been shocked here is our beliefs in
what this country is about.
And again, as I said before, it's in a sense more comforting. It's frightening, but at the
same time more comforting to see the problem as coming from the outside than to search for it
with amongst ourselves and within ourselves.
AARON MATÉ : How about then the aspect of this that puts so much hope into Robert
Mueller? Because Robert Mueller was supposed to be our savior.
GABOR MATÉ : First of all, if we actually look at who Mueller is, who is he?
He's a man who, amongst many others, was 100 percent convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass
discussion.
VIDEO CLIP
(FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003)
ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence
last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully
attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that
Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological
material.
GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several
hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all
are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and
situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man
is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number
one.
Number two, America, if you can judge by its TV shows, is very much addicted to the good
guy/bad guy scenario. So that reality is not complex. And it's not subtle. And it's not a build
up of multiple dynamics, internal and external. But, basically, there's evil and there's good.
And evil is going to be cut out by the good and destroyed by it. And that's really how the
American narrative very often is presented.
Now, the same thing is projected into politics. So now if there's a bad guy called Putin and
his puppet called Trump, then there has to be a good guy that is going to save us from it. Some
guy on a white charger that's going to move in here, and is silver haired, patrician looking
man who's going to find the truth and rescue us all, which again is a projection of people's
hopes for truth outside of themselves onto some kind of a benevolent savior figure.
Needless to say, when that savior figure doesn't deliver, then we have to argue that maybe
he was bought off or corrupt or stupid himself or insufficient himself. Or that there's
something secret that has yet to be uncovered that some day will come to the surface that
Mueller himself was unable to discover for himself.
But, again, this projection of hope onto some savior figure. Rather than saying, okay,
there's a big problem here. We've elected a highly traumatized grandiose, intellectually
unstable, emotionally unstable, misogynist, self aggrandizer to power. Something in our society
made that happen. And let's look at what that was. And let's clear up those issues if we can.
And let's look at the people on the liberal side who, instead of challenging all those issues,
put all their energies into this foreign conspiracy explanation. Because to have challenged
those issues would have meant looking at their own policies, which tended in the same
direction.
Rather than looking at how under the Clinton, they've jailed hundreds of thousands of people
who should never have been in jail. L ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there
was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000
for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates
needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our
attention on some foreign devil again.
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : .... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the
progressive candidate?
Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails.
Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either.
Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that
the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership
deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates?
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : Let me just interrupt to say that if I were those people, then, then
quite apart from the shock defense that we've already talked about, it'd be so much more
convenient for me to go to the Russia narrative than to say publicly, you know what? We
screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We
didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our
policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never
merited because he was interesting news and sold copies.
... ... ...
AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked
about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people
rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful
corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real
alternative policies to Donald Trump.
If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power
structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the
power structure.
Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the
origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient
justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion
probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching
the investigation.
The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign– seem
to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for spying on the campaign
of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment.
In any event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate
scandal and mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution
for their role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.
Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:
" The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments,
to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called
Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in
the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." (
"How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)
Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in
his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether
the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already
knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain
warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their
counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was
unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign
enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing
or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their
power to discredit him and have him removed from office.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4855
His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may
have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps,
even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears
to be serious about finding out.
Here's Barr again:
"Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant .I would
like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort
designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."
In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what
happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research
"hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had
concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened
already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how
trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or
force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".
The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director
who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious
hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new
evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report
by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were
shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later,
used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written
proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd
call a premeditated felony.
But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the
bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the
nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More
on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:
(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White
House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree
head spin.
"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on
a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA
director.
In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA
sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher
Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New
York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more
than an FBI counterintelligence case." (
"James Comey
is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)
Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous
White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all
appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??
Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan,
the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise
to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's
strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni
militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering
a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why
Brennan hates Trump?
Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade.
It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together
the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election
chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was
chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while
still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan
was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining
of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:
"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several
requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British
and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was
able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns
about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence
sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped.
And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." (
"The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip
Giraldi)
Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped
them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus
"intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these
foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's
ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.
According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.):
"GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia
investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower".
("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian)
Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative
ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his
report, right? But he didn't. Why?
Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it
would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign
assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because
there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.
Here's more from the same article:
"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team
and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)
"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???
Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president
of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.
There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says:
"One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to
shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."
Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of
his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved
in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have
been retroactively classified?
Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents
in April 2017.
"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might
explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks."
-Peter Strzok.
Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan
wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.
All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William
Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly
obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going
to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.
Bottom line : The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable
for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are
about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."
There is ZERO evidence that Russia played ANY role in the 2016 USSA election and yet are sanctioned to the max, threatened
with war etc. HOWEVER there IS proof of the UK/GCHQ involvement.
I am waiting to see if Trump still goes to the UK in June or if he tells them he is "busy with more important things at home"
aka F...off.
Apocalypse, I would say that word describes it pretty well.
Middle English Apocalipse "Revelation (the New Testament book)," borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Late Latin
apocalypsis "revelation, the Book of Revelation," borrowed from Greek apokálypsis "uncovering, disclosure, revelation,"
from apokalyp-, stem of apokalýptein "to uncover, disclose, reveal" (from apo- APO- + kalýptein "to cover, protect,
conceal," of uncertain origin) + -sis -SIS
"No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes"
Too kind. We all know it is impossible that Susan Rice did not know -- she would have to authorize the FBI to conduct any foreign
spying operations.
And if Susan Rice knew, it is impossible that Barack Obama didn't know. And approved of it, if only by not putting a stop to
it.
The string that hasn't been pulled yet is the role of British intelligence. Brennan is obviously not a very bright man. He's
a post-turtle, so how a dull-witted former communist ended up as head of the CIA is yet another story that needs looking into.
Was he actually a British mole?
The intersection of British establishment political goals and donated assets in the operation of this plot is nakedly obvious.
It will be for Barr to expose that "angle", with the distinct possibility the ultimate origin of this scheme was the Blairite
UK civil service who wished to eliminate a potentially powerful political actor who repeatedly and strongly indicated his unreserved
support for Brexit.
All the things you mentioned were obfuscated by Clinton, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Cheney, several Generals, heads of
state, foreign intelligence. Do you think someone just snaps a finger and the MIC disappears?
You conflate 'past' leadership with the current. The deep state is crumbling. We need to keep digging and indicting until Rothschild
takes a one way rocket off planet Earth.
It will only end when treasonous traitor hang by their necks. I'm still hoping and informing others.
"I've talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest levels. I know who they want elected here. It's not
Hillary Clinton." – Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani
The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Israhell.
"... Breaking news today, courtesy of the New York Times , is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. ..."
"... The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians. ..."
"... The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton . ..."
"... In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress. ..."
"... It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey* interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg ..."
"... Neoliberals and neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be destroyed root and branch. ..."
"... What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives' recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies: ..."
"... Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources (including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were employed by the bureau in this operation: ..."
Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson
The preponderance of evidence makes this very simple--there was a broad, coordinated effort
by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and
paint him as a stooge of Russia.
The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case
against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement
organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom and organizations aligned with the
Clinton Campaign.
Breaking news today, courtesy
of the New York Times, is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a
female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to
entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement
officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. Quite understandable
given what we now know about British spying on the Trump Campaign.
The Mueller investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential
election focused on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow
George Papadopolous --
Carter Page --
Dimitri Simes --
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges--of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign
interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the proposals to interact with
the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by
Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any
member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining
derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not
one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert
action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
Let's look in detail at each of the cases.
THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater.
Here's what the Mueller Report states:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a
Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted
Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a
Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.
Sater had
known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov
during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and
proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would
license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own.
Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the
Mueller Report).
Mueller,
as I have noted previously , is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI
informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully
signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also
was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another
inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors,
Andrew
Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI
Informant business .
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with
Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015,
when he is offered out of the blue a job with the
London Centre of International
Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) . The LCILP has all of the hallmarks of an
intelligence front company. LCILP began as an offshoot from another company -- EN
Education Group Limited -- which describes itself as "a global education
consultancy, facilitating links between students, education providers and organisations with an
interest in education worldwide".
EN Education and LCILP are owned and run by Nagi Khalid Idris, a 48-year-old British citizen
of Sudanese origin. For no apparent reason Idris offers Papadopolous a job as the Director of
the LCILP's International Energy and Natural Resources Division. Then in March of 2016, Idris
and Arvinder Sambei (who acted as an attorney for the FBI on a 9-11 extradition case in the
UK), insist on introducing Joseph Mifsud to Papadopolous.
It is Joseph Mifsud who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch in
London:
"The lunch is booked for March 24 at the Grange Holborn Hotel,. . . . "When I get there,
Mifsud is waiting for me in the lobby with an attractive, fashionably dressed young woman with
dirty blonde hair at his side. He introduces her as Olga Vinogradova." (p. 76)
"Mifsud sells her hard. "Olga is going to be your inside woman to Moscow. She knows
everyone." He tells me she was a former official at the Russian Ministry of Trade. Then he
waxes on about introducing me to the Russian ambassador in London." (p. 77)
"On April 12, "Olga" writes: "I have already alerted my personal links to our conversation
and your request. The embassy in London is very much aware of this. As mentioned, we are all
very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation
would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced."
And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary:
"Then Mifsud returns from the Valdai conference. On April 26 we meet for breakfast at the
Andaz Hotel, near Liverpool Street Station, one of the busiest train stations in London. He's
in an excellent mood and claims he met with high-level Russian government officials. But once
again, he's very short on specifics. This is becoming a real pattern with Mifsud. He hasn't
offered any names besides Timofeev. Then, he leans across the table in a conspiratorial manner.
The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They
have thousands of emails."
Here again we encounter the lying and obfuscation of the Mueller team. They falsely
characterize Mifsud as an agent of Russia. In fact, he has close and longstanding ties to both
British and US intelligence (
Disobedient Media lays out the Mifsud mystery in detail ).
Mifsud was not alone. The FBI and the CIA also were in the game of trying to entrap
Papadopolous. In September of 2016, Papadopolous was being wined and dined by Halper (who has
longstanding ties to the US intelligence community) and Azra Turk, an FBI Informant/researcher
( see NY
Times ).
The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed
ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking
out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US
intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians.
CARTER PAGE
The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller
and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the Trump campaign--he is
described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact
only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior experience and work
in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about
the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period.
In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is
omitted in the Mueller report.
Mueller eventually accurately describes Page's role in the Trump campaign as follows:
In January 2016, Page began volunteering on an informal, unpaid basis for the Trump Campaign
after Ed Cox, a state Republican Party official, introduced Page to Trump Campaign officials.
Page told the Office that his goal in working on the Campaign was to help candidate Trump
improve relations with Russia. To that end, Page emailed Campaign officials offering his
thoughts on U.S.-Russia relations, prepared talking points and briefing memos on Russia, and
proposed that candidate Trump meet with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
In communications with Campaign officials, Page also repeatedly touted his high-level
contacts in Russia and his ability to forge connections between candidate Trump and senior
Russian governmental officials. For example, on January 30, 2016, Page sent an email to senior
Campaign officials stating that he had "spent the past week in Europe and had been in
discussions with some individuals with close ties to the Kremlin" who recognized that Trump
could have a "game-changing effect . .. in bringing the end of the new Cold War. The email
stated that " [t]hrough [his] discussions with these high level contacts," Page believed that
"a direct meeting in Moscow between Mr. Trump and Putin could be arranged.
The Mueller presentation portrays Carter Page in a nefarious, negative light. His contacts
with Russia are characterized as inappropriate and unjustified. Longstanding business
experience in a particular country is not proof of wrong doing. No consideration is given at
all to Page's legitimate concerns raising about the dismal state of US/Russia relations
following the US backed coup in the Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea by
Russia.
Page's association with the Trump campaign was quite brief--he lasted seven months, being
removed as a foreign policy advisor on 24 September. Page was not identified publicly as a
Trump foreign policy advisor until March of 2016, but the evidence presented in the Mueller
report clearly indicates that Page was already a target of intelligence agencies, in the US and
abroad, long before the FISA warrant of October 2016.
While serving on the foreign policy team Page continued his business and social contacts in
Russia, but was never tasked by the Trump team to pursue or promote contacts with Putin and his
team. In fact, Page's proposals, suggestions and recommendations were either ignored or
directly rebuffed.
The timeline reported in the Mueller report regarding Page's trip to Russia in early July
raises questions about the intel collected on that trip and the so-called "intel" revealed in
the Steele Dossier with respect to Page. Carter admits to meeting with individuals, such as
Dmitry Peskov and Igor Sechin, who appear in the Steele Dossier. Page's meetings in Moscow
turned out to be innocuous and uneventful. Nothing he did resembled clandestine activity. Yet,
the Steele report on that visit suggested just the opposite and used the tactic of guilt by
association to imply that Page was up to something dirty.
The bottomline for Mueller is that Page did not do anything wrong and no one in the Trump
Campaign embraced his proposals for closer ties with Russia.
DMITRI SIMES
The targeting and investigation of Dmitri Simes is disgusting and an abuse of law
enforcement authority. Full disclosure. I know Dmitri. For awhile, in the 2002-2003 time
period, I was a regular participant at Nixon Center events. For example, I was at a round table
in December 2002 on the imminent invasion of Iraq. Colonel Pat Lang sat on one side of me and
Ambassador Joe Wilson on the other. Directly across the table was Charles Krauthammer. Dmitri
ran an honest seminar.
The entire section on Dmitri Simes, under other circumstances, could be viewed as something
bizarre and amusing. But the mere idea that Simes was somehow an agent of Putin and a vehicle
for helping Trump work with the Russians to steal the 2016 election is crazy and idiotic. Those
in the FBI who were so stupid as to buy into this nonsense should have their badges and guns
taken away. They are too dumb to work in law enforcement.
Dmitri's only sin was to speak calmly, intelligently and rationally about foreign policy
dealings with Russia. We now know that in this new hysteria of the 21st Century Russian scare
that qualities such as reason and rationality are proof of one's willingness to act as a puppet
of Vladimir Putin.
TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016)
This is the clearest example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once
again, presents a very disingenuous account:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a
Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the
Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert
Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate
developer Aras Agalarov. Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the "Crown prosecutor of Russia
... offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that
would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" as "part of Russia and its government's
support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. immediately responded that "if it's what you say I love it,"
and arranged the meeting through a series of emails and telephone calls.
The meeting was with a Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The Russian attorney who spoke at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had previously worked
for the Russian government and maintained a relationship with that government throughout this
period oftime. She claimed that funds derived from illegal activities in Russia were provided
to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. Trump Jr. requested evidence to support those claims,
but Veselnitskaya did not provide such information.
Ignore for a moment that no information on Hillary was passed or provided (and doing such a
thing is not illegal). The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not
investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working
closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. NBC News reported on
Veselnitskaya:
The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June
2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous
Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.
In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received
the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax
evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been
hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.
Even a mediocre investigator
would recognize the problem of the relationship between the lawyer claiming to have dirty,
damning info on Hillary with the firm Hillary hired to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. This was
another botched set up and the Trump folks did not take the bait.
EVENTS AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
This portion of the Mueller report is complete farce. Foreign Ambassdors, including the
Russian (and the Chinese) attend Republican and Democrat Conventions. Presidential candidates
and their advisors speak to those Ambassadors. So, where is the beef? Answer. There isn't any.
That this "event" was considered something worthy of a counter intelligence investigation is
just one more piece of evidence that law enforcement and intelligence were weaponized against
the Trump campaign.
POST-CONVENTION CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR KISLYAK
Ditto. As noted in the previous paragraph, trying to criminalize normal diplomatic contacts,
especially with a country where we share important, vital national security interests, is but
further evidence of the crazy anti-Russian hysteria that has infected the anti-Trumpers.
Pathetic.
MANAFORT
If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free
today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg
Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were
desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now
know the impetus to target
Manafort came from the DNC :
The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect
Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling
is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor,
Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases
tried, to help Hillary
Clinton .
In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National
Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman
and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor
Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on
Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in
hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration most
certainly were.
Take these eight events as a whole a very clear picture emerges--US and foreign intelligence
(especially the UK) and US law enforcement collaborated in a broad effort to bait the Trump
team with ostensible Russian entreaties in order to paint Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. That
effort is now being exposed and those culpable will hopefully face justice. This should sicken
and alarm every American regardless of political party. Will justice be served?
I just read the following about special visas approved for some of the FBI "operatives"
(from SD at CTH): "It wasn't just the CIA that was using spies to "dirty up" Trump
associates. The FBI was doing it too. There was the infamous Natalia Veselnitskaya who is
known for her part in the Trump Tower meeting. She had been banned from the country but got a
special visa signed off by Preet Bahara of the FBI, Southern District of New York. Henry
Greenburg, the known FBI informant who tried to entrap Roger Stone, also got a special visa.
And I'm sure there are many more "
IMO, there is no coming back from this. Apart from this Deep State coup attempt, we have seen
that democracy is a shame, it's all theater. The Establishment (which includes GOP) is
constantly working to undermine Trump and thwart his plans to do what the American people
want and elected him for. What I've found quite disturbing is that the controlling puppet
masters have not let up in trying to remove or neutralize Trump. As if they can't wait even 4
years to again fully stack the deck and regain total control. They are not willing to concede
that 2016 was a political black swan event involving a celebrity billionaire American icon.
And conceding and allowing this fluke to be rectified I'm 4 short years is worse than their
pushback exposing the political system as a rigged game.
The events of the last 2.5 years have radically altered my views. I no longer have any
faith in democracy (voting), the government, the federal courts, law enforcement, et al. And
I can't see me regaining any faith in them. What I have seen in the past 2.5 years is kind of
like finding out my wife of decades, whom I idolized, has been cheating with my friend from
childhood, whom I would've laid down my life for. And all the other people close to me not
telling me.
It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and
was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were
intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about
U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey*
interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg
*Tracey, btw, is on the left. But like Glenn Greenwald and others on the left he is an
honest journalist interested in the truth.
The "left" was not behind and does not buy into this Russia psyop. Neoliberals and
neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left
of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment
must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to
admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on
terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster
for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be
destroyed root and branch.
To see how and why the "left" differs from corporate identity-politicking liberals in the
above regard consider how it is that Tulsi Gabbard is both the Dem candidate most respected
by principled Trump supporters on this site and others and the Dem candidate most reviled,
ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike.
The enemy to principled conservatives and the left in this country is the bipartisan
establishment corporate neoliberalism of the RNC and DNC alike.
What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a
history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives'
recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which
resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies:
Page is just a goofball grifter. He's not a plant. That is silly. When they saw names like
Page and Manafort the Democrats pounced because they knew the could cast aspersions.
I'm not sure about Mifsud. I think it would be hard for Mueller to knowingly indict
Papadop if Mifsud were an asset of the US (or even known to be an asset of allies). I think
it is more likely Mifsud was a free agent.
All these guys Mifsud, Page, Papadop were grifters, not doing real work. Just running
around trying to make a buck by claiming to facilitate meetings. It's a shame it bit them and
not a crime to do what they did. At the same time, I can't help but see some kharmic justice.
GET A JOB, you poly sci lightweights!
This anonymous commentator has never spent time in senior levels of business or government.
There is a whole class of people who do not see themselves as Grifters but more as "ideas
men".
The best offer valuable perspectives on the world, can really open doors and otherwise add
value. At the other end of the spectrum are con men. Political campaigns and large
corporations of any sort attract these people in droves. The skill in management is to sort
the wheat from the chaff. Trump is good at that.
Yes, Page often comes off as a bit crazy and incoherent. But he may be crazy like a fox. In
the end he was never charged with ANYTHING and it's my understanding he represented himself
legally throughout the investigation, opting not to hire counsel. I find it odd that others
were prosecuted for process crimes but he escaped even THAT fate.
His participation in the Trump campaign, limited as it was, was nevertheless KEY in
finally obtaining a FISA warrant after other attempts failed.
Consider it silly if you want. I view him at least worthy of suspicion. His hapless
demeanor could be his schtick , when his education, experience and IC connections are
taken into consideration.
Page represents himself poorly even when he knows a lot is on the line. Look at how
frustrated Gowdy got with him. Clearly Page didn't learn much from plebe year in terms of 5
basic responses. Compare the difference with Barr for instance.
While the Trident program is a big deal, every now and then USNA has mids that are
diligent about getting good grades but not very smart. I knew one my year. Page is clearly in
that vein. Don't miss that he didn't get into any elite program after graduation (SWO is the
default). And that he was a poly sci major. The saying is "poly sci, QPR high" (QPR is
quality point rating or GPA). Of course this is not to say there aren't some good SWOs or
poly sci majors. But there's a definite correlation I'm noting. It fits with what his
reputation is.
Furthermore, the guy has had an uneventful career, bouncing around. He went to a lower
bulge bracket (not Goldman) and didn't seem to stick. And his Russian colleagues said he was
an idiot and a boaster. We're not talking i-banker smart. Wouldn't trust him to do an NPV or
other economic analysis. And then after that we have the grifting and the shmoozing.
Kid is a lightweight. A slightly less coffee-boy coffee boy.
''They cannot convict based on a law that was passed after the act was committed''
Money laundering has always been against the law of course....the NY law just firmed up
the due diligence that is suppose to be done in transactions. I don't think there is a statute of limitations on things like
fraud, tax evasion and money laundering but I will check it out to see
Catherine, in current PC thinking, merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner
party makes you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil
plans.
As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds
hamburger as attempted bribery.
''As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds
hamburger as attempted bribery.''
Hardly. 7 million dollar cash deals for a condo thru a shell company is a red flag
however..as is buying property for 1 million and selling it unimproved the next year for 2
million...or buying a house in LA 11 million and selling it 9 months later for 8 million.
That 'in between money" is someone's pay off....that's how it works.
Money laundering is epidemic in the US and Europe....Israeli mafia, Russian oligarchs,
African dictators looting their country's treasury and running it through a real estate
washing machine deal. Far be from me to sweep the fairy dust out of Trump supporters eyes but, as I said,
Trump's troubles are far from over. We will see what comes out in the future.
The soft coup against Donald Trump failed. He has to run hard and sure to win in 2020 to
avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. Corporate Democrats will do
their damnedst again to put forth their weakest pro war candidate like the aged, apparently
demented, Joe Biden. This fiasco and the recent coup attempt in Venezuela make the Keystone
Cops appear competent.
I put this all down to Washington DC being completely isolated inside their credentialed
bubble. It is just like corporate CEOs, who think they know exactly what they are doing. But,
in reality, they are destroying the stabilizing middle class by extracting and hording wealth
and turning mid-America into their colony. Globalist and nationalist oligarchs are after each
other's throat over who controls the flow of money.
We live on a very finite world dependent on one sun in an expanding universe. Just like
Boeing, Bayer or Volkswagen, the splintering world is starting to crash all around them. Even
as they deny it, this is a multi-polar world now. It is not going back without a world war
which would destroy civilization and could make the world uninhabitable for humans.
And the best that our government can do is warn us not to wash our chicken before cooking it
because washing merely spreads the salmonella that our food industry is unable to prevent
from infecting it.
The trouble is that those CEO's do know exactly what they are doing. Making money the
only way possible in a business environment in which outsourcing can sometimes be the only
thing that pays.
The idea was that Trump was going to change that environment. Bannon calls its "economic
nationalism" but in truth it's now just economic survival. Survival for those whose jobs are
outsourced. Survival for the country as a whole, ultimately. That was Trump's core programme. It was the programme that made him different from all
other Western politicians, "populist" or status quo. Do you see any sign that it's being
implemented, or has that programme too got bogged down in the swamp?
If we are speaking about criminal justice, there is some chance that we will see persons such
as Jim Comey, who persists in his smug higher calling act, prosecuted for what was a clear
cut violation in divulging classified material through a lawyer intermediary to the NYT. I
suspect the higher calling bit has been prompted in part because he knows that he screwed up
both on the facts and in law and he is justifying his screw up to himself, and possibly also
rehearsing his defense, with the rationale that he was only trying to do the right thing.
Yeah, he may have had the facts all wrong, the Russians, etc, etc, but the worst that can be
said is that he had been competent, there was no intent. That defense doesn't do much for the
FBI's once held reputation for competence, but that appears to be gone anyway.
With regard to what will be turned up concerning the actual roots of the travesty, the
heavily politicized faux investigation into the Clinton e mails and targeting of the Trump
campaign on a predicate that is somewhere between nebulous and non existant, I think a
criminal prosecution arising from that investigation, even if it is serious, is unlikely for
two main reasons. First, what will be the charged violations? As best I can see right now,
they will have to entail some imaginative application of fraud statutes, defrauding the FISC,
defrauding the US, informants and assets lying to their handlers, or process crimes like Bob
Mueller's partisan posse relied upon (ugly); and second, something like the Comey defense
will interpenetrate all the individuals and entities involved: we may have been incredible
bunglers, but that is the worst of it. We really believed these charlatans who conned us into
this debacle. Sorry, but we thought we were doing the right thing.
Now if we are talking about seeing some kind of political or moral justice, I'm not too
optimistic we will get much satisfaction there either and we will probably have to wait for
history. The reason is that Barr will conduct this investigation by the rule book. That means
that what we see developed through the process, indictment, prosecution, etc, is likely
all,that we will ever see. Barr is very unlikely to produce a politcized manifesto to be
employed as a smear weapon like the once reputable Mueller did.
Anyway, until we see a special FGJ empanelled, some search warrants executed, some tactical
immunities offered, everything is on the come.
What probability do you assign that any top official will be indicted and prosecuted? I
mean Brennan, Clapper, Comey & Lynch.
Second, what probability do you assign that Trump will declassify the relevant documents
and communications like the FISA application,the originating EC, the tasking orders for
FBI/CIA spying, etc.
The question really comes down to Trump. Does he really want to expose the Swamp and pay
the price or just use it for rhetorical & political purposes? When considering
probabilities and looking at his track record in office on foreign policy relative to his
campaign stance, I would say the probability is less than 30% that Brennan & Clapper will
be indicted.
The question is only very partly what Trump wants, in some abstract sense. Situations like
this commonly have a strong escalatory logic. So one needs to ask whether or not he has
rational reason to believe that unless he can destroy those who have shown themselves
prepared to stop at nothing to destroy him, they will eventually succeed.
If the answer is yes - and while I think it may very well be, I am not prejudging the
issue - then a key question becomes whether Trump will conclude that his most promising
loption is to go after the conspirators by every means possible.
Involved here are questions about who he is listening to, and how competent they are.
But the escalatory processes are not simply to do with what Trump decides. In particular,
a whole range of legal proceedings are involved. The referral in relation to Nellie Ohr is
likely to be the fist of a good few. In addition, Ed Butowsky's lawsuits, and those against
Steele, have unpredictable potentialities.
The intelligence & law enforcement apparatus in collusion with the media and the
establishment of both parties went after him hard. As Larry notes here, they went to
considerable effort to entrap those related to his campaign to impugn him. Mueller spent $35
million trying to find an angle. Even after the Mueller report stated there was no collusion
they're sill after him. So that's not going to end any time soon.
Trump may have good instincts but his judgment of people so far to staff his
administration is not very inspiring. He had Jeff Sessions as his AG and he let him hang in
there for nearly two years while Mueller ran riot. He's surrounded himself with neocons on
foreign policy. It seems his only real advisor is Jared. Everyone else he's got around him
are from the same establishment that's going after him. He hasn't taken advise from Devin
Nunes, who has done more to uncover the sedition than anyone else. If he had he would have by
now declassified all the documents & communications. The impression I have is his primary
motivation is building his brand & less about governance and wielding power. Take for
example his order to withdraw from Syria. Bolton & the Pentagon are thumbing their noses
at him.
Well, there have been several criminal referrals prior to the recent one on Nellie Ohr.
There's the McCabe referral and the 8 referrals by Devin Nunes. I've not read any report of
the empaneling of a grand jury yet. I agree with you that these law suits have the potential
for great embarrassment, however to hold those responsible for the sedition accountable will
require iron will & intense focus on the part of Trump to get his AG to assign
prosecutors who don't have the axe to "protect" the "institution" and to create an
opportunity for public awareness of the extent that law enforcement & intelligence became
a 4th branch of government. My opinion is that his skill is in his instinctual understanding
of the current political zeitgeist and his ability to manipulate the media including social
media to project his brand. He's not an operational leader making sure his team executes his
vision & strategy.
Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy
Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources
(including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were
employed by the bureau in this operation:
This was clearly an attempt to entrap Trump in connections to Russia and fuel anti-Russian hysteria and defense spending. Both goals
were accomplished under Trump without much resistance. Still Russiagate persists. Why?
Notable quotes:
"... 05/03/16 Email from DNC contractor Ali Chalupa states she connected Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News "to the Ukrainians" DNC https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3962 ..."
"... 05/15/16 Crowdstrike claims it investigated DNC hacking and that Russians were responsible; FBI still denied access to server to confirm Crowdstrike https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ ..."
03/06/16 Former Hillary State Dept. representative George Papadopoulos learns he will join Trump campaign as a low-level
foreign policy adviser DOJ
https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks
to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment
and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source
and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.
You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from
a document dump that is almost
entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact
Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the
period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.
These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important
for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source.
This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the
meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.
What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive
contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?
The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA)
and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps
who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").
We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking
of the DNC in 2015).
This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests,
https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but
then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public
is skeptical of their claims'.
The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their
hand on the scale.
Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are
trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the
mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't
support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.
I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in
the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.
What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the
Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance
with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them
to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie
that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.
From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole
thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews
by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national
security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got
their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.
Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered
to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.
Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was
not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?
The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law
enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as
'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.
It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of
agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.
Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'
It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely,
both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately
involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information
to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.
An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back
channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.
A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the
supposed termination.
When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue
to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:
"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be
forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."
At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me
a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would
it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance
of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?
Another crucial paragraph:
'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in
London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence
probes in American history.'
The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.
As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he
created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments
of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.
I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large
measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures
close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication
which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.
The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky
Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.
(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at
http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who
sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)
The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent
'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'
Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No
mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian
Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.
The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether
the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson
were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important
issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.
Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including
McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense.
So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.
Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem
to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with
the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted
his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation
culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian
Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was
potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get
'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously
I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt
on Trump...how is this not the same...?
Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential
candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact
the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him?
Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this
have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence
source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation
that may have already begun?
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete),
his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated
desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting
others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has
not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too
big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing
agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant
thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)?
'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's
"raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they
would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,
" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching
him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "
That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance
authorization?.
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the
NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws
they have that prohibits spying on their people.
Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about
a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered
as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years
ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In
my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them
are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these
people think they are.
It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.
Brennan role in weaponizing dossier now became more clear.
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier. ..."
"... The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product." ..."
"... A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire," Chalupa told CNN in July of this year. ..."
"... Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states: ..."
"... Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists. ..."
"... it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." ..."
"... The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation. ..."
"... She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only" top secret meetings with President Obama about it. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference. ..."
"... It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier. ..."
"... Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings. ..."
"... The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad." ..."
"... But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?" ..."
Did the Obama administration launch an investigation into the Trump campaign based solely off of unverified political opposition
research? And was that "research" dressed up and given more credibility than it should have? It appears that way
based on an
investigation of open-source information by Tablet.
The outlet's investigation begins with a June 24, 2017, Facebook post by Mary Jacoby, the wife of Glenn Simpson, the former
Wall Street Journal reporter who started Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.
Jacoby, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who once shared bylines with Simpson, bragged how her husband was not getting
the credit he deserved for the dossier.
"It's come to my attention that some people still don't realize what Glenn's role was in exposing Putin's control of Donald Trump,"
she wrote on Facebook. "Let's be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn."
Until this day, the dossier is often referred to as the "Steele dossier," named after the former British spy Christopher Steele
who is believed to have authored the document.
Steele's background has been used by collusion-believers to argue that the document is credible. But Jacoby's post suggests that
Steele might not have played as big of a role in the dossier as he is given credit.
Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's
role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent
in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier.
The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product."
Tablet also took a look at Simpson and Jacoby's work for the WSJ . In April 2007 -- in the lead-up to the 2008 election
-- they co-wrote a story about Republican links to Russians.
In that story, titled "How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington," they detail how prominent Republicans helped open doors
for "Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Vladimir Putin."
They reported on Viktor Yanukovich, who had paid political fixer Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington,
DC, figures. They later reported on May 14, 2008, that Manafort's lobbying firm was escorting Yanukovich around Washington. Yanukovich
would later become president of Ukraine in 2010.
Tablet explains how their reporting may have been the origins of the Trump dossier:
So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson
and Jacoby's eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations
with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing
the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon. In addition to whatever sales pitch
Simpson might have offered about Manafort, the Clinton campaign had independent reason to believe that research into Manafort's
connections might pay some real political dividends: A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra
Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire,"
Chalupa told CNN in July of this year.
Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight
corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states:
Ex-Ukrainian President YANUKOVYCH confides directly to PUTIN that he authorised (sic) kick-back payments to MANAFORT, as alleged
in western media Assures Russian President however there is no documentary evidence/trail.
Tablet notes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would later find corruption by Manafort related to money laundering (before he
joined the Trump campaign). It also points out that Tony Podesta -- Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's brother -- worked
for Manafort at the time he represented Yanukovich. (The Podesta Group disbanded this year after those connections were made public,
and the special counsel is reportedly investigating Podesta too.)
Tablet notes that while Simpson had begun working on the dossier on Trump collusion with Russia, he was also working for a Russian
lawyer to undermine an American law called the Magnitsky Act and that Steele may have been hired to disguise that contradiction.
Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in
marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists.
Ohr -- Simpson's next hire -- also hadn't lived in Russia for decades and was "not a spy, or even a journalist." "In this world,
she was definitely an amateur," Tablet writes.
"Presumably, as a result of all the above, much of the reporting in the dossier is recognizably the kind of patter that locals
in closed or semi-closed societies engage in to impress expats -- the kind of thing you hear in a bar, or on the cab ride from the
airport to the hotel," it says.
Tablet then goes into the bad shape of U.S. intelligence on Russia -- likely making officials less skeptical of the dossier even
though, to date, they have not been able to confirm any of its allegations on collusion.
And Tablet notes that it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview
after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are
now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump."
At that point, a tech firm had attributed the leaks to Russia but was not able to explain why. The FBI was looking at the leak
but had not yet publicly determined political motivation.
"But the DNC and Clinton campaign did have an oppo-research firm under contract that was in the middle of putting together a file
that would claim that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected," Tablet notes.
The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including
then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation.
But by late October, they had not yet found any evidence that showed Russia was working to elect Trump. So, ten days before the
election, angry Clinton supporters and unnamed intelligence officials
spoke to
the New York Times in an October 31, 2016, story about what the investigation had found so far.
Jacoby would post that story in her June 24 Facebook post, slamming the FBI and accusing it of "ineptitude," while the CIA "hopped
to and immediately worked to verify" the dossier.
She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only"
top secret meetings with President Obama about it.
Thus, while the document could not be verified and was not used in any intelligence assessment because of its inability to be
verified, it was now the topic of meetings with the president.
CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA
had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter
to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference.
Reid then wrote another letter to Comey after he reopened the investigation into Clinton's emails -- accusing him of letting Trump
slide.
"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his
top advisers, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every
opportunity," he wrote.
"I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public and yet, you continue to resist calls
to inform the public of this critical information."
That "information" Reid was referring to was the dossier, according to Tablet:
According to David Corn's Oct. 31, 2016, article in Mother Jones , the Nevada lawmaker was referencing the findings
of "a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence."
Corn now explains that the "former Western intelligence officer -- who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters
and who now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients" is Christopher Steele. According
to Corn, Steele said that "in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources,
contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump."
It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier.
Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings.
"An envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried 'eyes
only' instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides," the
Washington
Post
reported on June 23, 2017.
"So was the Steele dossier in the envelope?" Tablet asks.
The Post writes that inside that envelope "was an intelligence bombshell" -- a report drawn from sourcing deep inside
the Russian government that detained Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the presidential race,
defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton, and help elect Donald Trump.
The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's
daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad."
But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority
leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?"
Tablet writes:
Sources and methods are the crown jewels of the American intelligence community. And yet someone has just told a major American
newspaper about a "report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that captured Putin's specific instructions."
If the CIA had a human intelligence source that close to Putin, publication of the Post article could have exposed that
source -- doing incalculable damage to American national security. He and many of his loved ones would then have presumably died
horrible deaths.
Or, as Mary Jacoby surmised, it was her husband's handiwork that landed on the president's desk.
The public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that
put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings. ..."
"... Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks , Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on to state that she has been working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds: ..."
"... "I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." ..."
On Friday, the much anticipated
"Nunes Memo"
was finally released to the general public.
Disobedient
Media previously reported on the push to prevent the memo from being released. While there is much contained in the four pages,
the most glaring issue contained in the memo is the FBI's willful concealment of pertinent details of which they were required by
law to turn over to the FISA court when seeking the initial surveillance warrant on
Carter Page , a former volunteer foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.
According to the memo, former director James Comey signed three FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Additionally, Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, and acting Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein, each signed one or more applications on behalf of the DOJ.
Under 50 U.S.C. § 1805(d)(1) , a FISA order on
an American citizen must be renewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) every 90 days. In order to protect the
rights of Americans, each subsequent renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. This means that the in order to be granted
a renewal, the government is required to produce all material and relevant facts to the court, including any information which may
be potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application.
On four separate occasions the Obama administration essentially claimed before the FISA court that Page had betrayed his country
by working for a hostile foreign nation, and therefore it was necessary that the government violate his Fourth Amendment rights.
However, in this case, the government purposely withheld relevant information from the government not once, but four separate times.
According to the memo, at no time during the initial application process for the warrant to surveil Page, or in any of the three
renewals of that application, did the government disclose to the FISA Court the nature of their relationship with Christopher Steele,
his relationship with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or his relationship with the Clinton campaign. Instead, the memo simply,
yet vaguely states that, "Steele was working for a named U.S. person."
Instead, the government purposefully withheld information from the court that the "dossier" compiled by Steele was done so on
behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was further withheld from the court that the DNC had paid Steele over $160,000
for his work in compiling this "dossier", and that the money was
funneled to Steele through the law firm Perkins Coie,
which represents both the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as the DNC in legal matters. According to the
National Review , the Clinton campaign and the DNC
paid at least $9.1 million to Perkins Coie from mid-2015 to late 2016.
The government further held from the court the fact that the FBI had authorized payments to Steele. According to the
New York Post , in October 2016 the FBI contracted
to pay Steele $50,000 to "help corroborate the dirt on Trump."
In March of 2017, CNN also reported that the FBI had entered into an
arrangement with Steele, whereby they agreed to
cover all of his expenses.
While it is extremely disconcerting that the government willfully concealed the existence of their financial relationship with
Steele, a foreign national, what is more troubling is the fact that the government used tax payer dollars to do so. In other words,
every single American who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, whether they voted for Trump or a third party candidate or did not vote
at all – were forced to finance the Clinton campaign-funded opposition research.
In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that
put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.
Why the media refuses to mention or cover this fact, this author does not know. But this is an extremely important fact that every
American, whether left, right, up, down, should remember, as it is the perfect example of the corruption which exists within our
tax payer-funded institutions, which we are told to have nothing but the utmost respect for.
According to the memo, in an effort to corroborate Steele's dossier, the FBI extensively cited a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News
article by Michael Isikoff, titled " U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump
adviser and Kremlin ", which focuses on Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. However, when presenting this article to the court the
FBI falsely assessed that Steele did not provide this information directly to Isikoff. Meaning that the FBI was aware that the article
they presented to the court was not corroborating evidence from a separate source, because the information in the article was provided
to Isikoff by Steele himself. In fact, as the memo points out, Steele himself has stated in British court filings that in September
2016 he met with Yahoo News , as well as several
other outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker.
What's more, in an article published on January 12, 2017, Isikoff reports
on a story by the Wall Street Journal in which Christopher Steele is identified as the author of the infamous dossier, and even notes
that Steele was an " FBI asset ". However, what is
most striking about this article is the fact that despite receiving the underline information which served as the basis for his own
article in September, Isikoff pretends have not known that Steele was the source of the dossier.
Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According
to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks ,
Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she
was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on
to state that she has been
working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and
that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds:
"I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More
offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something
I'm working on you should be aware of."
According to the memo, Steele's relationship with the FBI as a source continued until late October 2016, when he was terminated
for what the FBI defines as the most serious violations, "an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI".
This unauthorized disclosure occurred in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones
article by David Corn, the reporter who broke the infamous Mitt Romney
"47 Percent" story.
Again, the FBI did not notify the court that Steele was leaking information to media outlets, or that he was terminated by the
FBI after doing so for the second time.
Before and after his termination, Steele maintained contact with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife,
Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS. Ohr would later tell the FBI in an interview in September 2016, that Steele had stated that
he, "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president."
Lastly, the memo also reveals that the Steele dossier was so crucial to the investigation, that Deputy Director McCabe testified
in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information. This admission
by the former Deputy Director is damning, as it proves that, if it were not for the Clinton campaign and DNC funded dossier created
by a foreign national, there would have been no surveillance of Page, and ultimately there would have never been a special counsel
appointed.
At the end of the day, every American, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, should be worried about the fact
that the FBI and DOJ sought and were granted a warrant to spy on an opposing political campaign based on a document that the FBI
itself had neither verified or corroborated. If the FISA court does in fact employ strict "safeguards" and procedures in order to
ensure that the rights of American citizens are not being systematically violated, how is it that the FBI and DOJ were able to obtain
a surveillance warrant based on unverified allegations? And why did Congress overwhelmingly vote to
reauthorize
Section 702? Vote up! 15 Vote down! 0
This whole ball of wax should be in the public hands. Straight up clear cut case for a real civilian grand jury. As far removed
from the government control as possible. Its a corruption issue. Nobody in government has clean hands.
This is a problem because across the 5-eyes intel agencies are being given extra-judicial powers to do basically whatever they
want without oversight and without legal boundaries. This assumes the agencies will never become politicised, and that no individual
within the agencies will ever have an axe to grind against an ex, or a petty hatred to pursue, or political agendas of their own.
What FISA-gate shows is that this is clearly not the case. We need the reimposition of free speech, transparency and of civilian
rule of government.
Only an informed public can really be in charge of its elected government. We need to be in charge again because civilians
are fast being kettled into a snare where we have no say in the decisions that our governments take. It's being decided by the
deep state bureaucracy
"FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA" [
The Hill ]. "[Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec's] observations were
recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify
securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign
adviser Carter Page and the campaign's contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked
collusion theory
[T]he FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele's 'reporting has been
corroborated and used in criminal proceedings' and the FBI has determined him to be 'reliable'
and was 'unaware of any derogatory information pertaining' to their informant, who
simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump . She quoted Steele as saying, "Payments
to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami," according to a copy of her
summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens
United.
Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: "It is important to note
that there is no Russian consulate in Miami." Kavalec, two days later and well before the FISA
warrant was issued, forwarded her typed summary to other government officials. The State
Department has redacted the names and agencies of everyone she alerted. It is unlikely that her
concerns failed to reach the FBI." •
"It is unlikely" is doing a lot of work there; surely we can find out of the FBI was on the
distribution list of Kavalec's memo? That said, wowsers, does Steele look sketchy.
Newly released evidence suggests Ukraine played key role in creating
Trump–Russia collusion narrative at behest of Obama officials
As Ukraine underwent dramatic changes
in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played a critical role in the Obama
administration's involvement in the revolution that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych.
Following the revolution, Biden would use his influence to help force the creation of the
troubled National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign,
information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that helped to create
the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.
Biden also would use the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to
pressure Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general. At the time, the
prosecutor had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas giant that had appointed
Biden's son, Hunter, as a board member.
President Donald
Trump 's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said, "Keep your eye on Ukraine." In his
comments to the
Washington Examiner , Giuliani highlighted the "plot to create an investigation of
President Trump, based on a false charge of conspiracy with the Russians to affect the 2016
elections."
Obama Administration's 2014 Involvement
On or shortly before Feb. 4, 2014, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary for European and
Eurasian affairs in the Obama State Department, had a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, which was intercepted and leaked .
In the call, Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be discussing the ouster of Yanukovych and the
installation of opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister.
Nuland favored opposition leader Yatsenyuk over his main rivals Vitali Klitschko and Oleh
Tyahnybok, telling Pyatt: "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the
governing experience. He's the what he needs is Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the outside."
Toward the end of the conversation , then-Vice President Biden
was discussed as being willing to help cement the changeover in Ukraine:
Geoffrey Pyatt: "We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come
out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to
Yanukovych, but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into
place."
Victoria Nuland: "So, on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [Biden's national security
adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need Biden, and I said
probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's
willing."
Nuland and Pyatt met with Ukrainian opposition leaders Klitschko and Yatsenyuk, along with
then-President Yanukovych, just days later on Feb. 7, 2014.
Events then moved swiftly. On Feb. 22, 2014, Yanukovych was
removed as president of Ukraine and fled to Russia. On Feb. 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk, the
candidate favored by Nuland, was installed as prime minister of Ukraine.
Klitschko was left out. Notably, Yatsenyuk would later resign
in April 2016 amid corruption accusations.
Biden's Involvement in Ukraine
In April, Biden would get personally involved, as would his son, Hunter. On April 18, 2014,
Hunter Biden was
appointed to the board of directors for Burisma–one of the largest natural gas
companies in Ukraine.
Four days later, on April 22, 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine ,
offering his political support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk's shaky new government.
Poroshenko, a billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.
Biden became close to both men and helped Ukraine obtain a four-year, $17.5
billion IMF package in March 2015.
In October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, "
What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe ," which described Biden's role in the removal of
Ukraine's general prosecutor, Victor Shokin. Shokin, the choice of Poroshenko, was portrayed as
fumbling a major corruption case and "hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state
prosecutors arrested on corruption charges."
The United States pushed for Shokin's removal, and Biden led the effort by personally
threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview
with The Atlantic, Biden recalled telling Poroshenko: "Petro, you're not getting your billion
dollars. It's OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand -- we're not paying if
you do." Shokin was removed by
Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.
But according to reporting by The Hill, at the time of his firing, Shokin had been
investigating Burisma. Shokin's investigation into Burisma had previously been
disclosed in June 2017, by Front News International.
Burisma is
owned by Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola Zlochevsky), the former minister of
ecology for Ukraine. According to
Front News , Zlochevsky issued
a "special permit for the extraction of a third of the gas produced in Ukraine" to his own
company, Burisma.
According to the Ukrainian nonprofit Anti Corruption Action Center, Zlochevsky owns 38
permits held by 14 different companies -- with Burisma
accounting for the majority with 33 of the permits. Zlochevsky left Ukraine after
Yanukovych fled to Russia during the Ukrainian Revolution known as
Euromaidan.
Investigation Into Burisma
In the spring of 2014, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation at
the behest of the UK prosecutors office, which was investigating money laundering allegations
against Zlochevsky and had
just frozen $23.5 million in assets allegedly belonging to him in early April 2014. Shokin,
who wasn't appointed as general prosecutor until February 2015, wasn't yet involved in the
case.
Ukrainian prosecutors
refused to provide the UK with needed documents, and in January 2015, a British court
ordered the assets unfrozen. This action was pointedly called out in a
speech by Pyatt, who stated, "In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the
UK authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian
people."
Instead of receiving cooperation from Ukrainian prosecutors, they "sent letters to
Zlochevsky's attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was
freed by the UK court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus."
On Feb. 10, 2015, Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and he picked up the
investigation into Burisma, which reportedly continued until his formal resignation in February
2016.
Around the same time that Zlochevsky's assets were being frozen in the UK, Burisma appointed
Hunter Biden to its board on April 18, 2014. Hunter's compensation had never been disclosed by
Burisma, which is a private company, but Ryan Toohey, a Burisma spokesman,
told The New York Times that Biden's compensation was "not out of the ordinary" for similar
board positions.
However, according to The Hill's
reporting , Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was receiving regular
payments -- "usually more than $166,000 a month" -- from Burisma. The payments ran from the
spring of 2014 through the fall of 2015 and reportedly totaled more than $3 million.
The Hill article included a written answer from Shokin, who told Solomon that his
investigation into Burisma had included plans for "interrogations and other crime-investigation
procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden."
According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, following Shokin's forced
dismissal, the Burisma investigation was transferred to Sytnyk's NABU, which then reportedly
closed the investigation sometime in 2016.
The Kyiv Post on March 27 published an
editorial written by three members of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kyiv that
disputed Lutsenko's interview with The Hill. They claim that two cases relating to Burisma are
still being investigated by NABU:
"Two cases regarding the extraction of licenses by Zlochevsky's companies and embezzlement
of public funds at the ministry's procurements during Zlochevsky's Ministerial tenure remain
active and are investigated by NABU."
They also claim that "none of the criminal proceedings against Burisma were closed by NABU."
They acknowledged that the case concerning illegal issuance of licenses to extract natural
resources were transferred to NABU in December 2015, but claim that SAP missed procedural
deadlines for a lawsuit on canceling those licenses.
The politics within Ukraine are extremely complicated, and corruption is endemic, often
leading to conflicting accounts of events.
US Pressure to Investigate Manafort
In January 2016, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama's National
Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) met in
Washington, according to an April 26
article by The Hill.
The meeting, which was reportedly billed as "training," apparently also touched on two other
matters -- the revival of a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine's
Russia-backed Party of Regions and the closure of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into
Burisma.
According to The Hill's reporting, the Ukrainian Embassy confirmed that meetings were held,
but said it "had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the
meetings."
A Jan. 22, 2016, NABU press
release confirmed that NABU Director Artem Sytnyk was in Washington from Jan. 19 to 21.
At the same time as the NABU meeting with Obama officials, Vice President Biden
also met with senior Ukrainian officials. On Jan. 21, 2016, Biden
met with Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. According to the
White House release , the two leaders agreed "to continue to move forward on Ukraine's
anti-corruption agenda."
Just six days earlier, on Jan 15, 2016, Biden had met with Ukrainian Prime Minister
Volodymyr Groysman, promising to commit $220 million in new assistance to Ukraine that
year.
Notably, several months later, Sytnyk and Ukrainian Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko
would
publicly disclose the contents of the Ukrainian "black ledger" to the media, which
implicated Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The revelation would force Manafort from
the campaign.
Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael
Isikoff and Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa. In addition,
Leshchenko served as a direct source of information for Fusion GPS -- and its researcher,
former CIA contractor Nellie Ohr.
Another Ukrainian-related meeting also took place in January 2016 when Chalupa, a
Ukrainian-American, informed an
unknown senior DNC official that she believed there was a Russian connection with the Trump
campaign. Notably, this theme would be picked up by the Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016.
Chalupa also told the official to expect Manafort's involvement in the Trump campaign.
How Chalupa knew to expect Manafort's involvement with the Trump campaign in January remains
unknown, but her forecast proved prescient, as Manafort
reached out to the Trump campaign shortly after, on Feb. 29, 2016, through a mutual
acquaintance, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. According to Manafort, he and Trump hadn't been in
communication
for years until the Trump campaign responded to Manafort's offer.
As The Epoch Times
previously reported , on May 30, 2016, Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr sent an email to
her husband, high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and three other DOJ officials to alert them
of the discovery of the "Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions' 'Black
Cashbox.'" It was this discovery that led to Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign in
August 2016.
On Aug. 14, 2016, The New York Times published an article
alleging that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents' "black box" --
the 400-page handwritten ledger released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow
for Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign just days later.
NABU Ties to FBI
Following the successful overthrow of Yanukovych, Joe Biden had a direct hand in the
formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), as he personally "pushed for the
creation of an independent anti-corruption bureau to combat graft," according to an Oct. 30,
2016, article by
Foreign Policy .
NABU was formally established in October 2014 in response to pressure
from not only the U.S. State Department and Biden, but also by the International Monetary Fund
and the European Commission.
Despite the international push, the fledgling anti-corruption unit took more than a year to
actually become a functioning unit. During this time, NABU officials began establishing a
relationship with the FBI. In early 2016, NABU Director Sytnyk announced
that his bureau was very close to signing a memorandum of cooperation with the FBI and by
February
2016 , the FBI had had a permanent representative onsite at the NABU offices.
On June 5, 2016, Sytnyk met with U.S. Ambassador Pyatt to
discuss a more formalized relationship with the FBI and, on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI
entered into a
memorandum of understanding that allowed for an FBI office onsite at NABU offices to focus on
international money laundering cases. The relationship was renewed
for an additional two years in June 2017.
NABU has repeatedly refused to make the memorandum of understanding with the FBI public and
went
to court in 2018 to prevent its release. After receiving an unfavorable opinion from the
Kyiv District Administrative Court, NABU appealed the ruling, which was overturned in its favor
by the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.
Sytnyk, along with parliamentarian Leshchenko, became the subject of an investigation in
Ukraine and in December 2018, a Kyiv court
ruled that both men "acted illegally when they revealed that Manafort's surname and
signature were found in the so-called black ledger of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's
Party of Regions," the Kyiv Post
reported on Dec. 12, 2018.
The court noted the material was part of a pre-trial investigation and its release "led to
interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests
of Ukraine as a state."
Leshchenko had publicly adopted a strong anti-Trump stance, telling the Financial
Times in August 2016 that "a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American
foreign policy" and that it was "important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he
is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world." Leschenko
noted that the majority of Ukrainian politicians were "on Hillary Clinton's side."
In December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko
accused Sytnyk of allowing the FBI to conduct illegal operations in Ukraine, claiming that
the "U.S. law enforcers were allegedly invited without the permission required and in breach of
the necessary procedures." Lutsenko
continued by asking, "Who actually let the foreign special service act in Ukraine?"
Taras Chornovil, a Ukrainian political analyst, also questioned the FBI's activities,
writing that "some kind of undercover operations are being conducted in Ukraine with direct
participation (or even under control) of the FBI. This means the FBI operatives could have
access to classified data or confidential information."
Lutsenko called for an audit of NABU,
claiming to "possess information of interest to the auditors" and was pushing for Sytnyk's
resignation, along with that of Nazar Kholodnitskiy, the Specialized Anti-Corruption
Prosecutor's Office (SAP). According to
reporting by Euromaidan Press, Lutsenko's efforts failed "thanks to the reaction from
Ukraine's American partners."
Michael Carpenter, an adviser to Joe Biden, personally issued a public warning to Lutsenko
and others pushing for Sytnyk's removal, stating, "If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the
Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all U.S. government
assistance to #Ukraine , including security
assistance."
Sytnyk remains in his position as NABU's director.
Pinchuk's Ties to Leshchenko,
Clintons
On April 11, 2019, Greg Craig, Obama's former White House counsel and a partner at law firm
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, was indicted
for lying about and concealing his work in Ukraine. Craig, who reportedly worked closely with
Manafort, was paid
more than $4 million to produce an "independent" report justifying Ukraine's trial and
conviction of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Notably, Craig's name was not
included in the "Black Ledger" leak from Leshchenko and Sytnyk.
The indictment notes that "a wealthy private Ukrainian" was fully funding the report. In a
recent YouTube video
, Craig publicly stated that "it was Doug Schoen who brought this project to me, and he told me
he was acting on behalf of Victor Pinchuk, who was a pro-western, Ukrainian businessman who
helped to fund the project."
"The Firm understood that its work was to be largely funded by Victor Pinchuk," Skadden
wrote in recent FARA filings .
Pinchuk put out a statement on Jan. 21, denying any financial involvement:
"Mr. Pinchuk was not the source of any funds used to pay fees of Skadden in producing their
report into the trial and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko. He was in no way responsible for
those costs. Neither Mr. Pinchuk nor companies affiliated with him have ever been a client of
Skadden. Mr. Pinchuk and his team had no role in the work done by Skadden, including in the
preparation or dissemination of the Skadden report."
Pinchuk is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He owns Credit Dnipro Bank,
several ferroalloy plants and a media empire. He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of
former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
Pinchuk has been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at
severely below-market prices through political favoritism.
Between April 4 and April 12,
2016, Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova had
four meetings , with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz
Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Department), and David Kramer
(McCain Institute).
FARA documents
filed by Schoen showed that he was paid $40,000 a month by Pinchuk (page 5) -- in part to
arrange these meetings.
Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with congressmen and media (page 10). It's
unknown how many of these meetings, if any, took place.
Schoen also helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street
Journal reported on
March 19, 2015, how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in
order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko–a political
rival of Yanukovych–from jail. And the relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons
continued. According to the Kyiv
Post :
"Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the
annual YES and other Pinchuk events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is
known internationally as a businessman and philanthropist."
Although exact numbers aren't clear,
reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk's
donations went to the Clinton organization.
Pinchuk also has ties to Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked the information on
Manafort. Leshchenko had been a frequent speaker at the Ukrainian Breakfast , a traditional private event
held at Davos, Switzerland, and hosted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and has also been
pictured with Pinchuk at multiple other events.
"... Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration. ..."
"... Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove. ..."
"... Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend. ..."
"... Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services. ..."
"... Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. ..."
"... Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times. ..."
"... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
"... Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations. ..."
"... Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated. ..."
UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.
Britain's GCHQ was involved in
collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert
Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to
meet personally
with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.
Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers.
In the following year, Hannigan
abruptly announced
his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.
As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted
after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant
Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly
so.
Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele
retains close ties with Dearlove.
Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to
work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at
the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter
Page to attend.
Dearlove knows Halper through their
mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is
an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence
and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and
retains close ties to UK intelligence services.
Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has
co-authored two books.
Downer, who
met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting
established through a chain
of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt
from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still
maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish
the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.
The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former
British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later
relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute,
to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017,
statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.
Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations
-- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can
we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.
In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that
the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.
Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified
documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest
idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?
Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release
appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.
Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele
Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion
was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against
Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.
Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he
and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele
maintains contact with British intelligence,
Sir Richard Dearlove
, and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.
Steele appears to have been
represented
by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from
texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:
"Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important
concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort.
I will be with him next tuesday for a week."
Steele also appears to have
lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in
emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently
disclosed by the Washington Examiner:
"Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool'
of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."
Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation
pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler,
who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower
meeting, at which she discussed the
Magnitsky Act .
Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson
met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government
agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside
contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.
Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.
Bruce and Nellie Ohr have
known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a
DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography
lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr
before and after the 2016 election.
Bruce Ohr had been in
contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later
actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions
between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s
-- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.
Spy Traps
In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps
were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has
ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.
Papadopoulos and Mifsud
both worked
at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around
November
2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly
joined
LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some
reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November
or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths
until March 14, 2016, in Italy.
Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and
Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and
Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days
in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.
Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but
was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.
Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed
as a
chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.
Papadopoulos was introduced
to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened
to
be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit
remains unknown.
The Papadopoulos–Downer
meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly
reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.
According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point
mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
"During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the
lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told
The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging
to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."
Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was
responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.
Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017,
BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted
to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended
target of these failed FISAs.
Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael
Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.
Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.
After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter
Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized
with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct.
21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.
Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016
Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known
each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.
Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with
Page. Current information suggests there was only
one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named
in the Buryakov case.
Page, who
cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted
by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov
pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was
sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was
deported to Russia.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes
said in August that exculpatory evidence
on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence
likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.
If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application
to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.
Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review. ..."
"... The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016. ..."
"... After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target. ..."
"... On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit. ..."
"... Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant. ..."
"... The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. ..."
"... While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director. ..."
Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for
uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page
unsealed FISA
court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.
"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.
"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."
The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar
disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."
The FISA Court
disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to
the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.
In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of
improper
contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he
directed the NSA's Office
of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors
working for the FBI.
DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was
part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the Office
of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose
Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.
The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin
announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.
After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing
numerous "about query"
violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and
reported his findings
to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are
not "to" or "from" the target.
On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance
on Carter Page from the FISA Court.
At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally
informed
the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings
of his audit.
The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions
at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a
recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.
The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing
to present his findings to the FISA Court.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
The insurance policy was the false flag operation directed at establishing the Trump–Russia collusion
narrative. The key part was the appointment of Special Prosecutor in which McCabe played an important if not the decisive role.
Notable quotes:
"... The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign. ..."
"... The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation. ..."
Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance
policy," the term has been the subject of wide speculation.
Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to
monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump
campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying meaning of the
text.
The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion
narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the
Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The
intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump
campaign.
The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe
would end up running the investigation.
The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the
Democratic National Committee, served as the foundation for the Russia narrative.
The
intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the
dossier as a launching pad for creating their Intelligence Community assessment.
This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers
having only moderate confidence in its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the
narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.
Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the
narrative that Russia helped Trump win the elections was aggressively pushed throughout
2017.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be
followed on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe. ..."
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate."
He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the
Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance policy" text
message.
McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.
On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He
was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recluses
himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March
2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of
the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.
Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased
scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly
Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.
On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject
of the memo was "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day.
McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for
the permanent position.
On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the
FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016,
Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe" by Devlin
Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of
Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."
At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the
darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate fully known.
In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions,
regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with
Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.
Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly
record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced
from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general
counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence.
Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.
The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the
Justice Department to open an investigation into the president."
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the
conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying,
"What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met
with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job.
On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after
Rosenstein's encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from
the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any
expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.
Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed
-- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation.
McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under
consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement
and the FBI would have retained control.
On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath
regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew
McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.
On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of
investigation and definition of authority" that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of
this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI
director.
Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks
investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak
investigations.
That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove
any residual FBI influence -- specifically that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The
appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely
neutralized.
On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and
is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.
The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies , was transformed during the Obama years.
The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political
affiliation.
However, a
series of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder's tenure as
attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern of ideological conformity among new hires at
the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate or
conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in
determining who will be subject to prosecution.
The DOJ's job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a
protective layer of cover for all those involved. The department became a repository of
information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts of the FBI and the
legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch,
serving as the insulating barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had
become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.
The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also
became an active element acting against members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ's National Security Division, was
actively
involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security
adviser to President Trump.
To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn's
call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to
the FBI. There have been
questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written
notes of Flynn's FBI interviews. Special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn's
sentencing hearing.
David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the
DOJ's National Security Division, played a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia
hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean, the long-time
friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually
assaulting her while in high school. McLean was also
employed by the FBI for 24 years.
Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a
key role in Spygate. Ohr held
two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just
four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he reported directly to
her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as "the centerpiece
of the attorney general's drug strategy."
Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis
with Steele, whom he had known since at
least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who
began working for Fusion GPS sometime in
late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the
dossier.
According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times
during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew
McCabe.
Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least
12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings
could have been used to
transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed
contact with Steele in late October or early November 2016.
John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general
and the head of the DOJ's National Security Division until October 2016. His role will be
discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website
TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General. ..."
FBI's formal involvement with the
Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016,
when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele's first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland
at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.
Gaeta, who also headed the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided
assistance to the FBI's investigation into the
FIFA corruption
scandal .
Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele
several weeks earlier.
"In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA," The Guardian reported. "His information
started to reach the bureau in Washington."
It's worth noting that there was no "dossier" until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents
from Steele -- documents that were passed on individually -- as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI's legal perspective, they
didn't use the dossier. They used individual documents.
For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI's interest in
the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau
asked Steele "for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify
his sources."
In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI's Eurasian squad once again. It's likely that the meeting
included several other FBI officials as well. According to a
House Intelligence Committee
minority memo , Steele's reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016 -- the same time as Steele's
September trip to Rome.
The reason for the FBI's renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign -- Carter Page -- who had been in
contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA
and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper
arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page took a trip
to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.
Page was now the FBI's chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the
primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office,
finally expiring in September 2017.
The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant on Page
After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired.
Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification
of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website
TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part. ..."
"... But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference. ..."
"... Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes ..."
"... Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real. ..."
"... The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump. ..."
"... The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia. ..."
"... Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers. ..."
"... Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition. ..."
"... That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else. ..."
"... Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism. Mueller Report ..."
One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the
military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is "to conceal the criminal conduct of US
government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton
campaign," by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
The third is to obstruct Trump's campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the
election.
Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded
with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find
evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of
its purposes.
Trump has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have
succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a blatant criminal
attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan government.
Hillary's criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic)
Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI obtaining spy warrants for
partisan political purposes on false pretexts from the FISA court, were swept out of sight by
the Russiagate hoax.
The Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any evidence
supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump of obstruction and passed
the buck to the Attorney General. In other words, Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept
the controversy going by setting up Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.
It is evidence of Mueller's corruption that he does not explain just how it is possible for
Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Mueller states in his report that the crime he
was empowered to investigate could not be found. How does one obstruct the investigation of a
crime that did not occur?
As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his
refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to
accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same
thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly
present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal
prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part.
But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly
obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the
Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in
the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this
interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in
the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference.
Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of
presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC
emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by
the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails
were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the
Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the
presstitutes.
One reason for ignoring this undisputed fact is that they all want to get Julian Assange,
and the public case concocted against Assange is that Assange is in cahoots with the Russians
who allegedly gave him the hacked emails. As there is no evidence that Russia hacked the emails
and as Assange has said Russia is not the source, what is Mueller's evidence? Apparently,
Mueller's evidence is his own political indictment of Russian individuals who Mueller alleged
hacked the DNC computers. This false indictment for which there is no evidence was designed by
Mueller to poison the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin and announced on the eve of the
meeting.
Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not
possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking.
This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would
be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real.
The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his
otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference
as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia
for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump.
The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but
even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do
not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in
constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any
remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia.
Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus
has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened
by any move toward peace between nuclear powers.
The Democratic Party and the presstitutes cannot be bothered by facts. They are committed to
getting Trump regardless of the facts. And so is Mueller, and Brennan, and Comey, and a slew of
other corrupt public officials.
A good example of journalistic misconduct is James Risen writing in Glenn Greenwald's
Intercept of all places, "WILLIAM BARR MISLED EVERYONE ABOUT THE MUELLER REPORT. NOW DEMOCRATS
ARE CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION." Quoting the same posse of "hang Trump high" Democrats, Risen,
without questioning their disproven lies, lets the Democrats build a case that Mueller's report
proves Trump's guilt. Then Risen himself misrepresents the report in support of the Democrats.
He says there is a huge difference between Barr's memo on the report and the report itself as
if Barr would misrepresent a report that he is about to release.
Length is the only difference between the memo and the report. This doesn't stop Risen from
writing: "In fact, the Mueller report makes it clear that a key reason Mueller did not seek to
prosecute Trump for obstruction was a longstanding Justice Department legal opinion saying that
the Justice Department can't indict a sitting president." This is something Mueller threw in
after saying he didn't have the evidence to indict Trump. It is yet another reason for not
indicting, not the reason. Risen then backs up his misreport with that of a partisan Democrat,
Renato Mariotti who claims that Mueller could have indicted Trump except it is against US
Justice Department policy. Again, there is no explanation from Risen, Mariotti, or anyone else
how Mueller could have indicted Trump for obstructing what Mueller concludes was a crime that
did not happen.
Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have
indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not
one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition.
That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did
not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in
the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else.
Risen also alleges that the unproven Russian hacks were passed over by Barr in his memo on
the report. Not only is this incorrect, but also Risen apparently has forgot that the
investigation was about Trump's collusion with Russia to do something illegal and the
investigation found that no such thing occurred. Risen, like the rest of the presstitutes and
even Greenwald himself, takes for granted that the unproven Russian hacks happened. Again we
see that the longer a lie is repeated the more it becomes true. Not even Greenwald can detect
that he has been bamboozled.
At one time James Risen was an honest reporter. He won a Pulitzer prize, and he was
threatened with prison by the Department of Justice when he refused to reveal his source for
his reporting on illegal actions of the CIA. But Risen discovered that in the new world of
journalism, telling the truth is punished while lying is rewarded. Risen, like all the others,
decided that his income was more important than the truth.
Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this
is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First
Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer
be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism.
Mueller Report
Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service,
and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.
In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven
irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts
ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a
series of payments to several as-of-yet-
unnamed reporters .
The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In
September 2016 ,
he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according
to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
In mid-October
2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother
Jones reporter David Corn.
Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted
version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence
community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern
that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.
On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article "
A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in
court documents
relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance
in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, "
FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA
warrant.
The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and
charged with one count of lying
to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment
alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.
Reporter
Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application.
According to the indictment
, Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages
with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call.
The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.
In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions
for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.
Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original
unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly
stated that evidence within the FISA application
shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.
Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence
having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit
their complicity.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided
by Section
2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's
data-sharing
order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance
simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.
Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't
sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.
The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between
agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.
An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017,
MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration
gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as
much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'
"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try
to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the
leaking."
Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating
impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the
attorney general's office. According to congressional
testimony by Horowitz:
"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply
a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going
to give us that information."
These new restrictions were
put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a
letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015,
with a 58-page
memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including
intercepted communications and national security letters.
The New York Times recently
disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.
At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The
Intelligence Community assessment was released
internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national
security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email
documenting
the meeting.
The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they
gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey,
Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.
Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later
explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview
why:
"Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."
Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey
noted in
a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:
"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write
that the FBI has the material."
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey
briefed Trump that
CNN reported
on the dossier. It was later
revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.
The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of
intelligence unmaskings
, the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha
Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.
The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser,
Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division,
led that effort
.
Executive Order 13762
President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ.
The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold
the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her
position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.
Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership.
The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.
Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips,
after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced
to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming
under intense scrutiny.
The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian
ambassador.
Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.
Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.
On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings
appear to have been unexpected.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both the 2016 Presidential election and the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November. Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did. Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016 elections. Had Hillary won, the world would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with China, Russia, and Iran. ..."
"... Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they don't hide it. They can't control him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ. ..."
"... The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, insteadt it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS. ..."
"... The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in all sorts of nefarious activity during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies, from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think about why Clinton instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State emails by using "a cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice (remember also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his tarmac antics). ..."
"... The smoke screen consisted of the classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully, those guilty of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and the activities of the crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality. Just because a poltical party has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for organized crime. ..."
"... I am unable to determine the truth concerning Mr. Johnson's individual clams but I do take from it the determined efforts to stop détente between Russia and the US. If people die because of their sabotage, their deaths are on their heads. Certainly the major media is part of this effort by making any effort by the Trump Administration to engage with Russia appear to be a crime. ..."
"... The US government was "sold to the highest bidder" gradually after the War of 1812 as the founders died out, economic entities grew in the 19th century, and the ebulliently rising middle class declined to regulate economic influence upon elections, mass media, and the judiciary. Thus the people lost those tools of democracy, and with the consolidation of the MIC/Intel/WallSt/Israel/KSA powers after WWII democracy was lost forever. ..."
"... Thank you for this piece of work exposing the corruption of significant elements of the Democratic Party ("Clinton wing") which used intelligence agencies and other government elements to x-out a sitting president. It is important to add that this writer was vehemently opposed to the candidacy of Donald Trump and is disappointed by his his incumbency as the Chief Executive of the United States of America. It distresses that good people, usually solid thinkers flinch, look away, and deny when the name Hillary Clinton emerges. ..."
"... "Mueller, as noted previously, is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant." Sater was also a mobster. This isn't altogether surprising since Mueller was arguably in bed for much of his career with New England's Irish organized crime family, the ultra violent Winter Hill Gang. ..."
"... 2015, 2016, We introduce Donald Trump the "wild card" who just might disturb the flow of profit and market share away from the den of thieves that enjoyed 8 years of Obama. ..."
There is one facet in this entire dirty scheme that gets overlooked: a number of the
actions by the Dems and the FBI served for the exclusive purpose to force Trump to fire his
best campaign managers and secretary of defense and other persons in his campaign and
presidency:
The Dems were afraid Trump would win with Manafort as his campaign manager, and acted to
force Trump to fire him just as earlier, one of his managers who turned out to be effective,
was besmeared by a reporter of having forced her to fall when she clearly didn't, just to
besmear Trump as being a mysogenist.
The same was done to Flynn, who was in favor of good relations with Russia. Flynn really
didn't do anything wrong other than to endanger the Dem's agenda to topple Putin. In the same
vein, Bannon and two other of the more populist advisors who wanted a more peaceful conduct
for the US, got eliminated by the earlier chief of staff Kelly until he got fired
himself.
The same repeated with AG Barr, who is clearly a threat to the entire Dem cabal, but
hasn't been successfully far despite shameful congressional inquiries during Barr's
testimony.
Looked at in tandem with the Russiagate accusations and Mueller's investigations, it is
obvious that this entire web of lies and repeated attempts at entrapment of Trump employees
was constructed by Clinton in complicity with not just the FBI and CIA, but with the DNC and
the entire deep state, to either oust, impeach or incarcerate Trump and, if that didn't work,
to force him and corner him into continuing Obama/Bush's agenda against Russia.
Sadly, Trump fell for it and the US policies which he pursues are the same now as always:
hegemony with regime change wars to keep the MIC in control of the entire US economy.
Excellent interview here with Aaron Mate and his father Gabor on the psychology of the
mass hallucination we call Russiagate. Same as Consortium News, Aaron was out in front of the
propaganda snow machine calling the hoax like it is from its inception.
The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both
the 2016 Presidential election and the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November.
Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did.
Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016
elections. Had Hillary won, the world would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with
China, Russia, and Iran.
Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they
don't hide it. They can't control him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ.
Peter Halligan , May 8, 2019 at 15:06
The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of
which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay
to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months,
insteadt it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the
mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a
coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC
interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS.
The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in
all sorts of nefarious activity during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies,
from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think about why Clinton
instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State
emails by using "a cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities
of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by
Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice
(remember also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored
by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his tarmac antics).
The smoke screen consisted of the
classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully, those guilty
of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and
the activities of the crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we
all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality. Just because a poltical party
has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for
organized crime.
Pablo Diablo , May 8, 2019 at 15:03
Trump is a "loose cannon". This whole Mueller investigation was an attempt to "control"
him. It worked. Got the Neocons back in power and fed The War Machine very well.
I am unable to determine the truth concerning Mr. Johnson's individual clams but I do take
from it the determined efforts to stop détente between Russia and the US. If people
die because of their sabotage, their deaths are on their heads. Certainly the major media is
part of this effort by making any effort by the Trump Administration to engage with Russia
appear to be a crime.
Starting with Flynn, he was nailed not on talking to the Russia but the fact that he was
caught lying to the FBI. But it was clear that the real crime was not misleading the FBI but
talking to Russia. Always thought Trump's failure to defend Flynn was weakness or bad advice or both.
Obstruction of justice, the major hook by law enforcement when there is no proof of a
crime. If in fact Trump knew he was not guilty he might well turn to looking to stop a
politically damaging vendetta. Might call it obstruction of injustice. That seems to be what
the Democrats are about.
DW Bartoo , May 8, 2019 at 12:13
It is comment threads such as this which continue to convince me that the community of
interest that congregate at Consortium News, is among the most well informed, most well read,
and most diligently committed to critical thought and analysis, along with most articulate,
with both wit and wisdom as us to be found anywhere.
The combination of a site totally committed to exposing truth and an attendant community
of individuals equally committed to seeking (and sharing) that truth, and the implications of
what such truth must reveal, usually of great consequence, results in a space quite unique in
this time of unresolved and,too often, unexamined existential crisis, well on the way toward
calamity or catastrophe for the entire human species.
As we watch, have watched, for decades, U$ policy, foreign and domestic, choose
domination, bullying, and destruction of the rule of law, of civil rights generally, and of
any pretense of democracy all devolve into a Klepto Dismal ideology, it is islands of sanity,
and the occasional oasis of reason, that make this life journey feel like a bit more than an
increasingly bad trip down Machiavellian Lanes, where other humans seem to be living in
realms Socrates would have considered most worthy of examination.
Those who struggle merely to survivethey are not the sleepwalking servants of empire, it is
the "educated" who prefer the manufactured lies, such as "Russia did it", who see nothing
wrong with military empire, which they often deny even exists, nor with destroying the
capacity of the web if life to support their existence, so long as their vanity and
consumerist hungers are fed, they are not bothered that "education" turns the young into
serfs, for their own "meritorious" offspring will, with full "legacy" advantage be propelled
ever upward, to heights where failure and deceit are rewarded with further honor, acclaim,
and wealth. The "too big to jail", the "nice guys" who sit down on Tuesday to decide who will
be killed on Wednesday, those who devise "sophisticated psychological" torture programs that
will, inevitably, be blamed on a few bad apples, while those who oversaw such programs and
destroyed evidence OF the programs now run intelligence agencies. War criminals are pardoned,
some to rise again in positions to destroy nations and human beings with cavalier
indifference and a fine reception at Big Bank receptions, often with huge "appreciation" fees
for services rendered.
Then, of course, there are the "opinion-shapers" those well-paid mouthpieces of corporate
media.
On the subject of money, look how much goes to murder and mayhem? And still they jockey
for more.
The public is told, "Everyone hates us for our freedoms!": Duct tape and plastic. A cashless society. Facial recognition at every toll booth.
Tell me, when did the people become the enemy of the government? Tell me, when was the government sold to the highest bidder? And what "branch" of government approved the sale? What "branch" dispensed with the law and simply appointed the next president who had the
good fortune to become a "wartime president!", when a certain "event" "changed
everything"?
Changed everything and was claimed as the "exceptional moment" that ended any pretense of
the rule of law, which has been replaced with an empty "form" of "law", which acknowledges no
bounds or limits, no process or need of evidence or even motive, but requires only empty
assertion and a media most happy to amplify, for money, any and every idiotic assertion that
the owners, the PTB, wish broadcast.
My appreciation to all who dare stand against the madness, the mayhem, the murder, and the
myths. (This has been a test, merely to see if new comments have been posted since last I looked.
; -)
Sam F , May 8, 2019 at 12:24
The US government was "sold to the highest bidder" gradually after the War of 1812 as the
founders died out, economic entities grew in the 19th century, and the ebulliently rising
middle class declined to regulate economic influence upon elections, mass media, and the
judiciary. Thus the people lost those tools of democracy, and with the consolidation of the
MIC/Intel/WallSt/Israel/KSA powers after WWII democracy was lost forever.
Indeed with our new Democracy™ we have only "an empty "form" of "law", which
acknowledges no bounds or limits, no process or need of evidence or even motive, but requires
only empty assertion." Same for mass media and elections. We must await national disaster as
a precondition of the restoration of democracy.
David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 14:58
...Sociopaths feeding on power projections from psychopaths.
Such is our contemporary leadership defined. And perhaps our terminal flaw as a species as
technology continues to be within our reach, but as ever, not within our grasp
E Wright , May 8, 2019 at 22:31
Ah, but you see, the Founding Fathers were exactly the people you describe.They wanted to
take power from the British for the People. People like themselves. Labor was a commodity to
be bought and sold. What better way to ensure their legacy than to fix in place a
constitution that would remain frozen in time.
Tuyzentfloot , May 8, 2019 at 04:33
The Iranians in the 2009 elections had a period where the losers of the election
challenged the legitimacy of the election which was potentially very dangerous. But it was
cut short when Khamenei decided Moussavi et al had to put up or shut up. Either they had to
show the proof that the elections had been stolen or they had to shut up. That was a healthy
decision.
In the US the whole electoral process is being corrupted and the debate about the
legitimacy of the presidency is allowed to drag on till the next election. That's not even
about the truth of the claims or whether that would be a reason for worry (Putin has an evil
plan to reduce tensions between the US and Russia).
You need a very high threshold before starting such commissions of inquiry.
J. Edward Tipre , May 8, 2019 at 02:56
Thank you for this piece of work exposing the corruption of significant elements of the
Democratic Party ("Clinton wing") which used intelligence agencies and other government
elements to x-out a sitting president. It is important to add that this writer was vehemently
opposed to the candidacy of Donald Trump and is disappointed by his his incumbency as the
Chief Executive of the United States of America. It distresses that good people, usually
solid thinkers flinch, look away, and deny when the name Hillary Clinton emerges.
Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 01:42
"Every country gets the government it deserves." – Joseph de Maistre
David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 15:03
Omidyar dumped $500,000 into Hillary/Nuland-Kagan's Maidan Massacre.
Risen is risible.
The Intercept's "crack source-protection team" got Realty Winner imprisoned.
TheMerryO , May 8, 2019 at 00:19
One of the better articles on this American mystery story.
Trump Tower: Akmetshin was listed on the log visiting the Obama White House in Jan 2016. He
then shows up as Russian atty Natalia's escort to the Tower meeting in June 2016. He and
Natalia speak English yet the Obama State Dept interpreter joined them. Several sources
report Natalia met with Hillary's agent Fusion GPS before and after the meeting. Natalia was
given a special Visa by Mueller SC team member Preet Bharara against a State Dept Jan on
Natalia, making Preet a witness on the Tower meeting he is "investigating".
Papadopoulos on Twitter states Mueller falsified the date of the key meeting in the London
hotel on May 10, 2016 with Aussie Downer. The Mueller false date inserted was May 6; by
giving a false date Mueller obscures the fact that FBI spy chief Priestap was in London on
May 9 the day before the hotel meeting. Priestap's London sojourn is deduced from the combo
of his testimony to Congress and from Strzok / Page emails "Bill (Priestap) is in
London".
Both Carter Page and PapaD would probably be willing to be interviewed and would help clarify
some of the data you attempt to write about of their story.
DH Fabian , May 7, 2019 at 23:34
One clue was overlooked early on. Not long after the 2016 election, the Clinton team
shouted, "Russia stole the election!" The initial public response was a collective rolling of
the eyes. After all, after each election, the side that loses blames someone/something other
than themselves for the outcome. But media grabbed hold of the notion, and began creating
their the Russian Tale. There was little effort to root out the truth -- only to exploit the
notion.
KiwiAntz , May 7, 2019 at 20:55
Didn't you get the Memo Larry? Despite the underwhelming nothingburger Mueller Report
& the overwhelming evidence that the US Intelligence Agencies, in cahoots with the MSM,
Obama, HRC & the DNC, all interfered in the US Election, none of this really matters? The
blame must be centred on RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA that did it! Who needs facts & evidence?
We are America & can create our own reality, based on fabricated lies? I've never seen a
Country such as the US of A that has such a victim mentality? Its always everyone else's
fault that America is a shambolic basketcase on the precipice of Imperial collapse? Its
always either another Countries fault such as Russia or China, or the Syrians, Iranian's or
Venezuelan 's fault? Or Socialism or any other "ism" you can come up with? Thats a real
cowardly, delusional attitude to have, blaming everyone else for your own incompetence &
without self examination by looking in the mirror & owning your own stuffups &
mistakes? Trump is another sorry example of blaming others for America's corrupt practices?
Although its patently obvious that massive attempts have been & continue to be made to
sabotage Trump's Presidency & remove this bipolar clown from office, judging by World
events, it needs to happen because this POTUS is a dangerous idiot that must be stopped?
Trump, with the troika of tyranny of Pompouspeo, Revolton Bolton & Crazy Abrams are
heading America into to either a new Cold War or WW3 in which they would not win!
Skip Scott , May 8, 2019 at 07:08
By pretending that RussiaGate was not an Intelligence Agency psy-op, you are helping the
Deep State, and it will never make any difference who is president. Your TDS has you in a
brain fog.
Deniz , May 8, 2019 at 09:45
Why is "Russia, if you are listening, find Hillarys 30,000 emails." a crime and not a just
a cynical joke? It is no different than what late night comedians say everyday. Should
comedians be thrown in jail for their thought crimes?
As far as I am aware, the first amendment is still the law of the land.
Eddie S , May 8, 2019 at 20:40
I agree! Trump is a consummate example of the stereotype 'joi-zee' rich-kid scammer, with
NO refined tastes and a crass casino pit-boss personality, a true ugly-American boor, but
using some flippant remark he made on the campaign trail as supposed support for collusion
with Russia is just a ridiculous stretch. I have WAY less of a problem with that than with
(for instance) 'St Ronnie's' open-mike 'humor' about 'In ten minutes we start bombing Russia'
(I don't recall the exact words that idiot said) -- talk about a possible misunderstanding
possibly creating a tragedy of biblical proportions.
hetro , May 8, 2019 at 11:10
Seems to me the confusion lies in conflating Trump doing business deals (and problems
thereby, including his lying about it) with Trump working hand in glove with an evil Putin to
"fix' the 2016 election. This vast and supid oversimplification has been going on (and
fostered) for years in terms of ANY contact with Russia means automatically there is dirty
dealing from the Kremlin to twist into US politics. No, we need to resist this
oversimplification.
The Mueller thing devolved from Clinton's loss as a diversion, more and
more obvious, for various corruptions problems with Clinton's affairs, including the
campaign, which are still being largely ignored. There was no Evil Vlad at Trump's elbow. But
then any attempt to point out this distinction lands on: "you're helping Trump." No, the
focus is on the propaganda smearing of Trump as a distraction from other matters. This does
NOT mean anyone seeking to clarify on this distinction is in favor of Trump and his continued
ineptitude. It means for once we'd like some truth to come out of government instead of all
the manipulation, equally being shared at this time by BOTH wings of our sorry and
broken-down System.
ML , May 8, 2019 at 16:48
I agree with you, hetro. I am just tired of hearing these investigations drone on and on
and on. I have been in agreement that Russiagate was a sham from the beginning. Trying to
convince most so-called liberals of this has been a fruitless endeavor. I am not conflating
Trump's sly business deals with anything but what they are- sly, often illegal deals in
violation of the emoluments clause. I think the man is seriously despicable. So was his
nemesis, the snake-headed Hillary. But I am sick of never-ending discussions of all of this
in our press and as well as on many decent sites like the stellar CN. I'd like to focus on
urgent matters at hand like war, ecocide, and improving our lives as Americans. But that is
too much to ask in this highly partisan environment. Peace to all the great commenters
here.
hetro , May 8, 2019 at 20:16
Yes, we absolutely, badly, need to move on–this point directly relates to how
Russia-gate has been a monstrous distraction from what we need to concentrate on. But we have
a struggle still to continue to challenge the official bullshit which continues on and on
masking the reality of a government in thrall to a plutocratic governance. The problem also
lies in trying to understand how materialism + propaganda can pretty much neutralize the
critical thinking skills of too many of us. We are after all a primitive species. We have
been overlain with BS for so long now the question is whether we can ever dig out from under
the mountain of it.
Sam F , May 8, 2019 at 12:37
But the worst assaults on US democracy are certainly not all "domestic in nature by
right-wing forces & Corporate Democrats" as one cannot ignore the fact that the top ten
HRC "donors" were zionists (and the majority of their "donors" over 500K) as well as the
largest "donors" to their "foundation" along with KSA. While the economic powers that
supplanted our former democracy are diverse, it is plain that Russiagate was invented to
conceal IsraelKSAgate, as well as the influence of MIC/WallSt that usually "donate" more to
the Repubs.
Its not illegal to do business in Russia and everyone knew Trump wanted a Trump Tower in
Moscow and what not?
The Stelle dossier was compiled from top Russian government officials so while Trump was
"talking" Hillary was working with Russia
Literally
The Emails proved Hillary was a criminal and stole the nomination from Sanders those are
just facts
Not only that they used the bogus unsubstantiated dossier to illegally spy on the trump
campaign and lied to the FISA court to do it.
Thats sedition and far worse than any crime Trump committed
Hillary is why we have Trump .No other reason.
michael , May 8, 2019 at 19:11
Howard Schultz has over 100 Starbucks in Moscow alone, but I'm sure Mueller and his army
of Lawyers and FBI agents and admins (~100 total) vetted this, just as he would have vetted
Greg Craig and the Podesta Group who worked in the slime of Ukrainian corruption with
Manafort. Otherwise this becomes just partisan political theatre and another Act is coming
(Republicans are vindictive!)
If the Kremlin was involved at all with the disinformation of the fake dossier which
initially, briefly gave credence to Russiagate, Hillary and her minions have helped Russia
"sow discord" and deliberately interfere with the Federal government. That is Sedition.
I don't think the Russians were 'really' involved (no more than usual background noise of
which I'm sure the NSA is aware.) The destruction of the DNC computers (classic
Hillary– "no evidence = no crime"), the dependence on Crowdstrike and Dmitri
Alperovitch, a Russian working with ? the Awan brothers? Fusion GPS? My guess is New
Knowledge; seems very likely after pretending to be Russians and interfering with the Alabama
Senate race (did anyone go to jail for that), New Knowledge may have pretended before
complicit with the DNC (indeed that seems their business model to get government grants).
VIPS' data and Seth Rich are worth re-examining in detail. Of course DC is about nepotism and
pay-to-play and no one connected will pay a price. They are all above the Law. Braying ass
Trump is an Outsider; that is his sole failure in the Establishment's eyes and he has to be
removed.
Nothing really new in this article although of course ignored by the CIA-controlled MSM, but
some good details in the comments.
sierra7 , May 9, 2019 at 17:15
Michael:
" .. ass Trump is an Outsider; that is his sole failure in the Establishment's eyes and he
has to be removed."
That is the eye of the needle! Going further I personally believe that DT didn't ever expect
to be elected president! He was so angry with his embarrassment by the President Obama at the
Washington DC annual "media party" that he vowed to run then and there but was totally
gob-smacked when he actually won. Of course he won because the Dems proferred a most
despicable candidate that believed the world owed her the presidency. There is a reason that
DT was elected: too many Americans were/are sick and tired of the "Washington Two-Step" .and
will try the system before the pitchforks.
"Mueller, as noted previously, is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an
FBI informant." Sater was also a mobster. This isn't altogether surprising since Mueller was arguably in bed for much of his career
with New England's Irish organized crime family, the ultra violent Winter Hill Gang.
The older I get the more I start to wonder if the only honest section of a bookstore is
the "True Crime" section.
hetro , May 7, 2019 at 18:25
Somewhat off topic, a valuable addition to the discussion can be found at:
Here Aaron Mate discusses with his father Gabor Mate psychological implications of the
collusion fiasco. (There is a transcript.) It's an interesting discussion related to how fear
and paranoia feed over-reaction, although I would also have liked to see promptings to that
very paranoid type of response as a propaganda tool to prepare a nation for military events
and further war.
elmerfudzie , May 7, 2019 at 17:52
Let's examine the network of interwoven Intel agencies throughout the world today, a brief
summary:
The Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was hanged. He threatened to eliminate the
contraband trails meandering through Turkey (controlled and organized by the CIA and Turkish
Mafia)
Olof Palme, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and confrontational with many U.S.
policies and tried in vain to stop the Iran-Iraq war, further he was an avid Cuba-supporter,
-assassinated.
In 2003, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed while shopping She was widely
seen as a credible candidate to Olof Plame's office.
The Baader-Meinhof gang, formally known as the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction, In
1977 abducted,and eventually murdered, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a representative of the West
German upper middle class, an operation done by Gladio (CIA) operators. Ditto, Italy's Aldo
Moro abduction and assassination
Brabant Supermarket Massacres Belgium (Gladio-CIA) motivated by a "commie" threat in
Europe
Lyndon B. Johnson, that "senator from the Pentagon" sheds additional light on Gladio, when
told the Greek ambassador in the U.S. that the ongoing civil war in Cyprus required the
partition of Cyprus. I quote him here (it's on the record):
"Then listen to me Mr. Ambassador. Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is
an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea ASIDE: ask the Goldman Sachs clique! If those
two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk,
whacked good. We pay a lot of good dollars to the Greeks Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime
Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and
his constitution may not last very long. . . . Don't forget to tell old Papa – what's
his name – what I told you. Mind you tell him, you hear. " Does this sound familiar to
you, CONSORTIUMNEWS readers? an echo perhaps of many, equivalently arrogant, statements made
subsequent to LBJ's pronouncements?
As a CIA front Aginter Press of Lisbon Portugal, made it their task to indulge in
murderous activities wherever it was necessary, ANYWHERE in the world. Again I paraphrase it
here, from the expert on CIA activities, Ganser; Therefore Aginter operatives, including
American Jay Sablonsky, together with the CIA and US Green Berets Special Forces participated
in the notorious Gautemalan counter-terror of 1968-1971. Ditto, operatives were present in
Chile in 1973 and were involved when CIA ousted Allende and replaced him with right wing
dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Prime Minister Adnan Menderes of Turkey, circa 1960 a CIA directed coup using the Gladio
network, followed by a show trial and then hanging, in effect his murder
CIA, Counter-Guerilla, the Grey Wolves, and their link to an Assassination Attempt on Pope
Paul II. A strong connection exists between the CIA controlled Grey Wolves and members of
Counter-Guerilla with this assassination attempt on May 13, 1981
These examples are but a sliver of the many, many, many direct "interference's" by one of
our U.S. official government agencies into the politics and government and consequently those
elections held in western Occident and southern hemisphere countries.
DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:01
Think of this fiasco in more basic terms. The purpose of the Mueller investigation was to
determine if there was evidence that Russia somehow manipulated the 2016 election. There
wasn't. What did come out of the investigation was a long list of indictments, several
convictions to date, for perjury/financial crimes. Not political crimes. Nevertheless, party
loyalists are compelle3d to continue spinning the tale.
The bottom line to the 2016 election: Most votes come down to eco0nomic issues. Democrats
split apart their own voting base in the '90s, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama years
confirmed that this split is permanent. How did people think that would turn out?
Connect the dots to form a very clear picture .Remember it's always about "profit &
market share"
Obama's legacy
Obama's rush to push the ultra secret TPPA
Multinational Corporations big winners of agreement
Big Pharma and MSM share the same bed on Wall St/City of London
MIC and MSM multinational investors at the profit roundtable
The goons (Multinational Intel Agencies) that clear the way for the continued profits for
the den of thieves
2015, 2016, We introduce Donald Trump the "wild card" who just might disturb the flow of
profit and market share away from the den of thieves that enjoyed 8 years of Obama.
Which brings us all the way back to "The Obama Legacy"
Major Mueller Report Omissions Suggest Incompetence Or A Coverup
"false claims that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia would qualify as a
"principal way" in which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Mueller's second major oversight – which we have touched on repeatedly – is
the special counsel's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent –
when available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
Weeks after returning from Moscow, Mifsud – a self-described Clinton Foundation
member – 'seeded' the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton with Trump
campaign adviser George Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016, according to the Mueller report."
So we have -at least- 4 major omissions in the Mueller investigation and report:
1) the Mueller report failed to consider whether the dossier authored by former MI6 spy
Christopher Steele was Russian disinformation (and Steele was not charged with lying to the
FBI).
2) Mueller's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when
available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.
3) Mueller declined to talk to the VIPS, who offered evidence that the DNC servers were
not hacked but content was copied onto a disk at the server's location
4) Mueller refused to hear Julian Assange, who offered evidence that it was not the
Russians that had provided WikiLeaks with the emails.
And it was Fusion GPS that worked with the Russians not Trump
That's sedition
DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:29
To my knowledge, Russia wasn't involved at all. Consider something: The US had achieved
supremacy/domination in the Western world from the end of WWll until the Reagan/Clinton era.
We've been recognized internationally as a declining world power for some years now. In
short, we just aren't that important anymore. Remember that the Soviet government and economy
had collapsed a short time ago, in the 1990s. Russia has remained solidly focused on
rebuilding their country/economic system, while protecting its borders and international
interests -- not on petty US party politics.
I remember a televised interview with Putin during the 2016 campaigns, when he was asked
if he "supported" Clinton or Trump. In diplomatic terms, he pointed out that either one
indicated heightened international tensions, but hoped for the best. He was right. It appears
that the more the US deteriorates economically and socially, the more those in power (both
parties) seek a Glorious War, WWlll, with visions of emerging from it victoriously --
parades, confetti, and all.
Russian government officials were involved in the Steele dossier .that's the only Russia
collusion that can be proved. Putin had no part .
The FBI had informants like Sater and Halper infiltrating the Trump campaign and set up
Popodopulus and Cohen etc .and why?Because Trump wanted to work with Russia and get out of
wars as Gen Flynn did.The deep state wasnt having any f it.
Clark M Shanahan , May 7, 2019 at 13:44
Contrary to others, I'm quite confident Obama was a willing/knowing partner.
He always revered our intelligence apparatus and the spin of Empire.
His ill-advised placing of the missile shield in Romania (2016)illustrates well his fealty to
our StrangeLoves as well as did his massive build-up of arms in the ex-Soviet Satellites.
I am very concerned with this sad chapter of deep-state normalization and the blowback that
shall ensue.
Yes, his JCPOA was a great step.
Yet, his lip-service to climate change, while shepherding the pipelines and helping the US
become 2013's World's Foremost Exporter of Fossil Fuels was a sad event.
Ditto with the TPP taking peoples rights to protect the environment in courts
(disgusting)..
Sold twice the arms and had military ops in twice the countries as did Dubya.
He certainly doesn't deserve a pedestal.
I contend that he helped pave the way for Trump.
David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 12:08
...An utterly consummate duplicitous fraud in Empire's service.
David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 13:19
Re: my acronymic ignorance in the above comment:
Whoops! Busted! I decided to go to comments first as I felt a lively and informative
conversation would be underway. I was right about that.
I had started to read this from Ray's posting of it and saw it elsewhere too, but figured as
I was already having some info-overload I'd give it a couple of days before diving in.
The charges-countercharges resonating in the monkey house are increasingly cacophonous and in
the meantime (these mean and stupidity-laden times) Trump's Troika of Twisted Twits are
continuing to sword-rattle all over the world even as U.S. citizens are under violent but not
yet lethal siege defending the elected popular Maduro government's VZA's U.S.embassy in D.C.;
even as malicious and murderous mischief continues to be perpetrated by U.S. Intel / Goldman
Sachs goon squads unhindered by Congressional oversight all over the world. and now the IDF
makes its grand entrance into the western-southern hemisphere with 1000 troops to take
advantage of the Mossad's groundwork.
Hey, folks, this is significant. A paradigm shift while we are "busy" elsewhere.
I hesitate to engage in too much U.S. internal navel gazing at this time while Pompeo and
Bolton in particular are free to roam about the world leaving old brushfires smoldering while
lighting off new ones wherever they "touch down."
Ash , May 8, 2019 at 14:52
Now now, without the JCPOA it might have been really difficult for them to curtail Iran's
nonexistent nuclear weapons program.
Yes, Obama gave us Trump (signed the Patriot Act and the AUMF, for starters.) People say
well, he did one great thing the JCPOA. What they haven't read is the Brookings institute's
detailed plan, "What Path to Persia," wherein it follows a diabolical plan to first make the
nuclear deal with Iran (making the US look wonderful), then when the Iranians break the deal,
the US (egged on by Israel) can attack Iran, having established a perfect false flag. Problem
is, Iran never broke the agreement. The US did. Now that Iran has realized the JCPOA was a
farce to begin with, they are free to do what they wish (which by the way does not include
nuclear weapons they decided against that in 2003, but with John Bolton, Israel, etc.
screaming in Trump's ear, the US will again attack an innocent,sovereign country. The US,
unlike Russia, Cuba and Venezuela, has no moral compass whatsoever.
ML , May 8, 2019 at 17:09
Absolutely true, Clark. Trump is indeed Obama's legacy and his "gift" to beleaguered
Americans. So sorry I fell for his line in 2008. But lesson learned. Now I won't ever again
trust anyone who runs from either party. Sorry state of affairs, but enjoy the spring
sunshine. Though a Green at heart, that has been beyond disappointing as well, with all their
infighting. Sigh. Probably will not vote in the next presidential election- especially if
they trot out Biden, I certainly won't bother re-registering to vote in our closed primary.
Like Carlin said, "If you vote for any of those cocksuckers, it's YOUR fault- don't blame me,
I didn't elect them; I stayed home!"
Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 03:59
Don't forget the Strategic Pivot to Asia, meant to punish the Chinese people for being
prosperous and not being submissive.
ML , May 8, 2019 at 10:33
Yes, tom, HRC is vile. But you are happy about the mess that is Trump? Both need to be
flushed into the sewers where they belong. Sigh. He isn't great and he isn't making American
great, either. America lost her cachet, her patina, her pizzaz, and most importantly, her
honor, a long, long time ago. Trump has accelerated America's decline.
Trump is a symptom Hillary was the disease. So you miss the wars and coups and genocides of Hillary? Russia gate started another cold war with Russia based on lies and propaganda and they
ignored real problems for 3 years. Trump is a symptom and whatever you want to think about him he did want peace with Russia
and N Korea and to get the USA out of the wars in Afghanistan and Syria ..and democrats
Russia gate forced him into the arms of the neo cons.
Democrats are already pushing Biden ie Hillary 2.0 and you think Trump is the problem?
You think Trump would be in Venezuela if he was working with Putin?And why Venuzuala? ..so
Bolton can get his war with Iran .You think any of that happens if not for Russia gate?
ML , May 8, 2019 at 17:16
What did I just say, tom? I've already said she was a sociopathic liar. Can't stand either one of them. Do you love
watching Trump skewer Venezuela, a sovereign nation that has a right to govern themselves as they see fit without coups,
sanctions, and us stealing their resources? Or is it just bad when a Democrat does it? To hell with the lot of them! And you
are letting him off the hook with your Bolton comment. He didn't have to hire the likes of Pompeo and Bolton, tom. Trump is in
it evil and deep; don't kid yourself. No difference in governance between the two parties that I can see.
oldog1951 , May 7, 2019 at 12:28
I believe that several names in this article were changed to protect the guilty. Rather
than Obama admin. it was demo entrenched Clinton leadership Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and
Hillary who hoped to distract attention from emails exposing their efforts to deny
progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders a fair chance at being nominated. I expect most
"foreign" influence was purchased by good old American sources. I don't deny your evidence so
much as I doubt your conclusions as to its meaning.
Roy A Booher , May 7, 2019 at 22:52
Rest assured that good ol' Bernie was just as much a part of that dog and pony show as
Hillary and the rest of them; what they didn't count on was that the youth vote wouldn't
along with the bait and switch scam as they had hoped. Bernie knew that funds intended for
him were being redirected, he also knew that there was strong evidence linking environmental
enthusiast Hillary with the murders of two prominent environmental activists in South
America, who knew better; yet Bernie choose to remain silent.
DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:53
That issue gets complicated, in some ways that many today don't even recognize. The
Clinton right wing effectively took over the Dem Party in the 1990s, and they continue to own
it. Over the past quarter-century, much of the liberal media served to promote their
(neoliberal) ideology and agenda. The B. Clinton administration split apart the Dem voting
base, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama administration confirmed that this agenda is
permanent. We continue to disregard the consequences.
By definition, there are no progressive Dem candidates. Political progressivism goes way
back. It's about building a better nation progressively, from the bottom up -- legitimate
relief for the poor at one end, firm restraints on corporate and financial entities. Some
Democrats just use that word for marketing purposes today. Today's Sen. Sanders is pragmatic.
He used to claim support for democratic socialism, and as such, advocated for legitimate
poverty relief programs. This doesn't sell to post-Clinton Democrats, so Sanders dropped the
issue by 2016. He campaigns to and for the more fortunate alone, the currently employed.
This, of course, takes us back to the deep split in the Dem voting base.
Larry Johnson is one of the more experienced and active members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity. His meticulous analysis/striking conclusion in this
Russia-gate-related article speaks for itself. And VIPS stands by it. Needless to say, his
findings are unpopular, so it is hardly a surprise that he would come under immediate ad
hominem attack. We all encounter that from time to time; we are used to it; it is part of the
woodwork. We do not see ourselves as involved in some kind of popularity contest.
Larry's findings are evidence based, and he has done his homework. In a perfect world,
they would merit banner-headline treatment in Establishment media but, typically, they will
be ignored because they undermine key parts of the "only acceptable narrative" on
Russia-gate.
I found Larry's fearless analysis so fact-based and relevant that I decided also to post
it on my own website, raymcgovern.com, together with a few brief comments to provide more
context, in order to give his article still more visibility. [[ See: https://raymcgovern.com/2019/05/06/intel-and-law-enforcement-tried-to-entrap-trump/
]]
In the past, Larry has been principal author of a umber of VIPS memos, notably this one on
Iran [[ See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/21/intel-vets-tell-trump-iran-is-not-top-terror-sponsor/
]] ,
As is typical of Larry's "old-fashioned" approach to analysis, this VIPS Memo is also
extremely well documented and relates to what Fanatics Fat and Skinny are still trying to
adduce as a casus belli to "justify" attacking Iran.
Larry's VIPS Memo on Iran takes strong issue with a key part of the evidence-free
Zionist-cum-U.S. government narrative on Iran being the world's foremost sponsor of
terrorism. While this issue continues to be of very high current interest, we expect Larry's
and VIPS' views to find neither ink nor air, since they are based on empirical data to which
our the Zionist-influenced Establishment media is allergic.
Ray McGovern
The issue he addressed here remains of high interest
David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 12:24
And Craig Murray just got booted from FarceBook....
vinnieoh , May 7, 2019 at 11:05
I reluctantly forced myself to try to read this, yet another breathless deconstruction of
the complete collapse of any semblance of a "republic" or enlightened governance. All the
while the "injured party" and the sub-human creatures he's surrounded himself with push
humanity closer to the point of no return.
Sorry Mr. Johnson, I didn't make it past the first few paragraphs. I'm under no illusions
that what passes for "government" is merely the vicious struggle between partisan factions to
determine who is first at the hog-slopping trough. At no previous time have Frank Zappa's
words seemed so true: "Scab of a nation, driven insane."
I will defend the tenure of Obama only in this: the JCPOA was a good thing, about the only
good thing this god-awful shitty mess of a nation has accomplished in decades. Since Trump
made no bones about his intent to scrap it, I wouldn't fault Obama for efforts to try to
defeat him, if that was his motivation. Of course HRC would probably have done the same
thing, as she actively tried to derail it throughout the negotiations. And again, Frank the
Prophet Zappa, echoes in my brain.
Agreed, as a stand alone, JCPOA was a (very) good thing. However, it was more than offset
by the nuclear "modernization" program, which threw previous nuclear weapons agreements with
Russia under the bus, making the net effect of the two (very) negative.
Puzzled why you had trouble with the first few paragraphs. While Johnson is all over the
page, sometimes correct, sometimes a loose cannon (IMHO) in this case he gets it pretty much
right. Any look into the characters involved showed some minor idots connected to the Trump
campaign where not up to the caliper of the CIA/FBI agents attempting to set up Trump. There
is NO hard evidence that this was NOT a Clinton/Obama admin driven sting attempt.
Had the attempt to get to the source of the leak/insider theft, the DNC woulf have allowed
(and NSA insisted) on access to the DNC servers, and released the info (the seem to collect
and archive 100% of all such communications). That issue, also generally circulating for some
time (see the Symnamtec) in my FB link to the story NTY "finally published (by none other
that a team which includes David Sanger). perhaps beacause of the Wired story? I have stopped
updating my web page (after Oct 2002), briefly went to a blog, but now, much as I abhor FB,
find it a fast convenient why to archive news.
(One needs to collect on "previous comments" to read the story line).
One of the older links goes to the NYT obit on Philip Agee (who LJ is on record as
despising), where his fiend is quoted"
""He [Philip Agee] really, truly did not want to see anyone hurt," said Mr. Wolf, the
friend and co-author who carried on Mr. Agee's work of exposing agents. "He wanted to
neutralize what they were doing -- the whole gamut, from fixing elections and hiring local
journalists to plant stories all the way up to creating foreign intelligence services that
became agencies of oppression." https://nyti.ms/2vHeoDL
So I VERY much welcome this article.
Was it mentioned by Trump (or covered much by the MSM so that the public knows) that,
eg
"From 1984 to 1990 Halper was chairman and majority shareholder of the Palmer National
Bank of Washington, D.C., the National Bank of Northern Virginia and the George Washington
National Bank. Palmer National Bank was used to transfer money to Swiss Bank Accounts
controlled by White House aid Oliver North."
I also agree w/ Daniel Lazare that the Mueller report is reasonable, but spun every bit as
much by Democrats (if not more?) than by Republicans.
erichwwk , May 7, 2019 at 13:44
Also :
Halper was once caught up in a scandal over allegations that he led an operation within
the Reagan campaign to dig up information on Jimmy Carter. In 1983, The New York Times
reported that
Halper was in charge of "an operation to collect inside information on Carter Administration
foreign policy" that was "run in Ronald Reagan's campaign headquarters in the 1980
presidential campaign."
It would very much depend upon what Obama did, had he made efforts to defeat Trump, as you
just realize, vinnieoh.
Had Obama made use of intelligence agencies, had he been party to attempts to influence
FISA with bogus evidence, or had he suggested that the FBI, for example, not bother with
examine the DNC computers to defeat Trump well, as you can imagine, vinnieoh, that would
constitute very serious and very possibly "high" crimes against the nation.
... ... ...
Abby , May 7, 2019 at 19:17
If you didn't read past the first paragraph then your comment has no value. This essay
isn't about who Trump is surrounding himself with now, but how the Obama administration made
up everything about Russia Gate and is responsible for this two year bogus investigation. The
real tragedy is that our generation has committed a massive psyops on the American public and
used it to keep us distracted from what congress is doing behind the scenes. And the reason
why congress can lie to us and spread propaganda is because Obama rolled back the rule
against doing it. Defend Obama all you want. IMO he was a worse president than Bush was and
that is saying something. Trump is Obama's legacy.
Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 04:17
There is no Left in America, certainly not the Democratic party.
Litchfield , May 8, 2019 at 14:00
You are right. Obama was/is a fraud.
That was clear weeks after the election, when he started to name his cabinet.
Ouch! Ouch! And Ouch! Same old same old.
And it was kind of clinched for me in a way that was purely from the gut: When I watched
the inauguration, the camera followed BO as he walked through the hallways of the Capitol. I
looked at his face, and I thought: There is something wrong here. Something wrong with this
man. His face during that walk gave me the creeps. I wish someonen would unearth the footage.
It was nationally broadcast as millions gathered in hotel lobbies etc. to view the whole
Inauguration on large screens.
As the Bushes' helicopter took off I thought: OK, they are gone. I am going to be happy
for a day.
But I knew any honeymoon would be short-lived. The Dems had a trifecta of the House, the
Senate, and the WH. If they had been serious -- if Obama had been serious -- about genuine
change, they could have done what they wanted, and what the American people really and
clearly wanted -- right then and there. They could have fixed American health care for
starters. Instead Obama's opening shot was shooting down universal health care. It was
downhill from there, I think both houses were lost in the midterms, or just one?
And, yes, the failure and disgust with Obama, his failure as leader of the party to
control Hillary Clinton (among other things) brought us Trump. I have no doubt that having
groomed Clinton by naming her SecState and then pushing her for the presidency -- for
whatever reasons -- he then took the next logical step of actively and illegally undermining
Trump's candidacy to ensure her ascent to power. The magnitude of the shock suggests the
magnitude of the loss (really Shock and Awe in DC, not Iraq). Why was it *so* crucial for
Hillary to win that her failure to do so pushed Obama and others to go so far off the
reservation? What is really behind it? I think maybe more than just partisan politics. There
is a secret there in the Clinton-Obama political relationship. Do they have something on each
other? The response to Trump's win was simply too extreme.
By being the first black president and turning out to be a fraud, Obama did huge harm to
the Dem Party.
"... Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. ..."
"... What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the 1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812 ..."
"... I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take them out. ..."
"... Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it. ..."
"... Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States. But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that. Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for the beltway and their imperial pretensions. ..."
"... If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign, would you denounce that act? If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do such? ..."
N ow in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent
political scandal in modern American history. It rests on two related core allegations: that
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "attack on American democracy" during the 2016
presidential campaign in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and that Trump and his
associates willfully colluded, or conspired, in this Kremlin "attack." As I have argued from
the outset -- see my regular commentaries posted at
TheNation.com and my recent book War With
Russia? -- and as recently confirmed, explicitly and tacitly, by special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report, there is no factual evidence for either allegation.
Nonetheless, these Russiagate allegations, not "Putin's Russia," continue to inflict grave
damage on fundamental institutions of American democracy. They impugn the integrity of the
presidency and now the office of the attorney general. They degrade the many Democratic
members of Congress who persist in clinging to the allegations and thus the Democratic Party
and Congress. And they have enticed mainstream media into one of the worst episodes
of journalistic malpractice in modern times .
But equally alarming, Russiagate continues to endanger American national security by
depriving a US president, for the first time in the nuclear age, of the diplomatic
flexibility to deal with a Kremlin leader in times of crisis. We were given a vivid example
in July 2018, when Trump held a summit with the current Kremlin occupant, as every president
had done since Dwight Eisenhower. For that conventional, even necessary, act of diplomacy,
Trump was widely accused of treasonous behavior, a charge that persists. Now we have another
alarming example of this reckless disregard for US national security on the part of
Russiagate zealots.
On May 3, Trump called Putin. They discussed various issues, including the Mueller report.
(As before, Putin had to know if Trump was free to implement any acts of security cooperation
they might agree on. Indeed, the Russian policy elite openly debates this question, many of
its members having decided that Trump cannot cooperate with Russia no matter his intentions.)
A major subject of the conversation was unavoidably the growing conflict over Venezuela,
where Washington and Moscow have long-standing economic and political interests. Trump
administration spokespeople have warned Moscow against interfering in America's neighborhood,
ignoring, of course, Washington's deep involvement for years in the former Soviet republics
of Ukraine and Georgia. Kremlin representatives, on the other hand, have warned Washington
against violating Venezuela's sovereignty. Increasingly, there is talk, at least in Moscow
policy circles, of a Cuban Missile–like crisis, the closest the United States and
Russia (then Soviet Russia) ever came to nuclear war.
To the extent, however remote, that Venezuela might grow into a Cuba-like US-Russian
military confrontation, would Trump be sufficiently free of Russiagate allegations to resolve
it peacefully, as President John Kennedy did in 1962? Judging by mainstream media commentary
on the May 3 phone conversation, the answer seems to be no. Considering the mounting
confrontation in Venezuela, Trump was right, even obligated, to call Putin, but he got no
applause, only condemnation. To take some random examples:
§ Democratic Representative David Cicilline asked CNN's Chris Cuomo rhetorically on
May 3, "Why does the president give the benefit of doubt to a person who attacked our
democracy?" while assailing Trump for not confronting Putin with the Mueller report.
§ The same evening, CNN's Don Lemon editorialized on the phone call: "The president
of the United States had just a normal old call with his pal Vladimir Putin. Didn't tell him
not to interfere in the election. Like he did in 2016, like he did in 2018, like we know he
is planning to do again in 2020 . You just don't seem to want us to know exactly what was
said . Nothing to see when the president talks for more than an hour with the leader of an
enemy nation. One that has repeatedly attacked our democracy and will do so again." (Lemon
did not say on what he based the expanded, serial charges against Putin and thus against
Trump or his allegation about the 2018 elections, which congressional Democrats mostly won,
or his foreknowledge about 2020 or generally and with major ramifications why he branded
Russia an "enemy nation.")
§ We might expect something more exalted from James Risen ,
once a critical-minded investigative reporter, who found it suspicious that "Trump and Putin
were both eager to put the Mueller report behind them," even for the sake of needed
diplomacy.
§ Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Eric Swalwell, both candidates for the
2020 Democratic presidential nomination, also
expressed deep suspicion regarding the Trump-Putin phone talk. Swalwell was sure it meant
that Trump "acts on their behalf," that he "is putting the Russians' interests ahead of the
United States' interests." (Voters may wonder if these candidates and quite a few others who
continue to promote extremist Russiagate allegations are emerging American statesmen.)
§ Not surprisingly,
a Washington Post opinion writer argued that the phone call meant "Trump is
counting on Russian help to get reelected."
None of these "opinion leaders" mentioned the danger of a US-Russian military
confrontation over Venezuela or elsewhere on the several fraught fronts of the new Cold War.
Indeed, retired admiral James Stavridis, once supreme allied commander of NATO forces and
formerly associated with Hillary Clinton's campaign, all but proposed war on
Russia in retaliation for its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented
measures" such as cyberattacks.
Russiagate's unproven allegations are an aggressive malignancy spreading through America's
politics to the most vital areas of national security policy. A full nonpartisan
investigation into their origins is urgently needed, but US intelligence agencies were almost
certainly present at their creation, which is why I have long argued that
Russiagate is actually Intelgate . If so, James Comey, then FBI director, was present at
the creation, though initially in a lesser role than were President Barack Obama's CIA
Director John Brennan and intelligence overlord James Clapper.
Comey recently deplored Attorney General William Barr's declaration that US intelligence
agencies resorted to "spying" on the Trump campaign. (In fact, Barr mischaracterized what
happened: The agencies, first and foremost Brennan's CIA, it seems, ran an entrapment
operation against members of the campaign.) Comey warned
Barr that he will discover that Trump "has eaten your soul."
It would be more accurate to say -- and certainly more important -- that baseless
Russiagate allegations are eating America's national security.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host
of The John Batchelor Show. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at
TheNation.com .
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is
available in paperback and in an ebook edition.
Phillip Sawicki says: May 9, 2019 at 7:52 pm
What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people
like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the
1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of
accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in
the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812.
In case people have
forgotten, The US sought to annex Canada. The Canadians resisted, and so then the US set up a
false flag attack in 1845 to start the Mexican-American War. Hundreds of interventions in
other countries, but if someone is alleged to have done so to us, it's a capital crime. What
arrogance!
Victor Sciamarelli says: May 9, 2019 at 4:17 pm
I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao
said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take
them out.
Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase
Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and
the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it.
Another point is that the downside of the policy elites' belief in "American exceptionalism"
is that it is also a trap. They claim our "indispensable nation" rests upon values and
principles such as the rule of law, respect for human rights, and freedom of speech, even
though reality often tells us something different.
Thus, if Putin is a thug, if not a murderer, who attacked the US, undermined our democracy,
and is an autocrat who cares nothing about our values and principles, then what place is
there for diplomacy because you can't negotiate or compromise our immutable principles and
values.
Another observation is we often hear the statement that, "All options are on the table." This
sounds tough to an American mind because it includes nuclear weapons. All options means all
options. Nonetheless, someone else might interpret this to mean you are not confident or
certain that your conventional forces are capable of doing the mission and you are more
likely or willing to resort to a nuclear weapon. This can make any confrontation whether in
Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, or Iran more dangerous that it needs to be.
In addition, Trump has sent an aircraft carrier group to the Middle East. The Guardian on May
6, 2019, stated that according to one report, information passed on by Israeli intelligence
contributed to the US threat assessment.
If we are now approaching war based on Israeli intelligence then I think we are also
approaching our Dr. Strangelove moment.
Jeffrey Harrison says: May 9, 2019 at 11:55 am
Arrogance, myopia. Those two words define the US today.
Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of
widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation
of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our
proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including
that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States.
But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that.
Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being
done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for
the beltway and their imperial pretensions.
This Stavridis bozo is a prime example. "all but proposed war on Russia in retaliation for
its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented measures" such as cyber attacks." I
realize that we are in a post proof world where any claim, no matter how inane, is
automatically taken as proven. No actual proof required. The "attack on our democracy" is
based on this totally bogus claim (never proven) that Russia hacked into the DNC's e-mails
(on a server that no law enforcement agency ever inspected to prove the claim of hacking)
that undermined our democracy by revealing how corrupt and slimy the DNC actually is. All the
while we're so myopic that we don't see the Republican party destroying our democracy from
within with voter ID requirements for a non-existent problem, gerrymandering themselves into
a permanent majority of a minority, voter suppression schemes such as purging voter rolls,
closing polling places, and generally making it difficult for people to vote.
But this Stavridis bozo wasn't done yet. The Russians he claims perpetrated unprecedented
measures such as cyber attacks. Really? The only cyber attacks that I'm actually aware of in
the US were actually perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security who was playing
bureaucratic turf games. The admiral's ignorance is in full display when he forgets the
STUXTNET worm that absolutely was a cyber attack on Iran by the US and Israel, and that the
NSA hacked the personal cell phone of Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of Germany, and the
trick revealed by Ed Snowden that the NSA would open computer boxes destined for certain
countries and install chips that would allow us to control the server, or that the only known
backdoor in a piece of Hauwei equipment was installed there by the NSA.
I'm suspecting that we need to clean up our act a lot more that most of the rest of the
world.
J McCormick says: May 8, 2019 at 11:57 pm
So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media and what I hear here
is a call for respect for and deference to the office of the presidency.
If there is cause for concern and worry , and I fervently believe that there is , I leave
it to others to offer up what they believe that cause might be.
History records that that the Congress relinquished powers that were properly theirs
(trade, war powers) and now they so far appear impotent in the face of executive overreach
when an effective check on the executive branch is critically needed.
Even if your opinion runs counter to mine I am reasonably certain we agree that
dysfunction and chaos rule the day in Washington and beyond.
Clark Shanahan says: May 9, 2019 at 6:26 pm
"So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media"
Tell me, J., do you believe Russia is our adversary?
If so, when did they become such?
If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign,
would you denounce that act?
If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do
such?
I would love to have a social conservative who was as red-hot on the abuse of corporate
power as she is. Of course there's no way she would ever win the Democratic nomination if she
were a social conservative, nor would she be a US Senator from Massachusetts.
Back in 2011, when she announced for the Massachusetts Senate race on an anti-big business
platform, I wrote in this space that she was "a
Democrat I could vote for." In 2014, observing how far gone she is on cultural leftism, I
lamented that
I wanted so bad for her to be good -- but hey, you can't always get what you want.
Warren's vision of human flourishing is fundamentally a conservative one -- or at least it
would be if the family were still at the center of the conservative conception of politics.
What she argues for is the right of families to thrive, not be the slave of financial
interests, corporate power, housing monopolies, the educational establishment, or any other
external force. She believes, radically, alas, in 2018, that we all have a right to food,
water, housing, education, and medical care. The idea that hard-working Americans should be
able to raise their children in comfort and with a sense of dignity is not, or at least
should not be, the exclusive purview of any one politician or party. The fact that Warren
very frequently does seem to be among the only elected officials in this country who both
affirms these things and has taken the trouble to think carefully about them is a reminder
that the centrism rejected by her and fellow travelers on the left and the right alike is not
only noxious but omnipresent.
Warren's economic vision of human flourishing -- that is, the economic conditions she
believes must be in place for people to flourish -- is fundamentally conservative, in an older,
more organic sense. Old-fashioned Catholic reactionaries understand exactly what she's talking
about, and so would the kind of Christian conservatives who read Wendell Berry and
Crunchy Cons (which, alas, came out about 13 years too early).
Elizabeth Warren said that out loud. Nobody seemed to mind. She'd never say that today.
It's not allowed like so much else that is true and important. She can't talk about the
things that she believed 10 years ago. No modern Democrat can.
If anyone had suggested to me five years ago that the most incisive public critic of
capitalism in the United States would be Tucker Carlson, I would have smiled blandly and
mentioned an imaginary appointment I was late for. But that is exactly what the Fox News host
revealed himself to be last week with an extraordinary monologue about the state of American
conservative thinking. In 15 minutes he denounced the obsession with GDP, the tolerance of
payday lending and other financial pathologies, the fetishization of technology, the
guru-like worship of CEOs, and the indifference to the anxieties and pathologies of the poor
and the vulnerable characteristic of both of our major political parties. It was a
masterpiece of political rhetoric. He ended by calling upon the GOP to re-examine its
attitude towards the free market.
Carlson's monologue is valuable because unlike so many progressive critics of our social
and economic order he has gone beyond the question of the inequitable distribution of wealth
to the more important one about the nature of late capitalist consumer culture and the
inherently degrading effects it has had on our society. The GOP's blinkered inability to see
beyond the specifications of the new iPhone or the latest video game or the infinite variety
of streaming entertainment and Chinese plastic to the spiritual poverty of suicide and drug
abuse is shared with the Democratic Socialists of America, whose vision of authentic human
flourishing seems to be a boutique eco-friendly version of our present consumer society. This
is lipstick on a pig.
And:
It is difficult for me to understand exactly why conservatives have come around to their
present uncritical attitude toward unbridled capitalism. It cannot be for electoral reasons.
Survey after survey reveals that a vast majority of the American people hold views that would
be described as socially conservative and economically moderate to progressive. A
presidential candidate who spoke capably to both of these sets of concerns would be the
greatest political force in three generations.
The answer is that for conservatives the market has become a cult. No book better explains
the appeal of classical liberal economics than The Golden Bough , Sir James Frazer's
history of magic. Frazer identified certain immutable principles that have governed magical
thinking throughout the ages. Among these is the imitative principle according to which a
favorable outcome is obtained by mimicry -- the endless chants of entrepreneurship, vague
nonsense about charter schools, calls for tax cuts for people who don't make enough money to
benefit from them. There also is taboo, the primitive assumption that by not speaking the
name of a thing, the thing itself will be thereby be exorcised. This is one reason that any
attempt to criticize the current consensus is met with whingeing about "socialism." This
catch-all talisman is meant to protect against everything from the Cultural Revolution to
modest restrictions on overdraft fees imposed at the behest of consultants.
"In the real world you are going to have to keep companies from getting too powerful if you
want a free(ish) market."
"So, is it possible that in this everything-can-be-bought-and-sold culture that the
massive corporations made the very rational choice to buy themselves a government?"
Noah makes an excellent point about the differences between public- and private-sector unions
and collective bargaining units. I would personally add that public-sector unions would never
have been necessary if governments were not run under the same philosophy as private-sector
employers: minimize the cost of employees by any means possible. I've always held that
regardless of any definition of necessity, public-sector unionization was and remains a bad
idea.
I also don't know of a better alternative. Sometimes it's the evil you must handle, rather
than the lesser of two evils.
As for the shifts in the socio-economic realities, there's a necessary categorization
necessary when discussing women in the workforce. I offer these broad categories which are
likely arguable. It's a starting point, not a line in the sand.
Families at or below the poverty line: when you control for the benefits of a stay-at-home
parent, these families only ever had one option to get above the poverty line enough to no
longer need public assistance, and that was a second income. The entire motivation for
minimum wage, stable work hours and such was an attempt to mitigate the need for a second
income. It gets politicized and complicated from there, partially for good reasons, but
unless you look at a given family's income limitations before criticizing the woman's working
instead of being at home, you are ignoring the consequences of poverty, which cannot be
mitigated by parenting.
The woman has a higher income potential: it started well before the employment argument,
as in decades previous women were "permitted" to attain higher education in skill and content
areas beyond nursing and teaching. One reaction to that, an analysis conclusion I arrive at
personally, was to routinely discriminate against female employees in both compensation and
promotion. The prevailing "wisdom" (again, my personal POV) was that women are going to get
pregnant anyway, why encourage them away from that? If the only disparity in compensation was
for unpaid leave due to pregnancy and childbirth, you might have avoided a large part of the
feminist revolution.
The broad mix of "women belong in " arguments based on some moral construct (religious or
other): this is where the feminist revolution was inevitable. It comes down to personal
agency and choice. I have an Orthodox Jewish relative whose wife fully, happily and
creatively embraces her religiously mandated role. She's very intelligent, an erudite writer
and speaker, and is as much a pillar of her community as any male in it. We should avoid
extreme examples like Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, but her plight without fatal consequences is
precisely what many women face, and want to escape. Feminism simply states that such women
have the right to make that different choice, and the power the men of their community have
over them is a denial of a human right.
I'm sure other broad categories need to be described. I'll leave this before it gets
beyond being too long.
@kgasmart "I defy Elizabeth Warren, or any other prominent lefty, to publicly restate her
thesis that the entry of women into the workforce has ultimately harmed the family.
Imagine the furious tweetstorms. How dare she suggests it's been anything but wonderful
for women themselves – and thus, for society as a whole. Evidence to the contrary be
damned as 'hateful,' of course."
You don't understand the left. And no, having once been in favor of SSM doesn't mean you
understand the left. I and many others will happily say the following: "Society was not
prepared for the mass entry of women into the workplace. Childcare suffered, work-life
balance suffered, male-female relations suffered."
The problem here is that we follow that up with: "The problem was not women having basic
aspirations to the dignity and relative economic security work offers. The problem was a
government captured by the rich who don't understand what policy for families that can't
afford nannies would look like. The problem was also a social structure which valued families
less than it valued proscribed gender roles. Time to chart a different course."
Trust me, feminists talk all the time about how much harder it is to have a family these
days. We just don't think the problem exists because women selfishly wanted basic economic
security.
Warren is a smart, informed academic with some solid views on economic issues.
On the other hand, she is a terrible politician, and not suited for high executive office.
She lacks gravitas and has no intuition for the optics of what she does, going from gaffe to
gaffe. She'd be chewed up and spit out before she became a contender.
While I think HRC had terrible ideas, I never questioned her capacity to project authority
and credibility, that is, "act presidential". In contrast, Obama's dork factor got him in
trouble on a number of occasions (although his "communist salute" stands out), and Warren is
many times more a dork than Obama.
"I confess I have never understood her appeal. She is the very model of a useless New England
scold, constantly seeking to regulate just about everything. There is almost no problem that
more government, more regulation – usually with no oversight – cannot fix. No,
thank you."
This sounds like someone who has not researched Warren's writings and positions
and just does not like her style (i.e. New England Scold). I think her style, which would
be fine in a man (e.g. who is a scold if not Bernie) will primary her out.
The market is not a Platonic deity, floating in the sky and imposing goodness and
prosperity from on high. It is the creation of our choices, our laws, and our democratic
process. We know, for instance, that pornography has radically altered how young boys
perceive their relationships with women and sex, and that the pornography industry has
acquired a lot of wealth in the process of creating and distributing that content. Just last
month, we learned that a Chinese entity created the first gene-edited baby, using a
technology developed in the United States. Some company, here or there, will eventually
create a lot of prosperity by using this gene-editing technology (called CRISPR) in an
unethical way, quite literally playing God with the most sacred power in the universe -- the
creation of human life. In the past few years, it has become abundantly clear that Apple --
despite self-righteously refusing to cooperate with American security officials -- has
willingly complied with the requirements of the Chinese surveillance state, even as China
builds concentration camps for dissidents and religious minorities. And, as Carlson
mentioned, there are marijuana companies pushing for legalization, though we know from the
Colorado experience that legalization increases use, and from other studies that use is
concentrated among the lower class, causing a host of social problems in the process.
I'm an anti-capitalist so of course I'd agree with JD Vance that there's no good reason to
trust the free market or the owners of capitalist enterprises. Nonetheless, I can't join him
in his specific criticisms of free markets here, and I think this kind of underscores the
difficulties there may be in building bridges between social conservatives and social
liberals. Bridges can certainly be built, for sure, but it will take some work and some
painful compromises, and this is a good example of why: several of the things that JD Vance
points to as examples of free markets gone wrong, are things that I'd say are good
things, not bad ones.
I'm not going to defend pornography (although I'm not particularly going to criticize it
that much either: while I distrust conservative / orthodox Christian sexual ethics, I don't
really care about pornography per se and would be happy if the more violent / weird /
disturbing stuff was banned). Gene editing of humans though strikes me as a clearly good
thing: why wouldn't we want our species to be more peaceful, better looking, more pro-social
and more healthy? And why wouldn't we, at the margins, want to raise people who might
otherwise be born with serious physical or mental handicaps to be 'fixed'? I have a lot of
fears for the future of the world, but the idea that gene editing of our species might become
commonplace is one of the things that makes me hopeful. I also think it's a good thing that
tech companies are cooperating with the Chinese state: not because I like China and its
government, particularly, but because I believe strongly in the sovereign nation state and in
the right of national governments to decide how foreign companies are going to behave on
their territory. I'd much rather a world in which companies in China are constrained by the
Chinese state than one in which they're constrained by no rules at all other than their own
will. Finally, the legalization of marijuana and other soft drugs seems to me to be a good
thing as well.
I'm sure that JD Vance and I can come to lots of agreement over other issues, but I did
want to point out there may be stumbling blocks over social issues as well- precisely because
these issues do matter. They don't matter as much as the economic issues, but they do matter
somewhat.
"We believe that family, local communities, and voluntary associations are the first
guarantors of human dignity, and cultivate mutual care. National institutions and policies
should support, not supplant them."
Quite seriously, the entire party could have been invented by Rod, and I mean that as the
highest endorsement.
"You think creating a power vacuum will prevent big businesses from imposing their will on
the population? Go back and look at your beloved 19th century and tell me that absent
government intervention corporations won't crush peoples lives for a few extra cents."
Absolutely. Absent government help, businesses can't do anything except offer people goods
or services, or offer to purchase their labor or goods or services, on terms the individuals
may or may not find advantageous compared to the status quo. When Big Business ran roughshod
over people in the 19th Century, it was because government helped them (e.g., court cases
letting businesses off the hook for their liabilities because of the supposed need for
"progress").
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper
for their obvious major felonies.
Not all specialties are created equal. It is clear that a person who take loan to became
obtain a degree in communications is deeply misguided as chances to get a well paying job with
this specially are close to zero. Many "humanitarian" specialties are similar -- unemployment is
almost guaranteed and if a person was misled we should prosecute greedy university administrators
and jail some of them. Such specialties should have a disclaimer: employment is difficult to
obtain. Unemployment is almost garanteed. Take the courses at your own risk.
At the same time for STEM degrees Warren proposal makes more sense as people who enrolled
into those specialties tried a more realistic approach, but probably job market turned bad or
level of talent is not enough or both. while people in this specialties are needed but their
chances for employment are crippled by the flow of H1B applicants so part of those costs should
be subsidized by fees for large H1B employers, such as Microsoft and Google. Or something like
that.
At the same time why we should forgive a person the debt if the particular person specialized
in, say, dance? What is the social value of oversupply of dancers? So probably subsidies should
be selective and limited to STEM specialties and selected "high social value" humanitarian
specialties.
So the loan forgiveness is a crippled, somewhat unfair but still a reasonable approach.
But the key problem is not loads but greed of neoliberal educational institutions. Cost of
tuition skyrocketed after 1980 and that's not accidental: this is drect result of neoliberalism
corruption of higher education. The ability of government to prosecute "too greedy" colleges is
important. Limits of salary of administrators and especially president and vice president and
deens are critical.
Notable quotes:
"... The total cost of Warren's plan would be $1.25 trillion over 10 years, with the debt forgiveness portion consisting of a one-time cost of $640 billion. Warren plans to pay for her plan by imposing an annual tax of 2 percent on all families that have $50 million or more in wealth. ..."
"... Warren is right to focus attention on the matter of student loans. This is a major issue for young people and experts have been warning of a crisis for years. ..."
"... After all, they are victims of a scam perpetrated by the education cartel and the federal government. ..."
"... Here's how it works: the education cartel sells the lie that only those with four-year college degrees can succeed in life. Then they steer everyone with a pulse towards a university. ..."
"... The government steps in and subsidizes student loans that allow almost anyone to go to college, regardless of their ability to pay the loans back. ..."
"... College is not for everyone and there's no reason to keep promoting that idea. ..."
"... Reduce the overabundance of administrators. The number has exploded since the 1990s. ..."
"... A lot of required courses are just padding to make the experience drag on for four years. That creates unneeded expenditures of time and money. ..."
"... several nations currently do offer virtually free college educations & I don’t believe their diplomas are of less value for it. ..."
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren recently jolted the Democratic presidential primary
race by tackling one of the most important issues of our time: student loans and the cost of
higher education. Warren called for
canceling up to $50,000 of student loan debt for every American making under $100,000 a
year. In addition, she would make two- and four-year public college tuitions free for all new
students.
The total cost of Warren's plan would be $1.25 trillion over 10 years, with the debt
forgiveness portion consisting of a one-time cost of $640 billion. Warren plans to pay for her
plan by imposing an annual tax of 2 percent on all families that have $50 million or more in
wealth.
Warren is right to focus attention on the matter of student loans. This is a major issue
for young people and experts have been warning of a crisis for
years.
But in most cases, it isn't right to blame student loan borrowers for their predicaments.
After all, they are victims of a scam perpetrated by the education cartel and the federal
government.
Here's how it works: the education cartel sells the lie that only those with four-year
college degrees can succeed in life. Then they steer everyone with a pulse towards a
university.
The government steps in and subsidizes student loans that allow almost anyone to go to
college, regardless of their ability to pay the loans back. These loans are a trap, and
not just with regard to their cost. The government, which
took over the student loan industry , forbids borrowers from discharging that debt in
bankruptcy proceedings.
How do such cheap and easy student loans affect universities? For starters, they have caused
a proliferation of degrees that offer poor returns on
investment . In addition, they have led to the dilution of the value of previously
marketable degrees such as those in the humanities and international relations, as more
students enter those programs than could ever hope to work in their respective fields. For
example, in 2013, half of all those who had graduated from college were working in jobs that
did not require degrees .
But worst of all, the easy access to student loans has destroyed the price mechanism, which
is so important for determining the real supply and demand of a product. Since government is
the ultimate payer, tuition has been pushed sky high. The rate of tuition increase has
actually
outpaced inflation threefold .
Is Elizabeth Warren's plan the solution? No! It will only make things worse.
For starters, the wealth tax that she would use to fund her plan is likely
unconstitutional . But even if it was upheld by the Supreme Court, it would still be bad
policy. Countries that have imposed wealth taxes like France and Sweden have found that the
rich simply
leave and take their assets with them rather than pay more.
As for the idea of universal student loan debt forgiveness, it is a bad policy on the
merits. For starters, it does not make economic sense to forgive the debts of those who will
earn at least $17,500 more a year than those who don't go to college.
Also, although the student loan bubble has been inflated by the actions of both the
education cartel and government, at the end of the day, loans are a contract. Those who are
able to pay them down should and not be bailed out.
... ... ...
Finally, we need to promote alternatives to college. There are many well-paying jobs out
there that
don't require degrees . There are also apprentice programs offered by organizations like
Praxis . We should encourage
entrepreneurship, which is how so many in this country have lifted themselves out of poverty.
College is not for everyone and there's no reason to keep promoting that idea.
Kevin Boyd is a freelance writer based in Louisiana. He is a contributor to The
Hayride, a southern news and politics site. He has also been published in , The Federalist, The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution , and The New York Observer among other publications.
How to make college cost effective. Two major reforms
1. Reduce the overabundance of administrators. The number has exploded since the
1990s.
2. Restructure college. Most programs don’t need to be four years long. Most can be
cut to 2 1/2 – 3 years. A chemistry student should be taking courses required for a
chemistry degree, nothing more (unless he/she wants to). A lot of required courses are just
padding to make the experience drag on for four years. That creates unneeded expenditures of
time and money.
After doing the above, then maybe we can talk about “free” college.
I personally believe that we should each pay our own way through life as much as possible,
but several nations currently do offer virtually free college educations & I don’t
believe their diplomas are of less value for it.
I agree with you that other avenues like trades should be encouraged. A four year degree
isn’t necessary for everyone.
"... The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting." This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program. ..."
"... One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely. ..."
"... I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report. ..."
"... Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant. ..."
"... That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, ..."
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported. ..."
"... Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive: ..."
"... I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government? ..."
"... Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution. ..."
"... Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before the country move forward on any front. ..."
"... So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal. ..."
Do not focus on July 2016 as the so-called start of the counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump. That is a lie. We
know, thanks to the work of Judicial Watch, that the FBI had signed up Christopher Steele as a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS)
by February of 2016. It is incumbent on Attorney General Barr to examine the contact reports filed by Steele's FBI handler (those
reports are known as FD-1023s). He also, as I have noted in a previous post, needs to look at the FD-1023s for Felix Sater and Henry
Greenberg. But these will only tell a small part of the story. There is a massive intelligence side to this story.
The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer
of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive
steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives,
the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie
Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified
the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This
information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting."
This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.
One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was
CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka
the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely.
This initial phase of intelligence collection produced a great volume of intelligence that allowed analysts to identify key personnel
and the people they were communicating with overseas. You don't have to have access to intelligence information to understand this.
For example, you simply have to ask the question, "how did George Papadopoulos get on the radar." I am confident that a survey
of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially,
his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone
unless their name is in an intelligence report. We also know that Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Donald Trump
and an FBI informant since December 1998 (he was signed up by Andrew Weismann), initiated the proposal to do a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Don't take my word for it, that's what Robert Mueller reported:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately
September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert),
a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately
2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later
contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and
brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee
of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency
put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the
direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from
a registered FBI informant.
By December of 2015, the Hillary Campaign decided to use the Russian angle on Donald Trump. Thanks to Wikileaks we have Campaign
Manager John Podesta's email exchange in December 2015 with Democratic operative Brent Budowsky:
" That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, " Budowski replies, later adding: "
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ."
The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway. This was more the opposition research.
This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition
research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets--
Hakluyt: there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about
with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against
Donald Trump.
Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums. . . .
Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's
Henry
Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6
[British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "
I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI
for launching the investigation into
George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that
led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's
associates conspired," The Times reported.
Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially,
he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network
reported in a January 2016 exclusive:
But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client
cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.
His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation
of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.
Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain--there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET
intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation
mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.
Having watched interviews of Papadopoulos on TeeVee I would say that this creature would be easy to manipulate. His ego is so
enormous that a minimal effort would be required.
I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what
I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that
he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect
that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government?
The guts of the matter was well expressed by Judge T.S. Ellis when he made the distinction between different results which
can be expected from exerting pressures on witnesses: they may 'sing' - which is, commonly, in the interests of justice - but,
there again, they may 'compose', which is not.
Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law
enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses
to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should
be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution.
Yes, indeed, many a composition have been elicited by prosecutors in criminal cases. The issue is there is no penalty for prosecutorial
misconduct while the advancement points ratchet up with each conviction. The incentives are aligned perfectly for the "institution"
to run rough shod on ordinary Americans. Only those wealthy enough to fight the unlimited funds of the government have a chance.
But of course in matters relating to national security there is the added twist of state secrets that protects government malfeasance.
I don't know how the national security state we continue to build ever gets rolled back. A small victory would be for Trump
to declassify all documents and communications relating to the multifaceted spying on his campaign and as Larry so eloquently
writes to frame him as a Manchurian Candidate. At least the public will learn about what their grandchildren are paying for. But
it seems that Trump prefers tweeting to taking any kind of action. Not that it would matter much as half the country will still
believe that Trump deserves it until the tables are turned on their team. While most Americans will say to use Ben Hunt's phrasing
Yay! Constitution. Yay! Liberty. they sure don't care as the state oligarchy tighten their chokehold.
Yes, he seems young and ambitious enough to be easy (and willing) prey. Having been involved in some local political campaigns
though, I've observed that more and more than before, young people like him are hyper-concerned with networking. Papadopoulos'
ego aside, of course he and many people who sign on hope to make self-serving connections. Not only that, it's also been my observation
that casual sexual hook-ups go with the territory, and not only among young, single guys like him. I have to say I've been shocked
a few times by how risky and cavalier some liaisons have been that've come to my attention, considering "public figures" are involved.
No doubt that's why a "honeypot" was dispatched to try to help entrap Papadopoulos.
Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes
spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before
the country move forward on any front.
So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele
via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal.
Papadopolos was very young hence the nativity getting sucked in. The ego helped for sure. Probably exciting to be part of something
important probably for the first time since he started working for Trump campaign
One thing that's always concerned me about Larry's informative and insightful essays on these matters is how can we be assured
that the IC documentation mentioned has been filled out honestly and accurately -- or that the forms even still exist and haven't
been conveniently "lost" or surreptitiously destroyed?
Too often caught between Randian individualism on one hand and big-government collectivism
on the other, America's working-class parents need a champion.
They might well have had one in Elizabeth Warren, whose 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap , co-authored with her daughter Amelia
Warren Tyagi, was unafraid to skewer sacred cows. Long a samizdat favorite among socially
conservative writers, the book recently got a new dose of attention after being spotlighted on
the Right by Fox News's
Tucker Carlson and on the Left by Vox's
Matthew Yglesias .
The book's main takeaway was that two-earner families in the early 2000s seemed to be less,
rather than more, financially stable than one-earner families in the 1970s. Whereas
stay-at-home moms used to provide families with an implicit safety net, able to enter the
workforce if circumstances required, the dramatic rise of the two-earner family had effectively
bid up the cost of everyday life. Rather than the additional income giving families more
breathing room, they argue, "Mom's paycheck has been pumped directly into the basic costs of
keeping the children in the middle class."
Warren and Warren Tyagi report that as recently as the late 1970s, a married mother was
roughly twice as likely to stay at home with her children than work full-time. But by 2000,
those figures had almost reversed. Both parents had been pressed into the workforce to
maintain adequate standards of living for their families -- the "two-income trap" of the book's
title. Advertisement
What caused the trap to be sprung? Cornell University economist Francine Blau has helpfully
drawn a picture of women's changing responsiveness to
labor market wages during the 20th century. In her work with Laurence Kahn, Blau found that
women's wage elasticities -- how responsive their work decisions were to changes in their
potential wages -- used to be far more heavily driven by their husband's earning potential or
lack thereof (what economists call cross-wage elasticity). Over time, Blau and Kahn found,
women's responsiveness to wages -- their own or their husbands -- began to fall, and their
labor force participation choices began to more closely resemble men's, providing empirical
backing to the story Warren and Warren Tyagi tell.
Increasing opportunity and education were certainly one driver of this trend. In 1960, just
5.8
percent of all women over age 25 had a bachelor's degree or higher. Today, 41.7 percent of
mothers aged 25 and over have a college degree. Many of these women entered careers in which
they found fulfillment and meaning, and the opportunity costs, both financially and
professionally, of staying home might have been quite high.
But what about the plurality of middle- and working-class moms who weren't necessarily
looking for a career with a path up the corporate ladder? What was pushing them into full-time
work for pay, despite consistently
telling pollsters they wished they could work less?
The essential point, stressed by Warren and Warren Tyagi, was the extent to which this
massive shift was driven by a desire to provide for one's children. The American Dream has as
many interpretations as it does adherents, but a baseline definition would surely include
giving your children a better life. Many women in America's working and middle classes entered
the labor force purely to provide the best possible option for their families.
Warren's academic work and cheeky refusal to fold under pressure when her nomination as
Obama's consumer ('home ec.'?) finance czar was stymied by the GOP are worthy of respect. I'd
like to see her make a strong run at the dem nomination, but am put off by her recent
tendency to adopt silly far-left talking points and sentiments (her Native DNA, advocating
for reparations, etc.). Nice try, Liz, but I'm still leaning Bernie's direction.
As far as the details of the economic analysis related above, though, I am unqualified to
make any judgment – haven't read the book. But one enormously significant economic
development in the early 70s wasn't mentioned at all, so I assume she and her daughter passed
it over as well. In his first term R. Milhouse Nixon untethered, once & for all, the
value of the dollar from traditional hard currency. The economy has been coming along nicely
ever since, except for one problematic aspect: with a floating currency we are all now living
in an economic environment dominated by the vicissitudes of supplies and demands, are we not?
It took awhile to effect the housing market, but signs of the difference it made began to
emerge fairly quickly, and accelerated sharply when the tides of globalism washed lots of
third world lucre up on our western shores. Now, as clearly implied by both Warren and the
author of this article, young Americans whose parents may not have even been born back then
– the early 70s – are probably permanently priced out of the housing market in
places that used to have only a marginally higher cost of entry – i.e. urban
California, where I have lived and worked for most of my nearly 60 years. In places like this
even a 3-earner income may not suffice! Maybe we should bring back the gold standard, because
it seems to me that as long as unfettered competition coupled to supply/demand and (EZ credit
$) is the underlying dynamic of the American economy we're headed for the New Feudalism. Of
course, nothing could be more conservative than that, right? What say you, TAColytes?
"Funny that policy makers never want to help families by taking a little chunk out of hedge
funds and shareholders and vulture capitalists and sharing it with American workers."
Funny that Warren HAS brought up raising taxes on the rich.
"... The Jimi Dore show is what the Daily Show used to be. ..."
"... NYTimes and Washington Post won the Pulitzer prizes for "thorough coverage" of 2016 Russia collusion ..."
"... The xenophobia towards Russia is higher than during the cold war. It's embarrassing imo. ..."
"... 14:52 Russian Troll farm: spends 15k on adds America: We lost the war we are no longer a sovereign nation ..."
"... Russiagate distracts from the very real Israelgate. #BDS ..."
"... so alex jones got banned from all platforms for being a conspiracy theorist while the MSM were pushing one for two years?! wow ..."
"... Pretty sure psychopaths will not feel embarrassment or humiliation, only rage and vengeance. ..."
"... CNN is actually a cult and It has a following. ..."
"... The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. ..."
"... Keith Olbermann is Grandpa Maddow ..."
"... If somebody in power is after you, the feds will indict a ham sandwich... ..."
"... I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking. Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up. ..."
"... We've known all along this has been a coup. This is not news to the informed. ..."
"... The Soviet Union moved from Russia, to the ruling class of DC and NYC. ..."
Now that Trump has agreed to go along with the war with Russia, they will back off on Trump and let him continue provoking
Russia in Syria, Venezuela and by flying US planes into Russian air space. Mueller helped Bush lie America into destroying Iraq.
US Empire wants military bases in more and more nations.
The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump
actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. LOL. Can't make this stuff up. The danger here is that the what really
happened was a deep state effort with mainstream media to overthrow a lawfully elected president of country. That's scarier than
any thing Trump may ever do.
I'm a conservative and have tremendous amount of respect for Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate'. I may not agree with them on specific
policies but I know these two guys come from a sincere, honest place. I usually just blow off liberal rhetoric but I listen to
what Jimmy has to say. God bless them
FLYNN The FBI has concluded that Michael Flynn did not have any secret relationship with Russia and has cleared the retired
Lt. General of any wrongdoing. According to a U.S. intelligence official speaking with NPR, after reviewing the transcripts, FBI
agents found that Michael Flynn's forced resignation could only have been orchestrated from Obama insiders operating within the
White House.
"The FBI reviewed intercepts
of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn -- national security
adviser to then-President-elect Trump -- but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government,
U.S. officials said."
Another current U.S Intelligence official agreed with the FBI and told NPR , "there is no evidence of criminal
wrongdoing in the transcripts of of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak, The official also said there was "absolutely nothing" in the transcripts that suggests Flynn was acting under instructions
"or that the trail leads higher." "I don't think [Flynn] knew he was doing anything wrong," the official said. "Flynn talked about
sanctions, but no specific promises were made. Flynn was speaking more in general 'maybe we'll take a look at this going forward'
terms."
So why aren't we listening to the officials who actually HEARD the calls? Don't be fooled, this isn't about Flynn discussing
sanctions or anything else with Russia for that matter. This is about delegitimizing a president. There is a reason why Democrats
are still determined to investigate Flynn even though he has already resigned. They are using this as a way to prove that Trump
was "in with Russia" and therefore an illegitimate president. Democrats will stop at nothing to get Trump out of the White House.
They don't care how many lives they have to ruin.
Communists on the Left colluded with Soviet Russia for decades and infiltrated politics, academia, education, media. Now
that Russia doesn't represent a threat and is now a growing Christian democracy...they hate it.
Jimmy: they (the globalist elite) want to defeat all of us. We all (Progressives, Christians, Conservatives, people who love
their country ) are on the same boat. The globalists want to destroy all of us. They are against the nation state, against people
having their own culture and defending it, they are against Christians (look at the way Obama referred to Catholics who were attacked
in Sri Lanka (Easter worshippers)), they are against true democracy meaning against a government that has the true interest of
their citizens in mind not the interest of the elite that controls all branches of the government. I might disagree with your
socialist policies and particularly what you said about Venezuela (I am from Colombia and saw the disastrous policies of Chavez
and Maduro destroying that nation) but we all have a common enemy and the Right and the true Left should come together in this
fight.
Because (CIA agent) Anderson "Cooper" Vanderbilt is the most trusted "NAME™" in News. Yeah, right. We already know the truth
about this porky mofo. His time is coming.
Remember this is the Special Counsel Investigation, the "Ultimate" Investigation. Which is also the 3rd Investigation. We already
had the House & then the Senate Investigate Russia Collusion & both came up with NO Evidence. So they started as Special Counsel
Investigation which has now come up with the same Conclusion as they did🤔
I always believed in you when it came to Russia Jimmy. I don't agree with you on everything, but you and Kyle are definitely
one of the new progressives that didn't go off the deep end with this conspiracy.
And yes, exactly what Aaron says. I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking.
Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up.
It's only fair that "news journalists" start doing stand-up routines - it's your fault Jimmy for taking over the role of serious
news journalism from them, was probably inevitable, LOL.
I used to respect Keith Olberman (and Rachael Maddow as well!) when they were criticizing Bush for lying us into a war over
a non existent weapons of mass destruction program. I think these living colostomy bags are promoted to their positions to undermine
legitimate criticism of the criminal dirtbags that run this nation. They were right about Bush Jr, wrong about Obozo - and of
course, other...
The two of you are both great! I think so highly of Aaron, and the fact that he seems to have chosen Jimmy's show for his first
lengthy take on the "end of Russiagate" is telling! Both of you deserve our props and thanks for helping keep us ALL sane over
the past couple of years.
I'm sure they all still believe Trump will be indicted or impeached "any day now". These people are mentally unstable, they
are the textbook example of delusional.
Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter Aaron Mate how despite the categorical statement in Robert Mueller's report
that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, the conspiracy theories by the nation's mainstream media
show little sign of diminishing.
"... This is problematic for Comey in light of Mueller's findings. There are strict guidelines governing when the FBI can task a confidential source or a government undercover operative to collect against a U.S. citizen. Normally this is restricted to a full investigation, and normally restricted to the United States, not overseas. ..."
"... There is a sense that Comey's team was not checking the boxes, did not have adequate predication, and may have tasked sources before an investigation was even officially opened. Barr should pull case files and dig in on this. ..."
"... In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case ..."
"... James Comey is right to be apprehensive. He himself ate away at the soul of the FBI, not in small bites but in dangerously large ones. ..."
Comey adjudged the president as "amoral." He declared the attorney general to be
"formidable" but "lacking inner strength" unlike -- the inference is clear -- Comey himself. A
strategy of insulting the executioner right before he swings his ax is an odd one but, then,
Comey has a long record of odd decisions and questionable judgment.
"Amoral leaders [referring to the president] have a way of revealing the character of those
around them," wrote Comey without a hint of irony or self-awareness. Those whom the former FBI
director assembled around him probably rue the day they ever met the man. Most are now fired or
disgraced for appalling behaviors that Comey found easy to manipulate to advance his
decisions.
ADVERTISEMENT
Then, just to make sure his op-ed was odd-salted to the max, Comey mused that the president
"eats your soul in small bites." OK, let's step back for a moment: James Comey appears to be in
trouble. His strange, desperate statements and behaviors betray his nervousness and
apprehension. In a way, it's hard to watch.
Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the
investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General
Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney
John Huber , along with Barr's promised examination, are completed, Comey's mishandling of
the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.
Ideally, Barr's examination will aggregate information that addresses three primary
streams.
The first will be whether the investigations into both presidential nominees and the Trump
campaign were adequately, in Barr's words, "predicated." This means he will examine whether
there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an
investigation in the first place.
The Mueller report's conclusions make this a fair question for the counterintelligence
investigation of the Trump campaign. Comey's own pronouncement, that the
Clinton email case was unprosecutable, makes it a fair question for that investigation.
The second will be whether Comey's team obeyed long-established investigative guidelines
while conducting the investigations and, specifically, if there was
sufficient, truthful justification to lawfully conduct electronic surveillance of an
American citizen.
The third will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas
emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director
and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree head spins.
There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three
scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of
confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.
Without diving into the weeds, it's important to understand that FBI counterintelligence
investigations generally proceed sequentially from what is called a preliminary investigation
or inquiry (PI) to a full investigation (FI). To move from a PI to an FI requires substantial
information -- predication -- indicating investigative targets acted as agents of a foreign
power.
This is problematic for Comey in light of Mueller's findings. There are strict guidelines
governing when the FBI can task a confidential source or a government undercover operative to
collect against a U.S. citizen. Normally this is restricted to a full investigation, and
normally restricted to the United States, not overseas.
There is a sense that Comey's team was not checking the boxes, did not have adequate
predication, and may have tasked sources before an investigation was even officially opened.
Barr should pull case files and dig in on this.
In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all
appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times
with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter
Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and
cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was
manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence
case.
Some in the media have suggested that the Times article was an attempt by the FBI to justify
its early confidential source actions. But current FBI Director Christopher Wray has shown that
he would like to excise the cancerous tumor that grew during Comey's time and not just keep
smoking. It's hard to imagine current FBI executives trying to justify past malfeasance.
James Comey is right to be apprehensive. He himself ate away at the soul of the FBI, not in
small bites but in dangerously large ones. It was a dinner for one, though: His actions are not
indicative of the real FBI. The attorney general's comprehensive examination is welcome and, if
done honestly and dispassionately, it will protect future presidential candidates of both
parties and redeem the valuable soul of the FBI.
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI
special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a
founder and principal of NewStreet Global
Solutions , which consults with private companies and public-safety agencies on strategic
mission technologies.
Peter Strzok, his
little girlfriend Lisa Page, Andy McCabe, John Brennan, Sally Yates & Bruce Ohr immediately come to mind.
Horowitz is investigating those FISA warrant applications & Barr is investigating the origins of the Russia
collusion delusion.
Investigate them, arrest them the same way Roger Stone was arrested & interrogate them the same way Michael
Flynn was interrogated. Then offer them a deal.
If they flip on their lords & masters at the DNC, they get one weekend in a country club prison. If they don't
flip, they get 20 years in a real prison.
The next 18 months are going to be fascinating.
Neal
Stephen
an hour ago
This report reads, in fact, as if Trump was supposed to cooperate in his own obstruction. And because he
didn’t, he’s guilty of obstruction. ‘Donald Trump attempted to obstruct our coup,’ is how this should read.
‘Donald Trump attempted to obstruct our effort to throw him out of office,’ is how this report should read.
It’s made to order for people who want to continue running this operation to get rid of Trump. … The report
itself says there was no collusion.
We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn’t matter and it never has, by design. So all
these are just exercises in mathematics.
Hillary winning the popular vote by three million doesn’t mean anything, period.
If you want to have fun and if you’ve got some time, go to YouTube or wherever you go to find videos and
find election night coverage and start at 6 or 7 p.m. Eastern, any network, and watch it for a couple
hours. And as you get close to 9 o’clock, you will see a 180 degree shift from an attitude of jocularity
and confidence and happiness.” Because this was it, this was the glass ceiling being shattered or cracked,
however you look at it, the first female president, Hillary Clinton, walking away with it in a landslide.
But then as they get close to 9 o’clock, panic begins to settle in, and they shortly thereafter realize
that it ain’t falling out the way they thought it was going to. And as they start fearing and realizing
that Hillary is gonna lose, it’s one of the greatest things you can watch. Go back and relive that.
Liberals must be defeated not convinced
"... The encounter, and Kavalec's memos, were forced into public view through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by Citizens United. Yet, all but a few lines have been redacted after the fact. Officials are citing as the reason national security, in the name of the FBI and a half-century-old intelligence law. ..."
"... the documents suggest there was an illegal effort to "frame" the future president with bogus Russia collusion allegations. "This new information proves why the attorney general must conduct a thorough investigation of the investigators," he said. ..."
"... we have written proof the U.S. government knew well before the FBI secured the FISA warrant that Steele had a political motive and Election Day deadline to make his dossier public. ..."
"... Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS , show he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was "desperate" to defeat Trump and his work had something to do with Clinton's campaign. ..."
"... Kavalec's notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele's deadline to smear Trump. ..."
"... That makes the FBI's failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele's political bias and motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents' use of his unverified dossier to support the warrant all the more shameful. ..."
If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI's secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump 's campaign, it sat buried for more than
two-and-a-half years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec's written account
of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence
operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day
deadline.
State officials acknowledged a year ago they received a copy of the Steele dossier in July
2016, and got a more detailed briefing in October 2016 and referred the information to the
FBI.
But what was discussed was not revealed. Sources told me more than a year ago that Kavalec
had the most important (and memorialized) interaction with Steele before the FISA warrant was
issued, but FBI and State officials refused to discuss it, or even confirm it.
The encounter, and Kavalec's memos, were forced into public view through Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) litigation by Citizens United. Yet, all but a few lines have been
redacted after the fact. Officials are citing as the reason national security, in the name of
the FBI and a half-century-old intelligence law.
David Bossie, head of Citizens United and an informal Trump adviser, said the documents
suggest there was an illegal effort to "frame" the future president with bogus Russia collusion
allegations. "This new information proves why the attorney general must conduct
a thorough investigation of the investigators," he said.
Sources tell me there also are handwritten notes from the meeting, with information about
Steele's political ties, that have not been given to Congress. "There's a connection to Hillary
Clinton in the notes," said one source who has seen them.
Perhaps those will come to light soon.
The mere four sentences that the FBI allowed State to release, unredacted, show that Kavalec
sent an email two days after her encounter with Steele, alerting others.
"You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case," Kavalec wrote
in the lone sentence the FBI and State released from that email . The
names of the recipients, the subject line and the attachments are blacked out.
Interestingly, one legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the
National
Security Act of 1947 , which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the
White House National Security Council.
The three other sentences visible in her memo show that U.S. officials had good reason to
suspect Steele's client and motive in alleging Trump-Russia collusion because they were
election-related and facilitated by the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS founder, Glenn Simpson.
"Orbis undertook the investigation into the Russia/Trump connection at the behest of an
institution he declined to identify that had been hacked," Kavalec wrote.
At the time, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was the highest-profile victim of
election-year hacking
.
"The institution approached them based on the recommendation of Glenn Simpson and Peter
Fritsch (specialists in economic crime, formerly of the WSJ) and is keen to see this
information come to light prior to November 8," Kavalec wrote. "Orbis undertook the
investigation in June of 2016." Steele's firm Orbis was a subcontractor to Fusion GPS, and WSJ
refers to the Wall Street Journal.
Everything else in the memo was blacked out. The FOIA notes contain this explanation for the
redactions: "Classified by FBI on 4/25/2019 -- Class: SECRET."
In other words, the FBI under Director Christopher Wray classified the document as "secret"
just a few days ago. To add injury to insult, the FBI added this hopeful note: "Declassify on
12/31/2041." That would be 25 years after the 2016 election.
Despite the heavy redactions, Kavalec's notes have momentous consequence.
For the first time, we have written proof the U.S. government knew well before the FBI
secured the FISA warrant that Steele had a political motive and Election Day deadline to make
his dossier public.
And we know that information was transmitted before the Carter Page FISA warrant to one or
more people whose job is so sensitive that their identity had to be protected. That means there
is little chance the FBI didn't know about Steele's political client, or the Election Day
deadline, before requesting the FISA warrant.
Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife
Nellie worked for Fusion GPS , show
he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was "desperate" to defeat Trump and his work had
something to do with Clinton's campaign.
Kavalec's notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele's
deadline to smear Trump.
Likewise, there is little chance the FBI didn't know that Steele, then a bureau informant,
had broken protocol and gone to the State Department in an effort to make the Trump dirt
public.
That makes the FBI's
failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele's political bias and
motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents' use of his unverified dossier to support
the warrant all the more shameful.
Kavalec's notes shed light on another mystery from the text messages between the FBI's Pete
Strzok and Lisa Page, which first revealed the politically-biased nature of the Trump collusion
probe.
Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the case, and Page, a lawyer working for the FBI deputy
director, repeatedly messaged each other in October 2016 about efforts to
pressure and speed the review of the FISA warrant.
For instance, on Oct. 11, 2016, Strzok texted Page that he was "fighting with Stu for this
FISA," an apparent reference to then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stu Evans in DOJ's
national security division.
A few days later, on Oct. 14, Strzok emailed Page he needed some "hurry the F up pressure"
to get the FISA approved.
If the evidence is good and the FISA request solid, why did the FBI need to apply
pressure?
The real reason may be the FBI was trying to keep a lid on the political origins, motives
and Election Day deadline of its star informant Steele.
And that would be the ultimate abuse of the FBI's FISA powers.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has
exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists'
misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political
corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at
The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports .
"... The fresh statement comes several months after a Ukrainian court ruled that the country's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort. ..."
"... Federal Election Commission records show Chalupa's firm, Chalupa & Associates, was paid $71,918 by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle. ..."
"... Chalupa, meanwhile, continued to build a case that Manafort and Trump were tied to Russia. In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort. She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her. Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion ..."
"... Less than a month later, the " black ledger " identifying payments to Manafort was announced in Ukraine, forcing Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually to face criminal prosecution for improper foreign lobbying. ..."
"... Though Chaly and Telizhenko disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa's request, they confirm that a paid contractor of the DNC solicited their government's help to find dirt on Trump that could sway the 2016 election. ..."
"... For a Democratic Party that spent more than two years building the now disproven theory that Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, the tale of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington feels just like a speeding political boomerang. ..."
The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is
picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine.
That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to
help Hillary Clinton.
In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic
National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's
campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor
Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort's dealings inside the country in
hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
In that story, the embassy was broadly quoted as denying interference in the election and
suggested Chalupa's main reason for contacting the ambassador's office was to organize an event
celebrating female leaders.
The fresh statement comes several months after a
Ukrainian court ruled that the country's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned
with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered
in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort.
The acknowledgement by Kiev's embassy, plus newly released testimony, suggests the Ukrainian
efforts to influence the U.S. election had some intersections in Washington as well.
Nellie Ohr, wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, acknowledged in
congressional testimony that, while working for the Clinton-hired research firm Fusion GPS, she
researched Trump's and Manafort's ties to Russia and learned that Leshchenko, the Ukrainian
lawmaker, was providing dirt to Fusion.
Fusion also paid British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose anti-Trump dossier
the FBI used as primary evidence to support its request to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page.
In addition, I
wrote last month that the Obama White House invited Ukrainian law enforcement officials to
a meeting in January 2016 as Trump rose in the polls on his improbable path to the presidency.
The meeting led to U.S. requests to the Ukrainians to help investigate Manafort, setting in
motion a series of events that led to the Ukrainians leaking the documents about Manafort in
May 2016.
The DNC's embassy contacts add a new dimension, though. Chalupa discussed in the 2017
Politico article about her efforts to dig up dirt on Trump and Manafort, including at the
Ukrainian Embassy.
Exactly how the Ukrainian Embassy responded to Chalupa's inquiries remains in dispute.
Chaly's statement says the embassy rebuffed her requests for information: "No documents
related to Trump campaign or any individuals involved in the campaign have been passed to Ms.
Chalupa or the DNC neither from the Embassy nor via the Embassy. No documents exchange was even
discussed."
But Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015
through June 2016, told me he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with
Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about
Trump and Manafort.
Telizhenko said that when he was told by the embassy to arrange the meeting, both Chaly and
the ambassador's top deputy identified Chalupa "as someone working for the DNC and trying to
get Clinton elected."
Over lunch at a Washington restaurant, Chalupa told Telizhenko in stark terms what she hoped
the Ukrainians could provide the DNC and the Clinton campaign, according to his account.
"She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were
Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin
against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it
in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot,
from the election," he recalled.
After the meeting, Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his
country's assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with
his assignment.
Telizhenko said that as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing
around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the
Democrats.
As a former aide inside the general prosecutor's office in Kiev, Telizhenko used contacts
with intelligence, police and prosecutors across the country to secure information connecting
Russian figures to assistance on some of the Trump organization's real estate deals overseas,
including a tower in Toronto.
Telizhenko said he did not want to provide the intelligence he collected directly to Chalupa
and instead handed the materials to Chaly: "I told him what we were doing was illegal, that it
was unethical doing this as diplomats." He said the ambassador told him he would handle the
matter and had opened a second channel back in Ukraine to continue finding dirt on Trump.
Telizhenko said he also was instructed by his bosses to meet with an American journalist
researching Manafort's ties to Ukraine.
About a month later, he said his relationship with the ambassador soured and, by June 2016,
he was ordered to return to Ukraine. There, he reported his concerns about the embassy's
contacts with the Democrats to the former prosecutor general's office and officials in the
Poroshenko administration: "Everybody already knew what was going on and told me it had been
approved at the highest levels."
Telizhenko said he never was able to confirm whether the information he collected for
Chalupa was delivered to her, the DNC or the Clinton campaign.
Chalupa, meanwhile, continued to build a case that Manafort and Trump were tied to
Russia. In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC
that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort. She also
wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her. Isikoff wrote some
of the
seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a
book making a case for Russian collusion.
"A lot more coming down the pipe," Chalupa wrote a top DNC official on May 3, 2016 ,
recounting her effort to educate Ukrainian journalists and Isikoff about Manafort. Then she added, "More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren
need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be
aware of."
Less than a month later, the " black
ledger " identifying payments to Manafort was announced in Ukraine, forcing Manafort to
resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually to face criminal prosecution for improper
foreign lobbying.
DNC officials have suggested in the past that Chalupa's efforts were personal, not
officially on behalf of the DNC. But Chalupa's May 2016 email clearly informed a senior DNC
official that she was "digging into Manafort" and she suspected someone was trying to hack into
her email account.
Chaly over the years has tried to portray his role as Ukraine's ambassador in Washington as
one of neutrality during the 2016 election. But in August 2016 he raised eyebrows in some
diplomatic circles when he wrote an
op-ed for The Hill skewering Trump for some of his comments on Russia. "Trump's comments
send wrong message to world," Chaly's article blared in the headline.
In his statement to me, Chaly said he wrote the op-ed because he had been solicited for his
views by The Hill's opinion team.
Chaly's office also acknowledged that a month after the op-ed, President Poroshenko met with
then-candidate Clinton during a stop in New York. The office said the ambassador requested a
similar meeting with Trump but it didn't get organized.
Though Chaly and Telizhenko
disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa's request, they confirm that a paid
contractor of the DNC solicited their government's help to find dirt on Trump that could sway
the 2016 election.For a Democratic Party that spent more than two years building the
now disproven theory
that Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, the tale of the Ukrainian Embassy
in Washington feels just like a speeding political boomerang.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has
exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists'
misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political
corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at
The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports . Tags Hillary ClintonPaul ManafortDonald TrumpTrump–Russia dossierDNCHillary Clinton campaign
Those of you who followed the 2016 campaign may remember a pattern where Trump would create
a debacle, the polls would drop, a cry of " This time we've got him!" would arise,
whereupon Trump would rebound and the polls would rise, sine wave-style fashion (
see charts from my post here ). And as election day, 2016, neared, the sine wave was
heading upward . It's possible that, following the release of the Mueller report, Trump is
about to repeat the same pattern, on a much larger scale. Polls down, 2016-2018; polls up
2019-2020. Perhaps.
Jack Goldsmith is Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is the
author, most recently, of The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside The Bush
Administration (W.W. Norton 2007), as well as of other books and articles on many topics
related to terrorism, national security, international law, conflicts of law, and internet
law. Before coming to Harvard, Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of
Legal Counsel, from October 2003 through July 2004, and Special Counsel to the General
Counsel to the Department of Defense from September 2002 through June 2003. Goldsmith taught
at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997-2002, and at the University of Virginia Law
School from 1994-1997. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford
University, and a B.A. from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, and Judge George
Aldrich on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal.
I quote this to point out that whatever else he may be, Goldsmith isn't a swivel-eyed loon.
(We can postpone discussion of whether all conservatives and/or all liberals and/or the
political class are swivel-eyed loons for another day; personally, I think that in our enormous
country, there are gradations.)
Goldsmith's piece, which in essence is a defense of Barr's release process for the Mueller
report, is worth reading in full, especially if you don't read a lot of conservative fare (I
don't), but here are the paragraphs that
caught my eye:
Finally, a few words about Barr's statements that the executive branch was "spying" on the
Trump campaign. Barr explained himself on May 1 in response to a question from Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse:
I'm not going to abjure the use of the word spying. I think, you know, my first
job was in CIA and I don't think the word spying has any pejorative convert connotation at
all. [T]o me the question is always whether or not it's authorized and adequately
predicated, spying. I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn't have
synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating really all forms of covert
intelligence collections. So I'm not going to back off the word "spying" to -- except I
will say I'm not suggesting any pejorative.
Barr also added that his original remark was "off the cuff" but that he "commonly" uses
the term "spying" in this way. (For what it's worth, Senator Whitehouse, among many others,
has used the term "spying" in this way too -- see here and here.)
I have no idea if Barr is being candid here or winding people up -- or both. But he has
signaled, especially in his original "spying" pronouncement, that he has concerns about the
origins and operation of the investigation of the Trump campaign. And he says he plans to
investigate it.
This is in theory an appropriate thing for the Justice Department to do, for two reasons.
First, while there is plenty of prima facie evidence of potentially untoward Trump
campaign-Russia contacts, there is also plenty of prima facie evidence of potentially
untoward intelligence agency activity in connection with its investigation of the Trump
campaign and presidency . For example: the horrible animus displayed in texts by Peter
Strzok toward the president and his supporters while investigating his campaign; the truly
unprecedented and terribly damaging leaks of U.S. person information collected via FISA or
E.O. 12,333; and the at least questionable FBI decision, after Trump fired FBI Director James
Comey, to investigate the President as a counterintelligence threat premised on the judgment
that he was a "threat to national security."
Second, the FBI and intelligence community more broadly need better internal guidance and
procedures when they confront possible evidence of improper foreign contacts or
counterintelligence threats by a presidential campaign. These institutions faced what was
probably an unprecedented situation. It would have been entirely irresponsible for senior
leadership in this agencies to not follow up and investigate the extraordinary Russia
contacts by the Trump campaign. But they would have been much better situated to avoid
controversy later if there were express guidance, process, and accountability mechanisms in
place for the decisions they made in this most delicate of contexts.
The country needs a full accounting of what the intelligence community did in the
2016 presidential campaign and in other presidential campaigns, as a basis for needed
reform in this area. I just hope that Barr conducts this review in a way that is and
appears to be scrupulously fair to all involved, so that it does not seem like political
payback that would weaken the important Justice Department norm against politicized
retaliatory investigations. That argues, I think, for inspector general review, not attorney
general review. I am not sure Barr agrees, however. We will see.
While I agree with Goldsmith on the need for a "full accounting," I think Goldsmith is being
pretty naive if he thinks any review by Barr will be seen as anything other than
"political payback," especially by Trump, who has a knack for saying the quiet part very loudly
indeed. As for example in this letter to Barr -- not crude, to be sure, but loud -- from the
President's Special Counsel, Emmet
T. Flood , who "most notably represented Clinton during the impeachment proceedings brought
against the former president by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate" (!).
This too is worth reading in full, just because it's always fun seeing an attack dog doing its
thing, but I think this is the key paragraph. From Flood's letter
:
Flood (and Goldsmith) and, for that matter, Barr, are serious people; they're not going to
run a flaky operation like Benghazi, for example. If they say they're going to look into this,
and if Trump can manage to maintain a modicum of self-control, the "accounting" they think
should take place, will take place.
* * *
To the "prima facie evidence" listed by Goldsmith, I would add some random bits I've picked
up in my travels on the Twitter; this should not be taken to suggest I'm "in the weeds" on this
material, because I'm not. Goldsmith doesn't mention how oppo (the Steele Report) was laundered
into a FISA warrant. Nor does he mention what looks to a LeCarré fan like an FBI
coat-trailing operation, complete with honeypot, directed against low-level Trump operative
George Papadopoulos. He also doesn't mention the presence of a mole -- oh, I'm sorry,
an
"FBI informant" -- in the Trump campaign. (
British intelligence seems to have inserted what looks rather like a mole in the Sanders
campaign ; and given the lack of "express guidance, process, and accountability mechanisms"
to which Goldsmith alludes, it would certainly be interesting to know if the FBI has moles
planted in 2020 campaigns and if so, which.) Nor does Goldsmith mention the media campaigns
conducted by former intelligence officials (if there is such a thing) Clapper, Brennan, and
Comey that helped create the "frenzied atmosphere" to which Flood alludes and with which we are
all familiar, and which was extremely profitable for them personally, as well as for the media
venues on which they appeared. Really, has cashing in on one's tenure as a high official in the
intelligence community given a whole new meaning to " trade craft"? It does seem so.
From the 30,000-foot level of the Constitutional order, we have ended up with
the intelligence community having potential veto power over who gets on the Presidential
ballot (I mean, will either party want an unvetted candidate after the object lesson of
what happened to Trump?), we have the intelligence community having potential authority over
the results of counting those ballots (if DHS delegitimizes a count based on a claim that
cyberwarfare interfered), and we have the intelligence community having inserted moles in not
one but two Presidential campaigns (on the assumption that there was some sort of intelligence
sharing arrangement for the UK mole in the Sanders campaign). That's rather a lot of power for
an unelected body with enormous operational and disinformation skills that works in secret
using a black budget to have. These are strange times, but on the merits I tend to agree with
Goldsmith and Flood. Of course, in 2020, "the merits" will be the last thing on anybody's mind,
so let me know how that turns out
* * *
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The military sucks up 54% of
discretionary federal spending. Pentagon bloat has a huge effect on domestic priorities; the
nearly $1
trillion a year that goes to exploiting, oppressing, torturing, maiming and murdering
foreigners could go to building schools, college scholarships, curing diseases, poetry slams,
whatever. Anything, even tax cuts for the rich, would be better than bombs. But as then GOP
presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in 2015, "The military is not a social experiment.
The purpose of the military is to
kill people and break things ." If you're like me, you want as little killing and breaking
as possible.
Unfortunately, no major Democratic presidential candidate favors substantial cuts to
Pentagon appropriations.
Current frontrunner Joe Biden (
33% in the polls) doesn't talk
much about defense spending. He reminds us that his son served in Iraq (so he cares about
the military) and that we shouldn't prioritize defense over domestic programs. Vague. Though
specific programs might get trimmed, Lockheed Martin could rest easy under a President
Biden.
"Since he arrived in Congress, [runner-up] Bernie Sanders [19%] has been a fierce
crusader against Pentagon spending , calling for defense cuts that few Democrats have been
willing to support," The Hill reported in 2016. "As late as 2002, he supported a 50 percent cut
for the Pentagon." Bernie is
still a Pentagon critic but he won't commit to a specific amount to cut. He wouldn't
slash and Bern. He'd trim.
Elizabeth Warren (8%) wants "to identify which programs actually benefit American security
in the 21st century, and which programs merely line the pockets of defense contractors -- then
pull out a sharp knife and make some
cuts ."
... ... ...
Kamala Harris (5%) has not weighed
in on military spending. She has received substantial campaign contributions from the
defense industry, though.
The Democrats on Wars for Fun
As senator, Biden voted for the optional wars against
Afghanistan and
Iraq . He
lied about his votes so maybe he felt bad about them. He similarly seems to regret
his ro le in
destroying Libya.
Sanders voted to invade Afghanistan . His
comment at the time reads as hopelessly naïve about the bloodthirsty Bush-Cheney regime:
"The use of force is one tool that we have at our disposal to fight against the horror of
terrorism and mass murder it is something that must be used wisely and with great discretion."
Sanders voted against
invading Iraq , favored regime change in Libya (
albeit nonviolently ) and voted to bomb Syria .
There have been no major new wars since 2013, when Warren joined the Senate so her antiwar
bona fides have not been tested. Like many of her colleagues, she wants an end to the "forever
war" against Afghanistan. She also wants us out of
Syria .
Democrats on NSA Spying Against Americans
... ... ...
Joe Biden, though to the right on other foreign-policy issues, was a critic of NSA spying
for years, going
back at least to 2006. Under Obama, however, he
backtracked . Even worse, Biden
called the president of Ecuador in 2013 to request that he deny asylum to NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden.
Devin Nunes Just Caught Dirty Cop
Mueller Lying to American Public about Joseph Misfud (VIDEO)Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)
requested information on Friday from the State Department, CIA, FBI and NSA on operative
Joseph Mifsud.
THIS IS DEVASTATING NEWS FOR ROBERT MUELLER AND THE DEMOCRATS ON THE SPECIAL
COUNSEL -- who
lied in their report on their operative Joseph Mifsud who was NOT a Russian operative as
the Mueller report claimed he was.
On Friday Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) joined Sean Hannity
to discuss his letter to the State Department, FBI and CIA. Nunes caught dirty cop Robert
Mueller in a complete lie. Mueller and his gang of angry Democrats reported in their report
that Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative.
It has been widely reported that Mifsud was a deep
state operative who trains CIA and FBI agents in Italy. And Devin Nunes knows this. Robert
Mueller could be in serious trouble for withholding this information from the American
Public.
"... The Senate minority leader–Deep Stater par excellence –knew whereof he spoke. But Trump somehow survived the storm, although sometimes it seemed as if he wouldn't. Now, some of the obvious parties –John K. Brennan and James Clapper with their apparatchik miens -- have suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs, as the Washington Times notes: ..."
"... Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also leveled up highly publicized comments that President Trump could even be an "asset" of Russian President Vladimir Putin , part of a slew of remarks that critics say went far beyond the usual partisan sniping that can accompany a change of administrations. ..."
"... More's afoot here, however, considerably more because the entire American intelligence system and the unique power referred to by Schumer are also now in those same crosshairs, as they should be. But many of the men and women involved are less overtly Stalinist in their style than Mssrs. Brennan and Clapper and slip more easily under the radar. ..."
"... A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire Hurricane," which sounds a lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper – a former Oxford University professor who was paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly half of it surrounding the 2016 US election. ..."
"... "Crossfire Hurricane," as most know, is the codename the wannabe hipsters at the FBI gave the Trump-Russia investigation. But more important is the word "before" in Ms. Cleveland's title. ..."
"... Papadopoulos and Page are the two naifs of the most obvious sort (sorry, guys) we have all seen on television who spent the last couple of years having to defend themselves against absurd charges. Considering the timing, it's pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e. entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration. ..."
"... I suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it. ..."
"... Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election , in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering. ..."
"... We need Halper, under oath and unredacted. Whether that's possible is another question. ..."
It's bad enough, as has been evident for some time, that Donald Trump and his campaign
were being spied upon by our own government, but it's highly likely they were also subject to
literal entrapment–at least a serious attempt was made.
I don't mean the entrapment of promulgating the salacious Steele dossier both to the public
and the FISA court as if it were the truth. That was more of a smear to justify a phony
investigation. I mean something more subtle and LeCarré-like coming from the depths of
our intelligence communities. It raises once more the question of the power of such agencies in
a free society, a conundrum with no easy answers but of great significance to our lives.
For all his New York rough-and-tumble, Trump was an innocent abroad when he arrived in
Washington. Way back in January 2017, he was warned by old-timer
Chuck Schumer that "intel officials have six ways from Sunday at getting back at
you."
The Senate minority leader–Deep Stater par excellence –knew whereof he
spoke. But Trump somehow survived the storm, although sometimes it seemed as if he wouldn't.
Now, some of the obvious parties –John K. Brennan and James Clapper with their
apparatchik miens -- have suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs, as the
Washington Times notes:
Special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that there was no Trump campaign conspiracy with
Russia to steal
the 2016 election has unleashed a tsunami of outrage toward Obama-era intelligence chiefs,
particularly former CIA
Director John
O. Brennan and former FBI Director James B. Comey, who are accused of pushing the
allegation during congressional hearings, in social media posts and in highly charged
interviews on television over the past two years.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also leveled up
highly publicized comments that President Trump could even be an "asset" of
Russian President Vladimir Putin , part of a slew of
remarks that critics say went far beyond the usual partisan sniping that can accompany a change
of administrations.
More's afoot here, however, considerably more because the entire American intelligence
system and the unique power referred to by Schumer are also now in those same crosshairs, as
they should be. But many of the men and women involved are less overtly Stalinist in their style
than Mssrs. Brennan and Clapper and slip more easily under the radar.
Notable among these, and perhaps able to reveal much of the McGuffin to the mystery of where
this all started and how, is Stefan Halper. Mr. Halper is "an American foreign policy scholar and Senior Fellow at
the University
of Cambridge where he is a Life Fellow at Magdalene College and directs the
Department of Politics and International Studies ." He is also a spook who worked for
Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, no less, and was a principle American connection to the UK's MI-6.
A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year that the agency had
contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire Hurricane," which sounds a
lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper – a former Oxford University professor who was
paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly
half of it surrounding the 2016 US election.
"Crossfire Hurricane," as most know, is the codename the wannabe hipsters at the FBI gave
the Trump-Russia investigation. But more important is the word "before" in Ms. Cleveland's
title.
The Post further noted that the academic, since identified as Stefan
Halper, first met with Trump campaign advisor Carter Page "a few weeks before the opening of
the investigation," and then after Crossfire Hurricane's July 31, 2016, start, he met again
with Carter Page and "with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis," offering the latter his
"foreign-policy expertise" for the Trump team. Then in September, Halper "reached out to George
Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work
on a research paper."
Papadopoulos and Page are the two naifs of the most obvious sort (sorry, guys) we have all
seen on television who spent the last couple of years having to defend themselves against
absurd charges. Considering the timing, it's pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e.
entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration.
Who ordered it is the obvious question, but I'm not going to leave it there.
I
suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or
another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the
campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it.
Putting it another way, someone or some group wanted to create -- or, more subtly, to
encourage the creation -- of Trump-Russia collusion from the inside in order to destroy
Trump before, or failing that, after he was elected.
How's that for a nefarious plot? Worthy of LeCarré or maybe even Graham Greene. But
is it true? I wouldn't bet against it. Something close anyway.
By the way, if I am right, this won't be the first time for Halper. And unfortunately for
Republicans, the shoe was then on the proverbial other foot. As
Glenn Greenwald wrote last year:
Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for
a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election , in which the Reagan campaign
– using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA
Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a
spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives
passing classified information about Carter's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in
order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was
considering.
Republicans can console themselves that their malfeasance was more benign, relatively. This
new one was outright sedition involving a foreign power. It is a blow to the heart of our
democratic republic. We need Halper, under oath and unredacted. Whether that's possible is
another question.
The conversation is the first known interaction between the two leaders since the Justice
Department released special counsel Robert
Mueller's report , which detailed more than nearly 200 pages of Russia's elaborate efforts
to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election on Mr. Trump's behalf.
"He said something to the
effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse," Mr. Trump said when
asked whether the two had discussed Mr. Mueller's account. "But he knew that because he knew
there was no collusion whatsoever."
Asked whether he had sought assurances from Mr. Putin that Moscow wouldn't try to influence
future elections, the president said: "We didn't discuss that."
... ... ...
In its own statement about the call, the Kremlin said Mr. Putin warned Mr. Trump against
military intervention in Venezuela.
Earlier this week, Mr. Pompeo said that Mr. Maduro had planned to leave Venezuela in the
midst of protests on Tuesday but that Russia asked him to remain in the country.
At the time, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman dismissed Mr. Pompeo's statement as
"informational warfare." Mr. Trump in a Fox Business Network interview on Wednesday said
assertions that Russia had asked Mr. Maduro to stay in Venezuela were "rumors."
Mr. Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke earlier in the week about
Venezuela. After that call, Mr. Lavrov denied that Moscow was interfering in Venezuela and
called Washington's accusations "surreal."
FBN's Trish Regan and Trump 2020 Strategic Communications Director Marc Lotter discuss a new
report that the Obama administration sent spies to gather dirt on the Trump campaign in
2016.
FOX Business Network (FBN) is a financial news channel delivering real-time information
across all platforms that impact both Main Street and Wall Street. Headquartered in New York --
the business capital of the world -- FBN launched in October 2007 and is the leading business
network on television, topping CNBC in Business Day viewers for the second consecutive year.
The network is available in more than 80 million homes in all markets across the United States.
Owned by FOX, FBN has bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and London.
Barack Hussein O gave the order to Spy on the Trump Campaign and on President Trump. BHO
is up to his Ears with all this Spying, Russia Gate, and making dirty deals with Ukraine.
We already know Obama weaponized the IRS, the CIA and the DOJ... the Obamanation is
corrupt to the core, so why would it be a surprise that he also weaponized the FBI?
Pencil Neck Adam Schiff is cleaning up all the CRAP left over from Barack Hussein O. This
weasel is running interference and making all the noise he can against A.G. William Barr who
is a good and decent man. God Bless A.G. Barr and his Family.
Obama weaponized just about all departments during his term. He used the EPA against
farmers and land-owners. He used the IRS against conservative groups. He used the
Intelligence groups against the American people, and the FBI and DOJ against anyone else that
annoyed him. Obama and his people need to be investigated and if warranted, charged. But,
this is what the left does.
Good Lord!! Obama.. Hillary.. Biden.. The FBI.. Then we have Omar, and Tlaib, and AOC
getting all of the new praise. The media CONTINUES to cover it up. Amazing that the NYT ran
it.
Joe Friday 2 hours ago
"what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
DEM's think, 'Obama anti-Trump crimes in Ukraine STAY IN UKRAINE'.
Professor Misfud worked for Italian intelligence and all major western intelligence agencies.
.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller tried his best in his coercion efforts unfortunately to his situation he was under a bright scope and could not falsely represent the report to the extent he wanted ..."
Nunes is a true Patriot and a truly honest Public Official that looks after the interest
of the country and its people unlike the Democratic Party of Crooks!
Mueller tried his best in his coercion efforts unfortunately to his situation he was under
a bright scope and could not falsely represent the report to the extent he wanted
Hey, Fox News, its Mifsud, not Misfud and he may, or may not be a "Russian Agent". The
question is, who was he working for when he lured Papadopoulos to that meeting? Sources hint
that he was working for what some might call the "Deep State". Think Brennan and/or Clapper.
What are you guys doing over there, inspecting you navels?
Nunes has been a straight shooter from the jump. I think you've got to look at
Rosenstein's scope statement to Mueller. It pretty much excluded anything not related to
Trump Team Collusion with Russia. I'm sure there were lots of threads that didn't get
followed. Independent reporters have pulled on some of those threads.
Devin Nunes is our hero and has been actively trying to save this country far more than
John McCain could have ever done. This is one great example of being a military and serve
this country is not the only hero and patriot that we should celebrate it. This is why he has
become the enemy of Nancy Pelosi and all Dems.
The differences between Nunes and Shiff for brains are night and day. You can tell that
Nunes is a goodly soul and child of God, and that truth and uprightness pour out of him. To
be the kind of person who sees Nunes as a liar and shiff as truthful, you have to be a child
of darkness to be sooo blind.
Wake up, Fox! There was never any "Russia" in this scam - it was just hot air and spooks
from the US-Five Eyes-Tel Aviv world-wide spying machine. Mifsud was a flaky CIA asset who
vanished as soon as his name came out in the press. As long as the Republicans and Fox keep
this "Russia" bullsh*t alive by repeating it, this crap will keep going. Listen to
Papadopoulos - there was no Russian involvement. It was all a lie. Russia does not want to
harm the USA, they want to be respected as an independent and sovereign country. Clinton
keeps cackling away every night watching Hannity and Nunes chasing ghosts and putting more
wood on the "Russia" fantasy fire.
"... Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics. ..."
"... In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity. ..."
"... It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"Impeachment is too good for him," Nancy Pelosi declared of the president on Thursday after "his lapdog" - as she styled Attorney
General William Barr - refused to be whipped by grandstanding Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. What did Madam Speaker
have in mind then? Dragging Mr. Trump behind a Chevy Tahoe over four miles of broken light bulbs? Staking him onto a nest of fire
ants? How about a beheading at the capable hands of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)?
Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the
long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics.
Of course, the reason for the continued hysteria among Democrats is that the two-year solemn inquiry by the august former FBI
Director, Mr. Mueller, is being revealed daily as a mendacious fraud with criminal overtones running clear through Democratic ranks
beyond even the wicked Hillary Clinton to the sainted former president Obama, who may have supervised his party's collusion with
foreign officials to interfere in the 2016 election.
Mr. Barr's hints that he intends to tip this dumpster of political subterfuge, to find out what was at the bottom of it, is being
taken as a death threat to the Democratic Party, as well it should be. A lot of familiar names and faces will be rolling out of that
dumpster into the grand juries and federal courtrooms just as the big pack of White House aspirants jets around the primary states
as though 2020 might be anything like a normal election.
In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next
year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's
dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game
of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question
that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity.
It's surely true that the public is sick of the RussiaGate spectacle. (I know readers of this blog complain about it.) But it's
no exaggeration to say that this is the worst and most tangled scandal that the US government has ever seen, and that failing to
resolve it successfully really is an existential threat to the project of being a republic. I was a young newspaper reporter during
Watergate and that was like a game of animal lotto compared to this garbage barge of malfeasance.
It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled
garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent
of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company,
Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor
Yanukovych.
That nasty bit of business comes immediately on top of information that the Hillary campaign was using its connections in Ukraine
-- from her years at the State Department -- to traffic in political dirt on Mr. Trump, plus an additional intrigue that included
payments to the Clinton Foundation of $25 million by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. That was on top of contributions of $150
million that the Clinton Foundation had received earlier from Russian oligarchs around 2012.
Did they suppose that no one would ever notice? Or is it just a symptom of the desperation that has gripped the Democratic Party
since the stunning election loss of 2016 made it impossible to suppress this titanic, bubbling vessel of fermented misdeeds? It seems
more than merely possible that the entire Mueller Investigation was a ruse from the start to conceal all this nefarious activity.
It is even more astounding to see exactly what a lame document the Mueller Report turned out to be. It was such a dud that even the
Democratic senators and congresspersons who are complaining the loudest have not bothered to visit the special parlor set up at the
Department of Justice for their convenience to read a much more lightly redacted edition of the report.
The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. The wheels are in motion now and it's unlikely they will be
stopped by mere tantrums. But the next move by the desperate Resistance may be to create so much political disorder in the system
that they manage to delegitimize the 2020 election before it is even held, and plunge the nation deeper into unnecessary crisis just
to try and save their asses.
"... That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it. ..."
"... The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it... ..."
"... He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already. ..."
It is about the rule of law and privacy. The Obama administration for more than four years
before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil
American citizens -- illegally. The FISA court has already found that. There is the Horowitz
report coming out in May or possibly early June. There's another report that everyone has
forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is
going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and
there are going to be criminal referrals in it.
The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief
judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the
head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for
national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it...
There's a hero in this story and it is not a lawyer. There is a hero. His name is Admiral
Mike Rogers. He was the head of the National Security Agency.
He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed
the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court
has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to
[Attorney General] Bill Barr already.
span y davidgmillsatty on Mon, 04/29/2019 - 7:26pm
@lotlizard
Well being a hippie myself and a staunchly anti-war advocate since the late sixties, I could
finesse this and say that I got my skepticism from that era. However, truth be told it was 35
years of practicing law and all the skepticism a law practice engenders that makes me have this
opinion.
Years ago I was determined to be an educated voter, only to discover that no one wants
voters to know the truth.
When it comes to matters of war, the government just does not want you to know. Period. No
matter how diligent you are, the government has no intention of letting the citizens know what
is going on about matters of war. And it is pretty much the same about anything that is
important.
Lawyers are privy to a lot more government information than other citizens. And I was always
frustrated trying to figure out what the government was up to.
So I think it is an exercise in self delusion when people think they can become educated
voters or citizens. It is not happening.
Direct Democracy, like Term Limits, assumes that politics is easy and anyone can do it
without training, which is not true of lawyers, doctors, teachers, soldiers, salesmen,
mechanics, even screw machine operators. Some things are easier to learn than others. Some
take innate talent.
One of the demands of XR (extinction rebellion) are citizen assemblies.
The system is no longer functional...bought and paid for by the very corporations
which threaten our ecosystem and promote (nuclear) war. We have to do an end around. What
if we just started citizen councils? If nothing else than to combat the mass distortion
and misinformation and begin a demand for change. XR sure did well last week. https://rebellion.earth/2019/04/25/update-7-to-parliament-and-beyond/
I find myself on the other side of the river from the main stream flow...so real democracy
isn't real for me. In other words people are brainwashed and don't make good decisions.
People don't have assess to accurate information and don't reach rational conclusions.
However I don't see our system capable of dealing with the emergency. If survival is an
option, we will be forced to act without and beyond the government IMO.
As to direct democracy...I saw through WMD and russiagate....took me a while to recognize
the the Obummer con. Awoke me with the peace prize speech arguing war is peace. Most people
want M4all, $15/hr, get out of war, etc. I think we would vote for those things if that was
an option instead of R or D? Now getting there is the rub.
#4
grabbing the wheel of a car careening out of control?
Direct Democracy, like Term Limits, assumes that politics is easy and anyone can do it
without training, which is not true of lawyers, doctors, teachers, soldiers, salesmen,
mechanics, even screw machine operators. Some things are easier to learn than others.
Some take innate talent.
span y The Voice In th... on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 8:38pm
I find myself on the other side of the river from the main stream flow...so real
democracy isn't real for me. In other words people are brainwashed and don't make good
decisions. People don't have assess to accurate information and don't reach rational
conclusions. However I don't see our system capable of dealing with the emergency. If
survival is an option, we will be forced to act without and beyond the government
IMO.
As to direct democracy...I saw through WMD and russiagate....took me a while to
recognize the the Obummer con. Awoke me with the peace prize speech arguing war is peace.
Most people want M4all, $15/hr, get out of war, etc. I think we would vote for those
things if that was an option instead of R or D? Now getting there is the rub.
It was established to protect the non-majority, too, and to give the non-majority a voice
in what was going on.
Small or non-populous states would have no voice at all had the system been direct.
And I am glad, even with today's gridlock, that this exists. I don't want a direct
democracy given the mob-like people who have no knowledge of concepts like due process,
innocent until proven guilty, habeas corpus, or notions related to corruption of the blood
and guilt by association.
We have already had two great examples (Kavanaugh, Trump)of how horribly the mob would
rule, had they enough power. We already know how the mob would suppress freedom of speech,
now that states are having to pass laws forcing universities to allow conservative
speakers.
#4
grabbing the wheel of a car careening out of control?
Direct Democracy, like Term Limits, assumes that politics is easy and anyone can do it
without training, which is not true of lawyers, doctors, teachers, soldiers, salesmen,
mechanics, even screw machine operators. Some things are easier to learn than others.
Some take innate talent.
Whether a system is bicameral (as in two houses of Congress) or unicameral (one house)
doesn't seem to me to be the issue when the discussion is about direct democracy versus
representative democracy. If we have direct democracy, we need zero houses.
Claiming the minority have no voice at all in a popular vote is untrue. One person, one
vote. Everyone has exactly the same amount of "voice" in a popular vote, whether they live in
a sparsely-populated state or a populous states. Unpopular views , however, do get
voted down, but not states and not people.
Absent unanimity, which is a pipe dream, rule by a majority of the people is the fairest,
even if extraordinary majorities are sometimes required.
As long as allegedly elected alleged representatives to govern us, the golden rule will
not change: He, she or it with most of the gold will make all of the rules for the rest of
us. A few wealthy people decide everything, thanks to our bought and paid for legislators;
and a vast majority of Americans have no say at all. That is the reality and it sucks
scissors. Anything that gives a tiny minority of people power over the vast majority of the
people is not democracy or fair or anything good.
Moreover, a state is a political unit, best known to most of us as some lines within a map
of the United States. I am fine with people in both heavily-populated states and sparsely-
populated states having 100% of political power, and lines on a map having zero political
power. However, less populous states do have power, no matter what. States have the power in
the electoral college (just ask Hillary, the popular vote President) and in ratification of
Constitutional amendments. IMO, that is more than enough power for lines on a map.
I don't give a rat's tail how the wealthy Framers felt about it in 1789. (In those days,
it was the slave states with their huge plantations that were the more sparsely-populated
ones. Gee, I wonder why they feared the popular vote, what with John Adams and other
Northerners recommending that the new nation be founded without slavery.)
As far you, me, Caucus99percenters and the rest of our fellow citizens being "the mob,
James Madison, is that you? You and your fellow citizens are a mob? As opposed to what? The
corrupt, deceitful war mongers in BOTH houses of Congress who sell their souls-- and
ours --to the very rich? I'd love to know why that out-of- touch, pampered, corrupt
crappy, soul-less lot should have more power over our lives and the lives of our kids and
grandkids than we and our fellow citizens do.
#4.2 the reason the
founding fathers established a bi-cameral legislature.
It was established to protect the non-majority, too, and to give the non-majority a
voice in what was going on.
Small or non-populous states would have no voice at all had the system been
direct.
And I am glad, even with today's gridlock, that this exists. I don't want a direct
democracy given the mob-like people who have no knowledge of concepts like due process,
innocent until proven guilty, habeas corpus, or notions related to corruption of the
blood and guilt by association.
We have already had two great examples (Kavanaugh, Trump)of how horribly the mob would
rule, had they enough power. We already know how the mob would suppress freedom of
speech, now that states are having to pass laws forcing universities to allow
conservative speakers.
@HenryAWallace
As you probably know, the house was set up to be representative by population. The senate was
set up to have 2 senators.
You've never heard the concept of tyranny of the majority?
You fault our past, bringing up the usual slavery issue. Do you forget that it was our
system that finally gave full rights to blacks, that the US finally passed laws against
various isms? Do you forget that it was our system that gave women the right to vote? Do you
forget that our system allowed for the passage of laws to protect various classes of people?
Do you realize that most of these changes came without ruinous violence (compared to the rest
of the world), and most of the time, issues get talked about and resolved via elections? You
lose, you live with the consequences until you win.
Frankly, I can do without the constant violent changes in governments and constant warring
among peoples. Do you wish to be like the Tutsis and Hutu? Or the Serbs and Bosnia? What
about the Sunnis and Shiites?
There is a reason that the US does not have similar murderous uprisings between whatever
groupings of people that might exist. It is because our political system flexes and it is
designed to flex.
Currently, I have no doubt that a huge group of democrats would imprison people based on
speech, wearing a MAGA hat, religion, and baseless evidence-free accusations if they had the
power to do so, or that they would try to overthrow elected officials on a whim. Our current
system has held, for now, against these types of actions.
People are unhappy with the electoral college. Good luck trying to pass a constitutional
amendment that does away with it; certainly the smaller and mid-size states would never pass
such an amendment, and there are probably blue states that wouldn't like the idea of being
run by California and New York.
Whether a system is bicameral (as in two houses of Congress) or unicameral (one house)
doesn't seem to me to be the issue when the discussion is about direct democracy versus
representative democracy. If we have direct democracy, we need zero houses.
Claiming the minority have no voice at all in a popular vote is untrue. One person,
one vote. Everyone has exactly the same amount of "voice" in a popular vote, whether they
live in a sparsely-populated state or a populous states. Unpopular views ,
however, do get voted down, but not states and not people.
Absent unanimity, which is a pipe dream, rule by a majority of the people is the
fairest, even if extraordinary majorities are sometimes required.
As long as allegedly elected alleged representatives to govern us, the golden rule
will not change: He, she or it with most of the gold will make all of the rules for the
rest of us. A few wealthy people decide everything, thanks to our bought and paid for
legislators; and a vast majority of Americans have no say at all. That is the reality and
it sucks scissors. Anything that gives a tiny minority of people power over the vast
majority of the people is not democracy or fair or anything good.
Moreover, a state is a political unit, best known to most of us as some lines within a
map of the United States. I am fine with people in both heavily-populated states and
sparsely- populated states having 100% of political power, and lines on a map having zero
political power. However, less populous states do have power, no matter what. States have
the power in the electoral college (just ask Hillary, the popular vote President) and in
ratification of Constitutional amendments. IMO, that is more than enough power for lines
on a map.
I don't give a rat's tail how the wealthy Framers felt about it in 1789. (In those
days, it was the slave states with their huge plantations that were the more
sparsely-populated ones. Gee, I wonder why they feared the popular vote, what with John
Adams and other Northerners recommending that the new nation be founded without
slavery.)
As far you, me, Caucus99percenters and the rest of our fellow citizens being "the
mob,
James Madison, is that you? You and your fellow citizens are a mob? As opposed to what?
The corrupt, deceitful war mongers in BOTH houses of Congress who sell their souls--
and ours --to the very rich? I'd love to know why that out-of- touch, pampered,
corrupt crappy, soul-less lot should have more power over our lives and the lives of our
kids and grandkids than we and our fellow citizens do.
As you probably know, the house was set up to be representative by population. The
senate was set up to have 2 senators.
Of course. Everyone knows that. My point was that unicameral vs. bicameral is not the
issue when discussing direct democracy vs. representative democracy. In a direct democracy,
no houses are necessary. In a representative democracy, you can have an infinite number of
houses or only one.
You've never heard the concept of tyranny of the majority?
Yes, of course. Mostly from rightists, though. I've also heard of the tyranny of the
minority.
You fault our past,
Actually, that not what I did.
bringing up the usual slavery issue.
The "usual slavery issue?" That seems unduly dismissive. In any event, I referenced the
colonies whose economies involved slaves, not out of the blue, but because they were directly
relevant to the reason the Framers gave sparsely-populated states undue power.
Do you forget that it was our system that finally gave full rights to blacks, that the
US finally passed laws against various isms? Do you forget that it was our system that gave
women the right to vote? Do you forget that our system allowed for the passage of laws to
protect various classes of people? Do you realize that most of these changes came without
ruinous violence (compared to the rest of the world), and most of the time, issues get
talked about and resolved via elections? You lose, you live with the consequences until you
win.
Frankly, I can do without the constant violent changes in governments and constant
warring among peoples. Do you wish to be like the Tutsis and Hutu? Or the Serbs and Bosnia?
What about the Sunnis and Shiites?
And, in your estimation, these things happened because a minority of people was allowed a
veto over the majority of people Because states, lines on a map, were given power over
people? If so, I strongly disagree. If anything, allowing minority rule delayed many positive
changes. If that is not the reason you're bringing up these historical events, I am not
understanding why you are bringing them up. And, btw, many nations effect change without
either violence or giving undue power to lines on a map.
There is a reason that the US does not have similar murderous uprisings between whatever
groupings of people that might exist. It is because our political system flexes and it is
designed to flex.
I think you are vastly oversimplifying the reasons for uprisings, which are often against
murderous, tyrannical regimes. Second, again, it's not allowing the minority to override the
majority that makes our system either fair or flexible.
People are unhappy with the electoral college. Good luck trying to pass a constitutional
amendment that does away with it. Good luck trying to pass any constitutional amendment.
However, my prior post said nothing about abolishing it. I simply cited it as one example
of states--political units, lines on a map--getting to override the will of a majority of
human Americans.
#4.2.2.1 As you
probably know, the house was set up to be representative by population. The senate was
set up to have 2 senators.
You've never heard the concept of tyranny of the majority?
You fault our past, bringing up the usual slavery issue. Do you forget that it was our
system that finally gave full rights to blacks, that the US finally passed laws against
various isms? Do you forget that it was our system that gave women the right to vote? Do
you forget that our system allowed for the passage of laws to protect various classes of
people? Do you realize that most of these changes came without ruinous violence (compared
to the rest of the world), and most of the time, issues get talked about and resolved via
elections? You lose, you live with the consequences until you win.
Frankly, I can do without the constant violent changes in governments and constant
warring among peoples. Do you wish to be like the Tutsis and Hutu? Or the Serbs and
Bosnia? What about the Sunnis and Shiites?
There is a reason that the US does not have similar murderous uprisings between
whatever groupings of people that might exist. It is because our political system flexes
and it is designed to flex.
Currently, I have no doubt that a huge group of democrats would imprison people based
on speech, wearing a MAGA hat, religion, and baseless evidence-free accusations if they
had the power to do so, or that they would try to overthrow elected officials on a whim.
Our current system has held, for now, against these types of actions.
People are unhappy with the electoral college. Good luck trying to pass a
constitutional amendment that does away with it; certainly the smaller and mid-size
states would never pass such an amendment, and there are probably blue states that
wouldn't like the idea of being run by California and New York.
Democracy in America was written in the mid 1800's.
Why am I dismissive toward people who knock the constitution vis-à-vis slavery and
bigotry issues? Because slavery and bigotry have been around forever, amongst numerous
peoples, yet our system allowed for its correction and continuous improvement. There are
still countries where religious and racial bigotry are the norm (Israel, China anyone?).
Instead, the US has ultimately decided against isms, as evidenced by regulations and Supreme
Court decisions.
"And, in your estimation, these things happened because a minority of people was allowed a
veto over the majority of people Because states, lines on a map, were given power over
people?"
I have no idea where you reached that conclusion. People won a war of ideas and effected
change.
I just find it amusing the number of people who knock a system without even understanding
how or why it arose, talking like it was a horror from which all must be destroyed. The fact
is, our system adjusted, and continues to adjust, to the needs and wants of its people. And
the changes are being done with pens, not violence.
I suppose a member of one of the many aggrieved groups could have acted violently
throughout the US instead of waiting for cases to wind through courts and waiting for
legislation to pass. I guess MLK could have taken up arms and shot as many whites as
possible. I guess women could have taken up arms and killed whole legislative bodies. Maybe
gays should have bombed all of the capitols in the US instead of pushing for legislation.
As you probably know, the house was set up to be representative by population. The
senate was set up to have 2 senators.
Of course. Everyone knows that. My point was that unicameral vs. bicameral is not the
issue when discussing direct democracy vs. representative democracy. In a direct
democracy, no houses are necessary. In a representative democracy, you can have an
infinite number of houses or only one.
You've never heard the concept of tyranny of the majority?
Yes, of course. Mostly from rightists, though. I've also heard of the tyranny of the
minority.
You fault our past,
Actually, that not what I did.
bringing up the usual slavery issue.
The "usual slavery issue?" That seems unduly dismissive. In any event, I referenced
the colonies whose economies involved slaves, not out of the blue, but because they were
directly relevant to the reason the Framers gave sparsely-populated states undue
power.
Do you forget that it was our system that finally gave full rights to blacks, that
the US finally passed laws against various isms? Do you forget that it was our system
that gave women the right to vote? Do you forget that our system allowed for the
passage of laws to protect various classes of people? Do you realize that most of these
changes came without ruinous violence (compared to the rest of the world), and most of
the time, issues get talked about and resolved via elections? You lose, you live with
the consequences until you win.
Frankly, I can do without the constant violent changes in governments and constant
warring among peoples. Do you wish to be like the Tutsis and Hutu? Or the Serbs and
Bosnia? What about the Sunnis and Shiites?
And, in your estimation, these things happened because a minority of people was
allowed a veto over the majority of people Because states, lines on a map, were given
power over people? If so, I strongly disagree. If anything, allowing minority rule
delayed many positive changes. If that is not the reason you're bringing up these
historical events, I am not understanding why you are bringing them up. And, btw, many
nations effect change without either violence or giving undue power to lines on a
map.
There is a reason that the US does not have similar murderous uprisings between
whatever groupings of people that might exist. It is because our political system
flexes and it is designed to flex.
I think you are vastly oversimplifying the reasons for uprisings, which are often
against murderous, tyrannical regimes. Second, again, it's not allowing the minority to
override the majority that makes our system either fair or flexible.
People are unhappy with the electoral college. Good luck trying to pass a
constitutional amendment that does away with it. Good luck trying to pass any
constitutional amendment. However, my prior post said nothing about abolishing it. I
simply cited it as one example of states--political units, lines on a map--getting to
override the will of a majority of human Americans.
@dfarrah
y
some people have just difficulties to accept majorities. But imho majorities elected in a
direct democratic vote are the most honest representation of what the population wants. I am
rather abused by a majority than by a minority. At least it deson't make sense to me why I
would accept a minority to enforce their will over a majority.
#4.2.2.1 As you
probably know, the house was set up to be representative by population. The senate was
set up to have 2 senators.
You've never heard the concept of tyranny of the majority?
You fault our past, bringing up the usual slavery issue. Do you forget that it was our
system that finally gave full rights to blacks, that the US finally passed laws against
various isms? Do you forget that it was our system that gave women the right to vote? Do
you forget that our system allowed for the passage of laws to protect various classes of
people? Do you realize that most of these changes came without ruinous violence (compared
to the rest of the world), and most of the time, issues get talked about and resolved via
elections? You lose, you live with the consequences until you win.
Frankly, I can do without the constant violent changes in governments and constant
warring among peoples. Do you wish to be like the Tutsis and Hutu? Or the Serbs and
Bosnia? What about the Sunnis and Shiites?
There is a reason that the US does not have similar murderous uprisings between
whatever groupings of people that might exist. It is because our political system flexes
and it is designed to flex.
Currently, I have no doubt that a huge group of democrats would imprison people based
on speech, wearing a MAGA hat, religion, and baseless evidence-free accusations if they
had the power to do so, or that they would try to overthrow elected officials on a whim.
Our current system has held, for now, against these types of actions.
People are unhappy with the electoral college. Good luck trying to pass a
constitutional amendment that does away with it; certainly the smaller and mid-size
states would never pass such an amendment, and there are probably blue states that
wouldn't like the idea of being run by California and New York.
@HenryAWallace
I am as mystified as anyone else why we keep electing people who support the mess you
described.
IMO, the choices are culled at local levels, so the locals in power, supported by the
rich, need to be overpowered.
Mobs to me means the women who were banging on the SC door, the people who have been
mobbing repubs at dinner/movies at Maxine Waters' (Booker's, Holder's)behest, people who
attack people for wearing Maga hats, people who have been mobbing conservative speakers at
universities and at tables promoting conservatives or Trump.
It is astounding to me that my side has behaved so badly and irrationally.
Whether a system is bicameral (as in two houses of Congress) or unicameral (one house)
doesn't seem to me to be the issue when the discussion is about direct democracy versus
representative democracy. If we have direct democracy, we need zero houses.
Claiming the minority have no voice at all in a popular vote is untrue. One person,
one vote. Everyone has exactly the same amount of "voice" in a popular vote, whether they
live in a sparsely-populated state or a populous states. Unpopular views ,
however, do get voted down, but not states and not people.
Absent unanimity, which is a pipe dream, rule by a majority of the people is the
fairest, even if extraordinary majorities are sometimes required.
As long as allegedly elected alleged representatives to govern us, the golden rule
will not change: He, she or it with most of the gold will make all of the rules for the
rest of us. A few wealthy people decide everything, thanks to our bought and paid for
legislators; and a vast majority of Americans have no say at all. That is the reality and
it sucks scissors. Anything that gives a tiny minority of people power over the vast
majority of the people is not democracy or fair or anything good.
Moreover, a state is a political unit, best known to most of us as some lines within a
map of the United States. I am fine with people in both heavily-populated states and
sparsely- populated states having 100% of political power, and lines on a map having zero
political power. However, less populous states do have power, no matter what. States have
the power in the electoral college (just ask Hillary, the popular vote President) and in
ratification of Constitutional amendments. IMO, that is more than enough power for lines
on a map.
I don't give a rat's tail how the wealthy Framers felt about it in 1789. (In those
days, it was the slave states with their huge plantations that were the more
sparsely-populated ones. Gee, I wonder why they feared the popular vote, what with John
Adams and other Northerners recommending that the new nation be founded without
slavery.)
As far you, me, Caucus99percenters and the rest of our fellow citizens being "the
mob,
James Madison, is that you? You and your fellow citizens are a mob? As opposed to what?
The corrupt, deceitful war mongers in BOTH houses of Congress who sell their souls--
and ours --to the very rich? I'd love to know why that out-of- touch, pampered,
corrupt crappy, soul-less lot should have more power over our lives and the lives of our
kids and grandkids than we and our fellow citizens do.
I am as mystified as anyone else why we keep electing people who support the mess you
described.
Because the rich have always had power here, from the East India Company and George III
and his colonial governors to the Koch brothers and Soros.
IMO, the choices are culled at local levels, so the locals in power, supported by the
rich, need to be overpowered.
Of course they do. But, the system is rigged in their favor and always has been.
Mobs to me means the women who were banging on the SC door, the people who have been
mobbing repubs at dinner/movies at Maxine Waters' (Booker's, Holder's)behest, people who
attack people for wearing Maga hats, people who have been mobbing conservative speakers at
universities and at tables promoting conservatives or Trump.
That is not how your prior post read. However, of course, some unruly activity exists in
the US and elsewhere that is not extremely despotic. But, in a population of about 300
million, they people whom you describe constitute a miniscule minority. Your point in your
prior post, however, seemed to be that direct democracy as a form of government-all citizens
voting on matters like war, taxes, etc. would be mob rule. And my response was that I'd
rather be governed by a majority of my fellow citizen than by "our" corrupt, deceitful,
insulated, etc. selected (sic) unrepresentatives (sic).
#4.2.2.1 I am as
mystified as anyone else why we keep electing people who support the mess you
described.
IMO, the choices are culled at local levels, so the locals in power, supported by the
rich, need to be overpowered.
Mobs to me means the women who were banging on the SC door, the people who have been
mobbing repubs at dinner/movies at Maxine Waters' (Booker's, Holder's)behest, people who
attack people for wearing Maga hats, people who have been mobbing conservative speakers
at universities and at tables promoting conservatives or Trump.
It is astounding to me that my side has behaved so badly and irrationally.
span y The Voice In th... on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 8:53pm
@HenryAWallace
Sometimes the many seize power. But they always lose it because they don't know how to hold
it because they are not power drunk fanatics. The rich, the ultra-rich are psychotics that
need to have more so that someone else has less. To the ordinary man having lots of money
means spending it on pleasurable things. To the rich it means power and ego-enhancment. What
sane man wouldn't be content with having a billion dollars and not be consumed with envy
because a dozen or so men in the world have more. Who wouldn't enjoy life and have fun and
help others? But just look at the world's richest men. They spend long hours consumed with
envy that there is someone who has more, to become the first trillionaire. Truly obsessive
sickness to cause misery and poverty to the men and women working for you just to add some
meaningless zeros to your net worth. Net "worth", I hate that phrase. Gandhi and Mother
Teresa had more worth than these sick deranged people.
I am as mystified as anyone else why we keep electing people who support the mess
you described.
Because the rich have always had power here, from the East India Company and George
III and his colonial governors to the Koch brothers and Soros.
IMO, the choices are culled at local levels, so the locals in power, supported by
the rich, need to be overpowered.
Of course they do. But, the system is rigged in their favor and always has been.
Mobs to me means the women who were banging on the SC door, the people who have been
mobbing repubs at dinner/movies at Maxine Waters' (Booker's, Holder's)behest, people
who attack people for wearing Maga hats, people who have been mobbing conservative
speakers at universities and at tables promoting conservatives or Trump.
That is not how your prior post read. However, of course, some unruly activity exists
in the US and elsewhere that is not extremely despotic. But, in a population of about 300
million, they people whom you describe constitute a miniscule minority. Your point in
your prior post, however, seemed to be that direct democracy as a form of government-all
citizens voting on matters like war, taxes, etc. would be mob rule. And my response was
that I'd rather be governed by a majority of my fellow citizen than by "our" corrupt,
deceitful, insulated, etc. selected (sic) unrepresentatives (sic).
If you don't agree with them, why refer to them as "my side?"
#4.2.2.1 I am as
mystified as anyone else why we keep electing people who support the mess you
described.
IMO, the choices are culled at local levels, so the locals in power, supported by the
rich, need to be overpowered.
Mobs to me means the women who were banging on the SC door, the people who have been
mobbing repubs at dinner/movies at Maxine Waters' (Booker's, Holder's)behest, people who
attack people for wearing Maga hats, people who have been mobbing conservative speakers
at universities and at tables promoting conservatives or Trump.
It is astounding to me that my side has behaved so badly and irrationally.
span y The Voice In th... on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 8:56pm
Whether a system is bicameral (as in two houses of Congress) or unicameral (one house)
doesn't seem to me to be the issue when the discussion is about direct democracy versus
representative democracy. If we have direct democracy, we need zero houses.
Claiming the minority have no voice at all in a popular vote is untrue. One person,
one vote. Everyone has exactly the same amount of "voice" in a popular vote, whether they
live in a sparsely-populated state or a populous states. Unpopular views ,
however, do get voted down, but not states and not people.
Absent unanimity, which is a pipe dream, rule by a majority of the people is the
fairest, even if extraordinary majorities are sometimes required.
As long as allegedly elected alleged representatives to govern us, the golden rule
will not change: He, she or it with most of the gold will make all of the rules for the
rest of us. A few wealthy people decide everything, thanks to our bought and paid for
legislators; and a vast majority of Americans have no say at all. That is the reality and
it sucks scissors. Anything that gives a tiny minority of people power over the vast
majority of the people is not democracy or fair or anything good.
Moreover, a state is a political unit, best known to most of us as some lines within a
map of the United States. I am fine with people in both heavily-populated states and
sparsely- populated states having 100% of political power, and lines on a map having zero
political power. However, less populous states do have power, no matter what. States have
the power in the electoral college (just ask Hillary, the popular vote President) and in
ratification of Constitutional amendments. IMO, that is more than enough power for lines
on a map.
I don't give a rat's tail how the wealthy Framers felt about it in 1789. (In those
days, it was the slave states with their huge plantations that were the more
sparsely-populated ones. Gee, I wonder why they feared the popular vote, what with John
Adams and other Northerners recommending that the new nation be founded without
slavery.)
As far you, me, Caucus99percenters and the rest of our fellow citizens being "the
mob,
James Madison, is that you? You and your fellow citizens are a mob? As opposed to what?
The corrupt, deceitful war mongers in BOTH houses of Congress who sell their souls--
and ours --to the very rich? I'd love to know why that out-of- touch, pampered,
corrupt crappy, soul-less lot should have more power over our lives and the lives of our
kids and grandkids than we and our fellow citizens do.
have the means to change, using "means" to encompass the funding and other things. The
Constitution and everything that preceded and followed it was geared to the group we now
refer to as the elites. And they've had literally centuries and billions of dollars over that
time to insulate themselves from us.
One of the demands of XR (extinction rebellion) are citizen assemblies.
The system is no longer functional...bought and paid for by the very corporations
which threaten our ecosystem and promote (nuclear) war. We have to do an end around. What
if we just started citizen councils? If nothing else than to combat the mass distortion
and misinformation and begin a demand for change. XR sure did well last week. https://rebellion.earth/2019/04/25/update-7-to-parliament-and-beyond/
have the means to change, using "means" to encompass the funding and other things. The
Constitution and everything that preceded and followed it was geared to the group we now
refer to as the elites. And they've had literally centuries and billions of dollars over
that time to insulate themselves from us.
We liberals and progressives have to shoulder at least some of the blame for this. To
ensure our progeny experienced few bumps in life, we cocooned them in classrooms where
learning was secondary to political correctness, we let them participate in sports where
nobody loses, and we downgraded working hard for your grades to a system of grading everyone
high on the curve.
I'm embarrassed by the ignorance of our successor generations regarding simple math
(making change without a cash register telling them what to do), basic grammar and spelling
skills, and fundamental knowledge of history.
We failed our children and grandchildren.
span y thanatokephaloides on Sat, 04/27/2019 - 6:21pm
We liberals and progressives have to shoulder at least some of the blame for this. To
ensure our progeny experienced few bumps in life, we cocooned them in classrooms where
learning was secondary to political correctness, we let them participate in sports where
nobody loses, and we downgraded working hard for your grades to a system of grading
everyone high on the curve.
I'm embarrassed by the ignorance of our successor generations regarding simple math
(making change without a cash register telling them what to do), basic grammar and
spelling skills, and fundamental knowledge of history.
Doesn't matter, though. Whether we have children or not, we still interact with and are
affected by the actions and misdeeds of other people's children.
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are focusing
on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter brought the
trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This is by
design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be promoting an
activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates? Bernie
endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would be one
possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the first option
for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this possibility?
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are
focusing on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter
brought the trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This
is by design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would
be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the
first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this
possibility?
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are
focusing on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter
brought the trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This
is by design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would
be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the
first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this
possibility?
@Cassiodorus
as I wrote in a comment the other day, Reagan ran on a platform to govern almost identically
to what the Carter administration had been doing: increase defense spending, decrease
regulation, reduce deficits.
not much doubt that he's been one of the bestest ex-presidents of all time, though.
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are
focusing on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter
brought the trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This
is by design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would
be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the
first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this
possibility?
@Cassiodorus
Hunter. Like father, like son. Will Trump smite the upper echelons of his enemies such as
Killary and the empty suit?
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are
focusing on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter
brought the trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This
is by design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would
be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the
first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this
possibility?
...They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter brought the trend in by
promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This is by design...
(I'm particularly interested in your comments on Carter.)
So, yes, we agree there, though honestly I'm at a loss to figure out why we are
focusing on "bad Presidents" here. They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter
brought the trend in by promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This
is by design.
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would
be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the
first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this
possibility?
...They've all been bad, starting with Reagan, and Carter brought the trend in by
promising to be bad in his losing 1980 reelection campaign. This is by design...
(I'm particularly interested in your comments on Carter.)
span y The Voice In th... on Sat, 04/27/2019 - 9:11pm
@Cassiodorus
Perhaps his having been a Naval officer had something to do with it. I do know that his old
boss, Admiral Rickover had a big influence on him.
...position. And, while it doesn't mention it in the
commentary, below , the fact of the matter is that Carter did more to bring peace to the
mideast than any president, perhaps, since the formal independence of the State of Israel, in
1948. From the link, earlier in this paragraph...
Jimmy Carter - Military policy
Carter had inherited a wide variety of tough problems in international affairs, and in
dealing with them, he was hampered by confusion and uncertainty in Congress and the nation
concerning the role the nation should play in the world. A similar state of mind prevailed
in the closely related area of military policy, and that state of mind affected the
administration. At the beginning of his presidency, Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft
evaders and announced that American troops would be withdrawn from South Korea. He also
decided against construction of the B-1 bomber as a replacement for the aging B-52,
regarding the proposed airplane as costly and obsolete, and also decided to cut back on the
navy's shipbuilding program. Champions of military power protested, charging that he was
not sufficiently sensitive to the threat of the Soviet Union.
In recent years, the Soviets had strengthened their forces and influence, expanding the
army, developing a large navy, and increasing their arms and technicians in the Third
World. As Carter's concern about these developments mounted, he alarmed critics of military
spending by calling for a significant increase in the military budget for fiscal 1979, a
substantial strengthening of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, and the
development and deployment of a new weapon, the neutron bomb. Next, he dismayed advocates
of greater military strength by first deciding that the bomb would not be built and then
announcing that production would be postponed while the nation waited to see how the
Soviets behaved.
In both diplomatic and military matters, the president often found it difficult to stick
with his original intentions. He made concessions to demands for more military spending and
more activity in Africa and became less critical of American arms sales. He both responded
to criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and sought to restore its
effectiveness, regarding it as an essential instrument that had been misused.
Critics, including Henry Kissinger, Henry Jackson, and many Republican senators, found
him weak and ineffective, confusing and confused. They suggested that his administration
had "seen that its neat theories about the world do not fit the difficult realities" and
that "it must now come to grips with the world as it is." One close observer, Meg
Greenfield of Newsweek magazine, wrote in 1978 that while "many of our politicians, more
traumatized than instructed by that miserable war [Vietnam], tend to see Vietnams
everywhere," more and more congressmen "seem . . . to be getting bored with their own
post-Vietnam bemusement," and "under great provocation from abroad, Carter himself is
beginning to move."
@bobswern
Unfortunately, he was more or less a true believer in neo-liberalism, before that formulation
even existed. Perhaps he just had too much faith in people. I don't know. I do know that, as
I've said in my other comments here, Reagan ran against him by promising to do everything
that Carter was already doing -- plus tax cuts.
Indeed, Reagan himself believed in working towards a peaceable end to the cold war, at
least at some point. Years ago, I saw an astonishing clip from Firing Line, with Reagan and a
couple of other Republicans. The other guys were belching a super-hard line on relations with
the USSR. Reagan, speaking coherently and intelligently -- as I say, it was
astonishing -- stated that the right had no business asking for people to vote for
them, if they had nothing to offer but inevitable nuclear war.
...position. And, while it doesn't mention it in the
commentary, below , the fact of the matter is that Carter did more to bring peace to
the mideast than any president, perhaps, since the formal independence of the State of
Israel, in 1948. From the link, earlier in this paragraph...
Jimmy Carter - Military policy
Carter had inherited a wide variety of tough problems in international affairs, and
in dealing with them, he was hampered by confusion and uncertainty in Congress and the
nation concerning the role the nation should play in the world. A similar state of mind
prevailed in the closely related area of military policy, and that state of mind
affected the administration. At the beginning of his presidency, Carter pardoned
Vietnam War draft evaders and announced that American troops would be withdrawn from
South Korea. He also decided against construction of the B-1 bomber as a replacement
for the aging B-52, regarding the proposed airplane as costly and obsolete, and also
decided to cut back on the navy's shipbuilding program. Champions of military power
protested, charging that he was not sufficiently sensitive to the threat of the Soviet
Union.
In recent years, the Soviets had strengthened their forces and influence, expanding
the army, developing a large navy, and increasing their arms and technicians in the
Third World. As Carter's concern about these developments mounted, he alarmed critics
of military spending by calling for a significant increase in the military budget for
fiscal 1979, a substantial strengthening of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
forces, and the development and deployment of a new weapon, the neutron bomb. Next, he
dismayed advocates of greater military strength by first deciding that the bomb would
not be built and then announcing that production would be postponed while the nation
waited to see how the Soviets behaved.
In both diplomatic and military matters, the president often found it difficult to
stick with his original intentions. He made concessions to demands for more military
spending and more activity in Africa and became less critical of American arms sales.
He both responded to criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and sought to
restore its effectiveness, regarding it as an essential instrument that had been
misused.
Critics, including Henry Kissinger, Henry Jackson, and many Republican senators,
found him weak and ineffective, confusing and confused. They suggested that his
administration had "seen that its neat theories about the world do not fit the
difficult realities" and that "it must now come to grips with the world as it is." One
close observer, Meg Greenfield of Newsweek magazine, wrote in 1978 that while "many of
our politicians, more traumatized than instructed by that miserable war [Vietnam], tend
to see Vietnams everywhere," more and more congressmen "seem . . . to be getting bored
with their own post-Vietnam bemusement," and "under great provocation from abroad,
Carter himself is beginning to move."
@UntimelyRippd
into inevitable nuclear war in his first term. The admin's bellicose rhetoric directed at the
Sov Union, including his FEMA director stating that we could win in a nuke exchange if people
would only build enough fallout shelters in their back yard, brought the two countries to a
very perilous position by 1983.
That anti-nuke movie which Ronnie saw in the WH, The Day After, began to undermine his
narrow and reckless attitude. Then the world lucked out when the reasonable, reform-minded
and détente focused Gorbachov came to power in 85. Gorby wanted a complete elimination
of nukes on both sides, and almost got RR to agree, but the DeepState boys intervened to
block it.
I do think Jimmy the C was very inconsistent in FP, one day listening more to his SoS Sigh
Vance, mostly a moderate-liberal non-interventionist type, and his nat'l security advisor
Zbig Brzezinski, a hawk's hawk who saw evil Soviet designs everywhere. JC was like a
ping-pong ball being batted back and forth.
But at least JC didn't get the US involved in any new wars during his term, and was
totally screwed by the Reagan-Bush team of crooks and liars and traitors who illegally
sabotaged Carter's 1980 efforts to get the hostages released. Poppy and Bill Casey, at the
least, should have ended up behind bars.
But for that October Surprise, and maybe the Carter team's failure before the one debate
to get their hands on Reagan's 1962 vinyl record showing how staunchly anti-Medicare he was,
Jimmy would have won another term.
#6.5.1.2
Unfortunately, he was more or less a true believer in neo-liberalism, before that
formulation even existed. Perhaps he just had too much faith in people. I don't know. I
do know that, as I've said in my other comments here, Reagan ran against him by promising
to do everything that Carter was already doing -- plus tax cuts.
Indeed, Reagan himself believed in working towards a peaceable end to the cold war, at
least at some point. Years ago, I saw an astonishing clip from Firing Line, with Reagan
and a couple of other Republicans. The other guys were belching a super-hard line on
relations with the USSR. Reagan, speaking coherently and intelligently -- as I say, it
was astonishing -- stated that the right had no business asking for people to vote
for them, if they had nothing to offer but inevitable nuclear war.
@wokkamile
Reagan's team defined Carter (and his administration) as big-spending, big-guvmint, and
weak-on-defense, in complete contradiction to Carter's actual record, and the Carter campaign
failed to communicate any meaningful correction.
Remember, Kennedy challenged Carter from the left.
#6.5.1.2.1 into
inevitable nuclear war in his first term. The admin's bellicose rhetoric directed at the
Sov Union, including his FEMA director stating that we could win in a nuke exchange if
people would only build enough fallout shelters in their back yard, brought the two
countries to a very perilous position by 1983.
That anti-nuke movie which Ronnie saw in the WH, The Day After, began to undermine his
narrow and reckless attitude. Then the world lucked out when the reasonable,
reform-minded and détente focused Gorbachov came to power in 85. Gorby wanted a
complete elimination of nukes on both sides, and almost got RR to agree, but the
DeepState boys intervened to block it.
I do think Jimmy the C was very inconsistent in FP, one day listening more to his SoS
Sigh Vance, mostly a moderate-liberal non-interventionist type, and his nat'l security
advisor Zbig Brzezinski, a hawk's hawk who saw evil Soviet designs everywhere. JC was
like a ping-pong ball being batted back and forth.
But at least JC didn't get the US involved in any new wars during his term, and was
totally screwed by the Reagan-Bush team of crooks and liars and traitors who illegally
sabotaged Carter's 1980 efforts to get the hostages released. Poppy and Bill Casey, at
the least, should have ended up behind bars.
But for that October Surprise, and maybe the Carter team's failure before the one
debate to get their hands on Reagan's 1962 vinyl record showing how staunchly
anti-Medicare he was, Jimmy would have won another term.
didn't help jimmy's campaign. I often wonder where we would be now had we stayed on
Jimmy's path of energy independence. The establishment dims worked against him too tip
O'Neil...and didn't Ted Kennedy try to primary him? Maybe it was Kennedy in law Shriver.
Plus RR had several years on the big and little screen much like Trump the unreality
star.
#6.5.1.2.1.1
Reagan's team defined Carter (and his administration) as big-spending, big-guvmint, and
weak-on-defense, in complete contradiction to Carter's actual record, and the Carter
campaign failed to communicate any meaningful correction.
Remember, Kennedy challenged Carter from the left.
@Lookout
primaried Carter in 1980 even as many in his inner circle advised against it. Sargent Shriver
ran as McGovern's VP in 1972 after George dumped his first pick Eagleton. Shriver ran for
prez in 76, in a large field loaded with liberals who tended to dilute each other's
votes.
didn't help jimmy's campaign. I often wonder where we would be now had we stayed on
Jimmy's path of energy independence. The establishment dims worked against him too tip
O'Neil...and didn't Ted Kennedy try to primary him? Maybe it was Kennedy in law
Shriver.
Plus RR had several years on the big and little screen much like Trump the unreality
star.
@UntimelyRippd
insulted Ted personally early on, even before taking office, when after his victory Jimmy was
really feeling his oats, thinking it was his own greatness alone that got him elected. Ted
did not forget or forgive. And on policy, he was greatly dismayed at Carter's unwillingness
to work for major health care reform, and a few other matters where JC was taking a
center-right position. But the policy differences probably were far less important than the
personal in deciding to challenge Carter.
Jimmy also unnecessarily aggravated and insulted House Speaker Tip O'Neil early on and
repeatedly, until after getting a personal ultimatum of sorts from Tip, Jimmy finally got the
message. That's just stupid, insulting the two most powerful Dems in Congress. You don't need
to have a PhD in Politics from Harvard in order to understand not to do that.
The Carter admin also did lousy messaging and PR, too much on the defensive, not often
enough out there effectively promoting their (definitely mixed-bag) policies. The MSM went
after him consistently as of 1978 and I don't think the Carter admin was prepared to deal
with it or adequate to the task. The in-bred Beltway Press treated Carter and his people from
Georgia like backwoods hicks and mostly were successful in painting the portrait of a weak,
incompetent presidency.
#6.5.1.2.1.1
Reagan's team defined Carter (and his administration) as big-spending, big-guvmint, and
weak-on-defense, in complete contradiction to Carter's actual record, and the Carter
campaign failed to communicate any meaningful correction.
Remember, Kennedy challenged Carter from the left.
@wokkamile
to heel. mobil was posting the largest profits of any corporation in american history, while
people couldn't afford gasoline. an attack on Mobil was built into Kennedy's stump
speech).
#6.5.1.2.1.1.1 insulted
Ted personally early on, even before taking office, when after his victory Jimmy was
really feeling his oats, thinking it was his own greatness alone that got him elected.
Ted did not forget or forgive. And on policy, he was greatly dismayed at Carter's
unwillingness to work for major health care reform, and a few other matters where JC was
taking a center-right position. But the policy differences probably were far less
important than the personal in deciding to challenge Carter.
Jimmy also unnecessarily aggravated and insulted House Speaker Tip O'Neil early on and
repeatedly, until after getting a personal ultimatum of sorts from Tip, Jimmy finally got
the message. That's just stupid, insulting the two most powerful Dems in Congress. You
don't need to have a PhD in Politics from Harvard in order to understand not to do
that.
The Carter admin also did lousy messaging and PR, too much on the defensive, not often
enough out there effectively promoting their (definitely mixed-bag) policies. The MSM
went after him consistently as of 1978 and I don't think the Carter admin was prepared to
deal with it or adequate to the task. The in-bred Beltway Press treated Carter and his
people from Georgia like backwoods hicks and mostly were successful in painting the
portrait of a weak, incompetent presidency.
#6.5.1.2.1.1.1 insulted
Ted personally early on, even before taking office, when after his victory Jimmy was
really feeling his oats, thinking it was his own greatness alone that got him elected.
Ted did not forget or forgive. And on policy, he was greatly dismayed at Carter's
unwillingness to work for major health care reform, and a few other matters where JC was
taking a center-right position. But the policy differences probably were far less
important than the personal in deciding to challenge Carter.
Jimmy also unnecessarily aggravated and insulted House Speaker Tip O'Neil early on and
repeatedly, until after getting a personal ultimatum of sorts from Tip, Jimmy finally got
the message. That's just stupid, insulting the two most powerful Dems in Congress. You
don't need to have a PhD in Politics from Harvard in order to understand not to do
that.
The Carter admin also did lousy messaging and PR, too much on the defensive, not often
enough out there effectively promoting their (definitely mixed-bag) policies. The MSM
went after him consistently as of 1978 and I don't think the Carter admin was prepared to
deal with it or adequate to the task. The in-bred Beltway Press treated Carter and his
people from Georgia like backwoods hicks and mostly were successful in painting the
portrait of a weak, incompetent presidency.
@HenryAWallace
I wasn't aware you had previously written extensively on the health care subject. But looking
at the cites I didn't see something which definitely nailed the story on Carter v TK on
health care reform, just 2 people who detested each other with differing views, and a
statement supposedly from Ted, which again I didn't see a cite for, admitting fault in the
Carter proposal. (I have not read his book of memoirs.) If the latter assertion is true, then
it is a bit of a puzzle why Carter would blame a then-deceased TK on 60Minutes over blocking
his health care proposal, when all he had to do was cite Ted's supposed confession of guilt
in his memoirs. (will now go to review the video of this interview, which I've not yet
seen.)
According to this HNN article from a 3d party academic on
the Carter proposal, it was indeed a weak one and only a partial and perhaps badly flawed
first step, which Kennedy may well have been right to oppose as Carter didn't commit,
according to the author, on specifics for a followup comprehensive plan other than Carter
would propose keeping the private insurance system intact, no public option. Jimmy just
offered hospital care cost cutting and continuation of private insurance.
On the earlier Nixon proposal, Kennedy, as I recall from the literature, was opposed as
the health care major reform backers linked to the AFL-CIO and other Big Labor thought Ted
should wait until a better proposal came along from a Dem president, as surely they would get
a good one in the 76 election in the wake of Watergate. But it might also be true that TK
regretted this move and had second thoughts about not taking the bird in hand and waiting for
the two in the bush. As it turned out, he got only a third of a bird by waiting with
Carter.
@wokkamile
I forgot he was a Democrat. He was Reagan's big enabler.
#6.5.1.2.1.1.1 insulted
Ted personally early on, even before taking office, when after his victory Jimmy was
really feeling his oats, thinking it was his own greatness alone that got him elected.
Ted did not forget or forgive. And on policy, he was greatly dismayed at Carter's
unwillingness to work for major health care reform, and a few other matters where JC was
taking a center-right position. But the policy differences probably were far less
important than the personal in deciding to challenge Carter.
Jimmy also unnecessarily aggravated and insulted House Speaker Tip O'Neil early on and
repeatedly, until after getting a personal ultimatum of sorts from Tip, Jimmy finally got
the message. That's just stupid, insulting the two most powerful Dems in Congress. You
don't need to have a PhD in Politics from Harvard in order to understand not to do
that.
The Carter admin also did lousy messaging and PR, too much on the defensive, not often
enough out there effectively promoting their (definitely mixed-bag) policies. The MSM
went after him consistently as of 1978 and I don't think the Carter admin was prepared to
deal with it or adequate to the task. The in-bred Beltway Press treated Carter and his
people from Georgia like backwoods hicks and mostly were successful in painting the
portrait of a weak, incompetent presidency.
Who betrayed the Russians when the US said it wouldn't tighten its military circle around
Russia? Was it Obama or Bush II that broke that promise?
#6.5.1.2
Unfortunately, he was more or less a true believer in neo-liberalism, before that
formulation even existed. Perhaps he just had too much faith in people. I don't know. I
do know that, as I've said in my other comments here, Reagan ran against him by promising
to do everything that Carter was already doing -- plus tax cuts.
Indeed, Reagan himself believed in working towards a peaceable end to the cold war, at
least at some point. Years ago, I saw an astonishing clip from Firing Line, with Reagan
and a couple of other Republicans. The other guys were belching a super-hard line on
relations with the USSR. Reagan, speaking coherently and intelligently -- as I say, it
was astonishing -- stated that the right had no business asking for people to vote
for them, if they had nothing to offer but inevitable nuclear war.
@dfarrah
to Gorby not to move NATO one inch eastward towards Russia, in return for the Sov Union
agreeing to a reuniting of Germany, began under Bush I, Poppy, or at least the anti-Russia
attitude began then, after the verbal agreement was made, and continued with all presidents
thru Obama and Trump.
#6.5.1.2.1.2 to Gorby
not to move NATO one inch eastward towards Russia, in return for the Sov Union agreeing
to a reuniting of Germany, began under Bush I, Poppy, or at least the anti-Russia
attitude began then, after the verbal agreement was made, and continued with all
presidents thru Obama and Trump.
armscontrol.com, but part of the gist was
that he hadn't wanted to seem 'like a wimp' while running against bob dole. i'm agnostic on
that, but what a fucked up cold war 2.0 organization that it. now, you might be right about
dubya creating one evil stepchild of nato, and he did create the neo-colonizing africom. it's
motto is (or was) 'we fight chaos in african nations', while forgetting that they also use
CIA agents and such to...create the chaos, then help install U-friendly puppet gummints.
on later edit : it gets worse, if more honest. i was on black alliance for peace's twit
account for my own current diary, they were protesting against africom, and one tweet led to
an article on africom with these lines:
"When AFRICOM was established in the months before Barack Obama assumed office as the
first Black President of the United States, a majority of African nations -- led by the
Pan-Africanist government of Libya -- rejected AFRICOM, forcing the new command to instead
work out of Europe.
But with the U.S. and NATO attack on Libya that led to the destruction of that country
and the murder of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, corrupt African leaders began to
allow AFRICOM forces to operate in their countries and establish military-to-military
relations with the United States. Today, those efforts have resulted in 46 various forms of
U.S. bases as well as military-to-military relations between 53 out of the 54 African
countries and the United States. U.S. Special Forces troops now operate in more than a
dozen African nations.
Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, first and former deputy of AFRICOM, declared in 2008,
"Protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market is one of
AFRICOM's guiding principles."
We say AFRICOM is the flip side of the domestic war being waged by the same repressive
state structure against Black and poor people in the United States. In the U.S. Out of
Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign, we link police violence and the domestic war waged on
Black people to U.S. interventionism and militarism abroad.
#6.5.1.2.1.2 to Gorby
not to move NATO one inch eastward towards Russia, in return for the Sov Union agreeing
to a reuniting of Germany, began under Bush I, Poppy, or at least the anti-Russia
attitude began then, after the verbal agreement was made, and continued with all
presidents thru Obama and Trump.
span y thanatokephaloides on Sat, 04/27/2019 - 8:42pm
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be promoting
an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up useful idiot Joe
Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates? Bernie endorses Joe, and
hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency would be one possible fruit of
the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as the first option for activism in
America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning for this possibility?
It seems to me that if we want to focus upon this contingency, we ought to be
promoting an activist "Plan B." What if the Democrats screw Bernie again, and set up
useful idiot Joe Biden to win the convention with the help of the superdelegates?
Bernie endorses Joe, and hope is once again replaced by despair. Such a contingency
would be one possible fruit of the "elect a better President" strategy which appears as
the first option for activism in America. What then? Perhaps we ought to be planning
for this possibility?
But voting for people who have never held office in their lives just seems pointless. It
would be nice if a green actually got elected somewhere before he or she decided to run for
President.
I live in a red state, so my vote doesn't matter. I could vote for Mickey Mouse and do as
much good. Maybe that is why I am so cynical about presidential elections now.
My gut tells me that Sanders can't beat Trump in 2020 when he could have in 2016. Sanders
let so many people down in 2016, that there will not be the enthusiasm this time. And Trump
will have lots of never-Trumpers on board in 2020.
#6.6
Heads I vote Green again
Tails I go get drunk on election day instead
span y The Voice In th... on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 10:52pm
But voting for people who have never held office in their lives just seems pointless.
It would be nice if a green actually got elected somewhere before he or she decided to
run for President.
I live in a red state, so my vote doesn't matter. I could vote for Mickey Mouse and do
as much good. Maybe that is why I am so cynical about presidential elections now.
My gut tells me that Sanders can't beat Trump in 2020 when he could have in 2016.
Sanders let so many people down in 2016, that there will not be the enthusiasm this time.
And Trump will have lots of never-Trumpers on board in 2020.
World peace is possible and with real leadership, America could usher it into being.
You sound really like an American President. Are you running? Sigh. I have to say
considering what is going on in the world, I find that sentence pretty unconvincing, if not
an attempt of misleading the sheeps.
What matters in a Congressman and Senator, might be more important to know.
No offense meant, it's just that the times are over when these nice words would still
work.
@mimi I
know what you mean, Mimi. I realize how unlikely it seems given the horrifying present, yet I
insist that, at least in theory, it doesn't have to be this way and that with sufficient will
we could reverse the hate and war. I may well be wrong, but I believe it. If we wanted peace
as badly as we wanted to go to the moon or build the atomic bomb, we'd stand a good chance of
getting there.
World peace is possible and with real leadership, America could usher it into
being.
You sound really like an American President. Are you running? Sigh. I have to say
considering what is going on in the world, I find that sentence pretty unconvincing, if
not an attempt of misleading the sheeps.
What matters in a Congressman and Senator, might be more important to know.
No offense meant, it's just that the times are over when these nice words would still
work.
Perhaps with f@ck Bill Clinton and his media consolidation - tip
of the iceberg.
Next up has to be Jane Fonda. "I guess the lesson is we shouldn't be fooled by
good-looking liberals no matter how well-spoken they are."
And following behind, this is one hell of a good question.
Now, having seen the wreckage a horrible president can wreak on a helpless nation, I'm
starting to re-question why none of the 'good' presidents ever had much impact. They had
the same power to do good as he has to do evil. I'm starting to think they didn't want to
change anything. Or were paid not to. (Shocking, I know.)
I think every person running for office should have to pass a lie detector test in order
to declare his/her candidacy. Questions to be written by his/her enemies. Next up, every
voter must pass a current events test in order to vote. If you have no clue, you should have
no vote. I'm tired of having our country's fate determined by crooks and people who don't
know better and could care less.
@dkmich
Unfortunately, most of the sheeples don't realize that "honest politician" is an
oxymoron.
Perhaps with f@ck Bill Clinton and his media consolidation -
tip of the iceberg.
Next up has to be Jane Fonda. "I guess the lesson is we shouldn't be fooled by
good-looking liberals no matter how well-spoken they are."
And following behind, this is one hell of a good question.
Now, having seen the wreckage a horrible president can wreak on a helpless nation,
I'm starting to re-question why none of the 'good' presidents ever had much impact.
They had the same power to do good as he has to do evil. I'm starting to think they
didn't want to change anything. Or were paid not to. (Shocking, I know.)
I think every person running for office should have to pass a lie detector test in
order to declare his/her candidacy. Questions to be written by his/her enemies. Next up,
every voter must pass a current events test in order to vote. If you have no clue, you
should have no vote. I'm tired of having our country's fate determined by crooks and
people who don't know better and could care less.
span y davidgmillsatty on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 9:23pm
*If* a president of this nation can bring peace about, the epic barriers to third party
candidates need to be reversed (especially toward the Greens), but they won't be. the only
potential peace candidate would need to both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist (not just
claim to be anti-war for some™, imo. in the duopoly, there simply isn't one, although
many will claim that tulsi gabbard is.
You're always "spot-on." But, this time, you hit it out of the park!
Wanted to turn you on to some new music...
1.) Irish singer-songwriter Hozier , just came out with his new album "Wasteland,
Baby!" (easily, one of the best, politically-oriented songwriters of the current
generation):
You're always "spot-on." But, this time, you hit it out of the park!
Wanted to turn you on to some new music...
1.) Irish singer-songwriter Hozier , just came out with his new album "Wasteland,
Baby!" (easily, one of the best, politically-oriented songwriters of the current
generation):
During my high school World History class, several of us approached our instructor to
change some of the elements of the class. We were tired of memorizing dates of wars and
battles. Her response was: "The history of the world is the history of war." I hope I live to
see this instructor proven wrong.
It is, unfortunately. Solving systemic corruption is always a complex and difficult
task.
But if we can find not only someone who we believe in but someone who also believes in
us, then why can we not progress?
Because those whose continued ill-gotten gains depend on us not progressing anywhere apply
their money power to make sure we do not progress.
Exhibit A: Bernie Sanders in 2016. The moneyed power brokers wanted Hillary Clinton. And,
the desire of us hoi polloi to the contrary notwithstanding, she's what we got.
And Donald Trump bought his way into the Presidency.
Who are these other entities?
The ultra-wealthy, whose continued un-earned profits depend on no change occurring. The
forever war industry, whose continued un-earned profits depend on no peace occurring,
ever. The fossil-fuel industry, whose continued un-earned profits depend on no change
occurring to how we power our lives. The mega-banks and the Wall Street Casino, which depend
on all the above and others like them.
After all, there are more of us, than there are of them
Not where it counts (dollars under single-individual control).
So chins up!
If Nike says 'Just do it' then so should we!
Do please describe how we are supposed to "just do it". I would be most interested in how
you suppose we should proceed here. But I must ask a favor: please don't suggest anything
which has already been tried to exhaustion. Thank you.
#12
But if we can find not only someone who we believe in but someone who also believes in
us, then why can we not progress?
Who are these other entities?
After all, there are more of us, than there are of them
What I see as the problem is the deep state stopping any person in the Oval Office from
accomplishing progressive goals. These war-mongers have a vice grip on our government. If the
person elected would have the courage to stand up for the people instead of the deep state,
then I think we have a chance.
This day will come, but it might be until the 2024 or 2028 election.
World peace is possible and with real leadership, America could usher it into being.
Forget America, it will never happen. We have not had a single world class president in my
lifetime. Democracy does no such thing as guarantee a better outcome, it only provides more
legitimacy. Our congress critters are a bunch of spineless cheerleaders for some odd concept
of patriotism in America. They would vote to nuke Cuba if they thought that it would advance
their careers. The deep-state's goal is more and better lethality of the military on an ever
ballooning budget. The ultra-rich and the corporations and banks control everything. What
path do you see to peace and justice? The American people vote these bastards into office.
This is what they want. The only good outcome I see is if the world learns to get along
without the US, and sanctions the US to the bone. I have no idea where these abstract
concepts of a greater purpose for the American Hegemon ever came from. They have no
relationship to reality. The best that we could do is to try to return the nation to the
belief in isolationism as was popular between the two world wars.
span y thanatokephaloides on Sun, 04/28/2019 - 5:16pm
The ultra-rich and the corporations and banks control everything. What path do you see
to peace and justice? The American people vote these bastards into office.
False.
The selection of non-choice (or Hobson's Choice) candidates is locked-in ages before any
of us hoi polloi get to vote on anything.
World peace is possible and with real leadership, America could usher it into
being.
Forget America, it will never happen. We have not had a single world class president
in my lifetime. Democracy does no such thing as guarantee a better outcome, it only
provides more legitimacy. Our congress critters are a bunch of spineless cheerleaders for
some odd concept of patriotism in America. They would vote to nuke Cuba if they thought
that it would advance their careers. The deep-state's goal is more and better lethality
of the military on an ever ballooning budget. The ultra-rich and the corporations and
banks control everything. What path do you see to peace and justice? The American people
vote these bastards into office. This is what they want. The only good outcome I see is
if the world learns to get along without the US, and sanctions the US to the bone. I have
no idea where these abstract concepts of a greater purpose for the American Hegemon ever
came from. They have no relationship to reality. The best that we could do is to try to
return the nation to the belief in isolationism as was popular between the two world
wars.
The ultra-rich and the corporations and banks control everything. What path do you
see to peace and justice? The American people vote these bastards into office.
False.
The selection of non-choice (or Hobson's Choice) candidates is locked-in ages before
any of us hoi polloi get to vote on anything.
@TheOtherMaven
"I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all
I ask is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers?
Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?
Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It
is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own
accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask
how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest."
It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of
their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American
people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of
protest."
More than that stayed home last election and yet here we are again getting ready to do the
voting process again over a half century since Dubois said that. The funniest thing about
that Russia allegation of interfering with the election is that the GOP have gerrymandered
the hell out of so many states, the democrats have let them do it and democrats not only
refuse to put enough voting machines in districts with heavy turnout they don't insist on
using paper ballots.
During the last primary in New York alone thousands of people were kicked off the voting
rolls and had their party affiliation changed and even after the person who did that admitted
it nothing was done. Next up was Brenda Snipes in Florida who destroyed lots and lots of
ballots and she not only wasn't punished for doing it, she got to retire with her full
pension.
DuBois condemns both Democrats and Republicans for their indifferent positions on the
influence of corporate wealth, racial inequality, arms proliferation and unaffordable health
care.
1956
I've been bitchin about what Trump is doing with the regulatory agencies and once again I
found out how badly Obama was before him... I shouldn't have been surprised huh?
#15.1.1 "I have no
advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask
is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again,
why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?
Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged
hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because
of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the
American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of
protest."
@Big
Al
and if it would be a direct democratic vote like in a parliamentary system, I think it would
be worth voting.
Voting in the US seems to be worthless these days.
#15.1.1 "I have no
advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask
is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again,
why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?
Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged
hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because
of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the
American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of
protest."
Update 10: Though she isn't in the room today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren felt she needed to
communicate a very important message to Barr: That she would like him to resign.
AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that
he's not a credible head of federal law enforcement. He should resign -- and based on the
actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the
President.
This is
the second in two recent
Real News Network interviews with Bill Black, white collar criminologist and frequent Naked
Capitalism contributor. Bill is author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and teaches
economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC).
Bill argues that the problem isn't deficient laws, which is Warren's focus. He says
instead:
It's far better to focus on using the existing criminal laws but changing the things in
the system that are so criminogenic and changing institutionally the regulators, the F.B.I.,
and the prosecutors, so that you go back to systems that we've always known how to make work.
The simple example is task forces. What produced the huge success in the savings and loan,
the Commercial Bank, and the Enron era fraud prosecutions? It was these task forces where we
brought everyone together to actually bring prosecutions. They killed those criminal task
forces, both under the Bush administration and under the Obama administration.
I think this is cause for optimism. For it means we don't have to go through the long and
torturous process of passing new laws to get somewhere with fixing a deeply broken system. The
Dodd-Frank Act wasn't passed until July 2010, despite the huge clamor to do something about the
banks that created the Great Financial Crisis. And then it took many years for all affected
agencies to finish rule-makings necessary to administer and enforce the law. Imagine if we had
to do that again to get somewhere with the necessary clean-up.
Instead, we merely have to elect politicians who will appoint necessary personnel to
confront the prevailing criminogenic environment. I know, I know – that's a big ask too.
But believe me, it would be even bigger if we must also take the preliminary step of passing
new legislation as well.
MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Mark Steiner. Always good to have you
with us. Now if you were watching the previous segment and you saw what Bill Black and I were
talking about, you saw that we were kind of diving into the history of this. Why it's so
difficult to prosecute or maybe it's not, and we're finding out why. But what we didn't jump
into was about Elizabeth Warren's proposal. Do they make sense? If they passed, will they
actually make a difference. What is it that we do we need, more laws like that or do we need
more regulation? What would solve the crisis that we seem to constantly be falling into? And
we're still here with Bill Black as always, which is great. So Bill, let me just jump right
into this. Her proposals -- do they meet muster? Do they actually make a difference? Some
people say she's piddling around the edges. What do you think?
BILL BLACK So for example, the proposed bill on Too Big to Jail would largely recreate the
entities that we had during the great financial crisis, which led to virtually no prosecutions. So yes, we need more resources, but bringing back SIGTARP, the special inspector general for
the Treasury, would have next to no effects.
The criminal referrals have to come from the
banking regulatory agencies. They have essentially been terminated. You need new leadership at
those entities that were actually going to make criminal referrals. The second part -- would it
change things to be able to prosecute simply by showing negligence? Well yes, but it would
still be a massive battle to show negligence in those circumstances and at the end of the day,
the judge could just give probation. And judges are going to be very hostile to it,
particularly after Trump gets all these judicial appointees.
You would just see a wave, if you
used a simple negligence standard of conservative judges who didn't think it was fair to make
it that easy to prosecute folks. They would give people probation. Prosecutors wouldn't want to
go through a huge fight just to get probation and such. And so, it would be immensely
ineffective, and it would break.
There'd be maybe some progressive judges that would actually
give the maximum term, but that's only one year under her proposal. So you're not going to get
significant deterrence through those mechanisms. It's far better to focus on using the existing
criminal laws but changing the things in the system that are so criminogenic and changing
institutionally the regulators, the F.B.I., and the prosecutors, so that you go back to systems
that we've always known how to make work. The simple example is task forces.
What produced the
huge success in the savings and loan, the Commercial Bank, and the Enron era fraud
prosecutions? It was these task forces where we brought everyone together to actually bring
prosecutions. They killed those criminal task forces, both under the Bush administration and
under the Obama administration. So we don't have to reinvent the bike. We don't have to design
a new vehicle. We have a vehicle that works for successful prosecutions. We actually need to
use it and to do that, we need people in charge who have the will to prosecute elite
white-collar criminals.
MARC STEINER So you do agree with a critique of these bills, saying what we need is just to
have greater regulation and enforce regulations we have? We don't need new prosecutorial tools?
Is that what you're saying?
BILL BLACK No I completely reject that view in Slate that is by two folks who have really
extreme views. One thinks that we prosecute and sentence elite white-collar criminals way too
much and much too heavily. And the other, for example, has written an article saying, we
shouldn't make wage theft which is theft, a crime.
Even though it's Walmart's dominant strategy
and it makes it impossible for more honest merchants to compete against Walmart, that is an
insane view. And of course, it will never happen because you're going to put the same people in
charge who don't believe. If they don't believe in prosecuting, you think seriously they
believe in regulating the big banks?
MARC STEINER What I'm asking you though Bill, to critique that, what do you think? Are the
bills that Elizabeth Warren is suggesting unnecessary, other than maybe putting more money into
regulatory agencies to oversee all of this? Are you saying that we have enough prosecutorial
tools?
BILL BLACK They're unnecessary. The specifics in the bills are unnecessary. But that doesn't
mean that regulation is the answer to it, although it's part of the issue.
MARC STEINER I got you. Right.
BILL BLACK What you need is leaders who will use the tools we know work, to do the
prosecutions. And they made absolutely sure -- that's Lanny Breuer who you talked about in the
first episode of this thing, that actually said to a nationwide audience on video that he was
kept awake and fearing not what the bank criminals were doing but fearing that somebody might
lose their job in banks because of it.
You know he doesn't represent the American people at
that point. If you put Lanny Breuer in, you could put 10,000 F.B.I. agents and you would still
get no prosecutions, because Lanny Breuer simply isn't going to prosecute just like Eric Holder
simply wasn't going to prosecute.
It's not just the US, but the UK, too. Readers may be aware that the British government is seeking a successor to Mark Carney at
the Bank of England, which has resumed most, but not all, of its former supervisory
responsibilities this decade.
One of the candidates, Andrew Bailey, a former Bank official and currently head of the
conduct risk regulator, is desperate for the Bank job and publicly and privately speaking
about lightening the regulatory load. Not only that, Bailey is also reluctant to take action
against the well connected and have anything going on that will have an impact on his
application, vide the current London Capital Finance scandal.
At a recent address to asset managers, Bailey said that not on Brexit + day 1, but soon
after the red pen would be applied to the UK rule book. He implied that prosecutions would be
a rarity. It was very much a plea to firms to stay after Brexit and to lobby for his
candidacy.
I am old enough remember clearly the Blue Arrow case in the 1980's ( easily looked up )
but essentially a share rigging operation. The smokescreen advanced by the establishment in
these cases had always been the same; that company fraud is far to complicated for ordinary
mortals to understand . But in the Blue Arrow case they ( the jury ) did understand it, which
terrified the establishment, and word came down from on high that no such prosecutions should
ever happen again . And then we had ' light touch regulation '. And then we had the Great
Financial Crash.
I do indeed Colonel. Both scandals seem almost quaint in the light of the scale of the
manipulation and fraud in the years leading up to the GFC and subsequently; and the
unwillingness of both the UK and US government to even attempt to bring about prosecutions.
The intertwining of politics and big business ( ' the revolving door ' ) has played a large
part in this and IMHO distressed the wider public to such an extent that when they had the
opportunity to show their displeasure they did so and voted for Brexit and Trump.
Those regulators and their ilk need trips to the Old Bailey, although that is not likely
to happen in the foreseeable future. Too much is riding on the Brexit preparations, until the
next panic, and then the following panic. All of those militate against any action that would
harm the fabric of, ahem, pay packets.
If you put Lanny Breuer in, you could put 10,000 F.B.I. agents and you would still get
no prosecutions, because Lanny Breuer simply isn't going to prosecute just like Eric Holder
simply wasn't going to prosecute.
IMHO, you could put Bill Black in, many, if not most of those 10,000 F.B.I. agents would
passively resist, and you would still get no prosecutions.
We're seeing, with Trump, what passive resistance looks like, the same will be done to
Bernie if elected.
The massive momentum of neo-liberal rule is baked in, and has been quite successful at
making sure Trump doesn't screw any of their plans up, in fact Trump derangement syndrome
seems to be working better than they could ever have dreamed to cover the really nasty stuff
that's going on while the people are treated to Russia, Russia, Russia! 24/7.
Bernie would face the same, but probably worse, more intense resistance from what would be
a unified, bi-partisan resistance, the 10%, with forty years worth of Washington Consensus
training under their belts, all either chanting in unison against the evils of socialism, or
sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting Na, Na, Na, Na!
After 9/11, the FBI pulled thousands of agents off white collar crime and switched them to
fighting terrorism, in hindsight, this seems closer to evidence of a plan than an accident of
history.
By now, most, if not all those agents have decided that for the sake of their careers,
they had better forget about what they used to think was important.
It would probably take all of Bernie's first term to bring the public up to speed, and in
alignment with the effort to prosecute the banksters, and that's being optimistic.
Right now, half the electorate believes that dead-beat borrowers crashed the economy in
2008.
You don't need the FBI to prosecute bank crimes. In his book version of Inside Job,
Charles Ferguson laid out the evidence for WaMu (and IIRC another bank) that was sufficient
to be able to indict executives. There was plenty of evidence in the public domain.
Yes, and what is it we are discussing, the reasons why no indictments were made, and what
is to be done about it?
My point is that changes in leadership, IMO are insufficient to prompt those indictments
into being in the near term because in the period since 2008, everything possible has been
done to load the federal bureaucracy with politically reliable persons dedicated to helping
defend the status quo.
I might add that ' The Resistance' has, IMO, been focused almost exclusively on
making sure Trump is not reelected, thereby protecting democratic rice bowls, and sadly, not
so much on preventing his destroying regulatory systems, the courts, and every remnant of the
New Deal.
The situation we're facing is the Augean Stables, except that it's been 40 years, not 30,
that the filth has been building up without a proper cleaning.
So, being wildly optimistic, we elect Bernie Sanders, and if we're lucky, start a
generation long process against a strong head wind.
That said, I remain wildly optimistic that that is what will happen, I just can't help
myself.
I'm not a legal expert but what about going after banks, most of which do business in NY
state, by using the existing Martin Act like Eliot Spitzer. According to
this older article :
"Spitzer's big gun was New York's Martin Act. The law allowed him to subpoena virtually
any document from anyone doing business in the state. Because the law permits prosecutors to
pursue either civil or criminal penalties, Spitzer could refuse to tell suspects which one he
was seeking. Spitzer's willingness to wield the considerable powers permitted by the Martin
Act turned the New York AG's office from a backwater into a rainmaker and made the SEC, which
could impose only puny civil penalties, look like a peashooter.
Spitzer used the Martin Act
to drag angry and unwilling corporate executives into his office for questioning. Then he'd
subpoena huge company files.
Dedicated staff combed through them and, almost inevitably,
found a smoking gun: secretive after-hours trading between mutual funds and hedge funds;
alleged bid rigging at Marsh; and emails from Wall Street analyst Jack Grubman bragging to
his mistress about how he'd recommended a shoddy company in a three-way deal to help his
boss, Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill, humiliate a corporate foe.
Spitzer would then wave "the
bloody shirt," as journalist Roger Donway puts it, in front of the cameras, show off the
worst offenses he had uncovered and use them to tar and feather an entire industry."
An honest politician is a biological phantasm, such as minotaurs. Wish as much as you
might, you cannot will either minotaurs or honest politicians into being. Alas, I must
include Tulsi into that concept (though she is certainly the best of the bunch).
We've had honest politicians before. They're not chaemeras, but they are rare.
Many, such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, were Republican. And the most honest
of Democratic Presidents, also named Roosevelt, was as honest as he was in large part because
he admired and emulated his kinsman Theodore.
They can be cultured. But the first step in culturing them is for We The People as a
whole to completely quarantine themselves from ever voting for bullshit. Give the likes of
Tulsi Gabbard an opportunity to stay honest, and she will. But she needs that opportunity. Can
we give it to her?
I my early days, before I really indulged in the swamp, known as politics, my thoughts
were identical to yours.
Presumably, everyone wants a composed, well spoken president, one that can conduct him
or herself with a trace of grace, some modicum of decorum, one who won't embarrass us
every time they speak or try to close an umbrella. Being nice looking also matters since
we have to look at this person a great deal more than we really want. A good smile, nice
teeth, real hair; all of that matters – to some extent. Just not all that much. An
attractive appearance and a suave command of the language actually guarantees very
little. If anything such characteristics have the potential to conceal deep flaws and
questionable actions and policies. Glib good-looking people get away with a lot of
crap.
A perfect exemplar of good teeth, glib words and a smile is Bubba, known as Mr. HRC
these days. What a walking piece of excrement.
I propose a biological comparison of looking for Mr. Goodbar president. This
is the process of birth. Despite genetics, we all to some degree get molded by the
transpelvic experience of our own births. The only exception is Caesarean section, which
involves a vicious intact on mother's anatomy. Can one exit unscathed from such a
beginning. Do all who aspire to speak for others always have at least some degree of
self-aggrandizement? Not necessarily money, but always power over others. It takes enormous
self-belief to imagine any individual capable of making life/death decisions for millions
with adopting the associated power that comes from so doing.
My faith in man/woman is reinforced by such as Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.
Disregarding for the moment their mutual imprisonment, neither of those would be interested
in holding political office.
An honest politician is a biological phantasm, such as minotaurs. Wish as much as you
might, you cannot will either minotaurs or honest politicians into being. Alas, I must
include Tulsi into that concept (though she is certainly the best of the bunch).
up 11 users have voted. --
"I say enough! If Israel wants to be the only superpower in the Middle East then they can
put their own asses on the line and do it themselves. I want to continue to eat." -- snoopydawg
@thanatokephaloides
that was easy. I'm not sure the word honest would be among the first descriptives about FDR.
Skillful politician, successful president, flexible attitude, good intelligence, concern for
his country's less well off come to mind. I wouldn't apply "honest" to Pearl Harbor or FDR's
seeming unconcern about the Jews of Europe.
Honest also isn't sufficient. Jimmy Carter was one of the most honest presidents. He too
was intelligent, so even that isn't enough. What FDR was very good at was applying his
personal abilities and the media tools of the time to sell the people on his programs. He was
also skillful at keeping his awkward Dem coalition together. Honest Jimmy not so good in
either category.
An honest politician is a biological phantasm, such as minotaurs. Wish as much as
you might, you cannot will either minotaurs or honest politicians into being. Alas, I
must include Tulsi into that concept (though she is certainly the best of the
bunch).
We've had honest politicians before. They're not chaemeras, but they are rare.
Many, such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, were Republican. And the most
honest of Democratic Presidents, also named Roosevelt, was as honest as he was in large
part because he admired and emulated his kinsman Theodore.
They can be cultured. But the first step in culturing them is for We The People
as a whole to completely quarantine themselves from ever voting for bullshit. Give the
likes of Tulsi Gabbard an opportunity to stay honest, and she will. But she needs that
opportunity. Can we give it to her?
@wokkamile
Jimmy Carter, I think his actions in Afghanistan supported the growth of terrorism, and his
efforts to deregulate led to the monopolies we're stuck with now.
#3.2 that was easy. I'm
not sure the word honest would be among the first descriptives about FDR. Skillful
politician, successful president, flexible attitude, good intelligence, concern for his
country's less well off come to mind. I wouldn't apply "honest" to Pearl Harbor or FDR's
seeming unconcern about the Jews of Europe.
Honest also isn't sufficient. Jimmy Carter was one of the most honest presidents. He
too was intelligent, so even that isn't enough. What FDR was very good at was applying
his personal abilities and the media tools of the time to sell the people on his
programs. He was also skillful at keeping his awkward Dem coalition together. Honest
Jimmy not so good in either category.
#3.2.1 Jimmy Carter, I
think his actions in Afghanistan supported the growth of terrorism, and his efforts to
deregulate led to the monopolies we're stuck with now.
@thanatokephaloides
make the case that lincoln was honest. his speeches were carefully tailored to his particular
audiences. he said so many contradictory things that we'll never know for certain what he
thought about slavery and racial equality.
See the original post video in Twitter (deleted here). It's very short (15 sec). Somewhere deep in her black heart she must know she's lying to excuse her humiliating
loss
"The Russians
did it" is Neoliberal insistence that there's absolutely no reason to support anyone to the
left of a not-as-crass neocon. A "fair election" will suffice in 2020.
Maybe not rig the primary by using superdelegates to override the wishes of the voters.
Not decide it's your time & you deserve a coronation & a crown. Not be so arrogant to
think you didn't need to campaign in important states & take responsibility that YOU
screwed it up.
Senator Elizabeth Warren's Q&A at the March 7, 2013 Banking Committee hearing entitled
"Patterns of Abuse: Assessing Bank Secrecy Act Compliance and Enforcement." Witnesses were:
David Cohen, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, United States Department
of the Treasury; Thomas Curry, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and
Jerome H. Powell, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
HSBC has a long history dealing in illicit, immoral drugs. In fact, the bank was
established to facilitate such. "After the British established Hong Kong as a colony in the
aftermath of the First Opium War, local merchants felt the need for a bank to finance the
growing trade between China and Europe (with traded products including opium). They
established the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company Limited in Hong Kong (March 1865) and
Shanghai (one month later)." ~ Wikipedia Another good source is the book "Dope, Inc." RESIST
!!!
Obviously nobody wants to take responsibilities. They would not even consider what is
morally wrong or acceptable. These are the people we pay salaries to protect us, 316 million
Americans? So we still pay a hefty salary to Senator Powell and David Cohn in Treasury
department? Are these people in cahoots with those who laundered money at J P Morgan ? Do
they make money from both sides? Peel off the tax payers and get bribes from the banks which
launder the money ? I assume this is just a game. Banksters on Wall Street who suck our blood
are still outside on the prowl. They did it in 2008 and are looking for the next move
soon.
What gets me is these banks are part of the illicit drug trade with no chance of jail
time, but if one of the peasants gets busted with a single joint.Prosecution,jail, fines, you
name it, it's throw the book time.We need more people like Warren in government.
Elizabeth Warren may have smart policies. But Bernie Sanders has mass politics.
Last week I wrote
an article
praising Elizabeth Warren for advancing the student debt conversation. While I think her proposal falls short of what we
deserve -- a full-on student debt jubilee, no means-testing or exceptions -- I'm impressed by how seriously it takes the
problem of student debt, leaving Obama-style "refinancing" behind in favor of large-scale debt forgiveness, commensurate
with the gravity of the crisis.
The student debt proposal was one of many recent plans released by Warren in recent
months, ramping up in the last few weeks. Some are better than others. Her
Ultra-Millionaire Tax
is a winner, as is her
Real
Corporate Profits Tax
. Warren's universal childcare plan is promising overall, though it retains
unnecessary
fees
for users. Her
affordable
housing plan
is one-sidedly market-based: its central proposal is to incentivize local governments to remove zoning
restrictions. That needs to be complemented by heavy investments in social housing, a policy
recently
floated
by the People's Policy Project.
But criticisms aside, Warren's proposals trend in a
positive direction. At the very least, they demonstrate a willingness to tackle working people's real problems
with debt, housing, health, and childcare. If they were to materialize, many of these proposals would
significantly improve life for working people -- maybe not as much as we'd like, but enough to be considered a
positive development, especially after decades of Democratic disinterest in policies that threaten corporate
profits or meaningfully redistribute wealth.
So it's understandable why many on the Left have reacted to
Warren's policy blitz with delight. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The proposals she's pumping out are
exciting, but more to the point, they are a strategy for raising her campaign's profile.
It's not standard in presidential politics to bust out
of the gate with a constant stream of detailed policy ideas. The other candidates aren't
behind
on
releasing policy proposals -- Warren is way ahead, doing something unusual. Bernie Sanders doesn't even have
his policy team fully assembled yet, nor do the others. We need to ask why Warren feels compelled to adopt
this early traction-gaining strategy to begin with.
In my view, Warren's policy blitz is a bid to
distinguish herself in light of her difficulty thus far in cohering an organic base. Put bluntly, Warren is
turning her campaign into a policy factory because she's had trouble inspiring people with a broad-strokes
political vision the way her closest ideological competitor, Bernie Sanders, has.
This strategy may work to boost her campaign prospects, but it's a bad omen for any presidential
administration seriously committed to taking on the ruling elite. If you can't impart to millions of working
people the sense that they are carrying out a historic mission during your campaign -- a "
political
revolution
" driven by "
Not
Me, Us
" -- you won't be able to mobilize them to exert pressure on the state to challenge the interests
of capital when it really counts, during your presidency.
Part of Warren's trouble in the area of mass politics can be traced to the fact that she's neither an
establishment plaything nor an opponent of capitalism. To her credit, Warren won't take corporate money (at
least
during the primary
), and she evades the regular donor circuit. That means that to make her campaign
viable, she needs masses of ordinary people to believe in her project strongly enough to donate their own
hard-earned money to her campaign. Unlike Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, or certainly Joe
Biden, she can't
paper
over
her lackluster popular support with fat checks from elites.
So far, those masses have failed to materialize. That's largely because Warren's temperate political
ideology makes it hard for her to say the things necessary to get their attention. She's great at diagnosing
the worst problems of capitalism and has plans to address them, but her rhetoric doesn't polarize along
class lines. She therefore struggles to define her constituency and identify who exactly that constituency
is up against.
Warren hates egregious inequality, but
fundamentally believes
in the superior rationality of markets. She has unwavering faith in capitalism,
calling herself
"a capitalist to my bones" -- her primary concern is that it has been led astray. At a
time when socialism is
becoming synonymous
with efforts to put people over profit, Warren disavows it. When Donald Trump
declared that "America will never be a socialist country" a couple of months ago, Sanders stayed slouched in
his chair, while Warren
rose to
her feet
in applause.
This means that while Warren knows down to the last detail what she'd like better regulations to look
like, she's not quite solid on the antagonists and protagonists, i.e. which broader social forces need to be
arranged against which other forces to make change.
Sanders's vision of social conflict is quite clear, and is summed up by the name of his
town hall
last year:
CEOs vs. Workers. To make favorable policy materialize and to protect it from reversal, the forces of
workers need to be arranged against the forces of CEOs. Nearly everything Sanders says and does leads back
to this core belief in the power of ordinary working people to take on capitalist elites themselves. As he
puts it
, "Real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on
up."
In Warren's case, where oppositional rhetoric appears at all, the contest more often comes across as
"Smart Progressive Policymakers vs. Bad Rules." Not only is there no room in that rivalry for ordinary
people, but the enemy is also faceless. The enemy is incorrect policy, and it must be corrected by expert
policy correctors. Elect Warren, on the basis of her demonstrated expertise, and she will deftly set about
changing the rules so that capitalism doesn't produce so many awful externalities.
Sanders may as well have been winking at Warren when he said, in a
video
screened recently to thousands of self-organized groups of Bernie supporters in every congressional
district:
No president, not the best intentioned, not the most honest person in the world, no one person can do
it alone. Now why is that? Because this is what is not talked about in the media, not talked about in
Congress: the power structure of America is such that a small number of wealthy individuals and large
corporate entities have so much influence over the economic and political life of this country that no
one person can do it.
You think we're gonna pass Medicare for All tomorrow because the president of the United States says
that's what we should do? You think we're gonna take on the fossil fuel industry and effectively and
aggressively combat climate change change because the president of the United States thinks we should do
that? A lot of presidents say, "Gee I have a great idea. I woke up yesterday and I think health care
for all's a good idea." That's not the way it happens. It happens when millions of people stand up and
demand it.
It's unsurprising that Bernie's broad vision of social conflict is more inspiring than Warren's. After
decades of skyrocketing living costs and stagnating wages, many working people are spoiling for a fight.
That nascent fighting spirit can be seen in the popular protest movements that began in 2011, the
unprecedented popularity of Sanders's dark-horse candidacy in 2016, and the teachers strike wave that kicked
off last year.
Unencumbered by an awkward mixture of admiration for capitalism and disapproval of its ugliest excesses,
Bernie Sanders is uniquely capable of picking that fight -- and making ordinary working people feel like
they're at the center of it, that it's theirs to win.
It's the trouble Warren has had breaking through in this way that explains why she has turned to cranking
out hyper-detailed proposals. She's making up with wonkery what she lacks in big-picture political clarity.
In the process, she's successfully grabbing headlines and winning the hearts of left technocrats with
prominent platforms. That might translate into some boost in popular support. But it's not obvious that such
support will ever rival that of a
candidate who tells workers
, "This is class warfare, and we're going to stand up and fight."
We are right to admire many of the ideas coming out of the Warren campaign. Best-case scenario, they will
spur a progressive policy arms race, which would be to the benefit of all.
But we shouldn't see her policy blitz purely as a sign of strength. It may actually be an SOS message, a
panicked response to her campaign's shortcomings in the field of mass politics. And of course, mass politics
are necessary for creating durable and militant constituencies that can
self-organize
outside the state, which is in turn necessary to win and preserve a progressive policy
agenda against the interests of capitalists -- an agenda that Warren and Sanders largely share.
Warren's policy blitz strategy may pay off in the short term. But in the long term, there's no substitute
for naming the sides, picking a side, and building up your side to fight the other side. And that's Bernie's
game.
She rips the Obama White House for its allegiance to Citibank. But she does nto understadn that the problem is not with
Citibank, but with the neoliberalism as the social system. Sad...
Democrats and Republicans are just two sides of the same coin as for neoliberalism. Which presuppose protecting banks, like
Citigroup, and other big corporations. The USA political system is not a Democracy, we have become an Oligarchy with a two Party
twist (Poliarchy) in whihc ordinary voters are just statists who have No voice for anyone except approving one of the two
preselected by big money candidates. It's time we put a stop to this nonsense or we'll all go down with ship.
Anyway, on a positive note
"Each time a person stands up for an ideal to improve the lot of others, they send forth a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistence." RFK
This budget deal is absolutely disgusting. More financial deregulation, the potential for
a second TARP, cuts to pensions, and cuts to funding for Pell Grants to help out students.
Once again, the people lose.
So tough, so strong, and so right. And I love that she's not afraid to rip into Democrats
and the White House for their complicity in selling out our country and tax dollars to the
big banks. We need more strong politicians on both sides of the aisle like this.
It's not party specific, though the Republicans are the worst. Both parties are to be
blame. The biggest blame goes to the Americans who do not vote and those who have no clue who
or what they are voting for. The government is the way it is, it's because of the attitude of
Americans towards politics. Majority do not give a shit and hence you have that pile up in
Washington and states legislature.
Elizabeth Warren is like a fictional do gooder character from Hollywood. No one take her
seriously.
Blame all the politicians you want, you Americans voting or not voting are the lousiest
employers in the world, because you hire a bunch of corruptors into your government. These
corruptors in fact control your lives.
They abuse your money, spending every penny on everything but on you. You would not hand
over your wallet or bank accounts to a strangers, yet are precisely doing that by putting
these corruptors in the government.
This speech encapsulates and exposes all that is wrong with America in general and with
our governance in particular. Taking the heinous provision out of the bill would be a great
first baby step toward cleaning up our politics, economy and collective spirit as a nation.
All the "smart money" says that Warren is engaged in a Quixotic attempt to do something good
in a system that is irredeemably corrupted by money and the lust for power. The cynics may be
right, perhaps America is doomed to be consumed by the parasites to the last drop of
blood...but maybe not. Maybe this ugly indefensibly corrupt malevolent move to put the
taxpayers back on the hook for the next trillion dollar bail out theft will be sufficient to
wake up hundreds of millions of us. When the people wake up and turn on the lights, the
crooks and the legally corrupt will slither away back into their hole...and many may just
wind up in prison, where they belong. But so long as corrupt dirty dastardly interests can
keepAmerica deceived and asleep, they will continue to drain our nation's life's blood dry.
Please share this video widely. If half as many folks watch this speech as watched the Miley
Cyrus "Wrecking Ball" YouTube, the provision to which Warren is objecting will be taken out
very quickly indeed.
As George Carlin said a decade ago,who are we going to replace these politicians with?
They did not fall out of the sky or come from a distant planet. They are US. You can vote all
you want and replace every last one of them but nothing will change. It is human nature.
Besides the road from being on the local town council, to the mayor,Gov then into the Capital
is littered with test to weed out anyone who might really pose a danger to the system. The
occasional odd one that does make it to power is castrated or there simply to give the
illusion that elections matter. Unless you can eliminate the attraction of greed,ego and
power nothing will ever change. Just a quick look back at history tells you what is happening
now and what will be going on in our future. The only difference is there are more zeros.
"... Although the causal relationships are difficult to untangle, there are solid grounds for believing that the rise in monopoly power has played a role in exacerbating income inequality, weakening workers' bargaining power, and slowing the rate of innovation. ..."
"... The debate about how to regulate the sector is eerily reminiscent of the debate over financial regulation in the early 2000s. Proponents of a light regulatory touch argued that finance was too complicated for regulators to keep up with innovation, and that derivatives trading allows banks to make wholesale changes to their risk profile in the blink of an eye. And the financial industry put its money where its mouth was, paying salaries so much higher than those in the public sector that any research assistant the Federal Reserve System trained to work on financial issues would be enticed with offers exceeding what their boss's boss was earning. ..."
"... It is a problem that cannot be overcome without addressing fundamental questions about the role of the state, privacy, and how US firms can compete globally against China, where the government is using domestic tech companies to collect data on its citizens at an exponential pace. And yet many would prefer to avoid them. ..."
"... At this point, ideas for regulating Big Tech are just sketches, and of course more serious analysis is warranted. An open, informed discussion that is not squelched by lobbying dollars is a national imperative. ..."
The debate about how to regulate
the tech sector is eerily reminiscent of the debate over financial regulation in the early 2000s. Fortunately, one US politician
has mustered the courage to call for a total rethink of America's exceptionally permissive merger and acquisition policy over the
past four decades.
CAMBRIDGE – Displaying a degree of courage and clarity that is difficult to overstate, US senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth
Warren has taken on Big Tech, including Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Warren's proposals amount to a
total rethink of the
United States' exceptionally permissive merger and acquisition policy over the past four decades. Indeed, Big Tech is only the poster
child for a significant increase
in monopoly and oligopoly power across a broad swath of the American economy. Although the best approach is still far from clear,
I
could not agree more that something needs to done, especially when it comes to Big Tech's ability to buy out potential competitors
and use their platform dominance to move into other lines of business.
Warren is courageous because Big Tech is big money for most leading Democratic candidates, particularly progressives, for whom
California is a veritable campaign-financing ATM. And although one can certainly object, Warren is not alone in thinking that the
tech giants have gained excessive market dominance; in fact, it is one of the few issues in Washington on which there is some semblance
of agreement . Other
candidates, most notably Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have also taken
principled stands
Although the causal relationships are difficult to untangle, there are solid grounds for believing that the rise in monopoly power
has
played a role in exacerbating income inequality, weakening workers' bargaining power, and slowing the rate of innovation. And,
perhaps outside of China, it is a global problem, because US tech monopolies have often achieved market dominance before local regulators
and politicians know what has happened. The European Union, in particular, has been trying to steer its own course on
technology regulation . Recently,
the United Kingdom commissioned an expert group, chaired by former President Barack Obama's chief economist (and now my colleague)
Jason Furman , that produced a
very useful report on approaches to the tech sector.
The debate about how to regulate the sector is eerily reminiscent of the debate over financial regulation in the early 2000s.
Proponents of a light regulatory touch argued that finance was too complicated for regulators to keep up with innovation, and that
derivatives trading allows banks to make wholesale changes to their risk profile in the blink of an eye. And the financial industry
put its money where its mouth was, paying salaries so much higher than those in the public sector that any research assistant the
Federal Reserve System trained to work on financial issues would be enticed with offers exceeding what their boss's boss was earning.
There will be similar problems staffing tech regulatory offices and antitrust legal divisions if the push for tighter regulation
gains traction. To succeed, political leaders need to be focused and determined, and not easily bought. One only has to recall the
2008 financial crisis and its painful aftermath to comprehend what can happen when a sector becomes too politically influential.
And the US and world economy are, if anything, even more vulnerable to Big Tech than to the financial sector, owing both to cyber
aggression and vulnerabilities in social media that can pervert political debate.
Another parallel with the financial sector is the outsize role of US regulators. As with US foreign policy, when they sneeze,
the entire world can catch a cold. The 2008 financial crisis was sparked by vulnerabilities in the US and the United Kingdom, but
quickly went global. A US-based cyber crisis could easily do the same. This creates an "externality," or global commons problem,
because US regulators allow risks to build up in the system without adequately considering international implications.
It is a problem that cannot be overcome without addressing fundamental questions about the role of the state, privacy, and how
US firms can compete globally against China, where the government is using domestic tech companies to collect data on its citizens
at an exponential pace. And yet many would prefer to avoid them.
That's why there has been
fierce pushback against Warren for daring to suggest that even if many services seem to be provided for free, there might still
be something wrong. There was the same kind of pushback from the financial sector fifteen years ago, and from the railroads back
in the late 1800s. Writing in the March 1881 issue of The Atlantic , the progressive activist Henry Demarest Lloyd
warned that,
"Our treatment of 'the railroad problem' will show the quality and caliber of our political sense. It will go far in foreshadowing
the future lines of our social and political growth. It may indicate whether the American democracy, like all the democratic experiments
which have preceded it, is to become extinct because the people had not wit enough or virtue enough to make the common good supreme."
Lloyd's words still ring true today. At this point, ideas for regulating Big Tech are just sketches, and of course more serious
analysis is warranted. An open, informed discussion that is not squelched by lobbying dollars is a national imperative.
The debate
that Warren has joined is not about whether to establish socialism. It is about making capitalist competition fairer and, ultimately,
stronger.
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University
and recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund
from 2001 to 2003. The co-author of This Time is Different:
Eight Centuries of Financial Folly , his new book, The Curse of Cash , was released in August 2016.
"... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
"... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
"... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
"... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
"... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
"... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
"... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
"... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
"... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
"... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
"... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
"... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
"... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
"... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
"... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
"... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
"... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019
20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf
The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in
U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having
"conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain
that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States,
including to this day, will be exposed.
The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix
the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth,
along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all
that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental
stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.
"It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller
report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named
Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."
The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained
variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians.
It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely
wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth,
or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like
Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love
truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.
Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard
Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several
years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper
policy motivation: why it was done.
A New Cultural Paradigm
The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United
States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future
will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical
economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization
of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.
The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a
proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to
resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:
"I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically
advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the
working level are great."
There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects
for world peace, stated:
"Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is
ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come
together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."
This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the
Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.
It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial
forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work
with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have
repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger
of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.
The Truth Set Free
President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office,
Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of
America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American
people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again
to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and
Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth,
and the truth would set them free.
The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican
forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street,
or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection
against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase
the American Declaration of Independence,
"The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
DOCUMENTATION
While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed
two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military
Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the
July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet
Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed
to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian
interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.
The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence
exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence
networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here
can be found on our website.
The Russian Hack That Wasn't
The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that
the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak,
rather than a hack conducted
over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency,
becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted
an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0,
who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics
of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports
the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained
from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department
all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James
Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.
Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's
alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved
a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook
ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every
day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a
stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation
that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.
The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the
claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab
(DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid
warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is
a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.
The British Target Trump
According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump
and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence
leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head
of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence,
the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming
widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing
to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's
direction.
This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British
soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple
connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in
the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly
resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage
control.
Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence
network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent
way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum.
Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support
for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation
throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.
In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian
state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine.
Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.
In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier
which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend"
of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which
would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at
Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of
bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from
the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department
intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence
and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.
A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations,
and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative
is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation
campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western
Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.
Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier.
They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare
On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst.
He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific
enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must
also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was
for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not
have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy
tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy
company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes
and misdemeanors.
Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda
stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to
various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes
Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the
friend were having coffee.
The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former
senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is
no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.
Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State
Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign
into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve
as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of
the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader
at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the
matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense
received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.
As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against
Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the
National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of
them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role
in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This
went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.
Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there
to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda,
against Russia.
The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications
Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department.
Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly,
in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.
This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the
attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That
is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with
ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.
"in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"
Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.
David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14
"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some
sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated
assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."
Absolutely correct.
Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University,
my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent
that dark "art".
Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University –
his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his
CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why
the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.
CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15
Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.
There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since
she could be bought. Trump can't.
What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained
that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.
Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes
did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.
Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly
as possible.
So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through
which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.
The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.
They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which
again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.
In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they
needed to try and hide what really happened.
So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.
'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.
Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah
Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.
The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.
1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.
2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.
Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with
the elections. NONE.
They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.
So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion,
Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..
Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?
Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.
There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.
That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!
So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?
He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.
The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.
His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.
Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.
They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.
The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.
It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.
The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
"Russia'.
So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?
A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.
And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)
B: Russians hacked the DNC.
That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.
Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.
It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the
Presidency.
That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!
In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.
That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.
Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump
Campaign'.
Let's go a bit deeper still.
Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?
After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.
If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP
the real crime', what would happen?
They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately
proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.
They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all
THEY were the criminals.
They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.
That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all
that.
They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created
LIE.
That LIE = the Insurance Policy.
What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.
Although true, that is only A.
They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying
on him!
The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.
What's the punishment for Treason?
About Assange and Seth Rich.
Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep
State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.
Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.
If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.
No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.
Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is
that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the
overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not
have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.
Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.
boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13
RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
:::
Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
JUL 30, 2007
I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:
O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman
was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed,
O'Neal said
In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the
Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about
nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:
News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code
in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned
publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.
If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring
to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack
the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.
Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as
snipers, too.
If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible
for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman
was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire
until the family forced them to do otherwise.
This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused
jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that
might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt
admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:
As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself,
but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like,
'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'
(Maybe the Congress can )
////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the
world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force
/ and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.
\\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life"
they've been alleged/assigned.
/// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
(WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???
!!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????
AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover
Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.
"Capitalism and Altruism
are incompatible
capitalism and altruism
cannot coexist in man,
or in the same society".
President Trump represents
Stark & Total Capitalism
Just as "Conservative Party"
Core is in The Confederacy
AKA; The RIGHT WING
The Right Wing of US Gov't
Is All About PRESERVING
Confederate States' Laws
Written by Thomas Jefferson
Prior to The Constitution, which
became the Received/Judicial
Constitutional Law of the Land in
The Republic of the "United States"
It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions
and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them
down? They get weapons and start killing people.
There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit.
Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation".
Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now
making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.
The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting
rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters,
the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive
policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying
theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."
In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because
Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton
campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they
disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.
Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14
Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into
where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on
in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner
Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38
Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did
you know:
1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is
owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just
supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the
campaign.
-daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.
Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36
The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.
It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping
into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place
with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications
turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.
War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.
The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the
truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory
truth effect will include this truth.
Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00
>>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."
The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that
they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.
Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?
Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55
That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about
the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony
Blair are lyers and mass murderers.
All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have
been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned
upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.
Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21
I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out
JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John
Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be
a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.
MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Mark Steiner. Great to have you all with
us. Senator Elizabeth Warren is attempting to make waves with her bold pronouncements during
her bid for this presidency. She's introduced two bills into the Senate. The first is called
the Corporate Executive Accountability Act, which will hold corporate executives of
million-dollar corporations criminally liable for negligence with potential prison time. The
other is called The Too Big to Jail Act, creating a corporate crime strike force. In the wake
of the 2008 meltdown, where there were no criminal prosecutions of note despite ruining
millions of lives in our country, it's led to a roiling discontent in America. Why has it been
so difficult to prosecute bankers and corporate leaders and executives in our country? Why has
the government been so reluctant to do so? And in the unlikely circumstance that Warren's bills
will get passed in the Senate, what would be the result and complications if they did? Joining
us once again to sort through all of this is a man who knows a thing or two about white-collar
crime. Bill Black -- Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of
Missouri-Kansas City, white- collar criminologist, former financial regulator, the author of
the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One, and a regular contributor here at The Real
News. Bill, welcome back. Good to have you with us. Thank you. So this has obviously been
building since 2008. People have been wanting some answer, but I think most folks don't know
really what that means. I've been reading a lot of pieces that are pro and con about what
Elizabeth Warren is suggesting. Let's go through what she's suggesting and get your initial
read and analysis of that.
BILL BLACK Okay. So as you said, there are two different acts. She just rolled one of them
out a couple of days ago and they fit together. One is addressed more directly to the financial
crisis and the other one is prompted by the financial crisis, but broader than it. That second
one would propose to change the requirement to get a guilty verdict to a demonstration of
negligence on the part of officers when they commit the really serious crimes. The other act
would basically provide more resources to go after elite, white-collar criminals.
MARC STEINER In the New York Times, there was a quote from Lanny Breuer who is a Justice
Department, Criminal Division official former head. He said on Frontline, "when we can't prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a criminal intent, then we have a constitutional duty
not to bring those cases." And Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate committee that some
banks would become "too big," that prosecuting them would have negatively affected the economy.
In other words, they've become too big to jail. And then, in Britain there it was said that if
you start prosecuting these people, then it threatens the very foundations of the free
enterprise system. So Bill, what's the problem here?
BILL BLACK So the problem is the people at the top in both the United States and the United
Kingdom. For example, Prime Minister Blair complained at a time when the Financial Supervisory
Authority -- which is referred to over there as the Fundamentally Supine Authority [laughter]
-- was absolutely not regulating anything, that it was outrageous overregulation, and how dare
they treat bankers as potential criminals. We have the combination of Breuer and Holder where
the only issue is, which of them was more moronic on this subject, and it was a dead tie.
MARC STEINER So tell me why do you use the word "moronic?"
BILL BLACK Because it's a family show.
MARC STEINER [laughter]
BILL BLACK So seriously, to go through these things, let's recall that in much more
difficult cases in the savings and loan debacle, we oriented the prosecutions entirely towards
the most elite defendants. And here's the first thing: There is never a problem to the
financial system from prosecuting individual criminals. It is not good for a financial system
to be run by criminals. You strengthen the financial system when you convict and remove
criminals from running the largest bank. [laugher]
MARC STEINER Let me just ask you a question about that. But is the nature of the competition
among banks and the competition to make as much money as humanly possible -- like the scandal
that happened in 2008 that tanked our economy for a while and put millions of people into huge
financial jeopardy -- that seems to me to be the daily workings of those institutions. And the
issue
BILL BLACK No, no.
MARC STEINER Go ahead. Tell me why you say no.
BILL BLACK Banks don't do anything.
MARC STEINER The people in them do, though.
BILL BLACK The bankers do things and bankers shape the institutions, so institutions matter
enormously. And that's the first big thing in a critique of Senator Warren. If anybody is close
to Senator Warren, please send her this link. [laughter] We can really help. She's got exactly
the right ideas, but she isn't an expert in criminology. She wasn't part of the efforts to
prosecute folks successfully that I'm about to describe. We can really, really help her be
effective and we're willing to help any candidate be effective on these issues. Two enormous
institutional changes have made the world vastly more criminogenic. Those changes are: we got
rid of true partnerships where you had joint and several liability. Therefore, it really paid
to make sure that you didn't make a partner, someone who was super sleazy, because then they
could sue you -- not them, not the sleazy partner, but you and it was absolutely no defense
that you had nothing to do with it. Your entire net worth could be taken. That's what a true
partnership was. We got rid of true partnerships throughout the financial world. The second
thing is modern executive compensation. Modern executive compensation not only creates the
incentives to defraud, because you can be made wealthy. It provides the means to defraud. This
allows you to convert corporate assets to your own personal wealth in a way that has very
little risk of prosecution and it allowed you to suborn the controls but also [allowed] the
lower officers and employees to actually commit the fraudulent acts, which are usually
accounting for you in a way that you'd have plausible deniability. We can change both and we
must change both of those incredibly perverse incentives if we want to deal with fraud
successfully. So that's the missing part of her plan and I think she would agree with
everything I've said. Now we have a detailed plan -- we being the bank whistleblowers united --
that we put out two years ago in the election, two and a half years ago. We'll put this on the
website, or at least the links to it for folks who want to know the kind of institutional steps
you need to start changing this. But even with what I've said about this much more criminogenic
environment, it remains true that we could have prosecuted successfully elite officers and
every one of the major participants that committed these frauds. Indeed in many ways it would
have been easier than during the savings and loan debacle, because unlike the savings and loan
debacle, we have superb whistleblowers -- literally hundreds of whistleblowers who can say
explicitly that these frauds occurred. And then we do it the old-fashioned way. That would give
us the ability to prosecute midlevel officials and we can take it up the food chain by flipping
them so that they give us information on the more senior folks. In some cases, our
whistleblowers were right there in the C-suite and that would have included for example, a dead
to rights prosecution against Robert Rubin. That's as senior as you can get at city, a dead to
right prosecution of Mozilo at Countrywide. And we have other institutions like Wells Fargo
where the following happened, so it's easy to look at liar's loans. Liar's loans again had a
fraud incidence of 90 percent -- nine-zero. So the only entities doing liar's loans as a
significant product are fraudulent. Similarly, if they're doing appraisal fraud, extorting
appraisers to inflate appraisals, that only occurs at fraudulent shops. So Wells actually
checked and it's easy to check and that's an important point. The fact that the Department of
Justice never did this, and the banking agencies never did this, is a demonstration that they
didn't want to actually conduct investigations. Here's how you check: so in a liar's loan, you
don't verify the borrower's income, but the borrower signs at the same time a permission that
says you can check this against my I.R.S. forms. And here's a hint: none of us deliberately
inflate our income on our income tax returns because we'd have to pay more taxes. [laughter] So
in the case of both Countrywide and Wells Fargo, we know that senior management who was given
the results said, these kinds of loans, liar's loans, are majority frauds. And we know that
senior management in both cases said, you know what we should do? Many, many more of those.
That is a great criminal case. At J.P. Morgan, we have a great criminal case.
MARC STEINER Let me just interrupt you for a second, Bill. I want people to understand this
because everything you're reading in the press right now, almost every article, whether they
seem to like what Elizabeth Warren is suggesting, or oppose it, have questions about it. Almost
everybody to a person I've read has said, it's almost impossible to prosecute these cases. We
don't have a law to do it, that prosecuting somebody for, as she's suggesting, for negligence
would not get the job done even if her bill ever passed. And so, talk a bit about that though.
I'm very curious since clearly, you're going against the common wisdom that most people would
have and anything they read -- whether it's The New York Times or anywhere else -- that we
don't have the laws to make prosecutions work, which is one of the reasons why we're not
prosecuting people.
BILL BLACK Okay so everybody you've read, has never been involved in these successful
prosecutions.
MARC STEINER No, but if they're journalists and they've studied it, they should know what
they're talking about.
BILL BLACK Seriously? [laughter]
MARC STEINER You would think, right? Well I would hope so. Anyway, but go ahead.
[laughter].
BILL BLACK No, I would not think so. I don't think that at all because otherwise, they would
have talked to people like us who actually did it. So let's go back. Under the same laws in the
savings and loan debacle, we were able to hyper-prioritized prosecutions against the most elite
folks. So we're going after folks in the C-Suite -- the C.E.O.s, the chief operating officers,
the boards of directors, and such. We got over a thousand convictions in these cases, just the
ones designated as major. We did over 600 prosecutions of the most elite of the elite, against
the best criminal defense lawyers in the world with the same laws, and we got over a ninety
percent conviction rate. So can it be done? Of course it can be done. We've shown that it can
be done. Maybe our cases were just simple because it was just savings and loans and these are
big banks. Actually, the prosecutions in many of these cases were easier. The loans in the
savings and loan debacle, were actually much more complicated than home loans. They were
commercial construction loans, $80-90 million dollars at-a-pop often. That's far more complex
to explain to a jury, than a home loan and something as easy as a liar's loan and extorting an
appraiser. In addition, there are massively more whistleblowers. I cannot remember the name of
a significant whistleblower in the savings and loan debacle that was critical to prosecutions.
I'm sure there were a couple, but again we have literally hundreds of whistleblowers who came
forward in this crisis. This crisis occurred because first the Bush administration and then the
Obama administration, were unwilling to investigate, unwilling to prosecute. And here's again
the key. There are about two F.B.I. white-collar specialists per industry in the United States
-- not per firm, per industry. So that means they don't have expertise in individual industries
and they don't walk a beat, or they'd never find it. They only come when there's a criminal
referral. Our agency, our much tinier agency back in the savings and loan debacle, made over
thirty thousand criminal referrals. All of the federal banking regulatory agencies, much bigger
in the great financial crisis, made fewer than a dozen criminal referrals, 30,000 to under a
dozen. That means that the banking regulatory agencies basically ceased functioning in terms of
criminal referrals. And why? That's the third big change and the third big change is
ideological. What you saw is, both under the Republicans and under Bill Clinton -- the
Democratic Party, the due Democrats, the Wall Street wing of the party -- they were simply
unwilling to even think of bankers as criminals. I got out of the regulatory ranks when under
Bill Clinton we were ordered, and I witnessed personally, to refer to the industry as our
customers. Not the American people as our customers, the industry as our customers. Well do you
make criminal referrals on your customers?
MARC STEINER So we're here talking to Bill Black and we've been covering some of the history
of this. What we are going to do is we're going to take a break here and come back with another
segment shortly and really probe into what Elizabeth Warren has said she wants to make into
law. Would that make a difference? Does it fall short and it could lead to more prosecutions?
We're going to come back to that. So you want to hit the next segment with Bill Black and Marc
Steiner. Bill, thank you once again for being with The Real News. It's always a pleasure to
have you with us.
BILL BLACK Thank you.
MARC STEINER And I'm Mark Steiner here for The Real News Network. Take care.
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it
now. The investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump
obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not
about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion.
His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his
investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his report, and which
qualifies as an impeachable offense.
... ... ...
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of
his investigation. And, on those terms, it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove
"collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and his Russian
handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his
obstruction of that investigation, not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other
paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on, once an investigation into
his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
Befitting of his status as a former VP and the leader in most national polls, Biden managed
to beat out Bernie Sander's day-one haul of $5.9 million, despite the still-simmering
controversy over 'gropegate' and the backlash over his treatment of Anita Hill, a young black
female lawyer who accused Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Clarence Thomas of sexual
harassment. Hill rejected a personal apology from Biden earlier this week, even as Biden
clarified during an interview on ABC's "the View" that he wasn't apologizing for his personal
behavior, but rather for the treatment she was subjected to during a hearing of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, which he led at the time.
Biden's day-one haul also beat out the $6.1 million raised by Texas Congressman Beto
O'Rourke during his first day, though recent polls show that enthusiasm for O'Rourke among
Democrats has waned as South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg has benefited from a media blitz of
fawning coverage.
After all the manipulated outrage, the electoral choices will most likely still be between
about whom it can essentially be said "meet the old boss, same as the old boss." Underneath
the thin layers of standard rhetorical ******** the same strings connect the puppets to the
puppet masters.
In case anyone is wondering what kind of thug Kolomoisky (Hunter biden's sponsor at
burisma), here is a run down of the murder of Russians in Odessa on 2 May 2014 and
kolomosky's close involvement.
What I read was "Biden is a typical American politician." All the career politicians
depend on big checks from the rich and corporate elites who greatly appreciate their services
rendered. America is pay to play. It has been for a long time.
Looks like she is incompetent beyond her narrow specialty and financial issues. This way she
deprive herself of votes that otherwise belong to her. And what she is trying to achieve ?
President Pence? Come on !
The most aggressive response to the full Mueller report has, naturally, come from the most
liberal wings of the Democratic Party. Last month, I sketched out six chief
Democratic blocs (from most liberal to most moderate): the Super Progressives, the Very
Progressives, the Progressive New Guard, the Progressive Old Guard, the Moderates and
Conservative Democrats. Many of the party's Super Progressives , including U.S. Reps.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York,
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, are already talking about impeachment, as is a key voice in the
party's Very Progressive bloc, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
From a 'decisions under uncertainty' point of view if I were the democrats I would let this go. They should minimize their
maximum regret, however they define it.
An impeachment debate in the House plays to Trump, how can you prosecute Trump his campaign was the target of a Watergate style
spy operation. While a 60 democrat senate is unlikely in the next 30 years.
Impeachment would get the "democrats had the FBI spying on GOP campaign" out from the right wing shock jocks onto C-SPAN.
It could convince the public that the Mueller report is a red herring of phony, non evidence of treason factoids for the crime
of disagreeing with the neocons and not being into a new cold war; that is Trump was not hard enough on Russia.
"... foreign policy scarcely moves the needle in the US electorate at large so that won't necessarily help Trump nor hinder Bernie except on the outer fringes. Americans are tired of endless wars so the Demotards should generally be favoured on this issue whether or not warranted so long as they play their cards right. ..."
"... US Presidential elections definitely turn on the economy. A slowdown or recession before 11/2020 and Trump is toast. Also, the conversation has clearly moved left on economic inequality and healthcare. Bernie owns these issues and to the extent he can make his way through the primaries he will stand a great chance of unseating Trump. ..."
"... Warren does too but as you stated she is not telegenic nor peronable. Her .01% Native American schtick really hurt her credibility. That was a dumb move. ..."
"... Gabbard is certainly telegenic and hasn't been blackballed as much as she is simply not well-known. She's in the field at the moment. Her chances appear more real farther down the road so running now could be seen as a first step in the eventual process. I doubt Bernie will choose her as VP but who knows? ..."
Russiagate will scarcely matter to most voters by election time 2020. Trump has already
received whatever positives he will receive courtesy of Barr's whitewashing. It is clear
among
a majourity of Americans that Trump obstructed justice and the drip drip of continued
information, hearings, etc will not improve his standing. May not hurt him but definitely
will not help him gain voters at the margins.
Likewise, foreign policy scarcely moves the needle in the US electorate at large so that
won't necessarily help Trump nor hinder Bernie except on the outer fringes. Americans are
tired of endless wars so the Demotards should generally be favoured on this issue whether or
not warranted so long as they play their cards right.
Trump may gain an advantage among more conservative-tinged independent voters if he
continues to work in concert with Russia and Israel on Middle East issues in the sense that
many may see these alliances as promoting strength and peace (whether warranted or not). The
coming deal with China on trade will benefit Trump too...as long as the economy keeps humming
along.
US Presidential elections definitely turn on the economy. A slowdown or recession before
11/2020 and Trump is toast. Also, the conversation has clearly moved left on economic
inequality and healthcare. Bernie owns these issues and to the extent he can make his way
through the primaries he will stand a great chance of unseating Trump.
Warren does too but as you stated she is not telegenic nor peronable. Her .01% Native
American schtick really hurt her credibility. That was a dumb move. Are some of her problems
related to gender bias? Without a doubt. However, as I have long said, the first American
female president will not come from the baby boom. The first American female president will
more likely be a millenial.
Gabbard is certainly telegenic and hasn't been blackballed as
much as she is simply not well-known. She's in the field at the moment. Her chances appear
more real farther down the road so running now could be seen as a first step in the eventual
process. I doubt Bernie will choose her as VP but who knows?
"... How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama, FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc? ..."
"... Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the light-of-day by BigLie Media. ..."
Mike Whitney
writes about one aspect of Russiagate that several of us have noted--the use of the FBI
and CIA to meddle in the 2016 campaign in an attempt to aid Clinton--an aspect that blows up
some of the hypotheses floated here. He begins thusly:
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Did the FBI place spies in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Do we know the names of the spies and how they operated?-- Yes
"Were the spies trying to entrap Trump campaign assistants in order to gather information
on Trump?-- Yes
"Did the spies try to elicit information from Trump campaign assistants in order to
justify a wider investigation and more extensive surveillance?-- Yes
"Were the spies placed in the Trump campaign based on improperly obtained FISA warrants?--
Yes
"Did the FBI agents procure these warrants based on false or misleading information?--
Yes
"Could the FBI establish 'probable cause' that Trump had committed a crime or 'colluded'
with Russia?-- No
"So the 'spying' was illegal?-- Yes
"Have many of the people who authorized the spying, already been identified in criminal
referrals presented to the Department of Justice?-- Yes
"Have the media explained the importance of these criminal referrals or the impact that
spying has on free elections?-- No
"Is the DOJ's Inspector General currently investigating whether senior-level agents in the
FBI committed crimes by improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the Trump team?--
Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to give Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the
presidential race?-- Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to gather incriminating information on Trump that
could be used to blackmail, intimidate or impeach him in the future?-- Yes
"Does spying pose a threat to our elections and to our democracy?-- Yes
"Do many people know that there were spies placed in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Have these people effectively used that information to their advantage?-- No
"Have they launched any type of public relations offensive that would draw more attention
to the critical issue of spying on a political campaign?-- No
"Have they saturated the airwaves with the truth about 'spying' the same way their rivals
have spread their disinformation about 'collusion'?-- No" [Emphasis in Original]
That's a little more than half of what Whitney lists that's quite damning as we must
admit. That it's not being discussed anywhere outside of a few social media accounts means
Trump could use the "precedent" set by Obama to do the same in 2020. Shouldn't we be
concerned about that possibility? How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to
win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama,
FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc?
Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive
danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the
light-of-day by BigLie Media. And we can also see why Pelosi and Clinton don't want
Impeachment proceedings to occur as the above information would finally become far more
overt/public than it is currently.
That's a blunder, but it does not matter as much as her blunder with "reparations"
Warren is not telegenic nor personable. Her .01% Native
American schtick really hurt her credibility.
Notable quotes:
"... On facebook in May 2017, "We know that the Russians hacked into American systems to try to influence our election." ..."
"... Warren is crap. There are only two genuine leading candidates, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders that offer some serious prospect of change and either could get there. ..."
re Warren, she is also a "Russia! Russia! Russia!" type.
On facebook in May 2017, "We know that the Russians hacked into American systems to try to
influence our election."
The other day on CNN she said, re the Mueller report, "Three things just totally jump off
the page. The first is that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election in order
to help Donald Trump. The evidence is just there. Read it, footnote after footnote, page
after page documentation. ..."
Not saying that most other candidates aren't the same.
Thank you spudski #26, Warren is crap. There are only two genuine leading candidates, Tulsi
Gabbard and Bernie Sanders that offer some serious prospect of change and either could get
there. Any change away from the Belligerant faction would be welcome. But it needs a Congress
and a Senate to combine with the change agenda to make a concrete, durable new direction.
That is a daunting task but achievable in these times.
It will be interesting to watch Creepy Joe Biden eat shit but he is just the bait, I look
forward to the switch being revealed. Nothing will surprise me.
bruce wilder:
"Reading the post and comments, I can help but feel the entire agenda is about feeling
good about one's own political fecklessness. The abject moral and economic failures of
left-neoliberalism / lesser evilism Democratic Party politics are staring at you.
likbez , April 24, 2019 10:04 pm
@pgl, April 23, 2019 7:35 am
Get prepared because these clowns get paid by the word
I wish ;-). Than I would hang in forums all day long like some of the commenters here.
or maybe they weren't eager for World War 3 with Russia over Syria or the Ukraine?
I voted for Trump after previously voting for Ralph Nader. And Obama proved beyond a doubt
that Nader was right. Meanwhile Trump has done exactly what I hoped he would do; he has shown
that our entire election system is rigged by the CIA (obviously not very thoroughly
rigged).
Like or hate Trump, only a traitor would not be concerned that the CIA is giving marching
order to the media and colluding to derail candidates it does not approve of.
Unless a "democrat" stands up who is willing to talk about unconstitutional wars,
unconstitutional bailouts, unconstitutional surveillance and unconstitutional rigging of the
two major parties, Trump is far better because he is forcing the public to see how corrupt DC
is.
We have been in a constitutional crisis since at least the 1990's. Of course if you are
too weak and stupid to handle any of that discussion, just bury your head and pretend that
"racism" is the only reason Trump won.
And
Brian 04.21.19 at 2:43 pm
I think the real question is not whether Trump is successful or not. That question is a
red herring in American politics today. The real question is whether or not the Democratic
"leadership" can allow nomination of a candidate that the Democrat rank and file want.
Bernie Sanders should have won the nomination last time. But the superdelegate system
gives a literal handful of mandarins the ability to fake the primary process. (I say that as
someone who has significant issues with some of Sanders positions.)
Trump won because Hillary was a horrific candidate. Voters stayed home, disgusted. Trump
won because the Obama administration didn't deliver hope nor change. He delivered a
government of the corporate criminal bankers for them. Middle and working class America got
screwed. Black people got screwed worst. Trump won because the utter corruption at the heart
of the DNC was exposed for all to see in the emails. Trump win because of the Obama
administration making a trade deal top secret classified and trying to force a vote through
congress. Not seeing any point in voting, Democrats didnt.
All the evidence since shows the DNC leadership didn't learn anything. They are just as
contemptuous of voters, just as manipulative with their window dressing as ever. The
Democratic party is the party of endless war even more than the Republicans. It's a party
that stopped every effort by Trump to wind down or end war posture with Russia and North
Korea. There's now 2 parties in Netanyahu's pocket implementing Likuds insane middle east
ideas.
Put some solar energy and LGBTQ butter on it with a side of women's rights bullshit and
it's "Democrat".
But the politicians are just as venal. The legislature just as wildly right wing war
mongering.
The 1960's is long over. The Democratic party hasn't seen a new idea since and has
converted to govern to the right of Nixon. Way to Nixon's right. The Democratic party is the
tool of the Uber-ization of not just America, but the whole world. Flour and break the law to
pauperize the working class, and suck money to a few in the SF Bay Area. That's policy
now.
You can see it already. Sanders is ahead. But Buttigieg is being anointed. He's the
perfect candidate. He's gay! He's out of the closet! And he's a corporate tool who can talk
smoothly without speaking a clear word. Best of all, he has ZERO foreign policy experience or
positions. So he'll be putty in the hands of the corporations that want endless war for
profits. Wall Street wants him. And the street owns the Democratic party. Will he give a
flying f*@k about the middle and working class? Will he be anything but another neo-liberal
who can be differentiated from a neo-conservative only by mild difference in racism? (Overt
vs.covert)
At least Buttigieg isn't Beto O'Rourke, the most completely empty skin in Congress.
There's that.
All the evidence I see is no. The Democrat "leadership" don't understand. I predict a
Trump win, or else a squeaker election that barely scrapes by with a win.
No matter what, the idiot Democrats won't get it. Pelosi will do her best to cast the
Republicans anti-tax anti-government (federal) government culture war in concrete with
balanced budget horse manure. The Democrats will continue to force a new cold war on Russia.
They will keep backing companies that steal from the middle and working class. (Yes, Uber and
Lyft are massive theft operations. They implemented taxi service without licenses. Those
licenses cost a lot of money to those who bought them. They put the public at risk causing
multiple deaths and assaults from unlicensed taxi drivers.)
Trump's appeal is that he at least talks a game of "f*@k you". Domestically it's all lies
on all sides. He lies to everyone. But at least he doesn't lie smoothly like the "good
Democrat" candidates do.
IMHO crookedtimber.org blog is a forum for a bunch of "soft neoliberals" and neocons like
this one, so this is a pretty remarkable development.
For anyone of a social democratic (or lefter) persuasion, and/or see war as something that
should only be used as an absolute last resort (due to it invariably being a moral horror),
then the Democrats have indeed been the lesser of two evils, and Republican-lite.
Take Obama for instance. He ran a cleverly ambiguous campaign where he sounded to many as
being progessive and left, a breath of fresh air, something finally that would put a stop to
limitless capitalism and unwind the Bush era. But in fact he's a 'centrist', which really means
thoroughly neoliberal. He's prepared to file some of the sharp edges off capitalism, but he
neither promised nor offered a genuine alternative to a lightly regulated free market.
I mean, look at his most famous legacy: the health care reforms. This is a thoroughly
market-based solution that leaves the marketplace largely as it was. Nationalization was
nowhere in sight. And the policy was based on one his elecotoral opponent enacted when he was
governing Massachusetts! It is literally the case that voting in Democrats at the national
level gets you the policy of Republican presidential candidates.
Also, he's quite happy to unilaterally blow up stuff, including innocent people, in other
countries, in order to crush his enemies and to look good domestically. We have no problems in
calling this 'evil' when our enemies do anything like this.
Brian 04.21.19 at 2:43 pm (no link)
I think the real question is not whether Trump is successful or not. That question is a red
herring in American politics today. The real question is whether or not the Democratic
"leadership" can allow nomination of a candidate that the Democrat rank and file want. Bernie
Sanders should have won the nomination last time. But the superdelegate system gives a
literal handful of mandarins the ability to fake the primary process. (I say that as someone
who has significant issues with some of Sanders positions.)
Trump won because Hillary was a horrific candidate. Voters stayed home, disgusted. Trump
won because the Obama administration didn't deliver hope nor change. He delivered a
government of the corporate criminal bankers for them. Middle and working class America got
screwed. Black people got screwed worst. Trump won because the utter corruption at the heart
of the DNC was exposed for all to see in the emails. Trump win because of the Obama
administration making a trade deal top secret classified and trying to force a vote through
congress. Not seeing any point in voting, Democrats didnt.
All the evidence since shows the DNC leadership didn't learn anything. They are just as
contemptuous of voters, just as manipulative with their window dressing as ever. The
Democratic party is the party of endless war even more than the Republicans. It's a party
that stopped every effort by Trump to wind down or end war posture with Russia and North
Korea. There's now 2 parties in Netanyahu's pocket implementing Likuds insane middle east
ideas.
Put some solar energy and LGBTQ butter on it with a side of women's rights bullshit and
it's "Democrat". But the politicians are just as venal. The legislature just as wildly right
wing war mongering.
The 1960's is long over. The Democratic party hasn't seen a new idea since and has
converted to govern to the right of Nixon. Way to Nixon's right. The Democratic party is the
tool of the Uber-ization of not just America, but the whole world. Flour and break the law to
pauperize the working class, and suck money to a few in the SF Bay Area. That's policy
now.
You can see it already. Sanders is ahead. But Buttigieg is being anointed. He's the
perfect candidate. He's gay! He's out of the closet! And he's a corporate tool who can talk
smoothly without speaking a clear word. Best of all, he has ZERO foreign policy experience or
positions. So he'll be putty in the hands of the corporations that want endless war for
profits. Wall Street wants him. And the street owns the Democratic party. Will he give a
flying f*@k about the middle and working class? Will he be anything but another neo-liberal
who can be differentiated from a neo-conservative only by mild difference in racism? (Overt
vs.covert)
At least Buttigieg isn't Beto O'Rourke, the most completely empty skin in Congress.
There's that.
All the evidence I see is no. The Democrat "leadership" don't understand. I predict a
Trump win, or else a squeaker election that barely scrapes by with a win.
No matter what, the idiot Democrats won't get it. Pelosi will do her best to cast the
Republicans anti-tax anti-government (federal) government culture war in concrete with
balanced budget horse manure. The Democrats will continue to force a new cold war on Russia.
They will keep backing companies that steal from the middle and working class. (Yes, Uber and
Lyft are massive theft operations. They implemented taxi service without licenses. Those
licenses cost a lot of money to those who bought them. They put the public at risk causing
multiple deaths and assaults from unlicensed taxi drivers.)
Trump's appeal is that he at least talks a game of "f*@k you". Domestically it's all lies
on all sides. He lies to everyone. But at least he doesn't lie smoothly like the "good
Democrat" candidates do.
Trump biggest regret is going to be that he ever ran for President. Impeached or not
impeached all his dirty laundry is going to be exposed. Even if he secured a second term
there is no statute of limitations on what he could be prosecuted for .so the minute he steps
down from the WH he's going to have to spend everything he's got on lawyers fighting the
charges the SDNY is going to bring against him.
David Cay Johnston: What Is Trump Hiding in His Tax Returns?
The Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter explains what's likely in Trump's
returns.
By Jon WienerTwitter
David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter who previously
worked at The New York Times. He's the founder and editor of DCReport.org.
Jon Wiener: The chair of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested six years
of Trump's personal and business tax returns earlier this month. Trump, of course, refused to
comply, and said the law is "100 percent" on his side. Does the IRS have to hand over Trump's
tax returns to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee?
David Cay Johnston: If they follow the law, they absolutely have to hand them over. Under
a 1924 anti-corruption law that was passed because of Teapot Dome, a Harding-administration
scandal, Congress can look at anybody's tax return at any time. In the 85-year history of
this law, the IRS has always responded appropriately to the request and turned over
everything that was requested.
@renfro How
does Trump tax return look on a balance with the treasonous, anti-Constitutional behavior of
Brennan, Comey, Clinton, Obama, Clapper and the presstituting chorus of "liberal" media?
Since the tsardom of Dick Cheney, the US Constitution had become quaint. Moreover, the
"democracy on the march" and other "humanitarian interventions" initiated by the ultimate
coward Bush the lesser and by the ultimate hypocrite and narcissist Obama, have destroyed
completely the value of diplomacy and international law with regard to the ZUSA foreign
policy.
Your obsession with the petty problem of Trump's taxes does not allow you to take a notice
of Brennan's great achievements in Ukraine: the successful regime-change in Kiev and
initiation of the civil war with the pro-federalists in eastern Ukraine. Currently, the US
Congress and the US citizenry at large have been tasting the unpalatable medicine developed
by the CIA during the decades of smothering the weaker countries with "appropriate" regime
changes.
The treasonous Russiagate -- up to Comey's willful inactivity towards Clinton's server
(and Comey's rejection of Assange' plea that the DoJ wanted at that time) -- is a direct
consequence of the perfidious autocratic rule established years ago by the five-deferment
Cheney.
The rot has got deep into the system.
or maybe
they weren't eager for World War 3 with Russia over Syria or the Ukraine?
I voted for Trump after previously voting for Ralph Nader. And Obama proved beyond a doubt
that Nader was right. Meanwhile Trump has done exactly what I hoped he would do; he has shown
that our entire election system is rigged by the CIA (obviously not very thoroughly rigged).
Like or hate Trump, only a traitor would not be concerned that the CIA is giving marching order
to the media and colluding to derail candidates it does not approve of.
Unless a "democrat" stands up who is willing to talk about unconstitutional wars,
unconstitutional bailouts, unconstitutional surveillance and unconstitutional rigging of the
two major parties, Trump is far better because he is forcing the public to see how corrupt DC
is. We have been in a constitutional crisis since at least the 1990's. Of course if you are too
weak and stupid to handle any of that discussion, just bury your head and pretend that "racism"
is the only reason Trump won.
The release of the Mueller report has left Democrats in
a dilemma. Consider what Robert Mueller concluded after two years of investigation.
Candidate Donald Trump did not conspire or collude with the Russians to hack the emails of
the DNC or John Podesta. Trump did not distribute the fruits of those crimes nor did anyone on
his campaign. On collusion and conspiracy, said Mueller, Trump is innocent.
Mueller did not say that Trump did not consider interfering with his investigation. But that
investigation nonetheless went on unimpeded. Mueller's document demands were all met. And
Mueller did not conclude that Trump obstructed justice.
On obstruction, then, not guilty, by reason of no indictment.
We are told that Trump ranted to subordinates about firing Mueller. Yet as Attorney General
Bill Barr pointed out, Trump had excellent reasons to be enraged. He was pilloried for two and
a half years over a crime he not only did not commit but that never took place.
From the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2019, Trump was subjected to scurrilous attacks. It
was alleged that his victory had been stolen for him by the Russians, that he was an
illegitimate president guilty of treason and an agent of the Kremlin, that he was being
blackmailed, and that he rewrote the Republican platform on Vladimir Putin's instructions.
All bull hockey, and Mueller all but said so.
Yet the false charges did serious damage to his presidency and the nation.
Answering them has consumed much of Trump's tenure and ruined his plans to repair our
dangerously damaged relations with the world's other great nuclear power.
Yet it is the Trump haters who are now in something of a box.
Their goal had been to use "Russiagate" to bring down their detested antagonist, overturn
his election, and put him in the history books as a stooge of Putin who, had the truth be
known, would never have won the White House.
Mueller failed to sustain their indictment. Indeed, he all but threw it out.
Yet Trump's enemies will not quit now. To do so would be to concede that Trump's defenders
had been right all along, and that they had not only done a grave injustice to Trump but
damaged their country with their manic pursuit.
And admitting they were wrong would instantly raise follow-up questions.
If two years of investigation by Mueller, his lawyers, and his FBI agents could not unearth
hard evidence to prove that Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russians, what was the
original evidence that justified launching this historic and massive assault on a presidential
campaign and the presidency of the United States?
If there was no collusion, when did Mueller learn this? Did it take two and a half years to
discover there was no conspiracy?
The names tossed out as justifying the original investigation are George Papadopoulos and
Carter Page. The latter was subjected to four consecutive secret FISA court surveillance
warrants.
Yet neither man was ever charged with conspiring with Russia.
Was "Russiagate" a nothingburger to begin with, a concocted excuse for "deep state" agencies
to rampage through Trump's campaign and personal history to destroy him and his presidency?
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential candidate, has called for impeachment hearings in
the House Judiciary Committee. But her call seems less tied to evidence of high crimes in the
Mueller report than to her own anemic poll ratings and fundraising performance in the first
quarter.
It is difficult to see how those Democrats and their media allies, who have invested so much
prestige and so many hopes in the Mueller report, can now pack it in and concede that they were
wrong. Their interests will not permit it; their reputations could not sustain it.
So where are we headed?
The anti-Trump media and second-tier candidates for the Democratic nomination will press the
frontrunners to join their call for impeachment. Some will capitulate to the clamor.
But can Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris, each of
whom has an agenda to advance, accept becoming just another voice crying out for Trump's
impeachment?
The credibility of the Democratic Party is now at issue.
If Mueller could not find collusion, what reason is there to believe that Congressman Jerry
Nadler's Judiciary Committee will find it? And then convince the country they have discovered
what ex-FBI director Mueller could not?
With conspiracy and collusion off the table, and Mueller saying the case for obstruction is
unproven, the renewed attack on Trump takes on the aspect of a naked and desperate "deep
state"-media coup against a president they fear they cannot defeat at the ballot box.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made
and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan
and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
Why did Mueller hire only Democrats for his team–an unusually large team, at that? Was
it because he thought nailing Trump on collusion a surefire thing? And as a surefire thing,
there was no need to placate Republicans or provide balance? Who advised or pressured him to
do that? Maybe the deep state
An investigation of the FBI's Trump-spying caper, with James Comey at the helm, should
look into those matters. To some as yet undetermined extent, Mueller and Comey are joined at
the hip. Or if they aren't, let the government prove it. If DOJ's Inspector General doesn't
do it, we may need another special counsel to conduct a more thorough investigation. And this
time, by someone from outside the Beltway, with no professional or social allegiances to
individuals within it.
The report itself states that, per OLC, the Special Counsel determined not to make a
prosecutorial judgment. It also states that the President is not exonerated of the crime of
obstruction.
Mr. Buchanan is right: President Trump has been found to be not guilty of working with
Russia, but neither the media, nor the neo-cons can possible admit it, or their cause is
lost. And one need not personally admire Donald Trump to note the haughty condescension of
his opponents, most of whom have been wrong about almost everything for decades.
Looks like tail wags the dog -- CIA controls the US foreign policy and in the last elections
also played active role in promoting Hillary. A the level of top brass we have
several people mentioned by Giraldi who are probably as dangerous as Allen Dulles was. Brennan
is one example.
The parade of rogues that Philip describes is really
alarming. Each with agenda that directly harms
the USA as a country promoting the interest of military-industrial complex and neocon
faction within the government...
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter. ..."
"... Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort. ..."
"... Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago. ..."
"... Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. ..."
"... Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down. ..."
"... And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
"... Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time. ..."
"... Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia. ..."
"... The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like the British MI5. The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words. ..."
"... As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State. ..."
"... The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes. ..."
"... The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done. ..."
"... The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency. ..."
"... While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies, it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos, the bankster mafiosi. ..."
"... I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama. ..."
"... Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness. ..."
"... How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN. ..."
"... Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began. ..."
"... Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. ..."
"... So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face. ..."
"... Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections. ..."
"... What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink" in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles' thought pattern & subsequent action. ..."
"... To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically sworn in on a bible. ..."
Long ago, when I was a spear carrying middle ranker at CIA, a colleague took me aside and said
that he had something to tell me "as a friend," that was very important. He told me that his wife
had worked for years in the Agency's Administrative Directorate, as it was then called, where she
had noticed that some new officers coming out of the Career Trainee program had red tags on their
personnel files. She eventually learned from her boss that the tags represented assessments that
those officers had exceptional potential as senior managers. He added, however, that the reverse
appeared to be true in practice as they were generally speaking serial failures as they ascended
the bureaucratic ladder, even though their careers continued to be onward and upward on paper. My
friend's wife concluded, not unreasonably, that only genuine a-holes had what it took to get promoted
to the most senior ranks.
I was admittedly skeptical but some recent activity by former and current Directors and Acting
Directors of CIA has me wondering if something like my friend's wife's observation about senior management
might indeed be true. But it would have to be something other than tagging files, as many of the
directors and their deputies did not come up through the ranks and there seems to be a similar strain
of lunacy at other U.S. government intelligence agencies. It might be time to check the water supply
in the Washington area as there is very definitely something in the kool-aid that is producing odd
behavior.
Now I should pause for a moment and accept that the role of intelligence services is to identify
potential threats before they become active, so a certain level of acute paranoia goes with the job.
But at the same time, one would expect a level of professionalism which would mandate accuracy rather
than emotion in assessments coupled with an eschewing of any involvement in the politics of foreign
and national security policy formulation. The enthusiasm with which a number of senior CIA personnel
have waded into the Trump swamp and have staked out positions that contradict genuine national interests
suggests that little has been learned since CIA Director George Tenet sat behind Secretary of State
Colin Powell in the UN and nodded sagaciously as Saddam Hussein's high crimes and misdemeanors were
falsely enumerated.
Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who
have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than
anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war
and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter.
Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money
flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being
made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed
by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority
of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been
sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been
selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's
defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level
would appear to be fully on board with that effort.
The most recent inexplicable comments come from the current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, speaking
at the Aspen Institute Security Forum. He began by asserting that Russia had interfered in the U.S.
election
before saying that the logic behind Russia's Middle Eastern strategy is to stay in place in Syria
so Moscow can "stick it to America." He didn't define the "it" so one must assume that "it" stands
for any utensil available, ranging from cruise missiles to dinner forks. He then elaborated, somewhat
obscurely, that "I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think
they find that something that's useful."
Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting
ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged
in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It
just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been
fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate
has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency
to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors
which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was
revealed in the press two weeks ago.
Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of
totally bereft of his senses. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee back in May,
he suggested that some Trump associates might have been recruited by the Russian intelligence service.
He testified that
"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions
between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about
because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether
or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."
In his testimony, Brennan apparently forgot to mention that the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs
on American citizens. Nor did he explain how he had come upon the information in the first place
as it had been handed over by foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians,
and at least some of it had been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first
place. Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian
operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected,
which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate started.
Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting
attended by Pompeo, he
told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials
should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent
(one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down.
A lesser known former CIA senior official is
John McLaughlin,
who briefly served as acting Director in 2004. McLaughlin was particularly outraged by Trump's recent
speech to the Boy Scouts, which he described as having the feel "of a third world authoritarian's
youth rally." He added that "It gave me the creeps it was like watching the late Venezuelan [President
Hugo] Chavez."
And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied
to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration.
Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose
show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been
some Russian recruitment of Trump people.
He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify
vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr.
Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr.
Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
I and others noted at the time that Putin and Trump had never met, not even through proxies, while
we also wondered how one could be both unwitting and a recruited agent as intelligence recruitment
implies control and taking direction. Morell was non-plussed, unflinching and just a tad sanctimonious
in affirming that his own intelligence training (as an analyst who never recruited a spy in his life)
meant that "[I] call it as I see it."
One could also cite Michael Hayden and James Clapper, though the latter was not CIA They all
basically hew to the same line about Russia, often in more-or-less the same words, even though no
actual evidence has been produced to support their claims. That unanimity of thinking is what is
peculiar while academics like Stephen Cohen, Stephen Walt, Andrew Bacevich, and John Mearsheimer,
who have studied Russia in some depth and understand the country and its leadership far better than
a senior CIA officer, detect considerable nuance in what is taking place. They all believe that the
hardline policies current in Washington are based on an eagerness to go with the flow on the comforting
inside-the- beltway narrative that paints Russia as a threat to vital interests. That unanimity of
viewpoint should surprise no one as this is more of less the same government with many of the same
people that led the U.S. into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They all have a vested interested in the
health and well-being of a fully funded national security state.
And the other groupthink that seems to prevail among the senior managers except Pompeo is that
they all hate Donald Trump and have done so since long before he won the election. That is somewhat
odd, but it perhaps reflects a fear that Trump would interfere with the richly rewarding establishment
politics that had enabled their careers. But it does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of CIA
employees. Though it is admittedly unscientific analysis on my part, I know a lot of former and some
current CIA employees but do not know a single one who voted for Hillary Clinton. Nearly all voted
for Trump.
Beyond that exhibition of tunnel vision and sheer ignorance, the involvement of former senior
intelligence officials in politics is itself deplorable and is perhaps symptomatic of the breakdown
in the comfortable bipartisan national security consensus that has characterized the past fifty years.
Once upon time former CIA officers would retire to the Blue Ridge mountains and raise Labradors,
but we are now into something much more dangerous if the intelligence community, which has been responsible
for most of the recent leaks, begins to feel free to assert itself from behind the scenes. As Senator
Chuck Schumer
recently warned "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community -- they have six ways
from Sunday at getting back at you."
In jumping this fascist nihilist shark, the groupthinkers have closed themselves off from the
logical conclusion to their viewpoint, which is final annihilation.
Brennan, Morell, and Pompeo should better find ways to justify their salaries: the U.S. has
suffered the greatest breach in cybersecurity on their watch:
" an enormous breach of the United States Security Apparatus by as many as 80 Democrat members
of Congress (past and present). We rail on about the Russians and Trump, but t he media avoids
providing nightly updates about these 5 spies that have compromised Congress ."
"In total, Imran's firm was employed by 31 Democrats in Congress, some of whom held extremely
sensitive positions on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House
Committee on Foreign Affair s."
Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and
blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan,
and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time.
And back to reality we have VIPS Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the
United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking
came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia.
That is war, World War Three and it would seem now that Congress is marching that way, but
the report below hold the key to fighting back.
One of the VIPS is William Binney fomer NSA Technical Director, an important expert. leading
the group is Ray McGovern with some whit and grace, well yes how about some sanity, to which humor
is important to the insight and to stay in the sights of what is clever thievery and worse. Much
worse,
and there is a twinkle in the eye when realize that it is straight forward.
And Congress could stop it tout sweet, but well old habits but they have taken an Oath of Office,
so, so what, yeah they did go after Bernie, so will you challenge your elected officials, either
do their sworn duty or resign, for what this sanctions bill against Russia and Iran is a declaration
of war, not only against Russia and Iran, but a declaration of war against the United States.
for there is no reason to do this against Russia when indeed there are great opportunities to
get along, but war is the insanity as it is sedition and treason. Tell them that,
I wonder if groupthink exists.
In any organisation people know quite well why the organisation exists, what the threats are to
its existence.
If they think about this, I wonder.
The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like
the British MI5.
The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words.
If indeed Trump changes USA foreign policy, no longer trying to control the world, the CIA is
obsolete, as obsolete as NATO.
" but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA
had any say in the matter."
Not to defend the CIA, but didn't Rumsfeld, doubt the enthusiasm of the CIA for providing the
slanted, bogus, "sexed up" intelligence the Executive required to make its "destroy Iraq now"
case ? So Rumsfeld therefore set up an independent intelligence agency within the Defence Dept
to provide/create the required "intelligence" ?
I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find
that something that's useful."
Yeah, because that's what resource-constrained countries with limited ability to tap the global
capital markets do. Methinks Mr. Pompeo is projecting his and the neocons' fantasies on the Russians.
As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor
decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep
State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who
make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants
of the Deep State.
Being resistant to jargon and catch phrases it is only slowly that I have accepted that "Deep
State" is not entirely pretentious waffle when used to describe aspects of the US. However I may
not be your only reader PG who would appreciate a clear explanatory description of the American
Deep State and how it works.
Here are some suggested parameters.
The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in
the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal
of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary
to its purposes.
And its origins imply that it is not just one in a number of major influences ln government or
those who vote for it.
So one has to acknowledge that in the US the Deep State has to be different in the important
respect that levers of power are observably wielded by lobbies for the aged, gun owners and sellers,
Israel, Wall Street, bio fuels, sugar and other ag, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, the arms industry,
Disney and other Hollywood and media, health insurers and the medical profession, and I could
go on.
These are all relevant to legal events like votes on impeachment or to hold up appointments.
The CIA and FBI together completely united (and note how disunited 9/11 showed them to be) wouldn't
remotely approach the old Turkish Deep State's ability to stage a coup. Are all of the putative
elements of the Deep State together today as powerful as J.Edgar Hoover with his dirt files on
everyone? (A contrast and compare exercise of today's presumed Deep State configuration and modus
operandi with the simpler Hoover days might shine some light on who does what and how today. And
how effectively).
To avoid lack of focus can a convincing account of the US Deep State be best given in terms
of a plausible scenario for
getting rid of Trump as President and/or
maintaining the lunacy and hubris which has the US wasting its substance on totally unnecessary
antagonistic relations with China and Russia and interference in the ME?
I would read such accounts with great interest. (Handwavers need not apply).
Of course the US Deep State must hate Russia. First, Jews have a very long history of hating Russia and Russians. That never changed. The
USSR was not Russia; the USSR was Marxism replacing Russia. Jews tended to love that. Rich Jews
from across the world, from the US and the UK of most interest to us, sent money to support the
Bolshevik Revolution.
Russia managed to survive the USSR and is slowly coming back around to Russian common sense
from the Christian perspective. Neither Jews nor their WASP BFFs can ever forgive that. They want
Russia to act now to commit cultural and genetic suicide, like Western Europe and the entire Anglosphere
are doing.
@polistraThe CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service,
long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has
done.
The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence
Presidency.
While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies,
it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos,
the bankster mafiosi.
But doing so would mean a voluntary end to playing the role of Sauron, determined to find and
wear the One Ring to Rule Them All. The average Elite WASP, and his Jewish BFF, definitely would
prefer to destroy the world, at least outside their gated compounds of endless luxury, than to
step down from that level of global domination.
@Wizard
of Oz Wiz – Here is an article I did on the Deep State two years ago. It was one of the first
in the US media looking at the issue. It would have to be updated now in light of Trump, but much
of what it states is still more-or-less correct.
But we need to make certain that your use of the word 'mafiosi' does not lead anyone to assume
that group has more than a handful of Italians. Jews, WASPs, and continental Germanics each will
outnumber Italians by at least 30 to 1.
I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are –
Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments.
The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans
who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too
well the truth about the Clintons and Obama.
Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the
Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success
balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead
and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally
oblivious to their own uselessness.
Well before he was elected I had a letter delivered to President Trump in which I outlined in
detail what would happen to him if he did not immediately purge the CIA of these assholes. I know
that at least some people on his staff read it but, of course, my advice was ignored. Trump has
paid dearly for not listening to an ordinary CIA guy who wanted to give him a reality brief on
those vicious snakes.
Historical facts teach humanity that Anglo-Saxon group of Nations was built on slavery, thuggery
and theft of other peace loving Civilizations.
We Slavs are the New "niggers", hate is the glue that holds you "toGether".
People of color have been successfully conditioned and practice it as well.
Time will tell how well it holds when balloon bursts and 99% gets called to serve as cannon fodder.
Terrorizing UNARMED and WEAKER is not true test of "superiority" and "exceptionalism".
Tiny, extremely tiny minority of Anglo-Saxons and Satraps understand this.
How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they
had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries.
On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed
to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the
DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN.
Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes
of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then
and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because
of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in
the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption
and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began.
It probably does as do group psychoses and group fantasies.. Anyone who's ever served in a beuaracracy
knows that groupthink exists.
Take a bunch of mediocre minds. And, they do exist, as Garrison Keiler once famously made a
joke out of with his line Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.
Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career
advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside
the group consensus. If everyone is wrong, then there is safety in the group. After all, if they
are wrong, so was everyone else in the organization. Thus they are immune to attack and censure
for being wrong. But if someone takes a position outside of the group consensus, that can be a
career-ending move if they are wrong, as now everyone else will be in the I-told-U-So camp. And
even if they are correct, they will still be hated and shunned just for being the person who pointed
out to the group that they are wrong.
So, you take your typical average mind, and not only do they not have any great insights of
their own, but they tend to stick to the group out of sheer survival and then when you take a
mass of these mediocre minds you have 'groupthink'.
If only Trump would really clean the swamp - particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and
globalists. One can dream ....
What we've learned from Trump is that 'Draining the Swamp' will
take more than an individual. It will take a political movement.
One sees this on the fringes of politics. Someone gets the idea of running for President, and
they point out all that is wrong. But, they focus only on their own campaign, their own goal,
and they thus gloss over the fact that they'll be outnumbered and powerless even if they win.
Seen this often on the Left. The most recent example is Bernie Sanders. Likewise, had Bernie
been elected President, he too would face an entrenched establishment and media with only a small
fraction of the Congress supporting him.
Change has to be built from the bottom up. There are no shortcuts. Electing a Trump, or a Nader
or a Bernie does not lead to real change. Step one is to build the political movement such that
it has real voting block power and which has already won voting majorities in the legislature
before the movement achieves the election of a President.
What Trump has needed to be doing for this first two years is to form clear divisions that
he could then take to his voters in the mid-term elections. He's needed to lay out his own agenda.
So what if he loses votes in Congress? He then takes that agenda back to the voters in 2018 with
a nationwide slate of Congressional candidates who support that agenda and runs a midterm campaign
asking the voters to help him drain that swamp.
So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who
cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless
war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support
me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer
to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to
face.
Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set
himself up for success in the next elections.
It is a serious error to consider President Trump "naive."
What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink"
in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles'
thought pattern & subsequent action.
To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by
the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically
sworn in on a bible.
Mr. Trump is neither naive nor stupid. Sheldon Adelson would not donate $millioms to any POTUS
wannabe who could not effectively lead the American Groupthink tradition. Subsequently, the political
horror show is brought to you in the understandable form of the perpetually elusive Deep State
which gets annual Academy Award.
"... One might reasonably ask if America in its seemingly enduring role as the world's most feared bully will ever cease and desist, but the more practical question might be "When will the psychopathic trio of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams be fired so the United States can begin to behave like a normal nation?" ..."
"... This hatred of all things Trump has been manifested in the neoconservative "Nevertrump" forces led by Bill Kristol and by the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" prominent on the political left, regularly exhibited by Rachel Maddow. ..."
"... Whether the Mueller report is definitive very much depends on the people they chose to interview and the questions they chose to ask, which is something that will no doubt be discussed for the next year if not longer. Beyond declaring that the Trump team did not collude with Russia, it cast little light on the possible Deep State role in attempting to vilify Trump and his associates. ..."
"... The media has scarcely reported how Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), has been looking into the activities of the principal promoters of the Russiagate fraud. Horowitz, whose report is expected in about a month, has already revealed that he intends to make criminal referrals as a result of his investigation. ..."
"... The first phase of the illegal investigation of the Trump associates involved initiating wiretaps without any probable cause. This eventually involved six government intelligence and law enforcement agencies that formed a de facto task force headed by the CIA's Director John Brennan. Also reportedly involved were the FBI's James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, and Admiral Michael Rogers who headed the National Security Agency. ..."
"... The British support of the operation was coordinated by the then-director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan who has since been forced to resign. Brennan is, unfortunately still around and has not been charged with perjury and other crimes. In May 2017, after he departed government, he testified before Congress with what sounds a lot like a final unsourced, uncorroborated attempt to smear the new administration ..."
"... The Deep State wants a constant state of tension with 'hostile' countries (Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, Syria and others). This scares the crap out of ignorant Americans and allows unjustifiable spending on war matériel. ..."
"... The Deep State wants a steady supply of cheap foreign labor to provide wealth to the supporters of the Deep State. ..."
"... You know damn well Adelson sent Bolton and you should also know damn well why the Orange Boy staffed his adm with Zionists. No one in NY except Zionists would associate with Trump. ..."
The real "deplorable" in today's United States is the continuation of a foreign policy based
on endless aggression to maintain Washington's military dominance in parts of the world where
Americans have no conceivable interest. Many voters backed Donald J. Trump because he committed
himself to changing all that, but, unfortunately, he has reneged on his promise, instead
heightening tension with major powers Russia and China while also threatening Iran and
Venezuela on an almost daily basis. Now Cuba is in the crosshairs because it is allegedly
assisting Venezuela. One might reasonably ask if America in its seemingly enduring role as the
world's most feared bully will ever cease and desist, but the more practical question might be
"When will the psychopathic trio of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams be fired so the
United States can begin to behave like a normal nation?"
Trump, to be sure, is the heart of the problem as he has consistently made bad, overly
belligerent decisions when better and less abrasive options were available, something that
should not necessarily always be blamed on his poor choice of advisers. But one also should not
discount the likelihood that the dysfunction in Trump is in part comprehensible, stemming from
his belief that he has numerous powerful enemies who have been out do destroy him since before
he was nominated as the GOP's presidential candidate. This hatred of all things Trump has been
manifested in the neoconservative "Nevertrump" forces led by Bill Kristol and by the "Trump
Derangement Syndrome" prominent on the political left, regularly exhibited by Rachel
Maddow.
And then there is the Deep State, which also worked with the Democratic Party and President
Barack Obama to destroy the Trump presidency even before it began. One can define Deep State in
a number of ways, ranging from a "soft" version which accepts that there is an Establishment
that has certain self-serving objectives that it works collectively to promote to something
harder, an actual infrastructure that meets together and connives to remove individuals and
sabotage policies that it objects to. The Deep State in either version includes senior
government officials, business leaders and, perhaps most importantly, the managed media, which
promotes a corrupted version of "good governance" that in turn influences the public.
Whether the Mueller report is definitive very much depends on the people they chose to
interview and the questions they chose to ask, which is something that will no doubt be
discussed for the next year if not longer. Beyond declaring that the Trump team did not collude
with Russia, it cast little light on the possible Deep State role in attempting to vilify Trump
and his associates. The investigation of that aspect of the 2016 campaign and the possible
prosecutions of former senior government officials that might be a consequence of the
investigation will likely be entertaining conspiracy theorists well into 2020. Since Russiagate
has already been used and discarded the new inquiry might well be dubbed Trumpgate.
The media has scarcely reported how Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the
Department of Justice (DOJ), has been
looking into the activities of the principal promoters of the Russiagate fraud. Horowitz,
whose report is expected in about a month, has already revealed that he intends to make
criminal referrals as a result of his investigation. While the report will only cover
malfeasance in the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, the names of intelligence
officers involved will no doubt also surface. It is expected that there will be charges leading
to many prosecutions and one can hope for jail time for those individuals who corruptly
betrayed their oath to the United States Constitution to pursue a political vendetta.
A review of what is already known about the plot against Trump is revealing and no doubt
much more will be learned if and when investigators go through emails and phone records. The
first phase of the illegal investigation of the Trump associates involved initiating wiretaps
without any probable cause.
This eventually involved six government intelligence and law enforcement agencies that
formed a de facto task force headed by the CIA's Director John Brennan. Also reportedly
involved were the FBI's James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney
General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, and Admiral
Michael Rogers who headed the National Security Agency.
Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump
associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other
European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American
sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies,
primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from
friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine
intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner
and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened
during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee.
In other words, to make the wiretaps appear to be legitimate, GCHQ and others were quietly
and off-the-record approached by Brennan and associates over their fears of what a Trump
presidency might mean. The British responded by initiating wiretaps that were then used by
Brennan to justify further investigation of Trump's associates. It was all neatly done and
constituted completely illegal spying on American citizens by the U.S. government.
The British support of the operation was coordinated by the then-director of GCHQ Robert
Hannigan who has since been forced to resign. Brennan is, unfortunately still around and has
not been charged with perjury and other crimes. In May 2017, after he departed government, he
testified before
Congress with what sounds a lot like a final unsourced, uncorroborated attempt to smear the
new administration :
"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and
interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I
was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised
questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those
individuals."
Brennan's claimed "concerns" turned out to be incorrect. Meanwhile, other interested parties
were involved in the so-called Steele Dossier on Trump himself. The dossier, paid
for initially by Republicans trying to stop Trump, was later funded by $12 million from the
Hillary campaign. It was commissioned by the law firm Perkins Coie, which was working for the
Democratic National Committee (DNC). The objective was to assess any possible Trump involvement
with Russia. The work itself was sub-contracted to Fusion GPS, which in turn sub-contracted the
actual investigation to British spy Christopher Steele who headed a business intelligence firm
called Orbis.
Steele left MI-6 in 2009 and had not visited Russia since 1993. The report, intended to dig
up dirt on Trump, was largely prepared using impossible to corroborate second-hand information
and would have never surfaced but for the surprise result of the 2016 election. Christopher
Steele gave a copy to a retired of British Diplomat Sir Andrew Wood who in turn handed it to
Trump critic Senator John McCain who then passed it on to the FBI. President Barack Obama
presumably also saw it and, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, "If it weren't for
President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that
set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel
Mueller's investigation."
The report was leaked to the media in January 2017 to coincide with Trump's inauguration.
Hilary Clinton denied any prior knowledge despite the fact that her campaign had paid for it.
Pressure from the Democrats and other constituencies devastated by the Trump victory used the
Steele report to provide leverage for what became the Mueller investigation.
So, was there a broad ranging conspiracy against Donald Trump orchestrated by many of the
most senior officials and politicians in Washington? Undeniably yes. What Trump has amounted to
as a leader and role model is beside the point as what evolved was undeniably a bureaucratic
coup directed against a legally elected president of the United States and to a certain extent
it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and
subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams. One can only hope that investigators dig deep
into what is Washington insiders have been up to so Trumpgate will prove more interesting and
informative than was Russiagate. And one also has to hope that enough highest-level heads will
roll to make any interference by the Deep State in future elections unthinkable. One hopes.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its
email is [email protected].
The President is part of the Deep State. To understand what the Deep State will and will not tolerate answer these questions.
What do both parties agree on? If they appear to disagree, look to see if anything changes
when one party has the power to cause change or does the party in power make excuses to avoid
change? Those things that the populus is against but never change or get worse are what the
Deep State wants
The Deep State wants a constant state of tension with 'hostile' countries (Iran, Russia,
Venezuela, China, Syria and others). This scares the crap out of ignorant Americans and
allows unjustifiable spending on war matériel.
The Deep State wants a steady supply of cheap foreign labor to provide wealth to the
supporters of the Deep State.
The Deep State wants our financial institutions to never fail (FED 2009) even at the
expense of 90% of Americans. The Deep State wants financial institutions to provide financial
products to the wealthy which cripples the vast majority of Americans.
The silly internecine squabbles within the Deep State are a ruse to misdirect the public
from important issues like constant war, legal and illegal immigrants taking jobs from
Americans and the increased transfer of wealth for the 90% to the supper weathy.
There will never be a wall and illegal immigration will continue to be a problem. All the investigations into Trump, the DNC, Hillary and all the rest will never come to
justice. The wealth transfer will not stop
Until Americans realize these diversions for what they are and put an end to it through
what ever means necessary
it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and
subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams.
Oh plezzze .you sound like you've been drugged.
Trump never had any better angels as any reporter and journalist whoever interviewed or
investigated him would tell you.
And come on! .You know damn well Adelson sent Bolton and you should also know damn well
why the Orange Boy staffed his adm with Zionists. No one in NY except Zionists would associate
with Trump.
i think some of the conspiracy was about controlling Trump's foreign policy going forward but
i also think some of it was people like Brennan worried CIA collusion with Saudi funded
jihadist groups since 9/11 (and possibly before) might come out.
On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released
a wide-ranging plan to fix the U.S. college system, with proposals including making two-year
and four-year public college free and expanding the size and scope of the federal Pell Grant
program. And one particularly radical idea is sure to grab the attention of young people around
the country: wiping out student loan debt for the vast majority of American borrowers. "The
time for half-measures is over," Warren, one of many politicians and public figures hoping to
secure the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, wrote in a post published Monday on Medium.
"My broad cancellation plan is a real solution to our student debt crisis. It helps millions of
families and removes a weight that's holding back our economy." Last year, outstanding student
debt in the U.S. topped $1.5
trillion , a growing financial burden that Warren argues is "crushing millions of families
and acting as an anchor on our economy." "It's reducing home ownership rates," she wrote. "It's
leading fewer people to start businesses. It's forcing students to drop out of school before
getting a degree. It's a problem for all of us." To address the problem, Warren is suggesting
what she calls a "truly transformational" approach: wiping out $50,000 in student loan debt for
anyone with a household income below $100,000. People with student loans and a household income
between $100,000 and $250,000 would receive substantial relief as well. At that point, "the
$50,000 cancellation amount phases out by $1 for every $3 in income above $100,000," Warren
wrote.
"... Americans should be marching in the streets at this attempted coup but we are so doped with mindless entertainment that we no longer care. We are becoming a system where as long as you don't challenge the 2 party system you are allowed your freedom to make money and to say whatever you want so long as it doesn't have consequences. ..."
The irony of the Mueller investigation that was demanded by Democrats because they thought it would show Trump colluded with Russia
to win the Presidency is that it has blown up in their faces by exposing in greater detail how Obama and the Deep State attempted
first, to throw an election in favor of one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and second, attempted a coup once Trump was elected via
investigations and false claims.
Once Trump won the election, the Deep State used their accomplices in the msm to convince the American public that Donald J
Trump stole the election with the collaboration of the Russians. In this way they sought to remove him by impeachment.
It turns out the Deep State were the ones who were acting as agents of Russia seeking to tear America apart.
Consider:
John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, by his own admission, played a key role in instigating the investigation of Trump before the
election. In the aftermath of the election Brennan has repeatedly called Trump a traitor on social media and old media.
We now know in August 2016 Brennan gave a private briefing to Sen. Harry Reid. Subsequently, Reid sent a letter to the FBI
which included info that clearly came from the now infamous dossier, manufactured by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion
GPS contractor. This dossier would later be included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application that
was used to justify investigations into Trump, his campaign, and his family. It now appears very likely Brennan later lied under
oath that he did not know who commissioned the dossier.
This dossier was originally funded by none other than Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Since the conclusion of the Mueller report has come out Brennan, probably fearing an investigation into his actions pre/post
election, now says he had "bad information". A more accurate description might be that he was willfully spreading disinformation
to bring down a President.
James Comey himself described this dossier as "salacious" and "unverified" yet he did not bother to have the FBI attempt to
verify the contents of the dossier.
This didn't stop Comey from lying 4 times to the FISA court that ex-British spy Steele was the source of an article by "journalist"
Isikoff, which was used to corroborate claims in his own dossier. So Comey, in essence, told the FISA court that the Steele dossier had been corroborated by Steele.
Some background: Steele also worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. So the only person who had any verifiable evidence
of working with the Russians in any capacity is an ex-British spy, contracted to manufacture a false dossier on behalf of Hillary
Clinton to smear Trump and later weaponized to impeach Trump after he won the election.
Comey lied to the FISA court so he could obtain, as he did, a warrant to spy on Carter Page (Trump staffer) and the Trump family
during the election. Moreover, in addition to Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, and
former Attorney General Sally Yates were required to sign off on the FISA warrant application. They are either incompetent or
were engaged in a conspiracy but regardless, this was a fraud on the FISA court.
Bruce Ohr, a senior official at the time at the Justice Department, acted as a middleman between the FBI and Steele. He passed
along information from his wife Nellie Ohr, also a Fusion GPS contractor like Steele , with, presumably, unverified and false
info regarding Trump and his campaign.
The FBI later terminated Steele's relationship as a confidential informant with them after he revealed this relationship to
the press. However, for up to 1.5 years after, Bruce Ohr continued to act as middleman between Steele and the FBI, even after
Mueller took over the investigation .
Americans should be marching in the streets at this attempted coup but we are so doped with mindless entertainment that
we no longer care. We are becoming a system where as long as you don't challenge the 2 party system you are allowed your freedom
to make money and to say whatever you want so long as it doesn't have consequences.
Any more details of Mueller's report due to be released by AG Barr are likely to reveal more of the rotted core of the Deep
State and their machinations and not, as Democrats think, damaging info about Trump.
That's a third Warren blunder after reparations blunder and Indian heritage blunder. She
might be out of the race soon...
Does not she understand that impeachment of Trump means President Pence? What is idiotic
statement. She is definitely no diplomat and as such does not belong to WH.
Senator Elizabeth Warren on Friday called for lawmakers to start impeachment proceedings
against President Trump, saying he obstructed Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation
into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Warren became the first of the Democratic presidential candidates to unambiguously call
for impeachment proceedings. Most senior Democrats in Congress have stopped far short of it
following the delivery of Mueller's 448-page report.
"The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside
political considerations and do their constitutional duty,'' the Massachusetts Democrat said
on Twitter. "That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the
President of the United States."
Also Friday, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for an
unredacted version of Mueller's report as Congress escalates its investigation. Trump and
other Republicans dismissed the report's findings.
The redacted version of Mueller's report details multiple efforts Trump made to curtail a
Russia probe he feared would cripple his administration. While Mueller declined to recommend
that Trump be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, he did not exonerate the president, all
but leaving the question to Congress.
The report stated, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that
the President did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she doesn't support impeachment without bipartisan
backing because it would be too divisive for the nation She signaled she wanted the House to
continue to fulfill its constitutional oversight role.
''We believe that the first article -- Article 1, the legislative branch -- has the
responsibility of oversight of our democracy, and we will exercise that,'' she said in
Belfast on Friday.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee,
said, ''It now falls to Congress to determine the full scope of that alleged misconduct and
to decide what steps we must take going forward.'' He expects the Justice Department to
comply by May 1.
On Twitter Friday, Warren said the report "lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign
government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that
help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack."
She said Mueller "put the next step in the hands of Congress," adding in another tweet
that "[t]o ignore a President's repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own
disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would
suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in
similar ways."
According to a Warren aide, the senator started to read the Mueller report Thursday during
a plane ride back to Boston following campaign stops in Colorado and Utah.
Warren, according to the aide, felt it was her duty to say what she thought after reading
the report but does not plan to emphasize impeachment on the campaign trail.
Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist who is not connected to any
presidential campaign, said Warren has been the first Democratic candidate to stake out
numerous policy stances during the campaign. Her impeachment statement will force everyone
else running for president to take a position, Marsh said.
"More often than not the field is reacting to her positions," she said.
Warren's call for impeachment proceedings, Marsh said, "shows she's willing to lead."
"She's willing to make the hard calls," Marsh said.
After the Mueller report's release, Trump pronounced it ''a good day'' and tweeted ''Game
Over.'' Top Republicans in Congress saw vindication in the report as well. On Friday, Trump
was even more blunt, referring to some statements about him in the report as "total
bullshit."
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said it was time to move on and said Democrats were
attempting to ''vilify a political opponent.'' The California lawmaker said the report failed
to deliver the ''imaginary evidence'' incriminating Trump that Democrats had sought. ...
Now, liberals are pressing the House to begin impeachment hearings, and the issue is
cropping up on the presidential campaign trail.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who is running for president, was asked
Friday if Trump should be impeached as he made an appearance at a Stop & Shop union
picket line in Malden .
"I think that Congress needs to make that decision," he said. "I think he may well deserve
it, but my focus, since I'm not part of Congress, but I am part of 2020, is to give him a
decisive defeat at the ballot box, if he is the Republican nominee in 2020."
On Friday, Julián Castro, a former housing secretary running for the Democratic
nomination, said he thought "it would be perfectly reasonable'' for Congress to open
impeachment proceedings.
Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is running for president, told MSNBC on
Thursday that she also thinks Mueller should testify. When asked about impeachment
proceedings, she told that outlet, "I think that there's definitely a conversation to be had
on that subject, but first I want to hear from Bob Mueller."
Cory Booker, the New Jersey senator running for president, was asked about impeachment
during a campaign trip to Nevada. Specifically in regard to impeachment, he said, ''There's a
lot more investigation that should go on before Congress comes to any conclusions like
that.''
In the House, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is now signed on to an
impeachment resolution from fellow Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
But senior leaders remain cool to the idea.
Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the number two in the House Democratic leadership,
told CNN on Thursday, "Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is
not worthwhile at this point." However, Hoyer quickly revised his comments, saying "all
options are on the table."
I think the ancestry scandal is about as important as wearing white pants after Labor
day.
You are far too partisan, you ignore the creation of the CPA and all the benefits it give
the public when Republicans at this very moment are looking to loosen the Pay Day Loan
lending rules.
I guess a 1400% interest rate is just not enough, do you support the loan sharks and rip
off banks? Yes or No.
What does Alcoholics Anonymous have to do with Elizabeth Warren?
By AA he meant Affirmative Action, not Alcoholics Anonymous. Although people with lots of
Native American DNA often have drinking problems. prudence would dictate "don't sell whiskey
and guns to Elizabeth Warren."
Look at the spin machine in action. She used the benefits of lying about her American
Indian ancestry to further her career and derive perks. We all know it. AA is a joke and
utter reverse racism in action.
No, she kept pushing it even to the point of claiming that her genetic result of 1/1024
Indian proved her claim. The lack of judgement -- both technical and political -- is simply
astounding. Then she apologized to the Cherokee for pretending to be one of them since she
doesn't meet the tribal criterion. To my knowledge she has never back off her claim beyond
that -- and never apologized to Whites for trying to get out of OUR Tribe, the one she was
born into.
I always try to look at the big picture, the whole episode was foolish but she harmed no
one and gained nothing.
Has she pushed the anti Russian crap? That would bother me as we have been the aggressor
with Russia and that is really dangerous.
As we speak nuclear armed bombers are flying daily close the the Russian borders and
Russia has to scramble jets to ward them off. One pissed off Russian fighter pilot and there
goes the world!
She is pushing for criminalizing White Nationalism -- as if We aren't persecuted enough
already. Foolishness to the nth degree. Whites have been amazing passive as their Nation has
been stolen from them. And those who make peaceful change impossible ..
The country was divided before Mueller Report. Now it is even more divided.
Notable quotes:
"... We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud, seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the genesis of the FBI's " operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous Trump Tower meeting , and hired Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had gathered against Trump while working for Fusion , according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony. ..."
"... Now the dossier -- financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee , and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele -- is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries . - NYT ..."
"... The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier. ..."
"... And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded in part by George Soros . ..."
"... Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit. ..."
"... after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it. ..."
"... As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed? ..."
"... the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT ..."
"... There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve. ..."
"... Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance. ..."
"... Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was on site during Roger Stones invasion. ..."
"... So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's Russia's fault"?! ..."
As we now shift from the "witch hunt" against Trump to 'investigating the investigators' who spied on him - remember this; Donald
Trump was supposed to lose the 2016 election by almost all accounts. And had Hillary won, as expected, none of this would have seen
the light of day .
We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud,
seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be
coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the
genesis of the FBI's "
operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign.
We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission
the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous
Trump Tower meeting , and hired
Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had
gathered against Trump while working for Fusion ,
according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony.
And if not for reporting by the Daily
Caller 's Chuck Ross and others, we wouldn't know that the FBI sent a longtime spook, Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on
the Trump campaign - after the Obama DOJ paid him over $400,000
right before the 2016 US election (out of more than $1 million he received while Obama was president).
According to the New
York Times , the tables are turning, starting with the Steele Dossier.
[T]he release on Thursday of
the report
by the special counsel , Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months -- that while many Trump aides
had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were
impossible to prove . Mr. Mueller's report contained over a dozen passing references to the document's claims but no overall assessment
of why so much did not check out.
While Congressional Republicans have vowed to investigate, the DOJ's Inspector General is considering whether the FBI improperly
relied on the dossier when they used it to apply for a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The IG also wants
to know about Steele's sources and whether the FBI disclosed any doubts as to the veracity of the dossier .
Attorney General Barr, meanwhile, said he will review the FBI's conduct in the Russia investigation after saying the agency
spied on the Trump
campaign .
Doubts over the dossier
The FBI's scramble to vet the dossier's claims are well known. According to an April, 2017
NYT report , the FBI agreed
to pay Steele $50,000 for "solid corroboration" of his claims . Steele was apparently unable to produce satisfactory evidence - and
was ultimately not paid for his efforts:
Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept.
14, said that Mr. Putin was facing "fallout" over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving "conflicting advice"
on what to do.
The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts,
according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid . -
NYT
Still, the FBI used the dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page - while the document itself was heavily shopped around to various
media outlets . The late Sen. John McCain provided a copy to Former FBI Director James Comey, who already had a version, and briefed
President Trump on the salacious document. Comey's briefing to Trump was then used by CNN and BuzzFeed to justify reporting on and
publishing the dossier following the election.
Let's not forget that in October, 2016, both Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta promoted the conspiracy theory
that a secret Russian server was communicating with Trump Tower.
The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading
Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier.
And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne
Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded
in part by
George Soros .
Russian tricks? The Times notes that Steele "has not ruled out" that he may have been fed Russian disinformation while assembling his dossier.
That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their
bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump's presidency as well.
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
In short, Steele is being given an 'out' with this admission.
A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, says that the Mueller report substantiated the "core reporting" in the Steele memos - namely
that "Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin figures," and that Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, had directed
"a covert operation to elect Donald J. Trump."
Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit.
The dossier tantalized Mr. Trump's opponents with a worst-case account of the president's conduct. And for those trying to
make sense of the Trump-Russia saga, the dossier infused the quest for understanding with urgency.
In blunt prose, it suggested that a foreign power had fully compromised the man who would become the next president of the
United States.
The Russians, it asserted, had tried winning over Mr. Trump with real estate deals in Moscow -- which he had not taken up --
and set him up with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013, filming the proceedings for future exploitation. A handful of aides
were described as conspiring with the Russians at every turn.
Mr. Trump, it said, had moles inside the D.N.C. The memos claimed that he and the Kremlin had been exchanging intelligence
for eight years and were using Romanian hackers against the Democrats , and that Russian pensioners in the United States were
running a covert communications network . -
NYT
And after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no
evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin
intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and key Democrats backing away from talks of impeachment, let's see if lady justice will
follow the rest of us down the rabbit hole.
This is why the whole FISA court is a joke. What is their remedy if their power is abused? What happens. Well,... the FISA
courts was lied to and found out about it in the early 2000's. Mueller was FBI chief. So they got a strongly worded dressing-down,
a mark in their permanent record from high school, and NO ONE was fired... no one was sanctioned, no agent was transferred to
Alaska.
Fast forward 10 or 12 years and the FBI is doing this **** again. Lying to the court... you know the court where there are
no Democrat judges or Republican judges.. they are all super awesome.... and what is the remedy when the FISA court is told they've
been lied to by the FBI and used in a intel operation with MI6, inserting assets, into a freaking domestic Presidential campaign!!!
and then they WON. Good god.
And what do we hear from our court? Nadda. Do we hear of some Federal Judges hauling FBI and DOJ folks in front of them and
throwing them in jail? Nope. It appears from here... that our Federal Justices are corrupt and have no problem letting illegal
police-state actions go on with ZERO accountability or recourse. They could care less evidently. It's all secret you know... trust
us they say.. Why aren't these judges publicly making loud noises about how the judiciary is complicit , with the press, in wholesale
spying and leaking for political reasons AND a coup attempt when the wrong guy won.???
Where is awesome Justice Roberts? Why isn't he throwing down some truth on just how compromised the rule of law in his courts
clearly are in the last 10 years? The FISA court is his baby. It does no good for them to assure us they are concerned too, and
they've taken action and sent strongly worded letters. Pisses me off. ? Right? heck of rant...
When did Russians interfere in our elections?? 2016. Who was president when Russians interfered with elections?? oobama. Who
was head of the CIA?? Brennan. Who was National Intelligence director?? Clapper. Who was head of the FBI when the Russians interfered
in our elections?? Comey. The pattern is obvious. When Trump was a private citizen the oobama and all his cabinet appointees and
Intel Managers had their hands on all the levers and instruments of Government..and did nothing . Your oobama is guilty of treason
and failing his Oath Of Office...everybody knows this.
This article is still a roundabout gambit to blame Russia.
Fair enough, where's Bill Browder? In England. Browder's allegations were utilized to try and damage Russia, even though Russia
(not the USSR), is about the most reliable friend America has.
Russia helped Lincoln, and were it not for that crucial help, there'd be no America to sanction Russia today. The Tsar paid
for that help with his dynasty, when Nicholas II was murdered, and dethroned.
Americans are truly ungrateful brutes..
Now, sanctions, opprobrium, and hatred are heaped on Russia, most cogently by chauvinistic racists, who look down their noses
at Rus (Russ) and yet, cannot sacrifice 25 millions of their own people, for the sake of others.
Russians are considered subhuman, and yet, the divine spark of humanity resides solely in their breasts. The zionists claim
a false figure of 6 million for a faux holocaust, and yet, nobody pays attention to the true holocaust of 25 millions, or the
many millions before that disastrous instigated war.
That the Russians are childlike, believing others to be like them, loyal, self sacrificing, and generous, has now brought the
world to the brink of armageddon, and still, they bear the burden of proof, though their accusers, who ought provide the evidence,
are bereft of any..
Thomas Jefferson it was, who observing whatever he observed, exclaimed in cogent agitation, that "I fear for my countrymen,
when I remember that God is Just, and His Justice does not repose forever".
Investigate Jared and Ivanka Kushner, along with Charles Kushner, and much ought be clear, no cheers...
I don't buy that "Few bad apples at the top", "Good rank and file" Argument. I have never seen one. We should assume everyone
from the top to the bottom of FBI, DOJ, and State, just to get started, probably every other three better agency is bad. At least
incompotent, at worst treasonous.
As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original
buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed?
the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT used to push
the Iraq war with all sorts of ********? after the war was determined to be started under a false premise and became common knowledge
there were no wmds in iraq the nyt came forward and reported the war was ******** as if they were reporting breaking news.
they have done the same thing here. they pushed the russiagate story with both barrels even though the informed populace knew
it was ******** before trump was sworn in as potus. now that the all the holes in the story are readily apparent the nyt comes
forward with breaking revelation that something is wrong with the story.
The Seth Rich investigation; where is it now? Murder of a campaign staffer; tampering with or influencing an election, is it
not? Hmmm... When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.
Once upon a time there was a Bernie supporter. And his name was Seth Rich. Then there was a "botched robbery", which evidence
that was concluded on, I have no idea. Do you? Anyhow, The End.
Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to
wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance.
Why wouldn't Assange name the source for the DNC emails? Is this a future bargaining chip? And what if he did name Seth Rich?
He would have to prove it. Could he?
They've got Assange now...Maybe they should ask him if it was Seth Rich who gave him the emails?
Maybe even do it under oath and on national television. I don't think it's still considered "burning a source" if your source
has already been murdered....
Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is
beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was
on site during Roger Stones invasion.
Treason and Sedition is rampant in America and all SPY roads lead to Clapper, Brennan and Obama...This needs attention.
The media is abusive and narrating attacks on a dully elected president
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
You have got to be ******* kidding me. So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's
Russia's fault"?!
"... Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers. ..."
"... Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer. ..."
"... The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway. ..."
"... No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way ..."
"... " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people." ..."
"... All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests. ..."
"... A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops. ..."
"... The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter. ..."
"... "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result " ..."
"... But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world. ..."
"... I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter! ..."
"... Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them. ..."
"... The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself. ..."
"... Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. ..."
"... That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era. ..."
"... The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it. ..."
"... [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank. ..."
"... Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran. ..."
"... Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington. ..."
"... Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. ..."
"... Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse. ..."
"... Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.) ..."
"... Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress? ..."
"... Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies. ..."
Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call
the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a
brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.
Again Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he
would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the
corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he
wanted to during the campaign.
Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion
with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of
paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which
the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe
or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him
to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by
all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the
zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.
The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine
with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have
been there anyway.
No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The
Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they
have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful
way
The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a
threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.
The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The
rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was
really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion
on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was
hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.
" ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people."
All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were
the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.
I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present.
A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated
the 98% poor, to stay rich.
When there were insurrections federal troops restored order.
Also FDR put down strikes with troops.
You should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It
is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from
it.
The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America
and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and
Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.
Until that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.
"The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and
unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident
Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story
after another would achieve the desired result "
But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out
neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions
fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.
I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's
not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of
brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and
facts don't matter!
Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about
intimidating them.
Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then
devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no,
the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in
the less-mainstream fake news media.
So Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too
stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The
US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?
The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the
WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or
cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.
By the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose
of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and
most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which
means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite
Mohammedans.
So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of
hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an
attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.
The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the
Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless
lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was,
and that means as bad as Hell itself.
Fair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable
approach for a book.
Here's the problem.
Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The
custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of
photoshopping.
OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had
made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist
wouldn't be paid.
Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the
60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major
role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally
flawed. I would say more so.
All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The
triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind
and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..
America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution
and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the
greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side
of American history is taught.
"There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate
this level of panic."
You continue to claim what you cannot prove.
But then you are a Jews First Zionist.
Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of
"Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a
straight face
Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually
coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and
permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.
Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks
from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.
The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys
Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were
the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.
After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with
the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924,
despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.
Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil
fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they
should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad
today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else
wanted.
'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" --
Michael Kenney
Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the
catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1)
by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by
NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.
It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans.
OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do
Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a
half.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration.
I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration.
While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The
second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by
Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?
It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling.
Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American
public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.
The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst
has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton
gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.
This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.
Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.
The fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the
Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of
these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.
[The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held
views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist
line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign
policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also
long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of
state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not
appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on
Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with
Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete
withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.
Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it
would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling
Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third
major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who
has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel
Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016,
donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in
Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]
Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It
means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources
and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital
the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US
debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will
steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in
Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple
Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington
must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate
their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain
its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to
success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency,
and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state –
particularly the Chinese.
First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists
defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army
conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic
ambitions.
The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news
gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who
dictates what they can and can't say.
They are given the political line and they broadcast it.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with
the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for
the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is
that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by
factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people. That can only lead to trouble.
At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the
media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet
Bolshevik model.
On the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the
Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's
Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.
Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt,
compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most
people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of
mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into
something much worse.
The thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are
maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with
neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources
in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last
events show – with acceleration.
It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for
those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free"
population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the
free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start
one.
All government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.
The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not
improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.
Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the
deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy"
narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.
And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they
were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and
CIA-trained.
Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign
nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's
that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six
month actions – they go on and on.)
Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the
grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these
politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave
office.)
Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are
we attacking with drones? Where is congress?
Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it
goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them
more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!
9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various
peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.
We are being exceptionally arrogant.
Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.
"People get into a lot of conversations about political strategies I might get in trouble for saying this, but what does
it matter if we beat Donald Trump, if we end up with someone who will perpetuate the very same crony capitalist policies, corporate
policies, and waging more of these costly wars?"
And just to drive home this point, quote:
"This is not a joke. This is not about me. This about all of us. This is about our future. About making sure we have
one."
Tulsi did get in to trouble. A day after the video posted on Twitter, it had been deleted by Twitter without explanation
Mark Dierking , April 18, 2019 at 15:53
Thanks to you any everyone that has responded for the thoughtful comments. If you are able to edit yours, a more accessible
link for the Safari browser is:
He's turned out to be a ziocon and Bibi's bitch instead. He's surrounded himself with
neocons. And he's also Wall St's bitch as his primary concern is stock prices. He wants the Fed
to lower already low rates and grow its multi-trillion dollar "emergency" balance sheet even
more. The federal government will add a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his
term. Isn't this exactly what the establishment of both parties want?
In any case, the hammer needs to come down hard on the putschists, so that law enforcement
& the intelligence agencies don't become an extra-constitutional 4th branch of government
accountable only to themselves. We'll see how far the Trump administration will go in holding
these seditionists to account?
We had been inflicted with "Russogate" ad nauseam for the better part of two years and
nothing, absolutely nothing, came of it. But no mention of the Zio-gate where the dog and its
tail reciprocally meddle in each others' election(s) overwhelmingly in favor of Zio-tail
interests. The silence of this issue in the MSM is deafening.
One of my biggest concerns about the 2016 Sanders campaign was that, at least at the
beginning, it was too easily forced to apologize for attacks on supposed "allies of
progressives" in the Democratic ecosystem -- because "unity."
The prime example of that occurred when Sanders accused the Planned Parenthood Action Fund
-- not Planned Parenthood the health care organization, Planned Parenthood AF, the highly
Clintonist political action committee, which had early-endorsed Clinton despite Sanders'
excellent record on women's issues -- of being "part of the establishment."
He was immediately accused by the rest of the establishment, falsely, of attacking Planned
Parenthood clinics. And he backed down, unwisely in my view. (For more on that episode, read
the first few
paragraphs of this piece .)
Well, the highly Clintonist, highly corporate establishment is at it again, in the form of
the corrupt
Center for American Progress (CAP) and its online publication ThinkProgress . (For more
on their corruption, see also
here and here .)
ThinkProgress published a video critical of Sanders, as Lee Fang (who also delves into
their corruption) explains here:
In response to that video Sanders sent CAP a letter
, saying in part:
Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while
simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry
that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the
role it is playing in the progressive movement . (emphasis mine)
Team Sanders then went a whole lot further than that in a public fundraising letter, parts
of which are reproduced below. Note the expansion of the "corporate money" point from the CAP
letter, and also the directness (emphasis mine throughout):
"We are under attack"
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends –
Just like that, our campaign is under attack from the corporate establishment .
This week, an organization that is the epitome of the political establishment --
the Center for American Progress (CAP) -- unleashed and promoted an online attack video
against Bernie.
And behind the scenes on the day Bernie introduced his Medicare for All bill, they held a
conference call with reporters attacking the bill.
That is the Center for American Progress' real goal. Trying to stop Medicare for All
and our progressive agenda .
CAP's leadership has been pretty upfront about their disdain for Bernie -- and for all of
us. They see our political revolution as a threat to their privilege and influence
.
The Center for American Progress is an organization whose massive annual budget is
bankrolled by billionaires and corporate executives that profit from finance,
pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuels, and sending American jobs overseas.
Last year alone, they took funding from financial giants like Bank of America and
Blackstone, whose CEO was chair of Trump's business council and is a leading
Republican donor.
Before that, they cashed checks from companies like BlueCross Blue Shield, Pfizer,
WalMart , and defense contractors like General Dynamics and BAE Systems .
They also took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel pumping United
Arab Emirates while the country was bombing innocent civilians in Yemen – a war
Bernie has led the fight to end.
The Center for American Progress has deep connections to the economic and political
elites who have done so much damage to working families in every zip code. And what we
must do today is send a message that we are prepared to fight back against those who are
working day and night to defeat our movement .
In solidarity,
Team Bernie
That's powerful stuff, no-holds-barred truth-telling. Note the many bells it
rings:
"corporate establishment" "epitome of the political establishment" "real goal stop
Medicare for All and our progressive agenda" "threat to their privilege and influence" "massive
annual budget is bankrolled by billionaires" "deep connections to the economic and political
elites who have done so much damage to working families" "working day and night to defeat our
movement"
The letter also names a few of the companies and countries that bankroll CAP -- Walmart,
Bank of America, Blue Cross, Blackstone, the UAE. He could have listed a great many more. There
are countless stories emerging from former ThinkProgress writers about CAP leadership
squelching aggressive reporting because their reports were negatively affecting CAP
fundraising. Read this twitter thread by former
ThinkProgress reporter Zaid Jilani to see some of those. There are others as well
.
Bernie Sanders is not backing down this time. Unlike 2016, this will be a battle with the
enemy named out loud and its deeds detailed. Looks like the fight, the one our country has been
avoiding for years, is finally on.
I commented about this on another thread to the effect that this is the beginning of a
"Night of the Long Knives" quality power struggle in the Democrat Party.
Glad to see the Sanders campaign being proactive about the dirty dealing that is being used to
try and stop them.
Now for Sanders to start framing the struggle as being between "Their" Democrat Party and "Our"
Democrat Party. Sanders really needs to pull off what Trump managed to do in the Republican
Party; a hostile takeover.
Exactly right. Unlike Trump, however, Bernie will have to do it with the entire corporate
and political establishments against him. And not even a "left" Fox News in his corner. It will
truly be us against (all of) them.
If any democrat wants to be real, they have to attack other democrats, because the democrats
suck.
As a political party, they are so pathetic, they lost to donald trump.
The republicans are vile , and mornic.that is how they appeal to their base ..
So if anything is to be done to try and break the stalemate, it must be the debate of ideas.
Not the battle of personalities , we have now.
The republicans have no real ideas, just worn out tropes. The democratic leadership, go around
"saying", they are progressives ( pelosi interview),but really they are as tired in their way
of thinking as the republicans .
Both groups are not worth a thing.
when pelosi pointed out AOC had a group of five she was being dismissive saying she was
steering a bigger ship democrats of all stripes. even the republicans who won seats as
democrats . but really her and her band of good for nothing democrats, doesn't count for
anything near the five new democrats who are out spoken, and have the good character to be on
the right side of history..
I for one, would vote for anyone who battles the democratic blob of a machine. and anyone who
doesn't have a problem with the democratic party, is un-electable.
Pelosi needs to go.
So sanders should fight the democratic corporatists in the senate, if he is trying to be real.
It is about time he needs that "audacity of hope" thingy.
Bernie is definitely in it to win this time. Last night he crushed it on Fox News. He had
the Fox Town Hall audience cheering and applauding. Yes, Fox News.
It's exactly what both sides of the broken political duopoly feared. Trump's tweet on the
subject bears testament to the latter . The pre #BernieFoxTownHall agita from
pearl-clutching Dem cultists online serves as evidence of the former .
Sanders is staying away from some issues, such as Assange arrest and Venezuela, which has
caused some complaints from the Left. Personally, I think he is being tactical and smart in
that he is attempting to reach the largest portion of the electorate. I doubt that he or his
staff is ignorant on these type issues, but he is set on a goal and does not want to let issues
that might divert his direction toward that goal. Or am I being unduly naïve? I am pretty
skeptical of all politicians, but his consistent history gives me some confidence that he will
be straight on these issues if elected/.
Saying something about two radically different people doesn't logically lead to the same
thing. Obama was great at giving speeches, was a historic candidate and did try to (in a vague
way) make it sound as if he wanted to change the system. He didn't. He pretended to want to
re-negotiate NAFTA, but when the Canadians freaked a bit, his campaign assured them that it was
just talk, cause it was. It was obvious before he took office, to anyone paying attention, that
Obama was a neoliberal that wouldn't change much of anything. But Obama in 2008 is not Bernie
then or now. Obama in 2008 is Beto or mayor Pete now. Empty platitudes, totally cut off from
the struggles of working people, paid to not structurally change what needs to structurally
change by people that benefit from the system as is. Obama was just much better at being that
empty slate than the 2020 version of him. I can almost smell the mayor Pete book deal though,
and I am sure he can too.
Thanks for this comment. I tried to read yesterday's New York piece
on the Democrats' Folksiest Heartland Hope, but between that
mcPhoto at the top, and the conversational, we're-all-in-this
together tone of the writer, stopped after a couple of paras.
The #resistance are all so tired; do they not realize that?
Regarding Mister Obama's speeches, to me they reeked of
hollowness. He had the gestures and cadences down, though.
I think you are not being unduly naive. Watch some of Bernie's videos from the 80ies. He is
very clear eyed about what he's dealing with – and has always said the same thing. He is
being realistic, tactical and smart – raising powerful issues where there is clear daily
pain for the common person that can bring a powerful response – is anyone really
surprised about the Fox audience reaction? (Im only surprised they didnt stack the room with
fakes who would boo him ).
The foreign policy issues are not so clear cut for the common working class person (please
understand that!) and would muddle the message. He finally sees an opening and he is going for
it. He knows what he's doing.
The other thing about Fox is that the owner Murdochs are amoral and apolitical. They go
where the money is. Totally neoliberal. That is all they care about. They know the money train
is coming to a very complex junction and are setting up to go with the money, whether corporate
or little people's.
I think this touches on what could be the most important aspect of a Sanders presidency
– it's not so much the policies (they are important), but the people that would be
brought into government. This letter is an indication that the usual suspects will not be
running the show. In that regard, it could be similar to Reagan's time in office, except way,
way better.
Just got another email from Bernie's campaign. Here it is:
Subject: A serious threat to our campaign
The New York Times has an article today with the headline "'Stop Sanders' Democrats
Are Agonizing Over His Momentum."
"From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington,
mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried " the article begins.
"The Bernie question comes up in every fundraising meeting I do," said one fundraiser.
"It has gone from being a low hum to a rumble," said an operative.
"He did us a disservice in the last election," said another.
"You can see him reading the headlines now," Mr. [David] Brock mused: "'Rich people don't
like me.'"
Mr. Brock -- who smeared Anita Hill and who led an effort to stop our political revolution
four years ago -- is almost correct. They don't just hate Bernie Sanders. They hate everything
our political revolution embodies. They hate Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, breaking up
big banks, free public college for all.
That is why, in the next 48 hours, we are launching a fundraising drive that I hope will
send an unmistakable message to the political establishment about the strength of our political
revolution.
That's why I'm asking you today:
[Link to donation site] Make a $27 contribution to our campaign as part of our emergency
48-hour fundraising drive to fight back against the "anti-Sanders" campaign being hatched by
the financial elite of this country. [End link]
They may have "canapé-filled fundraisers." We have each other.
Well, just moments after reading the NYT article in question, which is quite a doozy, this
popped up in my in box:
"The New York Times has an article today with the headline "'Stop Sanders' Democrats Are
Agonizing Over His Momentum."
"From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington,
mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried " the article begins.
"The Bernie question comes up in every fundraising meeting I do," said one fundraiser.
"It has gone from being a low hum to a rumble," said an operative.
"He did us a disservice in the last election," said another.
"You can see him reading the headlines now," Mr. [David] Brock mused: "'Rich people don't like
me.'"
Mr. Brock -- who smeared Anita Hill and who led an effort to stop our political revolution four
years ago -- is almost correct. They don't just hate Bernie Sanders. They hate everything our
political revolution embodies. They hate Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, breaking up big
banks, free public college for all.
That is why, in the next 48 hours, we are launching a fundraising drive that I hope will send
an unmistakable message to the political establishment about the strength of our political
revolution.
That's why I'm asking you today:
Make a contribution to our campaign as part of our emergency 48-hour fundraising drive to fight
back against the "anti-Sanders" campaign being hatched by the financial elite of this
country.
They may have "canapé-filled fundraisers." We have each other.
In solidarity,
Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager
Forgetting nothing, learning nothing. One of the true, primal joys of Bernie's 2016 campaign
was hitting the donate button every time the dollar dems dumped on him.
Likewise. I'm giving every time they dump on him, and again every time he hits back. At this
pace, $27 may get to be too expensive. A good problem to have I'd say.
Tears came to my eyes - happy tears - when you were elected! A seemingly impossible feat was accomplished that day in November.
I understood when you faced tremendous resistance in your first 200 days from Demorats. It seemed you were unphased and determined
- all was good.
You called the stock market a bubble when you were campaigning, but just a few months after you won the election you called
the stock market a great accomplishment of your administration. What changed? I got confused. Worse, you cursed when the Fed
raised interest rates to 2.5% and the market started to crash. That doesn't sound like an awesome economy. It sounds like a
highly manipulated one by central actors.
You lobbed some Tomahawks into Syrian sand - that worried me.
Then you lobbed a hundred or so more after a couple of Wahhabists wearing white hats, funded by Britain and the CIA, staged
a fakenews chemical attack and put it on social media. Dear Donald, were these missiles close to their expiry date? Were you
playing 4D chess? Some of those failed missiles flew near a major Russian base, were you at all concerned that one or two of
them might malfunction and accidentally bomb the Russians? I guess not. The Russians however were concerned -- which
is why they prepared to attack your fleet, along with the French and Canadian boats - just in case. But I guess it was just
another day at the Oval Office.
You said Hillary should be in jail. It is nearly three years since you said that. She's not in jail. Instead, several patriots
were dragged through the mud by Mueller and/or the Democrats - all you've had to say is that it was terrible! You can't even
seem to properly handle retarded people like Maxine and Nancy.
You claimed you were winning, but you lost the lower House to the Dems in the midterms.
You said America is leaving Syria for others to deal with -- which probably was a reference to Saudi Wahhabists and Israeli
Zionists. Why are you still there protecting Al Q'aida?
You seem to be eager to wreak havoc against Iran - was that part of the deal to bring home our troops?
You brought NK and the rest of the world to the brink of nuclear war. Luckily NK started packing-up their nuke program.
It wont be for long though. You've done nothing since, except appoint John Bolton. If I were the leader of NK I wouldn't really
trust you.
You campaigned on bringing home troops from all the useless wars. Now you're thinking of attacking Venezuela. What gives?
I'm more confused.
You said working with Russia would be a good thing - you've hit Russia fairly hard with sanctions and diplomatic retribution.
Maybe we can blame the fakenews MSM and the Dems and forgive you for playing into their whims.
You offered tax credits for corporations, they fraudulently bought back their own stocks. You offered tax credits to the
people, they used most of it to pay down their overdue credit cards. Some apparently used the money as a down-payment on a
new pickup that they'll either have to sell soon or risk repo - nothing changed in the long-run.
You promised a wall paid for by Mexico....
Why does the American military require three-quarters of a trillion dollars per year? Yet you're willing to pay even more.
Most of all, you kept referring to Wikileaks, and its publication of the HRC emails, as proof of a corrupt DNC. Two years
later, you jailed its editor. It doesn't end there. It really does look like you want to drag this Australian/Ecuadorian to
America to imprison, torture, and possibly execute, someone who hasn't committed any crime (except skipping bail on a highly
questionable extradition to Sweden in response to a 'she said / he said' accusation that the complainants and the Swedish prosecutors
dropped, much like those lobbed at your SCOTUS pick that you vehemently and rightly criticized).
Mr. President, if that's how you treat your allies and friends, I'd rather be your enemy. At least your enemies so far
seem to get away with everything and anything. your friends on the other hand get fired or jailed or both.
Mr. President, sir if you are a populist, you sure don't act like one surrounding yourself with the Deep State...
The fact that she lied about her ethnicity in the past in hopes of gaining a leg up will
backfire spectacularly if she's the DNC nominee for POTUS. Conservatives will beat this point
over and over and over.
Is the Left secretly trying to put Trump in the WH for another term? It sure looks like
it.
the chances that Dems supporting a candidate who does not win the primary would boycott
the election and put Trump back in the White House are vanishingly small this time
around
They were warned that that would happen last time, and they still let it happen. The
"Bernie bros" are back out in force, and not only have they not learnt their lesson, they
feel validated by Clinton's defeat to the extent where they are even more determined that
their old man should be the candidate and nobody else. These are people who abandoned the
Democrats for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who managed to make Sarah Palin look
intelligent. They will do it again because they are largely white, male and think just
because they read liberal newspapers that means they don't have a sense of entitlement.
Both Michigan and Pennsylvania would have gone to Clinton if only 20% of Green voters
hadn't lodged protest votes. These people don't want Elizabeth Warren, they don't want Kamala
Harris, they don't want Beto O'Rourke, they don't want Pete Buttigieg. They want Bernie. If
Bernie isn't the Democrat, they won't vote Democrat.
You can dismiss this as much as you like, but I placed a bet on Trump winning the
Republican nomination when he was the joke candidate and when he won the nomination I bet on
him winning the presidency. I think that would be an even safer bet this time round.
That's just funny. She's been behind some of the major legislation that enacted the things
that Bernie Sanders talks about. And Wall Street is scared crapless of her -- why do you
think they're going after her so hard?
This conjecture is entirely fiction at best but centrist neo libeberal bollocks as a
certainty. Warren was and is a republican. She is a corporate bootlicker, a thrall of Hillary
and has no serious attachment to truth. I regret to admit that I am a US citizen, 68 years of
age. I have wittnessed Warren's shameless plagirising of Bernie Sanders' arguments and am
sickened to see her lionized by people who, if honest, should know better.
The columnist is right about Warren's intellectual stature and influence, and anyone who's
looked at what she's accomplished for Massachusetts (or for that matter watched her takedown
of the sleazy head of Wells Fargo during the Senate hearings) knows she's tough. She also has
a *workable* vision of what the Democrats could offer Americans. From affordable childcare to
making college tuition affordable again to helping out working-class people like the
fisherman in Massachusetts, while reigning in the banks and making sure we don't have another
crash – it's the blueprint.
There's something hysterically funny about all the people who have signed in here, clearly
skipped the article, just to yell "squirrel!" – or in this case -- "oh no she filled
out the optional ethnicity box and it turns out her family stories were mistaken!"
What they're missing, what Warren is laying out and the article is pointing out, is what
the GOP will really be up against in the future.
I don't like this argument: she may not win the primary, but it's her ideas that will
dominate the conversation.
It worked for Bernie supporters to console themselves.
If we elect someone, it needs to be the person who will be passionate about that idea (as
opposed to lukewarm like Pelosi is on Green New Deal). We need someone who knows what it will
take to get it done. What will get in the way. How to get around it.
Warren not only had the idea for CFPB. She actually set it up. Then Obama lacked the moral
courage and political spine to have her lead the agency - just because Wall Street had
pressured the Democrats against it.
Warren is the right candidate for the right time. She has ideas to fix the country and
doesn't just rail against people. That's why even Steve Bannon is scared of her policy
positions that they could be theirs.
Democrats need to stop playing pundits and go with their heart. If they vote for someone
they like less but because he (why is it always a 'he' who is electable?) can win - we will
end up with a candidate no one really cares about and how is that a winning strategy?
Democrat primary voters need to recognise that defeating Trump is going to be very difficult.
Since WW II, only Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr. have failed to win re-election, in both
cases to superb campaigners who captured the public's imagination and, critically, swing
voters.
Which of the potential Democrat challengers is a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton? Or,
indeed, a Barack Obama?
For a dose of reality, Democrats could do worse than read Mike Bloomberg's piece on his
decision to stay out of the race:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-05/our-highest-office-my-deepest-obligation
Warren rules -- her policy ideas are creative, intelligent and moral, and the world would be
an indescribably better place if people like her were ever allowed into positions of
authority. That anyone on the planet would prefer to be represented by someone like Biden,
never mind Trump, is utterly depressing.
Sadly, FOX News has already issued their proscribed talking points on Sen.Warren. You will
find them listed and repeated anywhere Elizabeth's Warren's candidacy is discussed (including
here). Most of it will be lies or exaggerations, claims that she received jobs and promotions
based on her claims of Native American ancestry, claims that she received scholarships or
some kind of preferential treatment by calling herself an "Indian". They will insist that
this is an obvious character flaw, that she's a liar and some sort of cultural thief.
Sadly, too many American's still imagine FOX News and it's ilk are purveyors of fact. They
imagine the propaganda they are being fed about Elizabeth Warren is a truth the "mainstream
media" won't mention. We saw all of this with Hillary Clinton. 30% of Republican voters still
think Sec. Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a DC pizza parlor.
If Sen.Warren, or any other rational candidate has a fair chance at running for President,
if all the lies and propaganda of the right-wing media establishment are to be countered, the
left and the center of US politics needs an effective counter to right-wing narrative.
A presidential campaign is not about specific, detailed policy proposals. It's about a vision
for the country. A vision that must be consistent with voters' feelings and expectations; and
must be communicated in a clear, energetic way by an effective messenger. That's the way
Reagan, Clinton, Obama and Trump won.
Does anybody remember Trump's healthcare policy?
People don't vote for policy manifestos. People vote for candidates that inspire and
convince.
If Warren is the 'intellectual powerhouse' of the Democratic party, then god help them. Not a
word about 1 trillion dollar budget deficits and rising (under Trump)-but remember Obama was
little better; in 15 years time the US state pension system will be bankrupt, various other
states' pension schemes are also effectively bankrupt (see Illinois, Tennessee) as are
various cities (Chicago), and all Warren and Trump can think of is more debt, and nor will
MMT help (we know this is just deficit spending on steroids). None of these people are
'progressive' - by not tacking the key problem of runaway debt it just robs everyone by
forcing a default - not an 'honest' one, but rather the route taken by all politicians,
namely rapid devaluation of the currency; something that robs all people, and destroys
savings. Instead all we get are jam today, and bankruptcy tomorrow.
She changed her ethnicity from white to Native American at the University of Pennsylvania Law
School. Also, a large majority of Americans have Native American DNA....and EW has less than
the average American (which is 5%)...she has 0.20. She abused a privilege and got called out.
She's too damn smart, is the problem. Along with all her qualifications she has also a lot of
very solid wins that she brought home for the people of Massachusetts as a senator, from
helping fisherman to low-income students suffering from college debt -- emphasizing that
she's actually helped working class people and people in student debt should be a no brainer.
And yet she seems not to have a savvy political operator advising her – she sure as
hell hasn't gotten out ahead of the Native American thing, and I don't know why no one is
doing that for her.
"Elizabeth Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic party"
Then they really are in trouble.....
Just take 1 point....
"She has called for abolishing the electoral college, the unfair institution the US used
to elect executives "
Well that requires a constitutional amendment, that requires a two thirds majority in both
houses and then ratification by three quarters of the States. The ERA was proposed in 1923
didn't get through Congress until 1972 and is still short of the 38 State ratifications to
adopt it. That's an issue of direct concern to at least half the population. The idea that a
procedural change to the constitution for partisan benefit is getting through the process is
blatantly laughable. Particularly as there appear to be about 27 states that have enhanced
importance under the current system ( http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280
) and only 13 are needed to kill it.
Warren has the same foreign policy as all the others, invade, sanction, destroy. Steal oil,
gold and assets. The US has become a deluded neurotic police state rife with addiction and so
addled it is no longer a force for good in any sphere.
In short it is now a part of the
problem and no longer a part of any workable solution. Who becomes POTUS is therefore
irrelevant.
Warren is flawed ideologically and personally, US citizens need to wake up and recognise that the POTUS is an irrelevant position with no authority and that until you
tackle the neocon ridden nature of US politics nothing will ever change.
There is no hope in
systems, only hope in people. Politics has become irrelevant in the face of our impending
extinction.
"... Posturing as a would-be American native and supporting racial retributions is as far from qualifying as an intellectual powerhouse as it gets. She would be better than Trump, obviously, but then anybody would. ..."
It may well not be Warren who wins the Democratic nomination, but whoever does will be
campaigning on her ideas
since her initial announcement in December, Warren's campaign has rolled out a series of
detailed policy proposals in quick succession, outlining structural changes to major
industries, government functions, and regulatory procedures that would facilitate more
equitable representation in the federal government and overhaul the economy in favor of the
working class. These policy proposals have made Warren the Democratic party's new intellectual
center of gravity, a formidable influence who is steadily pushing the presidential primary
field to the left and forcing all of her primary challengers to define their political
positions against hers.
Warren has become the Democratic party's new intellectual center of gravity
Warren herself is an anti-trust nerd, having come to the Senate from a career as an academic
studying corporate and banking law. On the stump, she's most detailed in the same areas where
she is most passionate, like when she talks about about breaking
up huge tech companies such as Amazon and Google, and implementing a 21st-century --
version of the Glass-Steagall act that would separate commercial and investment banking (she
has also called for prosecuting and
jailing bank executives who break the law). But her policy agenda is broader than that,
taking on pocketbook issues that have resonance with working families.
Warren outlined a huge overhaul of the childcare system that would revolutionize the
quality, cost and curriculum of early childhood education, with subsidies for families and a
living wage for caregivers. It's a proposal that she talks about in the context of her own
career when, as a young mother and fledgling legal mind, she almost had to give up a job as a
law professor because childcare for her young son was too expensive.
Warren has also proposed a housing plan
that would limit huge investors' abilities to buy up homes, give incentives for localities to
adopt renters' protections, and build new public housing. Crucially, and uniquely, her housing
plan would also provide home
ownership grants to buyers in minority communities that have historically been "redlined",
a term for the racist federal housing policies that denied federally backed mortgages to black
families. The provision, aimed to help black and brown families buy their first homes, is a
crucial step toward amending the racial wealth gap, and it has helped sparked a broader
conversation within the party about the need to
pay reparations to the descendants of slaves -- a concept that Warren has also
endorsed.
Taking her cues from pro-democracy and voting rights advocates such as Stacey Abrams, Warren
has also taken on anti-majoritarian constitutional provisions, aiming to make American
democracy more representative and less structurally hostile to a progressive agenda. She has
called for abolishing the
electoral college , the unfair institution the US uses to elect chief executives that makes
a vote in New York count less than a vote in Wyoming, and which has resulted in two disastrous
Republican presidencies in the past two decades. She has advocated eliminating the filibuster
, an archaic procedural quirk of the Senate that would keep the Democrats from ever passing
their agenda if they were to regain control of that body. And she has signaled a willingness to
pack the
courts , another move that will be necessary to implement leftist policies such as Medicare
for All -- because even if the next Democratic president can pass her agenda through Congress,
she will not be able to protect it from the malfeasance of a federal bench filled with
conservative Trump appointees eager to strike it down.
When other candidates campaign, Warren's strong policy positions force them to define
themselves against her
Warren has been the first to propose all of these policies, and it is not difficult to see
other candidates falling in line behind her, issuing belated and imitative policy proposals, or
being forced to position themselves to her right. Warren has promised not to go negative
against other Democrats , but her campaign's intellectual
project also serves a political purpose: when other candidates campaign, her strong policy
positions force them to define themselves against her.
After Warren announced her childcare overhaul, senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris
rolled out plans similarly designed to combat gendered economic injustice, calling for
guaranteed family leave and
better teacher
pay , respectively. After Warren rolled out her pro-democracy agenda of eliminating the
electoral college, abolishing the filibuster and packing the courts, her ideological rival
Bernie Sanders was forced to come out against
both eliminating the filibuster and
packing the courts , damaging his reputation with a party base who knew that without these
interventions, a progressive agenda will probably never be enacted. The pressure eventually
forced Sanders to cave to Warren's vision and concede that he would be open to eliminating the
filibuster in order to pass Medicare for All.
There's still a long time before the first contests, and it's possible that Warren will
succumb to the flaws that her critics see in her campaign. In particular, she might not be able
to raise enough money. She's decided not to take any Pac money and not to fundraise with
wealthy donors, a position that may be as much practical as it is principled: the super-rich
are not likely to donate to Warren anyway, since she has such a detailed plan, called the
Ultra Millionaire Tax , to redistribute their money. She may fall victim to the seemingly
unshakable controversy over her old claims of Native American ancestry, and she seems doomed to
be smeared and underestimated for her sex, called
cold and unlikable for her intellect and then, as with other female candidates, derided as
pandering when she tries to seem more relatable.
But it would be a mistake to write Warren off as a virtuous also-ran, the kind of candidate
whose intellectual and moral commitments doom her in a race dominated by the deep divisions in
the electorate and the craven demagoguery of the incumbent. Elizabeth Warren does not seem to
be running for president to make a point, or to position herself for a different job. Instead,
she is making bold interventions in the political imagination of the party. It may well not be
Warren who wins the Democratic nomination, but whoever does will be campaigning on her
ideas.
Thanks Ken and Thomas. I couldn't have said it better myself. Are we going to pare down the
list of Democratic candidates on the basis of one or two stupid missteps? Looking through the
Bible, I note that Jesus lost his temper at the money-changers and put down the hard-working
Martha. So, he's out too.
Not only the USA, with everyone becoming wealthier, the need for education has declined,
across the western world, being liberal or educated has become a swear word. Social media and
lazy journalists are doing the rest, its all propaganda now, and permanent contradictory
stories means only simple messages cut through the noise, hatred, immigrants, islamophobia,
anti-semitism, etc. are classic messages that get through and stir people's emotions.
Intellect doesn't win elections with a gullible electorate
It was a mistake and it was self-interested and it was unethical. And it was a different time
before tribal groups in the US developed and enforced laws regarding membership status. Had
Trump not shown disdain for her and all native Americans by calling her Pocahontas as though
it were a racial slur, few would have made a big deal from this mistake.
Warren did confess without need to do so that she had purchased distressed mortgages to turn
a profit as a young lawyer like so many of her ethically misguided law colleagues.
If you are
or intimately know more than two attorneys you know this was and in some towns and cities
still is common practice for building wealth among lawyers who have first notice when these
“deals” are posted at the local Court House. Find me a “clean” lawyer
anywhere if you can and I doubt you can — they write law and protect themselves and
wealthy constituents mightily in doing so.
If you can help remove most of them from political
office and replace them with people working professions of greater merit I stand with you.
Congress needs intellectual strength and diversity
of backgrounds.
Unfortunately she opposes wars of choice from the position of an impressive service record
in Iraq so she gets ignored in favour of the ridiculous Elizabeth Warren here and in other
places. Warren's window was last time anyway when she was coming off the back of viral public
speeches about inequality.
Posturing as a would-be American native and supporting racial retributions is as far from
qualifying as an intellectual powerhouse as it gets.
She would be better than Trump, obviously, but then anybody would.
While I'd prefer the genders reversed, I think she would be an ideal running mate for the
front-runner among the declared candidates.
Sanders has much more assiduously defined the moral center that any candidate for
president must have: unapologetic confrontation with the oligarchy. Warren is the
intellectual weapon such an administration could deploy on the specifics of banking and
anti-trust.
This is all the more practical given that Warren has failed to tie race, social justice
and criminal justice issues all together in her values-based worldview -- certainly not to
the extent that Sanders has, his being well beyond any other candidate's efforts.
Because Obama was a canny corporate move to place someone that offered such qualities as
intelligence and grammar in sharp relief to GW Bush while remaining closely controlled by the
oligarchy.
Do you include her fraudulent and offensive claims to Native American heritage in that?
As CNN has reported, as far back as 1986 she was falsely claiming "American Indian" heritage
on official documents.
Despite repeated calls by the leaders of the Tribal Nations, she has still failed to
apologise. That's some intellectual powerhouse..
"... "IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus shouldn't be a rabbi. ..."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into
whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sparking
criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.
Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats
for how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his comments about surveillance brought
more derision from Democratic senators.
His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks
to cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation in an apparent attempt to
discredit Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow
Trump is silly to the point of being laughable.
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.
Did they have some scheme to get rid of Pence too? Or was it all mindless blind hatred
because he took down their Goddess Hillary?
ZS @ 68 said in part;"assuming the Corporate Democrats don't force one of their candidates
Big Corporations want on the ballot. Which is, of course, most of them."
I assume what you speculated on above, will happen.
Zachary Smith @68: ... Corporate Democrats ... domestic policies ...
The democratic party is irredeemable as it operates as one arm of the duopoly. I don't see
any meaningful distinction between "Corporate Democrats" and progressive Democrats except
this: progressive Democrats give the Democratic Party cover to support the establishment.
IMO domestic policy can no longer be considered separately from Empire. "Progressive
Democrats" are forced encouraged by their Party to support the military and
ignore foreign policy.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
IMO the only grouping that is currently viable/strong alternative is the libertarians. If
they could bring conservatives and (real) progressives together, then we could see a real
challenge to the "radical center" (which actually rules as center-right).
But conservatives, (real) progressives, and libertarians are underfunded and constantly
get played.
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.
Well of course the WHY baffles you, because the only WHY that makes sense is what I
described and that will never be allowed to come out publicly because then people will see
that their democracy is a sham.
The "managed democracy" that we have in USA subverts the will of the people to the
Empire.
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is
the truth. Even ignorant and thuggish goons like Trump can be victims of a crime, and I
believe that's what happened here.
I find it piquant that the vice president of the US attacks a Venezuelan ambassador at the UN
and then ramps up his aggression...by retreating.
Pence is so certain that the other guy doesn't belong, that he himself walks away. Every
schoolyard would see this behavior for exactly what it is. Animals would understand it
clearly also, in terms of pecking order.
How perfect this action is in matching precisely what we've been watching the US do in
several military theaters for some time now. The louder and the ruder the bluster, the more
certain we can be that it covers pure emptiness. And that the US is tangibly retreating under
cover of the smoke.
"IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such
behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus
shouldn't be a rabbi.
----------------------
"The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition," Ketubot 11b, vol. 7 (NY: Random House, 1991), p.
145:
"If a grown man has intercourse with a little girl less than three years old, all agree
that it is not a significant sexual act "
"If a man engages in homosexual intercourse with a minor who is under the age of nine,
whether actively or passively, he is exempt as with regard to ritual law..."
I"m not sure we disagree very much, for I also believe our "democracy" is thoroughly
managed, and "sham" is quite a good word for it. The part I don't understand is why you seem
to object to pointing out efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error of a slam dunk
election going bad. Hillary was supposed to be in the White House. More than one
nation had been making advance payments to the Clinton Foundation to purchase her goodwill.
She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks.
That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged.
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe
is the truth.
I think that you're not thinking this through.
You're question of WHY, is still unanswered.
> WHY did the hold back on Russian-influence allegations during the election? Hillary was suppose to win, sure. But why not ENSURE that win?
> WHY did they continue with Russiagate after the election? They engaged in Treasonous behavior because Hillary was butthurt?
She supposedly got 3 million more votes than Trump; how badly could her ego be
bruised?
> WHY did the establishment hate Trump so much? He's delivered all they could want and more.
> Why did Russiagate force Trump to bend to Deep State wishes? Ha! It didn't! Trump has always maintained that there was no Russia collusion. And now
the Mueller Report confirms this. Trump's Cold War policy continues the Deep State's same
policy - because Trump is part of the team.
This is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other questions that you could ask because
there's a lot that doesn't add up - unless Russiagate was a Deep State psyop with bi-partisan
support (as I've described).
Zachary Smith @85: efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error
Because it makes no sense. If they got their wish and "corrected" the error by overthrowing Trump, there would be a
civil war. Which is counter-productive in the extreme.
But they don't need to take such drastic action 'cause Trump does that the Deep States
wants anyway! So what are they trying to "correct"?!?
Alleged ongoing Military Coup in Sudan today, another just happened in Algeria... Haftar
making moves in Libya, could all just be a coincidence, then again, maybe not? Anyone got
anything? Wondering what Mr B. thinks..
At least 60 companies reported an effective federal tax rate of zero, meaning they owe
nothing in federal taxes for 2018, and that tax burden then falls on the rest of us. Senator
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to fix that. She joins Stephanie Ruhle in her first interview since
unveiling her proposal.
60 years ago every job offered health insurance, retirement plans, paid vacation, and all
sorts of other benefits. It's time to have them pay a share of our societies costs, they use
the same roads, breathe the same air, and drink the same water...
Warren has consistently amazed me with her proposals... I hope she will make it to the
debates, since everyone's fawning over Bernie and Beto for their fundraising capabilities, I
hope they are not trying to sink her...
Warren Buffet, who saved 28 or so million on his, himself said trumps tax deal was
foolish..but he also said he wouldn't turn it down, which i don't blame him on that..
Senator Warren makes some excellent points (as usual): "market" implies a competitive
environment, so when huge corps squeeze out competitors, it's no longer a "market".
Corporations/rich individuals always say they made their profits themselves (independently of
others or of any social structure systems). Really? If you were living/doing business on a
mountaintop, disconnected from everyone else and any infrastructure support, you would have
done just as well? That's a load of crap, and if they had any responsibility at all (as
opposed to just pure greed), they'd be willing to give back a bit and contribute to the
system(s) they build their wealth on.
The fact is that the wealthy all over the world do not want their position of privilege to
be challenged. This is why Bernie Sanders has been saying (for several DECADES) that the only
way to move our society forward is to build from the bottom up... not the top down. And he is
100% correct.
The main way big corporations corrupt the movement is by lobbing for tax preferential regime.
Neoliberalism included "voodoo" supply side economics thory that speculates that lower taxes
increase employment, while in reality they mostly increase the wealth of capital owners. This
theory is brainwashed itno people minds by relentless neoliberal propaganda machine -- all major
MSM are controlled by neoliberals. Common people have no say in this gbig game.
But tax regime is the battlefield were big capital fights labor and big capital since 1970
won all major battles.
Notable quotes:
"... "Because of relentless lobbying, our corporate income tax rules are filled with so many loopholes and exemptions and deductions that even companies that tell shareholders they have made more than a billion dollars in profits can end up paying no corporate income taxes," Warren wrote in a Medium post unveiling the plan. "Let's bring in the revenue we need to invest in opportunity for all Americans. And let's make this year the last year any company with massive profits pays zero federal taxes." ..."
"... Warren's plan is aimed at large corporations -- ones that have generally paid lower tax rates than smaller companies in recent years. The GOP tax cut law nearly doubled the number of publicly held companies that paid no federal taxes from 30 to 60 in the last year alone, according to a recent study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. ..."
"... This is the latest significant tax proposal the Massachusetts senator has unveiled as part of her campaign platform, which also includes a two percent surtax on people with more than $50 million in assets and a three percent surtax on those who have $1 billion. ..."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unveiled a major plank in her
platform to tax the rich on Thursday, introducing plans for a new tax on all corporations that
clear $100 million in annual profits.
Warren's "real corporate profits tax" is aimed at large corporations like Amazon that have
generated huge profits in recent years while almost entirely avoiding federal taxes through a
series of loopholes and credits.
"Because of relentless lobbying, our corporate income tax rules are filled with so many
loopholes and exemptions and deductions that even companies that tell shareholders they have
made more than a billion dollars in profits can end up paying no corporate income taxes,"
Warren
wrote in a Medium post unveiling the plan. "Let's bring in the revenue we need to invest in
opportunity for all Americans. And let's make this year the last year any company with massive
profits pays zero federal taxes."
The plan would institute a seven percent tax on profits over $100 million in addition to
current taxes. An economic analysis released by Warren's campaign estimated that at least 1,200
companies would be forced to pay new taxes under the plan, generating a net revenue boost of at
least $1 trillion for the government.
Warren's plan is aimed at large corporations -- ones that have generally paid lower tax
rates than smaller companies in recent years. The GOP tax cut law nearly doubled the number of
publicly held companies that paid no federal taxes from 30 to 60 in the last year alone,
according to a recent study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic
Policy.
This is the latest significant tax proposal the Massachusetts senator has unveiled as part
of her campaign platform, which also includes a two percent surtax on people with more than $50
million in assets and a three percent surtax on those who have $1 billion.
The plans have earned her plaudits on the left and drawn concern from some more
business-friendly moderate Democrats.
But so far, they haven't proven a game-changer in the presidential race. Warren continues to
struggle to siphon off a significant chunk of voters who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) last
election, her natural base of support. She's regularly polled in the mid- to upper-single
digits in recent state and national polls, in the second tier of candidates.
And she
raised just $6 million in her first quarter in the campaign, her team announced yesterday.
That's not a terrible haul in a crowded field, especially since she's sworn off big donors, but
it's nothing compared to the huge sums she pulled in as a Senate candidate -- and trailed even
upstart South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D).
She also spent almost all of that money, having
built out a large staff in the early primary states with a high payroll.
And Sanders isn't giving her much room on her left: He reintroduced a
sweeping Medicare for all plan on Wednesday, which she cosponsored, a move that puts
pressure on Warren and other Democrats to keep up as they try to woo the progressive wing of
the party base.
Trump betrayed white workers because he knows he can get away with it. For the last thirty years of the 20th century millions of
white families were wrenched out of the middle class without a squeak out of any major news outlet or national level politician. Trump
himself stiffed his workers in those days and got away with it.
Notable quotes:
"... “In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider. ..."
"... A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.” ..."
"... Yes, it would have been worse with the Cackling Hyena, but what does that tell ya? ..."
I'm not sure why the author of this article seems to be surprised by the actions of Trump and his administration. The collective
image of him as a blood-thirsty racist whose hatred of all peoples queer 'n' colored runs marrow and generations-deep -- think
of a cross between a street corner John Galt and Ian Smith, daubed with vague overtones of Archie Bunker mingling with Clint Eastwood
-- is purely an invention of the media, the left as well as that of the right.
Why or how he became the impromptu pope of white nationalism escapes me. Anyone with ears to listen and eyes to see could find
for themselves that he never so much as intimated even muted sympathy for that movement, not during his campaign and certainly
not as head of state, media accusations of "dog whistles" and the like notwithstanding.
But a demoralized white working and middle class were willing to believe in anything, deluding themselves into reading between
the barren eruptions of his blowzy proclamations. They elevated him to messianic heights, ironically fashioning him into that
which he publicly claims to despise: an Obama, a Barry in negative image, "hope and change" for the OxyContin and Breitbart set.
Like his predecessor, Trump never really says anything at all. There are grand pronouncements, bilious screeds targeting
perceived enemies, glib generalities, but rarely are any concrete, definitive ideas and policies ever articulated. Trump, like
Obama, is merely a cipher, an empty suit upon which the dreams (or nightmares) of the beholder can effortlessly be projected,
a polarizing figurehead who wields mostly ceremonial powers while others ostensibly beneath him busy themselves with the actual
running of the republic.
To observe this requires no great research or expenditure of effort -- he lays it all out there for anybody to hear or read.
Unfortunately, the near totality of this country's populace is effectively illiterate and poorly equipped to think critically
and independently, preferring to accept the verdicts of their oleaginous talking heads at face value without ever troubling themselves
to examine why. (The dubious products of the glorified diploma mills we call "higher education" are often the most gullible and
dim-witted.) Trump is the dark magus of racism and bigotry -- boo! Trump is the man of sorrows who will carry aloft Western Civilization
resurgent -- yay!
Just as the hysterical left was quickly shattered by the mediocrity that was Barack Obama, so too does the hysterical right
now ululate the sting of Donald Trump's supposed betrayal. As with their ideological antipodes, they got what they deserved. Pity
that the rest of us have to be carted along for the ride.
Politics, at least at the national level, is a puppet show to channel and periodically blow off dissent.
“In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush
years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of
our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger.
This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump
won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.”
Linh Dinh, “Orlando Shooting Means Trump for President,” published at The Unz Review, June 12, 2016.
NEW YORK -- Senator Elizabeth Warren lobbed another policy grenade into the Democratic
primary Friday, announcing she supports drastically changing the Senate by eliminating its
legendary filibuster to give her party a better chance of implementing its ambitious
agenda.
The move puts her campaign rivals on the spot to explain how they would pass their own
ambitious legislative priorities if the Senate keeps its rule in place requiring a 60-vote
supermajority to advance most bills.
Warren's announcement allows her to swerve to the left of Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont in a meaningful way at a time when she's straggling far behind him in early polls and
grass-roots fund-raising.
Sanders, who popularized proposals like free college and Medicare for All among Democrats
during his 2016 run for president, has been reluctant to support scrapping the filibuster.
That raises questions about how he would be able to pass his sweeping proposals into law
should he become president, given Democrats are extremely unlikely to have 60 seats in the
Senate.
"I'm not running for president just to talk about making real, structural change," Warren
told a group of activists at a conference organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton, where she
announced her opposition to the filibuster. "I'm serious about getting it done. And part of
getting it done means waking up to the reality of the United States Senate."
The appearance in New York caps off a three-week run that has seen Warren call for making
it easier to send executives to jail for corporate crimes, unveil a proposal to break up farm
monopolies, endorse forming a commission to study reparations for the descendants of slaves,
and say she would like to abolish the Electoral College so presidents are elected by popular
vote.
"Bernie Sanders, nobody's to his left on policy, but there's lots of running room on his
left on procedural changes that would be necessary to enact those policies," said Brian
Fallon, a former top Hillary Clinton aide and the founder of the liberal advocacy group
Demand Justice.
Sanders said he's not "crazy about" the idea of getting rid of the filibuster in an
interview in February, but said in a later statement that he is open to reform.
Getting rid of the Senate filibuster, which has been around since the mid-1800s, was once
seen as a radical proposal that would undermine the chamber's ability to take a deliberative
approach to major issues. But Democratic and Republican majorities have chipped away at it in
recent years, jettisoning filibusters for Cabinet and Supreme Court nominees.
Just this week, Senate Republicans infuriated Democrats by unilaterally reducing the
amount of debate time for other executive branch and judicial nominees before a filibuster
could be ended.
The move to ditch the filibuster has gained currency among liberals frustrated that the
Senate is more Republican than the general public because of liberals clustering on the
coasts and the constitutional requirement that all states get two senators regardless of
population.
President Trump and Barack Obama have complained about the filibuster, with Obama saying
last year that it made it "almost impossible" to govern.
Though probably too wonky a proposal to reach the average voter, the debate over the
Senate filibuster animates the Democratic activists who are watching the primary the most
closely and whose support the candidates are vying to win. Those activists are unmoved by
candidates who say they'll be able to persuade Republicans to sign onto their ambitious
liberal legislation.
"The idea that you can win people over by inviting them over for drinks on the Truman
Balcony -- that is completely out of vogue," Fallon said.
Other candidates have also called for getting rid of the filibuster, including Governor
J*a*y Inslee of Washington and Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who is pondering
a run. However, Warren is the first sitting senator in the race to do so. Senator Kamala
Harris of California, who signed a letter in 2017 affirming the filibuster, now says she's
conflicted about it.
The filibuster's defenders say it protects the rights of the minority party, and forces
the majority to compromise. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who also signed the 2017
letter, has said he is concerned that getting rid of the filibuster would mean Republicans
would be able to more easily pass legislation in the future over Democrats' objections.
In her speech to the National Action Network's activists, a largely black crowd, Warren
framed the filibuster as a tool of "racists" who used it for decades to block civil rights
legislation, including a bill to make lynching a federal crime that was first introduced in
the early 1900s. The legislation finally passed this year.
"We can't sit around for 100 years while climate change destroys our planet, while
corruption pervades every nook and cranny of Washington, and while too much of a child's fate
in life still rests on the color of their skin," she said.
After her speech, Warren told reporters that she is concerned about the bills Republicans
would be able to pass without the filibuster, but that getting rid of it is worth it for
Democrats. "Of course I'm worried. But I'm also worried about a minority that blocks real
change that we need to make in this country," she said.
The calls to eliminate the filibuster are part of a larger debate among Democrats about
reforming US democracy after they lost the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections despite
winning the popular vote. Warren, along with several other Democrats, has also called to
abolish the Electoral College. Warren, Harris, and former representative Beto O'Rourke of
Texas are also open to the idea of the next president expanding the number of seats on the
Supreme Court to offset its conservative majority.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who pushes a host of liberal policies, has
been more conservative on these proposals than many of his presidential campaign rivals. He
is against expanding the court, arguing it would be a slippery slope that Republicans could
also take advantage of, and is still on the fence about ditching the filibuster and
abolishing the Electoral College.
Warren declined to call out her Senate colleagues when asked whether she was surprised
they had not endorsed the idea of ending the filibuster. "All I can do is keep running the
campaign I'm running and talking about these ideas," she said.
Barr says Mueller didn't find an "Direct" coordination with "Russian Government officials."
That leaves all sorts of room for indirect (through wiki, through Kislyck, through the NRA...
etc.). This is wildly different than what you claim here - and your claim is not something
you know. I suppose it could be true, but you are believing the guy that covered up the Iran
Contra affair and got Oliver North off for his numerous, admitted crimes.
IF what you say is true, please explain -
1. Why did Trump, his family and his closest associates lie 100's of times about over 100
contacts with known assets of the GRU?
2. If Mueller "completely and totally exonerated" Trump, why are Trump's lawyers and
McConnell keeping the report from the public.
3. How is it possible that Barr thoroughly read and absorbed the report and it's evidence in
reportedly only 9 hours including the time it took him to draft his heavily hedged 4 page
memo?
4. Why did Mueller go out of his way to nail Manafort for lying about Russian contacts if it
was immaterial - he was going to jail for the rest of his life regardless?
5. Why do you discount the publicly available evidence that Trump obstructed justice? Is it
okay with you that Trump did it just because it was in the open?
6. Do you care that Russia clearly attempted to influence (and likely did) the 2016
election?
Leaked by someone with inside knowledge and thinks that justice has not been served...happens
all the time.
Exactly what is kurt think Trump is guilty of?
Books have written about Trump criminality, but for some strange reason, Democrats have
not been interested in pursuing those crimes. They were only interested in Hillary's
preposterous allegation that Trump colluded with Putin.
Perhaps because Trump's other crimes are similar to Democratic corruption...and he may
have the goods on folks like Schumer? Mutual assured destruction to pursue crimes that
committed over the past 50 years?
You have no idea what Mueller said. Only Barr's summary. Which is full of hedge language -
which indicates cover up. If it exonerates Trump, why is McConnell blocking the release and
back to "but her emails" and Steele Dossier?
Among kurt's questions, he carefully avoids the central question: Did Trump conspire with the
Russian government to subvert and American election and help Trump win? Hillary thought so.
kurt assured us repeatedly that Trump's guilt was a proven fact, a slam dunk prosecution.
Democrats and their media talked about it incessantly for three years, crowding out interest
in domestic corruption and other avenues of prosecution...and allowing Democrats flog that
issue and avoid developing a coherent message and a popular program to address major
problems.
They were all wrong about the central charge that Trump conspired with Putin to subvert
the election. Mueller did not find enough evidence to indict or prosecute. That was...repeat,
that was Mueller's charge. And he answered that central question, embarrassing and
humiliating Democrats and the media that flogged that fake news for three years.
Sure, Trump has not been exonerated on everything. Sure, investigations should continue,
focusing on those that have a high probability of finding corruption and
criminality...something that Democrats have avoided for years, despite books being written on
the subject.
The key question is: why have Democrats avoided investigating Trump on all those areas
that could yield prosecution for domestic corruption and criminality and instead focus almost
exclusively on a wild goose chase?
It's true. Democrats had had no subpoena power, but there is always the court of public
opinion. Books have been written about Trump's corruption, his sleazy and likely criminal
business behavior. Hillary refused to raise the issue much if at all. Pelosi and Schumer
avoided anything but Putin...probably because Trump has the goods on them. They needed to
fabricate a preposterous charge that wouldn't blow back against them.
Read the one and only footnote on Barr's "report." Then get back to me. It is doing all the
work and it is obviously a coverup. If you define collusion as only tacit agreement between
only government actors, then every spy that has ever been jailed or executed is not guilty.
Having disgraced themselves with full immersion in the barren Russia-gate "narrative," the
Resistance is now tripling down on Russia-gate's successor gambit: obstruction of justice where
there was no crime in the first place. What exactly was that bit of mischief Special Prosecutor
Robert Mueller inserted in his final report, saying that " while this report does not conclude
that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him?"
It's this simple: prosecutors are charged with finding crimes. If there is insufficient
evidence to bring a case, then that is the end of the matter. Prosecutors, special or
otherwise, are not authorized to offer hypothetical accounts where they can't bring a criminal
case. But Mueller produced a brief of arguments pro-and-con about obstruction for others to
decide upon. In doing that, he was out of order, and maliciously so.
Trump and Barr on Feb. 14, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Of course, Attorney General William Barr took up the offer and declared the case closed, as
he properly should where the prosecutor could not conclude that a crime was committed. One
hopes that the AG also instructed Mueller and his staff to shut the f up vis-à-vis
further ex post facto "anonymous source" speculation in the news media. But, of course, the
Mueller staff -- which inexplicably included lawyers who worked for the Clinton Foundation and
the Democratic National Committee -- at once started insinuating to
New York Times reporters that the full report would contain an arsenal of bombshells
reigniting enough suspicion to fuel several congressional committee investigations.
The objective apparently is to keep President Donald Trump burdened, hobbled, and disabled
for the remainder of his term, and especially in preparation for the 2020 election against
whomever emerges from the crowd of lightweights and geriatric cases now roistering through the
primary states. It also leaves the door open for the Resistance to prosecute an impeachment
case, since that is a political matter, not a law enforcement action.
Setting up the AG
This blog is not associated with any court other than public opinion, and I am free to
hypothesize on the meaning of Mueller's curious gambit, so here goes: Barr, long before being
considered for his current job, published his opinion that there was no case for obstruction of
justice in the Russia-gate affair. By punting the decision to Barr, Mueller sets up the AG for
being accused of prejudice in the matter -- and, more to the point, has managed to generate a
new brushfire in the press.
Barr could see this coming from a thousand miles away. I suspect he's pissed off about being
set up like this. I suspect further that he knows this brushfire is intended to produce a
smokescreen to obscure the rash of grand jury referrals coming down in the weeks and months
ahead against the many government employees who concocted the Russia-gate scandal. Personally,
I think Mueller himself deserves to be in that roundup for destroying evidence (the Strzok /
Page cell phones) and for malicious prosecution against General Michael Flynn , among other
things.
The reason Mueller did not bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against Trump is that the
evidence didn't support it. He didn't have a case. In a trial -- say, after Trump was impeached
or left office -- the discovery process could bring to light evidence that might embarrass and
even incriminate Mueller and his staff, and cast further opprobrium on the federal justice
agencies. For instance: why did Mueller drag out his inquiry for two years when he must have
known by at least the summer of 2017 that the Steele dossier was a fraud perpetrated by the
Clinton campaign?
Now the propaganda crusade has been initiated to defame Barr. The idiots running the budding
new congressional inquiries are going to pile on him, with the help of the news media. Though
he is said to be an "old friend" of Robert Mueller's, I believe they have become adversaries,
perhaps even enemies. Mueller is not in a position of strength in this battle. He has now
officially exited the stage as his mandate expires, so he has no standing to oppose further
consequences in the aftermath of Russia-gate. What remains is a dastardly and seditious hoax as
yet un-adjudicated and an evidence trail a mile wide, and no amount of jumping up and down
crying "woo woo woo" by Democratic lawmakers Jerrold Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff is
going to derail that choo-choo train a'chuggin' down the tracks.
James Howard Kunstler is author of "The Geography of Nowhere," which he says he wrote
"Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway
strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that
makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." He has written several
other works of nonfiction and fiction. Read more about him here . This article first appeared on his blog, ClusterfuckNation .
.
KiwiAntz , April 8, 2019 at 18:00
If at first you don't succeed, "try, try, try again? The Resistance, unlike Neo in the
Matrix, fails to take the red pill to wake up too real life, in the present & continues
to swallow the blue pill to stay in the dreamworld of fake realities & Hoax conspiracies?
So the Kabuki theatre must continue, the too big to fail lie of Russiagate can't be allowed
to die? The damage this fake conspiracy, collusion delusion is having on the US can't be
quantified? The fools who continue to promote this narrative are now tripling down in a state
of denial that defies belief! The Mainstream Media is now totally dead & buried, no one
believes their lies anymore & people are heading to alt media in droves! Politicians
& Politics, especially left wing, are objects of derision & contempt, & although
Trump may be innocent, the fact remains that he is a terrible President & a dangerous
idiot?? You only need to look at his staff with warmongering imbeciles like Pompeo, Bolton
& their kind who are leading America to War, in which their win ratio is zero? The
lunatic Russiagate narrative has served & achieved part of its goals & purposes? To
hamstrung Trump & paralyse his administration & get him impeached via a coup
d'état then to destroy & poison Russian detente,civility & relations? It
failed on one level to obtain Trumps removal but succeeded in destroying Russian relations,
the most dangerous gambit ever, to taut & ridicule a Nuclear Superpower? But that's the
actions of a dying US Empire in decline, arrogance, ignorance, hubris & self delusion,
all aptly supported by a corrupt propagandist fourth estate, the American Fakestream
Media?
JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:06
Once again, we see this is all a rather ridiculous charade to distract the public. As Bill
Binney & the VIPS pointed out on this website & others: if there was any evidence of
"Russian collusion" the NSA would have had it immediately. After two wasted years of
distractions & nonsense, of course there is NO evidence.
The irrational reactions of partisan hypocrites are truly bizarre, we need to have a
social psychologist explain the madness of crowd mentality here. What's more, so many people
STILL fail to acknowledge (or are paid not to) that there is NO evidence. They say wait and
see (We're still waiting for Saddam's WMD etc) Tragically humorous
You want REAL collusion and high crimes?: The Trump regime virtually takes orders verbatim
on foreign policy from Benjamin Nuttyahoo. However, Israeli diktats enjoy the overwhelming
support of both "parties" in Congress and the servile media cartel. Pointing out these
extremely obvious & highly problematic facts is not allowed. One cannot talk about
Israeli lobby groups not having to register as foreign agents. One cannot talk about
indisputable facts with a mountain of evidence in plain sight.
In the words of Rod Serling: "You have entered the Twilight Zone"
Jeff Harrison , April 8, 2019 at 13:20
I believe that the term prosecutor should officially be retired and the more accurate term
persecutor should be substituted in its place. The frequency of persecutorial misconduct at
all levels of the judicial system makes a mockery of the concept of justice.
JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:17
Yes indeed.
Justice and "the rule of law" is made a mockery of every day: Dick Cheney/Bush Jr.. Tony
Blair & other war criminals walk free. Instead of being in prison for life, they are
lavished with praise from media personalities & make big money.
After committing "the largest financial crimes in history, by orders of magnitude", (prof.
William K. Black) NOT ONE senior banker has been indicted, let alone prosecuted. Jamie Dimon,
for example, is in the media regularly and depicted as a brilliant & great man.
Congress & the Exec. routinely ignore & violate the law, including the US
constitution & Bill of Rights. At this point when any politician says the words
"democracy" & "the rule of law" I sneer & laugh with contempt
Skip Scott , April 8, 2019 at 12:55
It will be interesting to see if the DoJ really does follow up on the RussiaGate scam and
attempt to indict the people who created it. Would they really dare to prosecute members of
our so-called "intelligence" community? What about Schumer's "six ways from Sunday"?
mike k , April 8, 2019 at 15:26
Schumer is just a little Mafia toady.
JDC , April 8, 2019 at 12:38
The discovery process in any trial of Trump would have also perhaps brought to light that
Mueller's conclusion, as relayed by Barr's summary, that Russia hacked the DNC and delivered
the documents to Wikileaks has no basis in fact, given what Bill Binney and the other VIPS
have shown.
hetro , April 8, 2019 at 12:31
I think what needs clarifying here is the difference between "does not conclude the
President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" and the more specific
"obstruction of justice" accusation. For me, at least, this is confusing. Trump may well have
committed a crime by ordering Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels, or in other ways similar to
the financial sleaze revealed with his associates–but is this not separate from
"obstruction of justice"? Further, it would seem to most ordinary mortals Mueller would be
embarrassed after more than two years to come up with . . . nothing? So he gives us not
guilty of "collusion" and hints at something else, taking the heat off himself (or attempting
to)?
"... Nice group shot of the three stooges. The most dishonest, disloyal, dipshitted psychopaths a country should never have to endure. ..."
"... The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried. ..."
"... There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc. ..."
"... This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time. ..."
As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it's important to consider how this destructive information operation
rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years , and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from
recurring.
While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith
investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.
<
Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling
them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump
associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were
spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence.
The efforts to feed the dossier's allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were
championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the
FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential
support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically.
The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny.
High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were
among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of
providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to
investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse,
Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.
According to Ohr's congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was
biased against Trump, that Steele's work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele's material was of questionable reliability.
Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information.
Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation
or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele's Russian sources . In fact, it is
impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI's conduct of this investigation, including the astounding
level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general's discovery
of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.
It's now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced
it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take - turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a
political candidate and then against a sitting president.
The hoax itself was a gift to our nation's adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes
is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and
women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America's body politic, creating a yearslong
political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.
Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals
on numerous individuals involved in these matters.
These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence
community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot
be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.
All 3 of them have been confirmed to by lying through their teeth by their own people. They are all going down. We just need
the Mueller report to come out to get the ball rolling. Can't do it before the report comes out as they would call it obstruction.
So we wait another 9 days, or less, according to AG Barr.
Could be, PapaGeorge. Maybe this time it's different because it could be argued that the TPTB don't want Trump pulling the
same thing on the DNC--and get away with it like the Usual Suspects just did. In legal terms, a bar has been set. BARR? Get it?
Buwhahahahahahahahahha!!!
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies
are buried. There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof.
You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead
bodies are buried.
There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You
can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time.
<<<House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in
these matters<<< We shall see now, won't we? I won't believe this, till I see It!
The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused
Clinton's defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to
Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working "free media".
There are literally hundreds of thousands of mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from
every single one of the very biggest names in the Western media, which were predicated on the
complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to install Donald Trump as President of the United
States.
I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff
believed it,
whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay
cheque, or whether they just did their "job" and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were
producing truth or lies.
I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist.
At the Guardian, for
example, I get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to
believe all that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing
British Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame
and self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world
politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites everywhere.
She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the Integrity Initiative.
Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the
security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used.
It would be
embarrassing to have written a bestseller called "Collusion", the entire premiss for which has now
been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.
Harding's interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The august
elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative to critical
intellectual scrutiny.
Harding's utter inability to deal with unanticipated scepticism
descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.
In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation
had been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly
unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.
Harding and the
Guardian's
story
about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one of the most
blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely ridiculed, no
evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has been repeatedly
edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and acknowledgements of dubious
attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither Editor Katherine Viner nor
author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something which calls the fundamental
honesty of both into question.
Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller investigation
found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing.
Right up until Mueller
finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and again every
single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion with Russia.
The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to collusion. In fact for
the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated tax frauds or Trump's
hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The "Russians" that Manafort was convicted of
lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences occurred ten years ago and had no
connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of which Roger Stone stands accused
relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent relationship with Wikileaks.
The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group
of wealthy politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of
tax and lobbying.
Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news,
and if those around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of
similar kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the
Russophobic motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.
My analysis
of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably had
a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted for
money by a charlatan.
We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria Butina,
whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the moment when
there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes
The Crucible
look
like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the US political
world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her with a view to
increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or sinister. Her
efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony that the NRA has
been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.
Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy
theory.
Yet the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been
promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. "Russiagate", a
breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take
control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks "The Manchurian Candidate"
into a cocked hat. A Google "news search" restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a
search for the term "Russiagate" brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million
incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake "Russiagate" story, but specifically
using that term to describe it.
Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very
real conspiracy.
If, by contrast, you do a Google "news search" for the term "Integrity Initiative", the UK
government's covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to
pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for
"Russiagate". Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake conspiracy
story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their own luminaries
are personally implicated.
Too often caught between Randian individualism on one hand and big-government collectivism
on the other, America's working-class parents need a champion.
They might well have had one in Elizabeth Warren, whose 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap , co-authored with her daughter Amelia
Warren Tyagi, was unafraid to skewer sacred cows. Long a samizdat favorite among socially
conservative writers, the book recently got a new dose of attention after being spotlighted on
the Right by Fox News's
Tucker Carlson and on the Left by Vox's
Matthew Yglesias .
The book's main takeaway was that two-earner families in the early 2000s seemed to be less,
rather than more, financially stable than one-earner families in the 1970s. Whereas
stay-at-home moms used to provide families with an implicit safety net, able to enter the
workforce if circumstances required, the dramatic rise of the two-earner family had effectively
bid up the cost of everyday life. Rather than the additional income giving families more
breathing room, they argue, "Mom's paycheck has been pumped directly into the basic costs of
keeping the children in the middle class."
Warren and Warren Tyagi report that as recently as the late 1970s, a married mother was
roughly twice as likely to stay at home with her children than work full-time. But by 2000,
those figures had almost reversed. Both parents had been pressed into the workforce to maintain
adequate standards of living for their families -- the "two-income trap" of the book's
title.
Advertisement
What caused the trap to be sprung? Cornell University economist Francine Blau has helpfully
drawn a picture of women's changing responsiveness to
labor market wages during the 20th century. In her work with Laurence Kahn, Blau found that
women's wage elasticities -- how responsive their work decisions were to changes in their
potential wages -- used to be far more heavily driven by their husband's earning potential or
lack thereof (what economists call cross-wage elasticity). Over time, Blau and Kahn found,
women's responsiveness to wages -- their own or their husbands -- began to fall, and their
labor force participation choices began to more closely resemble men's, providing empirical
backing to the story Warren and Warren Tyagi tell.
Increasing opportunity and education were certainly one driver of this trend. In 1960, just
5.8
percent of all women over age 25 had a bachelor's degree or higher. Today, 41.7 percent of
mothers aged 25 and over have a college degree. Many of these women entered careers in which
they found fulfillment and meaning, and the opportunity costs, both financially and
professionally, of staying home might have been quite high.
But what about the plurality of middle- and working-class moms who weren't necessarily
looking for a career with a path up the corporate ladder? What was pushing them into full-time
work for pay, despite consistently
telling pollsters they wished they could work less?
The essential point, stressed by Warren and Warren Tyagi, was the extent to which this
massive shift was driven by a desire to provide for one's children. The American Dream has as
many interpretations as it does adherents, but a baseline definition would surely include
giving your children a better life. Many women in America's working and middle classes entered
the labor force purely to provide the best possible option for their families.
In the search for good neighborhoods and good schools, a bidding war quickly became an arms
race. There were "two words so powerful the families would pursue them to the brink of
bankruptcy: safety and education ." The authors underplay the extent to which
policy had explicitly sought to preserve home values, driven by their use as investment
vehicles and retirement accounts, a dynamic covered expertly by William Fischel's The Homevoter Hypothesis . But their broader
point is accurate -- rising house prices, aided and abetted by policy choices around land use,
have made it harder for families to afford the cost of living in 21st-century America.
Another factor in the springing of the trap? Divorce. In her 2000 book about how feminism had failed women, Danielle
Crittenden writes about how fear of dependency, especially in an era of no-fault divorce, had
caused women to rank financial independence highly.
These two factors, along with others Warren and Warren Tyagi explore, made it difficult for
families to unilaterally disarm without losing their place in the middle class. "Today's
middle-class mother is trapped," they write. "She can't afford to work, and she can't afford to
quit."
A quiet armistice may have been declared in the so-called "mommy wars," but the underlying
pressures haven't gone away since The Two-Income Trap was published. If anything,
they've gotten worse.
Warren and Warren Tyagi propose severing the link between housing and school districts
through a "well-designed voucher program," calling the public education system "the heart of
the problem." They correctly note that "schools in middle-class neighborhoods may be labeled
'public,'" but that parents effectively pay tuition by purchasing a home within a carefully
selected school district. Breaking the cartel that ties educational outcomes to zip codes would
increase choices for families and open the door to further educational pluralism.
Warren and Warren Tyagi are also unafraid to tell unpopular truths about the futility of
additional funding for colleges (identifying "faith in the power of higher education [as] the
new secular religion"), housing affordability ("direct subsidies are likely to add more
ammunition to the already ruinous bidding wars, ultimately driving home prices even higher"),
universal child care (which "would create yet another comparative disadvantage for
single-income families trying to compete in the marketplace"), and usurious credit (Warren's
long work on bankruptcy requires deeper treatment than this space allows, but their questioning
of our over-reliance on consumer debt deserves a fuller hearing).
Warren's presidential campaign contains elements of this attempt to make life easier for
families, but the shades of her vision of a pro-family economic policy seem paler than they
were a decade and a half ago.
Her universal child
care plan , for example, seemingly contradicts her prior stated worries about
disadvantaging stay-at-home parents. While she explicitly -- and wisely -- steers clear of a
subsidy-based approach, her attempt to "create a network of child care options" does less to
directly support families who aren't looking for formal care. In a sense, Warren would
replicate the public school experience for the under-five crowd -- if you don't want to
participate, that's fine, but you'll bear the cost on your own. A true pro-family populism
would seek to increase the choice set for all families, regardless of their work-life
situations.
Warren's housing plan has
similarly good intentions, seeking to increase the supply of affordable housing rather than
simply trying to subsidize demand. Her competitive education grant would reward municipalities
for relaxing restrictive zoning requirements. But while her campaign has yet to release a plan
on education, it seems unlikely we'll see the kind of bold approach to educational choice she
espoused in 2003. Populist sympathizers of all ideological stripes should hope I'm proven
wrong.
Warren's attempt at pro-family progressive populism seems honest. If not for certain
infamous biographical missteps, her personal story would be one of how America is still a land
of opportunity -- the daughter of a Oklahoma department store salesman who worked her way to a
law degree, a professorship, and a Senate seat. There's a congruence in her positioning of
economic security as a family values issue and the resurgent interest in a pro-worker,
pro-family conservative agenda. And unlike so many politicians, her personal experience seems
to have instilled an understanding of why so many dual-earner families see work as a means to
the end of providing a better life for their children rather than an end in itself.
A politician willing to question the sacred cows of double-income families, more money
for schools, and easy credit is the kind of politician this populist moment requires. A
candidate willing to call into question an economic model that prioritizes GDP growth over all
else would boldly position himself or herself as being on the side of families whose vision of
the American Dream involves a better life for their children, yet who are exhausted and hemmed
in by costs.
How Warren needs to position her platform to navigate the vicissitudes of a Democratic Party
primary will likely not be the best way to address the needs of the modern American family. But
in a crowded field, an uncompromising vision of increased choice for families across all
dimensions -- not just within the public school system, for example, but among all options of
education -- would be an impressive accomplishment and a way of distinguishing herself from the
pack. An explicit defense of parenthood as a social good would be unconventional but
welcome.
Still, a marker of how far the conversation around families has shifted from the early 2000s
is the extent to which Warren's and Warren Tyagi's view of parenthood as something more than an
individual "lifestyle choice" would now be viewed as radical, particularly on the Left. "That
may be true from the perspective of an individual choosing whether or not to have a child,"
they write, "but it isn't true for society at large. What happens to a nation that rewards the
childless and penalizes the parents?"
What indeed. Paging the Elizabeth Warren of 2003 -- your country needs you.
Patrick T. Brown ( @PTBwrites ) is a master's of public affairs student at
Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Doe anyone think the middle and especially upper middle class would be in favor of a school
choice plan that would cause their housing values to take hit? And there's another big
roadblock with a school choice program: the need for transportation. Two years ago my next
door neighbors who were able to place their young son in a good school across town sold their
house and moved to be closer to the school since the daily cross-town commute at rush hour
was just too much.
They might well have had one in Elizabeth Warren, whose 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap,
co-authored with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, was unafraid to skewer sacred cows.
It's more recent than that. The first edition was 2003, but a second edition came out in
2016, by which time Mom probably knew she might be running for president. It's got a new
introduction by the authors, so obviously it was done with their cooperation.
I haven't read either edition, so I don't know what's been changed in the new one.
I am struck again and again, by the unbelievable power of the forces in the political
arena pushing everyone who is a Democrat because they are fiscally liberal* to ALSO become
socially liberal,* and everyone who is a Republican because they are socially conservative*
to ALSO become fiscally conservative.*
The net result of the laws of motion seem to systematically take the ideological space of
"socially conservative, fiscally liberal" (the old New Deal) and push everyone in it either
out to the usual left "fiscally liberal, socially liberal" or the usual right "socially
conservative, fiscally conservative" quadrants.
This article shows how it's happening with Elizabeth Warren in one direction, and it's
happened constantly with socially conservative Republicans who get yanked back to the proper
quadrant anytime they try to move to a direction of economic policy that doesn't involve tax
cuts for the rich and actually help their constituents.
One can have all the opinions on better ways to do things for the good of society, but if
those ideas are not politically viable, it creates a change in directions. Warren probably by
now .realizes how complicated all of these policy issues are and the unintended consequence
of these policies are always a factor and a risk. Elizabeth Warren seems to have a good grasp
of complicated issues, but that never get her the support she would need to prevail in this
campaign. We currently live in the age of "Fantasyland" spewed by both the Trump RINOs and
the Lunatic Left. Warren is a thinker. That is not helpful these days.
What happened is that Warren wants the Team D nomination, and Team D, like Team R, could not
care less about the 99.9% of Americans who are not non-campaign bundlers or big contributors.
In fact, Team D (again, just like Team R) is actively hostile to any proposal that might
take money out of the pockets of the .1%, or otherwise affect the way the the economic pie is
sliced.
If this was the 1970s Warren would probably have supported busing. Pocahontas – leave
my safe neighborhood, my children's schools, and my home equity alone. Because these well
meaning social engineering schemes seldom work out as planned. As a middle class American I
will probably get the short end of the stick.
Funny that policy makers never want to help families by taking a little chunk out of hedge
funds and shareholders and vulture capitalists and sharing it with American workers. Talk
about "the heart of the problem."
My wife and I did a sort of calculation. In our state child care would be about 11,000 per
child per year. Also, you can't drop them off if they are sick, so you have to use your sick
days for them. Oh, and if you don't use the child care if you're on vacation, you still need
to pay to hold the slot. With two kids and taxes, she has to clear well over 30k per year to
about break even.
Add in the fact you'll be missing out on their childhood, spending maybe three or so hours
per day with them, is it really worth it?
The more I see the 'big tech' developments, they are basically things your pay for to let
you work so you can afford to work. TaskRabbit, Fivrer, DoorDash, etc basically give you free
time so you can work more.
"What happens to a nation that rewards the childless and penalizes the parents?"
Laughing.
They become liberals, democrats, anarchists, socialists, communists . . . supporters of
murdering children in the womb, efficiency advocates by way of eugenics . . . and other
assorted malcontents against ordered society.
But in my view, what has damaged economic sociology has been the shift in practice without
any assessment what it would do to the traditional family dynamic between husbands and wives
in family construction. That simply demanding that space be made for women and millions of
women would seriously tighten the job market for all and disrupt the pillars upon which our
nation was built, despite its problems.
Power dynamic, chivalry outran practical realities and that remains the case in
increasingly stratifying civil demands.
And while I sympathetic to the complaint about bussing, that had a very little impact on
the employment numbers which government and businesses and edication raced to fill the
discrimination expectations with women, and primarily white women.
tired comment, but accurate nonetheless, so instead of hiring men in response to
discrimination, those men were instead replaced by women, most of whom already had access via
the cultural dynamics of the majority.
Warren and Warren Tyagi propose severing the link between housing and school districts
through a "well-designed voucher program," calling the public education system "the heart of
the problem." [ ]
In my opinion, Warner's education voucher proposal by guaranteeing voucher dollar
enrollment in the affluent zip codes ignores the heart of the education problem. Affluent zip
codes do not ensure a child's academic success via 'better' teachers and educational
materials. Public schools in the big cities are filled with teachers who have their masters
and Ph.D's along with continuing education requirements.
Student success is fundamentally based upon parental commitment and community involvement.
Are the parents committed to their children's academic success? Does the parent(s) provide a
conducive and safe home environment? Does the child have a quiet space to study, do their
homework and prepare for school? Does the parent(s) sit down and teach? Review the child's
homework? Do the parents volunteer at the school? Are they involved with school events? Is
education a top priority? Or is school a babysitting service to drop off and pick up?
Those affluent zip codes are more than a number. For the most part, they are a supportive
community of families.
A child's academic success is assuredly tethered to the parental guiding hands. Simply, a
child's success begins at home with parents who care about their children's future.
Probably, every conservative will agree, that the basic flaw is materialism. Thus, with
materialism, personal values that cannot be sold or bought for money, are neglected in favour
of the gross domestic product per capita philosophy. Such personal values are, for instance,
family values, that is, children need both a mother, especially when they are below teenage,
and a father, especially when they are teenagers, and perhaps most important, a father and a
mother need one another. All this family thing does, however, not enter into the money
economy of big government. Whence, on the side of families, those need to take quite brave
choices, to choose morals above money. And on the side of the government, this needs to tax
the rich and help the poor. In fact, according to the World Bank, economic growth is
stimulated best, if governments help the poor directly, rather than with obscure subsidies to
the economic system. However, there is also the difficulty with difficult access to regular
jobs. By no doubt, abortion genosuicide decreases demand on the most simple of goods and
services, causing unemployment for the poor, and driving up costs of raising children.
Society then goes into socialism, with genosuicide instead of economic growth, while the
money flows into pension funds of the upper middle class. Governments must simply help the
poor. Humankind has always been able to produce twice the amount of good food that it needs,
but bureaucratic governments keep the poor enslaved, to fill them with lie.
Warren's academic work and cheeky refusal to fold under pressure when her nomination as
Obama's consumer ('home ec.'?) finance czar was stymied by the GOP are worthy of respect. I'd
like to see her make a strong run at the dem nomination, but am put off by her recent
tendency to adopt silly far-left talking points and sentiments (her Native DNA, advocating
for reparations, etc.). Nice try, Liz, but I'm still leaning Bernie's direction.
As far as the details of the economic analysis related above, though, I am unqualified to
make any judgment – haven't read the book. But one enormously significant economic
development in the early 70s wasn't mentioned at all, so I assume she and her daughter passed
it over as well. In his first term R. Milhouse Nixon untethered, once & for all, the
value of the dollar from traditional hard currency. The economy has been coming along nicely
ever since, except for one problematic aspect: with a floating currency we are all now living
in an economic environment dominated by the vicissitudes of supplies and demands, are we not?
It took awhile to effect the housing market, but signs of the difference it made began to
emerge fairly quickly, and accelerated sharply when the tides of globalism washed lots of
third world lucre up on our western shores. Now, as clearly implied by both Warren and the
author of this article, young Americans whose parents may not have even been born back then
– the early 70s – are probably permanently priced out of the housing market in
places that used to have only a marginally higher cost of entry – i.e. urban
California, where I have lived and worked for most of my nearly 60 years. In places like this
even a 3-earner income may not suffice! Maybe we should bring back the gold standard, because
it seems to me that as long as unfettered competition coupled to supply/demand and (EZ credit
$) is the underlying dynamic of the American economy we're headed for the New Feudalism. Of
course, nothing could be more conservative than that, right? What say you, TAColytes?
"Maybe we should bring back the gold standard, because it seems to me that as long as
unfettered competition coupled to supply/demand and (EZ credit $) is the underlying dynamic
of the American economy we're headed for the New Feudalism."
I take it you think the old one has departed.
It was in the area of how businesses and government were reciprocating unhealthy and
unfair business practices is where I think her advocacy was most accurate. But she has
abandoned all of that.
"Funny that policy makers never want to help families by taking a little chunk out of hedge
funds and shareholders and vulture capitalists and sharing it with American workers."
Funny that Warren HAS brought up raising taxes on the rich.
"... "I'm not running for president just to talk about making real, structural change. I'm serious about getting it done," the speech reads. "And part of getting it done means waking up to the reality of the United States Senate." ..."
"... Advocates including Warren also say the end of the filibuster would make it easier for the Senate to pass meaningful legislation to combat the climate crisis and to further other progressive causes. ..."
"... "We can't sit around for 100 years while the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful and everyone else falls further and further behind," Warren's speech reads. "We can't sit around for 100 years while climate change destroys our planet, while corruption pervades every nook and cranny of Washington, and while too much of a child's fate in life still rests on the color of their skin. Enough with that." ..."
"We can't sit around for 100 years while the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful
and everyone else falls further and further behind."
The 2020 presidential candidate is expected to endorse the proposal in a speech
at the National Action Network Convention in New York Friday morning.
"When Democrats next have power, we should be bold and clear: We're done with two sets of
rules -- one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats," Warren is expected to say. "And
that means when Democrats have the White House again, if Mitch McConnell tries to do what he
did to President Obama and puts small-minded partisanship ahead of solving the massive problems
facing this country, then we should get rid of the filibuster."
"I'm not running for president just to talk about making real, structural change. I'm
serious about getting it done," the speech reads. "And part of getting it done means waking up
to the reality of the United States Senate."
Getting rid of the filibuster -- the Senate procedure which allows a minority party to delay
a vote by drawing out debate and block legislation from passing by requiring a "supermajority"
of 60 senators to approve it -- would be a key step toward passing progressive measures,
advocates say.
At the NAN Convention, Warren is expected to note that the filibuster has stopped the Senate
from passing radical justice legislation for decades, including an
anti-lynching bill which was first introduced a century ago but didn't pass until December
2018.
"It nearly became the law back then. It passed the House in 1922. But it got killed in the
Senate -- by a filibuster. And then it got killed again. And again. And again," Warren plans to
say. "More than 200 times. An entire century of obstruction because a small group of racists
stopped the entire nation from doing what was right."
Advocates including Warren also say the end of the filibuster would make it easier for the
Senate to pass meaningful legislation to combat the climate crisis and to further other
progressive causes.
"We can't sit around for 100 years while the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful
and everyone else falls further and further behind," Warren's speech reads. "We can't sit
around for 100 years while climate change destroys our planet, while corruption pervades every
nook and cranny of Washington, and while too much of a child's fate in life still rests on the
color of their skin. Enough with that."
Warren joins
fellow 2020 Democratic hopefuls Pete Buttigieg and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in endorsing the
end of the filibuster. Her speech Friday will represent her latest push for "structural change"
that she says would have far-reaching positive effects on the lives of working Americans. Since
announcing her candidacy in January she has called for a tax on the wealth of the
richest Americans to combat economic inequality and fund progressive programs, a
universal childcare plan, and a breakup
of powerful tech giants , among other proposals.
span y arendt on Tue, 04/02/2019 - 7:31pm The old politics is dead. Citizens United
granted unlimited, anonymous political bribery to the transnational billionaire class. The
legacy media has been conglomerated down to six companies, while the platform media companies
(Google, Facebook, Twitter) have instituted censorship and banning. Sock puppets, trolls,
doxers, and other slime have demolished the promise of honest intellectual internet debate.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has released
a video statement telling the American people that the
accusations he is now facing
of touching women in inappropriate ways without their consent is the product of changing "social norms", assuring everyone that
he will indeed be adjusting to those changes.
And thank goodness. For a minute there, I was worried Biden might cave under the pressure of a looming scandal and decline to
run for president on the grounds that it could cripple his campaign and leave America facing another four years of Donald Trump.
Here are nine good reasons why I hope Joe Biden runs for president, and why you should support him too:
1. It's his turn.
It's Biden's turn to be president. He's spent years playing second fiddle while other leading Democrats hogged all the limelight,
and that's not fair. He's been waiting very patiently. Come on.
2. Most Qualified Candidate Ever.
If Joe Biden secures the Democratic Party nomination for president, he would be the Most Qualified Candidate Ever to run for
office. His service as a US Senator and a Vice President has given him unparalleled experience priming him for the most powerful
elected office in the world. Everything Biden has done throughout his entire career proves that he'd make a great Commander-in-Chief.
3. He's closely associated with a popular Democratic president.
You think Biden, you think Obama. You think Obama, you think greatness. You can't spend that much time with a great Democratic
president without absorbing his greatness yourself. It's called osmosis.
4. You liked Obama, didn't you?
Biden was part of the Obama administration. Remember the Obama administration? It was magical, right? If you want more of that,
vote Biden.
5. But Trump!
Do you want Trump to win the next election? You know he'll shatter all our norms and literally end the world if he does, right?
You should be terrified of the possibility of Trump winning in 2020, and if you are, you should want him running against Joe Biden.
What's the alternative? Nominating some crazy unelectable socialist like Bernie Sanders? Might as well just hand Trump the victory
now, then. Anyone who wants to beat Trump must fall in line behind the Most Qualified Candidate Ever.
6. Iraq wasn't so bad.
Okay, maybe some of his past foreign policy positions look bad in hindsight, but come on. Pushing for the Iraq war was what
everyone was doing back in those days. It was all the rage. We all made it through, right? I mean, most of us?
7. This is happening whether you like it or not.
We're doing this. We're going to push Joe Biden through whether you like it or not, and we can do it the easy way or the hard
way. Just relax, take deep breaths, and think about a nice place far away from here. Don't struggle. This will be over before
you know it. We'll use plenty of lube.
8. Just vote for him.
Just vote for him, you insolent little shits. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You think you're entitled to a bunch
of ponies and unicorns like healthcare and drinkable water? You only think that because you're a bunch of racist, sexist homophobes.
You will vote for who we tell you to or we'll spend the next four years calling you all Russian agents and screaming about Susan
Sarandon.
9. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong? It's not like the Most Qualified Candidate Ever could manage to lose an election to
some oafish reality TV star. Hell, Biden could beat Trump in his sleep. He could even skip campaigning in Michigan, Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania and still win by a landslide, because those states are in the bag. There's no way he could fail, barring some
unprecedented and completely unforeseeable freak occurrences from way out of left field that nobody could possibly have anticipated.
Radio Sputnik's Loud and Clear spoke with Daniel Lazare,
a journalist and author of three books, "The Frozen Republic," "The Velvet Coup" and "America's
Undeclared War," about what we can expect from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation
in 2019, its third year of operation.
"A House committee can keep the ball rolling indefinitely," Lazare noted. "Nothing solid has
turned up about collusion in the Russiagate story. Yet, the story keeps going and going, a new
tidbit is put out every week, and so the scandal keeps somehow perpetuating itself. And even
though there's less and less of substance coming out, so I expect that'll be the pattern for
the next few months, and I expect that the Democrats will revv this whole process up to make it
sort of seem as if there really is an avalanche of information crashing down on Trump when
there really isn't."
investigation, noting it had produced little to nothing of substance in support of the
thesis justifying its existence: that Russia either colluded with the Trump campaign or
conspired to interfere in the US election to tilt it in Trump's favor.
Indeed,
report after
report on the data that has been provided to Congress by tech giants like Facebook, Twitter
and Google show an underwhelming performance by any would-be Russian actors. In contrast to the
apocalyptic claims by Democrats and the mainstream media about the massive disinformation
offensive waged by Russian actors, the websites, social media accounts, post reach and ad money
associated with "Russians" is always
dwarfed by the equivalent actions of the Trump campaign and the campaign of its rival in
the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, along with their throngs of supporters
across the US corporate world, both of whom sunk hundreds of millions into winning the
social media game.
Among the chief motivations for Democrats going into 2019 is that "Democrats are now the
party of war," Lazare said, noting that Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi called Trump's
prospective withdrawal from Syria a "Christmas gift to ISIS [Daesh]."
"This is the raison d'etre for Russiagate: they're trying to maneuver Trump into
hostilities with Russia, China, North Korea, etc. I mean, this is foreign policy by
subterfuge it's about keeping 2,000 troops in Syria as well, and getting Americans' heads
blown off in Afghanistan, all of which the Democrats want to do. The whole thing is backroom
government of the worst kind."
@Cassander There is no democracy in US. There is civil war between two dysfunctional
parties. How come you did not notice? Or you just came from enchanted kingdom?
"... Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's "colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson. ..."
"... Saturday Night Live ..."
"... While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources." ..."
"... Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation. ..."
It will take weeks for the elite pundit class to unravel all the
possible implications and subtexts embedded in Robert Mueller's final report on the charge that
Donald Trump and his team colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. The right claims that
the report exonerates Trump fully, while the left contends there are lots of nuggets in the
full text of the final report that may point to obstruction of justice, if not collusion.
But here's all you need to know about the special counsel probe:
First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion.
It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The
entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two
years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by
the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen "experts" and "high-level sources"
had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.
Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017 -- the day after the special counsel
started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the
United States because senior officials at the world's premier law enforcement agency thought
Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy,
relying on second- and third-hand sources,
paid for by the Clinton campaign .
Instead, the special counsel lasted 674 days, during which millions of people who believed
Mueller was going to turn up conclusive evidence of Trump's devious conspiracies with the
Kremlin have become wrapped up in a collective hallucination that has destroyed the remaining
credibility of the American press and the D.C. expert class whose authority they promote.
Mueller knew that he wasn't ever going to find "collusion" or anything like it because all
the intercepts were right there on his desk. As it turned out, two of his prosecutors,
including Mueller's so-called "pit bull," Andrew Weissman, had been briefed on the
Steele dossier prior to the 2016 election and were told that it came from the Clintons, and was
likely a biased political document.
Weissman left, or was pushed out of, his employment with the special counsel a few weeks
ago, after the arrival of a new attorney general, William Barr, who had deep experience in
government, including stints at the Justice Department and the CIA. Knowing what we know now,
here's what seems most likely to have just happened: Barr looked at the underlying documents on
which Mueller's investigation was based. First, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's May
17, 2017, memo appointing the former FBI director to take supervision of the FBI's
investigation of Trump. And more importantly, the Aug. 2, 2017,
memo from Rosenstein outlining the scope of the investigation.
Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's
"colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only
known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that
under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the
Clinton-funded smear
campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy
theorist Glenn Simpson.
And now, after all the Saturday Night Live skits, the obscenity-riddled Bill Maher
and Stephen Colbert routines, the half a million news stories and tens of millions of tweets
all foretelling the end of Trump, the comedians and the adult authority figures are exposed as
hoaxsters, or worse, based on evidence that was always transparently phony.
The Mueller report is in. But the abuse of power that the special counsel embodied is a
deadly cancer on American democracy. Two years of investigations have left families in ruins,
stripping them of their savings, their homes, threatening their liberty, and dragging their
names through the mud. The investigation of the century was partly based on the possibility
that Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who served his country for more than three decades, might
be a Russian spy -- because of a dinner he once attended in Moscow, and because as incoming
national security adviser he spoke to the Russian ambassador to Washington. What rot.
While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the
president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and
personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources."
Instead of providing medicine, the press chose instead to spread the disease through a body
that was already badly weakened by the advent of "free" digital media
. Only, it
wasn't free .
* * *
The media criticism of the media's performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne
-- OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff
going on and now let's all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and
misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.
Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual
reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson
and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him.
None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an
indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.
The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country's
most prestigious news organizations -- including, but not only, The New York Times , the
Washington Post , CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the
last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to
obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible
because the institutions sustaining them are credible .
... ... ...
Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about
their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the
expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any
recognizable form . For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.
Not since the witchcraft hysteria of the Middle Ages have we seen such a display of human
idiocy, credulity and absurdist behavior. I refer, of course, to the two-year witch hunt
directed against President Donald Trump which hopefully just concluded last week –
provided that the Hillaryites, Democratic dopes and secret staters who fueled this mania don't
manage to keep the pot boiling.
This column has said from Day 1 that claims Trump was somehow a Russian agent were absurd in
the extreme. So too charges that Moscow had somehow rigged US elections. Nonsense. We know it's
the US that helps rig elections around the globe, not those bumbling Russians who can't afford
the big bribes such nefarious activity requires.
What Muller found after he turned over the big rock was a bevy of slithering, slimy
creatures, shyster lawyers, and sleazes that are normally part of New York's land development
industry. No surprise at all that they surrounded developer Trump. Son-in-law Jared Kushner
hails from this same milieu. The Kushners are pajama-party buddies with Israel's leader,
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now that the Muller investigation found no collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin,
we Americans owe a great big apology to Vladimir Putin for all the slander he has suffered. Too
bad he can't sue the legions of liars and propagandists who heaped abuse on him and,
incidentally, pushed the US and Russia to the edge of war.
People who swallowed these absurdist claims really should question their own grasp of
reality. Those who believed that the evil Kremlin was manipulating votes in Alabama or Missouri
would make good candidates for Scientology or the John Birch Society.
They were the simple fools. Worse, were the propagandists who promoted the disgusting
Steele dossier, a farrago of lies concocted by British intelligence and apparently promoted by
the late John McCain and Trump-hating TV networks. One senses Hillary Clinton's hand in all
this. Hell indeed hath no fury like a woman scorned.
It's so laughably ironic that while the witch hunt sought a non-existent Kremlin master
manipulator, the real foreign string-puller was sitting in the White House Oval office
chortling away: Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, behind him, the moneybags
patron of Trump and Netanyahu, American billionaire gambling mogul, Sheldon Adelson, the
godfather of Greater Israel.
The three amigos had just pulled off one of the most outrageous violations of international
law by blessing Israel's annexation of the highly strategic Golan Heights that Israel had
seized in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This usurpation was so egregious that all 14 members of
the UN Security Council condemned it. Even usually wimpy Canada blasted the US.
Giving Golan to Israel means it has permanently secured new water sources from the Mount
Hermon range, artillery and electronic intelligence positions overlooking Damascus, and the
launching pad for new Israeli land expansion into Lebanon and Syria. Israel is said to be
preparing for a new war against Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
In contrast to this cynical business over Golan, the Trump administration is still
hitting Russia with heavy sanctions over Moscow's re-occupation of Crimea, a strategic
peninsula that was Russian for over 300 years. So Israel can grab Golan but Russia must vacate
Crimea. The logic of sleazy politics.
We also learned last week that according to State Secretary Mike Pompeo, Trump might have
been sent by us by God, like ancient Israel's Queen Esther, to defend Israel from the wicked
Persians. Up to a quarter of Americans, and particularly Bible Belt voters, believe such crazy
nonsense. For them, Trump is a heroic Crusading Christian warrior.
This is as nutty as Trump being a Commie Manchurian candidate. We seem to be living in an
era of absurdity and medieval superstition. No wonder so many nations around the globe fear us.
We too often look like militant Scientologists with nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, the cool, calm, collected Vladimir Putin remains in charge of the other side in
spite of our best efforts to overthrow or provoke him.
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ." ..."
"... I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense ..."
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its
complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the
collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us
so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
... I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or
(IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about
private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. ..."
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity
in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into
the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite
power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes
sense
Yes, "Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them. " But he turned to be a fake, a marionette who is controlled by neocons like hapless Bush II.
Notable quotes:
"... Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war. ..."
"... The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. ..."
"... The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender . ..."
"... Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats. ..."
"... Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way. ..."
"... The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit . ..."
"... Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. ..."
Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power
Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate
narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.
Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives
lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media
in the end.
A day after publishing that excerpt, a
Attorney General
William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller : "[T]he investigation did not establish
that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were
rushing to judgment
, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters "cowed" and likely to "
back down from aggressive coverage of Trump ."
This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal,
Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate "skeptics" - I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn't normal and
healthy in this job - were really secret Trump partisans, part of a "horseshoe" pact between far left and far right to focus attention
on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump's more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book
about Trump called Insane Clown President .
A typical social media complaint:
@mtaibbi and all his deplorable followers. The truth will come out
and your premature celebrations are embarrassing.
It's irritating that I even have to address this, because my personal political views shouldn't have anything to do with how I
cover anything. But just to get it out of the way: I'm no fan of
Donald Trump .
I had a well-developed opinion about him long before the 2016 race started. I once interned for Trump's nemesis-biographer, the
late, great muckraker Wayne Barrett
. The birther campaign
of 2011 was all I ever needed to make a voting decision about the man.
I started covering the last presidential race in 2015 just as I was finishing up a book about the death of Eric Garner called
I Can't Breathe . Noting that
a birther campaign started by "peripheral political curiosity and reality TV star Donald Trump" led to 41 percent of respondents
in one poll believing Barack Obama was "not even American," I wrote:
If anyone could communicate the frustration black Americans felt over Stop-and-Frisk and other neo-vagrancy laws that made
black people feel like they could be arrested anywhere, it should have been Barack Obama. He'd made it all the way to the White
House and was still considered to be literally trespassing by a huge plurality of the population.
So I had no illusions about Trump. The Russia story bothered
me for other reasons, mostly having to do with a general sense of the public being misled, and not even about Russia.
The problem lay with the precursor tale to Russiagate, i.e. how Trump even got to be president in the first place.
The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering
where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed
the impression that the election season we'd just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary
espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.
This narrative contradicted everything I'd seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming
theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.
The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen
$150 million
contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or
$50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little
money and close to no institutional support became
a surprise contender
.
Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared
for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise
to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn't been prepared for anything else that would make sense.
This was particularly true of upscale, urban, blue-leaning news consumers, who were not told to take the possibility of a Trump
White House seriously.
Priority number-one of the political class after a vulgar, out-of-work game-show host conquered the White House should have been
a long period of ruthless self-examination. This story delayed that for at least two years.
It wasn't even clear Trump whether or not wanted to win. Watching him on the trail, Trump at times went beyond seeming disinterested.
There were periods where it looked like South Park's "
Did I offend you? " thesis was true, and he was
actively trying to lose, only the polls just wouldn't let him.
Forget about the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national
press corps. The more serious issue has to be the failure to face the reality of why he won last time, because we still haven't done
that.
... ... ...
Trump, the billionaire, denounced us as the elitists in the room. He'd call us "bloodsuckers," "dishonest," and in one line that
produced laughs considering who was saying it, "
highly-paid ."
He also did something that I immediately recognized as brilliant (or diabolical, depending on how you look at it). He dared cameramen
to turn their cameras to show the size of his crowds.
They usually wouldn't – hey, we don't work for the guy – which thrilled Trump, who would then say something to the effect of,
"See! They're
very dishonest people ." Audiences would turn toward us, and boo and hiss, and even throw little bits of paper and other things
our way. This was unpleasant, but it was hard not to see its effectiveness: he'd re-imagined the lifeless, poll-tested format of
the stump speech, turning it into menacing, personal, WWE-style theater.
Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there
was little difference between Republicans and Democrats.
...
Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties,
the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting
their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way.
...
The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my
bullshit .
I thought this was all nuts and couldn't believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job. My first
feature on candidate Trump was called "
How
America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable ." The key section read:
In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future.
The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:
President Donald Trump
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with
the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.
Traditional Democratic audiences appeared thrilled by the piece and shared it widely. I was invited on scads of cable shows to
discuss ad nauseum the "con man" line. This made me nervous, because it probably meant these people hadn't read the piece, which among other things posited the failures
of America's current ruling class meant Trump's insane tactics could actually work.
Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them.
...
The only reason most blue-state media audiences had been given for Trump's poll numbers all along was racism, which was surely
part of the story but not the whole picture. A lack of any other explanation meant Democratic audiences, after the shock of election
night, were ready to reach for any other data point that might better explain what just happened.
Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in
what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither
Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing
to vote for Donald Trump."
Post-election, Russiagate made it all worse. People could turn on their TVs at any hour of the day and see anyone from Rachel
Maddow to Chris Cuomo openly reveling in Trump's troubles. This is what Fox looks like to liberal audiences.
Worse, the "walls are closing in" theme -- two years old now -- was just a continuation of the campaign mistake, reporters confusing
what they wanted to happen with what was happening . The story was always more complicated than was being represented.
At CNN's town hall
event on Monday, the American people saw something we'd been told was impossible: Elizabeth
Warren winning over a crowd.
The Massachusetts senator took aim at a variety of subjects: the Electoral College,
Mississippi's racist state flag, the rise of
white nationalism . Always, she was met with thunderous applause. Even a simple Bible verse
-- from Matthew 25:35–40, about moral obligation to the poor and hungry -- prompted
cheers so loud and prolonged that Warren had to pause and repeat herself in order to make her
voice heard over the noise. Yet this was the same woman the media routinely frames as too
wonky, too nerdy, too socially stunted. But then, Warren has always been an exceptionally
charismatic candidate. We just forget that fact when she's campaigning -- due, in large part,
to our deep and lingering distrust for female intelligence.
Warren is bursting with what we might call "charisma" in male candidates: She has the folksy
demeanor of Joe Biden, the ferocious conviction of Bernie Sanders, the deep intelligence of
fellow law professor Barack Obama. But Warren is not a man, and so those traits are framed as
liabilities, rather than strengths. According to the media, Warren is an uptight schoolmarm, a
" wonky
professor ," a scold, a wimpy Dukakis, a wooden John Kerry, or (worse) a nerdier Al
Gore.
The criticism has hit her from the left and right. The far-right Daily Caller accused
her of looking
weird when she drank beer ; on social media, conservatives spread vicious (and viciously
ableist) rumors that Warren took antipsychotic drugs that treated "irritability caused by
autism ." On the other end
of the spectrum, Amber A'Lee Frost, the lone female co-host of the socialist podcast Chapo
Trap House , wrote for The Baffler (and, when The Baffler retracted her
article, for Jacobin) that Warren was "
weak " and "
not charismatic ." Frost deplored the "Type-A Tracy Flicks" who dared support "this Lisa
Simpson of a dark-horse candidate."
Casting Warren as a sheltered, Ivory Tower type is odd, given that her politics and diction
are not exactly elitist. Yet none of this is new; the same stereotypes were levied against
Warren in 2011, during her Senate campaign.
Strangely, the first nerdification of Warren was a purely local phenomenon -- one which
happened even as national media was falling in love with her. Jon Stewart publicly
adored her , and her ingenuity in proposing the creation of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau a few years prior earned her respect among the rising populist wing of the
party. Her fame was further catapulted when a speech -- a video of Warren speaking, seemingly
off-the-cuff , in a constituent's living room -- went viral. "Nobody in this country got
rich on his own, nobody," Warren proclaimed, pointing up the ways entrepreneurs benefit from
publicly funded services like roads and schools and fire departments.
"First-time candidates don't usually articulate a progressive economic message quite this
well," the Washington
Monthly declared . The New Yorker called it " the most important political
speech of this campaign season. " That enthusiasm continued throughout Warren's first
Senate bid. Writing for the New York Times , Rebecca Traister noted
that "the early devotion to Warren recalls the ardor once felt by many for Obama." (Obama
himself famously echoed
Warren's message -- "you didn't build that" -- on the 2012 campaign trail.)
Locally, Warren prompted a much different discussion, with scores of Massachusetts analysts
describing her as stiff and unlikable. Boston-based Democratic analyst Dan Payne bemoaned her
"know-it-all style" and wished aloud she would " be more authentic I want her to
just sound like a human being, not read the script that makes her sound like some angry,
hectoring schoolmarm." In a long profile for Boston magazine, reporter Janelle Nanos
quoted Thomas Whalen, a political historian at Boston University, who called Warren a "flawed
candidate," someone who was " desperately
trying to find a message that's going to resonate. " In that same article, Nanos asked
Warren point-blank about her "likability problem." Warren's response seemed to stem from deep
frustration: "People tell me everywhere I go why they care that I got in this race," she said.
"I can't answer the question because I literally haven't experienced what you're talking
about."
By demanding that Warren disguise her exceptional talents, we are asking her to lose.
Thankfully, she's not listening.
There's an element of gaslighting here: It only takes a reporter a few sources -- and an
op-ed columnist a single, fleeting judgment -- to declare a candidate "unlikable." After that
label has been applied, any effort the candidate makes to win people over can be cast as
"inauthentic." Likability is in this way a self-reinforcing accusation, one which is amplified
every time the candidate tries to tackle it. (Recall Hillary Clinton, who was asked about her
"likability" at seemingly
every debate or
town hall for eight straight years -- then furiously accused of pandering every time she
made an effort to seem more "approachable.")
It's significant that the "
I hate you; please respond" line of political sabotage only ever seems to be aimed at
women. It's also revealing that, when all these men talked about how Warren could win them
over, their "campaign" advice sounded suspiciously close to makeover tips. In his article,
Payne advised Warren to "lose the
granny glasses," "soften the hair," and employ a professional voice coach to "deepen her voice,
which grates on some." Payne seemed to suggest that Elizabeth Warren look like a model and
sound like a
man -- anything to disguise the grisly reality of a smart woman making her case.
Warren won her Senate race, and the "schoolmarm" stereotype largely vanished as her national
profile grew. By 2014, grassroots activists were begging her to run for president; by mid-2016,
CNN had named her " Donald Trump's chief antagonist ." She's
since given a stream of incendiary interviews and handed the contemporary women's movement its
most popular
meme . All this should be enough to prove any candidate's "charisma." Yet, now that she's
thrown her hat into the presidential ring, the firebrand has become a Poindexter once
again.
The digs at Warren's "professorial" style hurt her because, on some level, they're true.
Warren really is an intellectual, a scholar; moreover, she really is running an exceptionally
ideas-focused campaign, regularly turning out detailed and exhaustive policy proposals at a
point when most of the other candidates don't even have policy sections on their websites.
What's galling is the suggestion that this is a bad thing.
Yes, male candidates have suffered from being too smart -- just ask Gore, who ran on climate
change 20 years before it was trendy. But just as often, their intelligence helps them. Obama's
sophistication and
public reading lists endeared him to liberals. And just a few days ago, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg was widely praised for learning
Norwegian in order to read an author's untranslated works. Yet, Warren is dorky, a teacher's
pet, a try-hard Tracy Flick, or Lisa Simpson. A "know-it-all."
The "schoolmarm" stereotype now applied to Warren has always been used to demean educated
women. In the Victorian era, we called them "bluestockings" -- unmarried, unattractive women
who had dared to prioritize intellectual development over finding a man. They are, in the words
of one contemporary writer, "
frumpy and frowly in the extreme, with no social talents ." Educators say that 21st century
girls are still afraid to talk in class because of "sexist bullying" which sends the message
that smart girls are unfeminine: "For girls, peers tell them 'if you are swotty and clever and
answer too many questions, you are not attractive ,'" claims Mary
Bousted, joint general-secretary of the U.K.'s National Education Union. Female academics still
report being made to feel " unsexual, unattractive, unwomanly, and
unnatural. " We can deplore all this as antiquated thinking, but even now, grown men are
still demanding that Warren ditch her glasses or "soften" her hair -- to work on being prettier
so as to make her intelligence less threatening.
Warren is cast as a bloodless intellectual when she focuses on policy, a scolding lecturer
when she leans into her skills as a rabble-rouser; either way, her intelligence is always too
much and out of place. Her eloquence is framed, not as inspiring, but as "angry" and
"hectoring." Being an effective orator makes her "strident." It's not solely confined to the
media, but reporters seem anxious to signal-boost anyone who complains: Anonymous male
colleagues call her "irritating," telling Vanity Fair that "she projects a 'holier than
thou' attitude" and that "
she has a moralizing to her. " That same quality in male candidates is hailed as moral
clarity.
Warren is accused, in plain language, of being uppity -- a woman who has the bad grace to be
smarter than the men around her, without downplaying it to assuage their egos. But running in a
presidential race is all about proving that you are smarter than the other guy. By demanding
that Warren disguise her exceptional talents, we are asking her to lose. Thankfully, she's not
listening. She is a smart woman, after all.
A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco? February 3, 2017 • 39
Comments
Exclusive: Official Washington's new "group think" – accepting evidence-free charges
that Russia "hacked the U.S. election" – has troubling parallels to the Iraq-WMD
certainty, often from the same people, writes James W Carden.
The controversy over Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election shows
no sign of letting up. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently introduced legislation that would
impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its acts of "cyber intrusions."At a press event in Washington on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called Election Day
2016 "a day that will live in cyber infamy." Previously, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, called
the Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee "an act of war," while Sen. Lindsey
Graham, R-South Carolina, has claimed that there is
near unanimity among senators regarding Russia's culpability.
Despite all this, the question of who exactly is responsible for the providing WikiLeaks
with the emails of high Democratic Party officials does not lend itself to easy answers. And
yet, for months, despite the lack of publicly disclosed evidence, the media, like these
senators, have been as one: Vladimir Putin's Russia is responsible.
Interestingly, the same neoconservative/center-left alliance which endorsed George W. Bush's
case for war with Iraq is pretty much the same neoconservative/center-left alliance that is
now, all these years later, braying for confrontation with Russia. It's largely the same cast
of characters reading from the Iraq-war era playbook.
It's worth recalling Tony Judt's observation in September 2006 that "those centrist voices
that bayed most insistently for blood in the prelude to the Iraq war are today the most
confident when asserting their monopoly of insight into world affairs."
While that was true then, it is perhaps even more so the case today.
The prevailing sentiment of the media establishment during the months prior to the
disastrous March 2003 invasion of Iraq was that of certainty: George Tenet's now infamous
assurance to President Bush, that the case against Iraq was a "slam drunk," was essentially
what major newspapers and television news outlets were telling the American people at the time.
Iraq posed a threat to "the homeland," therefore Saddam "must go."
The Bush administration, in a move equal parts cynical and clever, engaged in what we would
today call a "disinformation" campaign against its own citizens by planting false stories
abroad, safe in the knowledge that these stories would "bleed over" and be picked up by the
American press.
WMD 'Fake News'
The administration was able to launder what were essentially "fake news" stories, such as
the aluminum tubes fabrication , by
leaking to Michael R. Gordon and
Judith Miller of The New York Times. In September 2002, without an ounce of skepticism, Gordon
and Miller regurgitated the claims of unnamed U.S. intelligence officials that Iraq "has sought
to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes intended as components of centrifuges to
enrich uranium." Gordon and Miller
faithfully relayed "the intelligence agencies' unanimous view that the type of tubes that
Iraq has been seeking are used to make centrifuges."
By 2002, no one had any right to be surprised by what Bush and Cheney were up to; since at
least 1898 (when the U.S. declared war on Spain under the pretense of the fabricated Hearst
battle cry "Remember the Maine!") American governments have repeatedly lied in order to promote
their agenda abroad. And in 2002-3, the media walked in lock step with yet another
administration in pushing for an unnecessary and costly war.
Like The New York Times, The Washington Post also relentlessly pushed the administration's
case for war with Iraq. According
to the journalist Greg Mitchell , "By the Post 's own admission, in the months
before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war." All this,
while its editorial page assured readers that the evidence Colin Powell presented to the United
Nations on Iraq's WMD program was "irrefutable." According to the Post, it would be "hard to
imagine" how anyone could doubt the administration's case.
But the Post was hardly alone in its enthusiasm for Bush's war. Among the most prominent
proponents of the Iraq war was The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg , who, a full year
prior to the invasion, set out to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Writing for The New Yorker
in March 2002, Goldberg retailed former CIA Director
James Woolsey's opinion that "It would be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial
institutional hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was keeping it from learning
about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda in northern Iraq."
Indeed, according to Goldberg ,
"The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terror
groups is a powerful argument among advocates of regime change," while Saddam's "record of
support for terrorist organizations, and the cruelty of his regime make him a threat that
reaches far beyond the citizens of Iraq."
Writing in Slate in October 2002, Goldberg was of the opinion that "In five years . . . I
believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound
morality."
Likewise, The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan was certain
that "we would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have no doubt about that." Slate's
Jacob Weisberg supported the invasion because
he thought Saddam Hussein had WMD and he "thought there was a strong chance he'd use them
against the United States."
Even after it was becoming clear that the war was a debacle, the neoconservative pundit
Charles Krauthammer declared that the inability to find WMDs was "troubling" but "only because
it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that
our inability to thus far find the weapons proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply
false."
Smearing Skeptics
Opponents of the war were regularly accused of unpatriotic disloyalty. Writing in National
Review, the neoconservative writer David Frum
accused anti-intervention conservatives of going "far, far beyond the advocacy of
alternative strategies." According to Frum, "They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a
potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of
them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies."
Similarly, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait castigated anti-war liberals for turning
against Bush. "Have Bush haters lost their minds?" asked Chait . "Certainly some have.
Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq
war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all."
Yet of course we now know, thanks, in part, to a
new book by former CIA analyst John Nixon, that everything the U.S. government thought it
knew about Saddam Hussein was indeed wrong. Nixon, the CIA analyst who interrogated Hussein
after his capture in December 2003, asks "Was Saddam worth removing from power?" "The answer,"
says Nixon, "must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the
government."
It turns out that the skeptics were correct after all. And so the principal lesson the
promoters of Bush and Cheney's war of choice should have learned is that blind certainty is the
enemy of fair inquiry and nuance. The hubris that many in the mainstream media displayed in
marginalizing liberal and conservative anti-war voices was to come back to haunt them. But not,
alas, for too long.
A Dangerous Replay?
Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the
allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the
intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the
existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100%
certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of
certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written
off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or
worse.
Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for
the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published
two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake
news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the
paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.
Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally
aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an
op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's
theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other
officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've
experienced."
On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board
chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt
by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post
described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."
On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin
told readers that the recent announcement of
sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid
warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."
Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in
Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the
government's case.
Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the
government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for
months," writes Chait.
"Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles
Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.
And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has
one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western
Europe."
David Frum,
writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal
clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."
Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump.
It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg
wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about
Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.
Foreign Special Interests
Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists
have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi,
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile,
worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH)
to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American
newspapers.
Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its
readers on May 26,
2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been
named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced
reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration
and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustivelydocumented .
Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is
taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid
war" with the West are
appearingwithincreasingregularity
. Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in
Politico
magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with
Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.
McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio
on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government
from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable
enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the
Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN
and Moldova's PLDM.
Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to
Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S.
journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and
Moldovan clients.
"The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest.
Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin
you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that
fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest – but perhaps not America's.
While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous
pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New
developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the
cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP
addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack
by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with
Russia."
Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be
Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an
indicator of compromise for any website."
On Jan. 4,
BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic
examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The
FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer
servers."
What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that
was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company,
Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence
official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything
that they have concluded is not accurate."
Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia.
Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the
Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating
tensions with Russia.
As I
reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the
Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State
Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and
the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice
calling for a new Cold War with Russia.
Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'
And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama
administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney,
a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of
its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked,
writing
that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian
government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a
hack."
None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to
influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have
intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's
hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an
understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources
and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.
But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a
recent you.gov/Economist
poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52
percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."
With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold
a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of
allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes
to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.
It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically
examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators – Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat
Sheldon Whitehouse –
announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in
elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about
the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest
extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."
So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop,
take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and
consequential – if not more so – as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years
ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee
for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the
Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.
Yes, "Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them. " But he turned to be a fake, a marionette who is controlled by neocons like hapless Bush II.
Notable quotes:
"... Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war. ..."
"... The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. ..."
"... The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender . ..."
"... Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats. ..."
"... Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way. ..."
"... The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit . ..."
"... Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. ..."
Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power
Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate
narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.
Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives
lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media
in the end.
A day after publishing that excerpt, a
Attorney General
William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller : "[T]he investigation did not establish
that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were
rushing to judgment
, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters "cowed" and likely to "
back down from aggressive coverage of Trump ."
This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal,
Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate "skeptics" - I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn't normal and
healthy in this job - were really secret Trump partisans, part of a "horseshoe" pact between far left and far right to focus attention
on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump's more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book
about Trump called Insane Clown President .
A typical social media complaint:
@mtaibbi and all his deplorable followers. The truth will come out
and your premature celebrations are embarrassing.
It's irritating that I even have to address this, because my personal political views shouldn't have anything to do with how I
cover anything. But just to get it out of the way: I'm no fan of
Donald Trump .
I had a well-developed opinion about him long before the 2016 race started. I once interned for Trump's nemesis-biographer, the
late, great muckraker Wayne Barrett
. The birther campaign
of 2011 was all I ever needed to make a voting decision about the man.
I started covering the last presidential race in 2015 just as I was finishing up a book about the death of Eric Garner called
I Can't Breathe . Noting that
a birther campaign started by "peripheral political curiosity and reality TV star Donald Trump" led to 41 percent of respondents
in one poll believing Barack Obama was "not even American," I wrote:
If anyone could communicate the frustration black Americans felt over Stop-and-Frisk and other neo-vagrancy laws that made
black people feel like they could be arrested anywhere, it should have been Barack Obama. He'd made it all the way to the White
House and was still considered to be literally trespassing by a huge plurality of the population.
So I had no illusions about Trump. The Russia story bothered
me for other reasons, mostly having to do with a general sense of the public being misled, and not even about Russia.
The problem lay with the precursor tale to Russiagate, i.e. how Trump even got to be president in the first place.
The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering
where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed
the impression that the election season we'd just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary
espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.
This narrative contradicted everything I'd seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming
theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.
The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen
$150 million
contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or
$50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little
money and close to no institutional support became
a surprise contender
.
Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared
for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise
to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn't been prepared for anything else that would make sense.
This was particularly true of upscale, urban, blue-leaning news consumers, who were not told to take the possibility of a Trump
White House seriously.
Priority number-one of the political class after a vulgar, out-of-work game-show host conquered the White House should have been
a long period of ruthless self-examination. This story delayed that for at least two years.
It wasn't even clear Trump whether or not wanted to win. Watching him on the trail, Trump at times went beyond seeming disinterested.
There were periods where it looked like South Park's "
Did I offend you? " thesis was true, and he was
actively trying to lose, only the polls just wouldn't let him.
Forget about the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national
press corps. The more serious issue has to be the failure to face the reality of why he won last time, because we still haven't done
that.
... ... ...
Trump, the billionaire, denounced us as the elitists in the room. He'd call us "bloodsuckers," "dishonest," and in one line that
produced laughs considering who was saying it, "
highly-paid ."
He also did something that I immediately recognized as brilliant (or diabolical, depending on how you look at it). He dared cameramen
to turn their cameras to show the size of his crowds.
They usually wouldn't – hey, we don't work for the guy – which thrilled Trump, who would then say something to the effect of,
"See! They're
very dishonest people ." Audiences would turn toward us, and boo and hiss, and even throw little bits of paper and other things
our way. This was unpleasant, but it was hard not to see its effectiveness: he'd re-imagined the lifeless, poll-tested format of
the stump speech, turning it into menacing, personal, WWE-style theater.
Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there
was little difference between Republicans and Democrats.
...
Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties,
the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting
their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way.
...
The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my
bullshit .
I thought this was all nuts and couldn't believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job. My first
feature on candidate Trump was called "
How
America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable ." The key section read:
In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future.
The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:
President Donald Trump
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with
the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.
Traditional Democratic audiences appeared thrilled by the piece and shared it widely. I was invited on scads of cable shows to
discuss ad nauseum the "con man" line. This made me nervous, because it probably meant these people hadn't read the piece, which among other things posited the failures
of America's current ruling class meant Trump's insane tactics could actually work.
Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them.
...
The only reason most blue-state media audiences had been given for Trump's poll numbers all along was racism, which was surely
part of the story but not the whole picture. A lack of any other explanation meant Democratic audiences, after the shock of election
night, were ready to reach for any other data point that might better explain what just happened.
Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in
what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither
Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing
to vote for Donald Trump."
Post-election, Russiagate made it all worse. People could turn on their TVs at any hour of the day and see anyone from Rachel
Maddow to Chris Cuomo openly reveling in Trump's troubles. This is what Fox looks like to liberal audiences.
Worse, the "walls are closing in" theme -- two years old now -- was just a continuation of the campaign mistake, reporters confusing
what they wanted to happen with what was happening . The story was always more complicated than was being represented.
"... Paul Krugman. In " Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." ..."
"... With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. ..."
"... The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow. ..."
"... After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House, and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent? ..."
"... The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its resilience. ..."
"... In any event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller. The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House. ..."
The idea of irascible Donald Trump as a compliant tool of the Kremlin in Moscow -- some sort
of clandestine agent or asset, in spy parlance -- has always seemed off-center. Who has ever
been able to control him, this volcano of a man? Does Trump seem capable of keeping secrets,
following orders, or maintaining the strict discipline required of a double agent? So, to sober
minds, it should come as no surprise that the final report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller
III supports no such conclusion. The report, as summarized by Attorney General William P. Barr
in a letter to congressional leaders on Sunday, found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign
and Russia to fix the 2016 election in Trump's favor. And that's exactly what Trump has been
saying, in his mantra of "no collusion," from the start of this nearly two-year-old
investigation.
Surely, then, it's time for a reckoning -- starting with, say, New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman. In " Donald
Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very
strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." On Twitter, Washington
Post columnist Anne Applebaum chimed in that Trump was "the real-life Manchurian
candidate." The Krugman-Applebaum references were to Richard Condon's classic Cold War novel,
published in 1959, and the subsequent film, The Manchurian Candidate , about an American
prisoner of war brainwashed into becoming a Communist sleeper agent. That, America was told,
was Donald Trump.
With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a
six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare
accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the
product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean
that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a
cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St.
Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New
York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The
headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of
mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly
became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow.
These are just samples of the Trump-as-Putin's-tool theory, now discredited by Mueller's
report. The idea was advanced not only by liberal media types but also by anti-Trump
conservatives, and it became a talking point in Democratic Party and U.S. foreign-policy
establishment circles. John Brennan, Barack Obama's former CIA director, all but called Trump a
traitor to America, for being in Putin's pocket. Of course, not all Trump opponents swallowed
this improbable if seductive line -- but many did.
Partisan politics are one factor at work in efforts to show Trump as being in cahoots with
the Russians. But mere partisanship seems insufficient to explain an abiding belief in Trump as
Moscow's pawn. After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not
hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House,
and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to
Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas
from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent?
The root explanation for the belief in a compromised Trump lies elsewhere than partisan
politics, and a good place to look is the classic essay by historian Richard Hofstadter, "
The Paranoid
Style in American Politics ," published in the November 1964 issue of Harper's.
Hofstadter was speaking, in the first instance, of the "Radical Right" of his day and its
cherished conviction that Communists had infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S.
government. But the main point of his essay was to identify a recurrent pattern in our
political life, going back to the republic's early days. "I believe there is a style of mind
that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing," he wrote in his opening
paragraph. "I call it the paranoid style," he explained, "simply because no other word
adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy
that I have in mind." In using this expression, he took pains to say, he was not speaking in a
clinical sense of "men with profoundly disturbed minds." Rather, it was "the use of paranoid
modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant."
Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s was one example; another was leaders of the
Populist Party in the 1890s believing in "secret cabals" of "gold gamblers" to ruin
America.
"Trump as Kremlin man" now can be added to these dubious annals. Hofstadter, who died in
1970, surely would be surprised. Though he did not see the "paranoid style" as the sole
province of the Right, he tended to view most exhibitors of this style as figures and movements
closer to the margins of American politics than to its center. A New York Times
columnist, say, was not the sort of person he had in mind. Yet his insight into the "modern
right wing" as feeling "dispossessed," as living in an America that "has been largely taken
away from them and their kind," and therefore liable to the paranoid style, also applies in the
current instance. For at least some of his critics, Trump's election was so perplexing and
disorienting that it was as if they were living in a foreign country. How could this be
happening in "their" America?
They still feel this way. The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with
complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its
resilience. Mueller, the decorated former Marine and former FBI director, is apt to be
attacked, in some disbelieving quarters, as a sellout: What isn't he telling us? Even the
publication of his full report -- as many Americans, rightly, are demanding -- will not satisfy
critics, who will insist that the absence of evidence of collusion is simply an element of the
vast conspiracy to cover it up.
A vindicated Trump, for his part, can be expected only to heighten the conspiratorial mood
of our times. An irony of this episode is that he, too, is the sort of person apt to believe in
intrigues, only in his view of the matter, the dark plot is a scheme by the "Deep State" to
keep him from getting elected and, once elected, to stay in power. He may well be loathed by
more than a few Washington bureaucrats, but that idea looks like another rabbit hole.
In any
event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia
connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller.
The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't
be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House.
Paul
Starobin , a former Moscow bureau chief of Business Week , is working on a book on
the Alaska gold rush of 1900.
"... Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era retreads. ..."
"... The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.) ..."
"... New incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley has already demonstrated his Nut-Job sensibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLfkJODepcI ..."
"... Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers. ..."
Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a
meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era
retreads.
I've stated before that the Pentagon now controls foreign policy. Along with the sanctified
Generals, Lunatic Bolton, Fat Pompeo, Nitwit Pence and other civilians are completely wired
into the Warfare State architecture parasitically dependent on a Russia = Soviet Union 2.0
model.
The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with
ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.)
The anti-Russia froth spilling out of a sclerotic Congress suffused with Idiots who want
to throw even more Billions at the 5-Sided Pleasure Palace is thick and heavy.
While Trump has proven himself to be a stupid, impotent fop against that war-mongering
menagerie.
Re: "Politics in Washington can often guide policy. The question post-Mueller is
whether policy will now be front of mind."
Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already
been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being
delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers.
Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home
without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.
As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple
indictments and convictions, but no "presidency-wrecking" conspiracy charges, or anything that
would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.
The New York Times:
A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new
indictments. The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained
in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even
pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.
The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with
votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing "All I Want for
Christmas is You" to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the
only option is a coup."
The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney
General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:
In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a
"witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr.
Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.
Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could
the same be said for the news media?
It's a brutal week for anyone who expected
special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election to be the end of
Donald Trump. Per Attorney General William Barr's
summary
of Mueller's report, there is no evidence to prove that Trump or his campaign conspired with
Russian agents to influence the election; while Mueller left the door open to obstruction of justice charges,
Barr has decided there are no grounds for those, either. Maybe the "Mueller time" merchandise can now be
marketed to Trump fans.
This outcome has left a lot of "Resistance" types
distraught and discredited, and it's an entirely self-made disaster. Trump/Russia hype and hysteria on the left
have been wildly over the top. It wasn't just fringe
conspiracy theorists
like British journalist Louise Mensch who claimed Trump was knowingly working for the
Kremlin; Jonathan Chait and Max Boot floated the same idea in
New York Magazine
and
The Washington Post
, respectively, as did
Bill Maher
on HBO's
Real Time
. Pundits, ex-intelligence officials,
and some congressional Democrats (notably California's Adam Schiff) repeatedly asserted that the Mueller probe
was all but certain to end with major indictments. It seemed like every week, a new "
bombshell
"
signaled "the beginning of the end" for Trump.
But now, the triumphant pro-Trump Republicans and
left-wing Trump/Russia skeptics (two groups currently enjoying a bizarre love-in) are engaging in just as much
hype and overreach -- and it may end badly for them, too.
For the record: From the start, I have been
mostly a Trump/Russia agnostic. In my
first piece
on the subject in July 2016, for the now-defunct AllThink blog, I wrote:
I don't think anyone is actually claiming that Trump is literally a [Vladimir] Putin agent. It's more that
Putin would much prefer to see Trump rather than [Hillary] Clinton in the White House; that Trump is not at
all averse to having Putin in his corner; and that top Trump staffers, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and
Russia adviser Carter Page, have tangible ties to the Kremlin regime and to Putin's cronies. And that Putin
may be using KGB-style dirty tricks to help elect Trump -- such as putting out what the Russians call
kompromat
on Clinton.
(I think this aligns pretty closely with
the Mueller report as summarized by Barr.)
Later, I was highly skeptical of the more extreme
Trump/Russia claims, including "
pee
tape
" blackmail. In a
December 2017
Newsday
column, I warned about the damage from
biased and sloppy media coverage of the story. In
July 2018
, I condemned Trump's conduct when he stood next to Putin at the Helsinki summit and badmouthed
the Mueller probe while endorsing Putin's denial of election meddling; I also stressed that "[c]ollusion with
the Kremlin is certainly not the only way to explain Trump's actions."
In other words, I am not a Russiagate peddler
refusing to concede error and bitterly clinging to my discredited position.
I simply believe that, on the facts, the extreme
"Russia Hoax" position (there was never anything to the Trump/Russia story except a conspiracy theory intended
to take down Trump) is as untenable as the extreme "Russiagate" position (Trump is Putin's bitch).
I think it's a bit galling for Trump defenders to
crow vindication when, only recently, the same people -- including Trump himself -- were viciously attacking
Mueller and slamming his investigation as a baseless witch-hunt cooked up by Trump haters and "Deep State"
malefactors. And yes, in some cases, it's literally the same people, not just people from the same political
camp. For instance,
Federalist
writer Sean Davis, who has been
gleefully
flogging
the media for their coverage of the scandal, had this to say last October when some Trump zealots
attempted to frame Mueller for sexual harassment:
(Davis apparently deleted the tweet later, but
it's definitely real, as demonstrated by
an embed
appearing on
RedState
.)
Indeed, Fox News Opinion was attacking Mueller on
the eve of the release of his findings, in an
article
that now looks deliciously ironic:
Fast-forward a few days, and anyone who has
the temerity to suggest that the Barr summary of Mueller's findings may not be the absolute last word on
Trump/Russia is promptly accused of being pathetic and desperate.
We'll know more soon when the full Mueller
report is out. But pending its release, here's a quick look at some of the post-Mueller "Russia hoax" myths.
Myth: The Mueller findings prove there was never anything to Trump/Russia. It's simply an anti-Trump conspiracy
theory spawned by the Christopher Steele dossier -- a discredited piece of Clinton opposition research -- and
fanned by the Trump-hating media.
This is sheer nonsense.
First of all: Discussions of Trump's, and his
campaign's, Russian connections began before anyone had heard of the dossier and before the FBI opened its
investigation into the matter.
The Washington Post
ran a
piece
on the Trump-Putin "bromance" and Trump's extensive financial ties to Russia on June 17, 2016, when
Steele, a former British intelligence agent, was just starting to compile his Trump-Russia dossier. An article
by Franklin Foer titled "
Putin's
Puppet
" appeared in
Slate
on July 4, still nearly
a month
before the FBI started its investigation into Russian election interference and some three months
before FBI agents first met with Steele.
Foer discussed Trump's "odes to Putin," the
Kremlin-controlled media's vocal support for Trump, the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers by
Russian intelligence, Trump's financial connections to Russia, and the fact that "Trump's inner circle is
populated with advisers and operatives who have long careers advancing the interests of the Kremlin." At
Talking Points Memo
in
late July
, Josh Marshall also highlighted the fact that the one foreign policy issue where Trump's team
pushed for change in the Republican Party platform was to tone down language calling for more American
assistance to Ukraine in its border conflict with Russia.
Trump's infamous "
Russia,
if you're listening
" remark on July 27 of that year, responding to questions about the DNC hacking by
jocularly inviting Russia to find Clinton's missing emails, raised the story to a new level. Unlike many
people, I believe he was making a tacky joke, not actually signaling the Kremlin. Even so, it's not difficult
to understand why this conduct would be considered suspicious. At best, a presidential candidate was responding
to reports that his opponent had been targeted for cyberattacks by an adversarial foreign power by jokingly
cheering for the hackers.
There are plenty of others times Trump
behaved in ways that fed the story.
There was his
statement
to NBC's Lester Holt in May 2017 that he fired James Comey because of the "Russia thing."
(Whether we now find Comey an obnoxiously self-important grandstander is totally irrelevant.)
There was, even more shockingly, the
revelation
that Trump bragged about the firing in a White House meeting with Russian foreign minister
Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, calling Comey "a real nut job" and saying that the
pressure he had faced over the Russia story was now "taken off." (Is there any way such behavior by the
President of the United States would
not
raise disturbing questions?)
There was his behavior at the Helsinki summit, and
numerous instances in which he took a remarkably mild attitude toward apparent criminal activity by the
Kremlin. Just last October, in a
60 Minutes
interview on CBS, Trump
conceded
that Putin had probably orchestrated the attempted poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia in England -- but brushed it off with "it's not in our country." (This is an
incident
in which Russian intelligence agents tried to kill two Russians on the soil of one of our top
allies, in the process accidentally killing one of that country's nationals and injuring two more. As they say:
Let that sink in.) In the same interview, Trump also downplayed 2016 Russian election meddling by claiming,
with no evidence, that "China meddled too" and "is a bigger problem."
Aside from that, there really were extensive
interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians with Kremlin or intelligence ties. There really was -- as
the Barr letter on Mueller's findings explicitly states -- a Russian effort to influence the election and
undermine Clinton. (Was the intent to damage the generally expected Clinton presidency, or to help elect Trump?
It's likely this was viewed as a win-win scenario.) Mueller
indicted
13 Russians over that operation. Remember, Mueller's mandate was to investigate
all
Russian interference in the 2016 election (including the possible
role of people inside the Trump campaign in aiding such interference). So to dismiss the Mueller probe as a
"conspiracy theory" and/or a waste of money is to show a rather shocking lack of regard for the integrity of
our elections.
It's true that not one American citizen
has been indicted for "collusion" (or, to be more accurate, conspiracy; there is no such crime as "collusion").
The prosecutions of Trump associates have been over other, only tangentially related things: Paul Manafort and
Rick Gates, for
financial crimes
connected to consulting work for pro-Russian Ukrainians; Roger Stone (who still
faces trial
in November) for lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, the "whistleblower"
organization that published the hacked documents; former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and campaign
staffer George Papadopoulos, for lying to the FBI about Russian contacts. Mueller has found -- there's no reason
to doubt the accuracy of the Barr letter on this -- that none of the contacts between the Trump campaign and
Russian operatives amounted to conspiracy, defined as an agreement to influence the election.
But: first of all, this doesn't mean that the issue
wasn't worth investigating. There
was
very real evidence of suspicious
and sleazy contacts. It didn't rise to the level of criminal and treasonous conspiracy. So far, so good.
Secondly, this doesn't mean that anything short of
conspiracy is fine. We didn't need Mueller to tell us that Trump welcomed the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked
documents from the DNC and the Clinton campaign; Trump
repeatedly said so
on the campaign trail in 2016. The Mueller probe did uncover contacts between WikiLeaks
and at least two people close to Trump: Stone and Donald Trump Jr. (We don't know whether such contacts at any
level would amount to conspiracy under the Mueller report's definition, since WikiLeaks is not definitively
classified as a Russian asset.)
The Stone indictment
charges
that late in the summer of 2016, after news of the DNC hacking -- which U.S. and allied intelligence
agencies, along with multiple private cybersecurity firms, identified as the work of Russian operatives -- a
senior Trump campaign official asked Stone to find out from WikiLeaks what was in the hacked emails and when
they would be made public.
Bloomberg News
columnist Eli Lake
argues
, in his commentary on the Mueller probe conclusion, that this fact actually undercuts the collusion
scenario: "If the [Trump] campaign was coordinating with Russia's influence campaign, why would Stone have
needed to go to WikiLeaks?" But surely collusion is not limited to full-time coordination. If the unnamed
official knew that WikiLeaks was acting as an intermediary for the Russians and directed Stone to find out more
about their plans to disclose illegally obtained material damaging to the Clinton campaign, that sounds pretty
damning to me -- even if doesn't amount to conspiracy with Kremlin agents.
And that's aside from the Trump Tower meeting. It's
a
fact
that Don Jr. received an email saying that a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer wanted to meet and offer
dirt on Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." It's a fact that he responded,
"I love it." (As it turned out, the lawyer had no information and used the meeting to talk about ending
sanctions against Russia.) The Barr summary notes that there is no evidence any Trump associate was involved in
coordination or conspiracy with the Russian government, "despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated
individuals to assist the Trump campaign." Yet at least in the case of the Trump Tower meeting, it seems clear
that the offer was not rejected; it was enthusiastically welcomed but turned out to be bogus. (Former Trump
attorney Michael Cohen
claims
Don Jr. told his father about this meeting, but there is no solid proof of this.)
If Trump supporters think this is a
vindication, or that this proves the Mueller probe was a pointless conspiracy theory I suppose they're
entitled to that view. It seems to me that any reasonable person would conclude that these facts warranted a
full investigation to find out whether they amounted to criminal conspiracy.
Myth: The Trump/Russia story was made up as an excuse for Clinton's defeat so that the Democrats could avoid
facing the fact that (a) they ran a terrible candidate and (b) a lot of Americans were sufficiently fed up with
the political establishment that they voted for Trump.
Did the collusion story serve that purpose for some
Democrats? Sure. But again, the Trump/Russia issue first became a story several months before the election,
when pretty much everyone expected Clinton to win. Indeed, in his "
Putin's
Puppet
" story in July 2016, Foer wrote, "We shouldn't overstate Putin's efforts, which will hardly
determine the outcome of the election." (Famous last words!)
Myth: We know for a fact that Russian interference did not help Trump win.
For some reason, suggesting that Russian meddling
may have affected the outcome of the election is often taken as tantamount to saying that Americans did not
really
elect Donald Trump. But that doesn't follow at all.
No credible person suggests that Russia tampered
with the voting tallies (though it's a measure of current levels of political derangement that
two-thirds of Democrats
believe such tampering "definitely" or "probably" happened). However, Trump won
several states by extremely small margins; surely some of those results could have been tipped by the WikiLeaks
disclosures,
falsely spun
as "the DNC fixed the primaries to rob Bernie Sanders and hand the nomination to Hillary."
Let's not forget that WikiLeaks began it's second dump of compromising material hours after the disclosure of
the "Access Hollywood" audio in which Trump was heard bragging that his star status allows him to "do anything"
to women, even "grab 'em by the pussy."
Of course this does not absolve Clinton of running
a bad campaign. A good candidate would have been ahead of Trump by a wide enough margin that WikiLeaks would
not have made a difference. A good candidate would not have had personal baggage that made it difficult for her
to hit Trump on the sexual misconduct allegations. There were numerous factors that contributed to Trump's win.
But I don't see how anyone can say with certainty that the Russia/WikiLeaks project wasn't one of
them -- especially since Trump exploited those disclosures to the hilt on the campaign trail.
Myth: The mainstream media as a group are utterly discredited because they fell for Trump/Russia hype, while
once-derided Trump/Russia skeptics have been vindicated.
This claim is being made not only by conservative
Trump supporters like Davis, but by leftists like Michael Tracey, Glenn Greenwald, and
Matt Taibbi
, whose indictment of the media's Russiagate fail has been widely praised.
There is a lot to criticize. Rachel Maddow should
be embarrassed. So should Chait, who once suggested that Trump might be meeting "his handler" in Helsinki.
But the critics are wrongly (and, I
suspect, intentionally) lumping together several extremely different things: outlandish Trump/Russia conspiracy
theories
a la
Mensch; sloppy "bombshell" reporting that ended up being
quickly debunked and retracted (such as the ABC News "
scoop
"
that Trump had directed Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign, not after the election);
opinions that were always presented as opinions; and factual reporting on the Trump/Russia investigation.
For instance, after I
tweeted
that Taibbi vastly overstates the media consensus on the "Trump is a Russian asset" narrative,
someone tweeted a collage of
Washington Post
headlines at me in
rebuttal.
However, none of those headlines refer to
Trump being a Russian asset. The closest is one that says, "Why the FBI might've thought Trump could be working
for Russia." But the FBI
did
briefly investigate that possibility in
2017 before Mueller took over the Russia probe! What's more,
the article
, by Aaron Blake, is the farthest thing from irresponsible hype. It offers a measured assessment
of the facts, pointing out that such claims are "highly speculative," that the brief FBI inquiry "may not mean
a whole lot," and that there are other explanations for the behavior that made the FBI suspicious.
And other headlines are simply factual: for
instance, "Trump misrepresents judge in Manafort trial as he claims 'no collusion' with Russia."
He did
.
Or: "Russia's support for Trump's election is no
longer disputable." Yes, the Barr letter confirms that too.
Some of Taibbi's criticism is fair (for instance,
he makes a strong case that Michael Isikoff of
Yahoo News
vastly
overhyped the Steele dossier before backtracking and suggesting that it's mostly inaccurate; he also rightly
spanks Chait for the "What if Trump is a longtime Russian agent"
New York
Magazine
cover story). Some is more dubious. Thus, Taibbi writes:
"
Trump
Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence
," published by the
Times
on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important,
narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was
witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts
supposedly were at all.
In fact, the article explicitly
acknowledges these unknowns. It states that the law enforcement officials who had provided the information "did
not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business" and whether they had anything to do with
Trump. It also notes that several Trump associates (including Manafort, the only person named in the article)
had done business in Russia and that "it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with
foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy
services are deeply embedded in society." Finally, it states that the officials interviewed "said that, so far,
they had seen no evidence" of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the election.
One can criticize
The
New York
Times
for hyping the "bombshell" in the headline only to admit in the
body of the text that it may amount to nothing much. (Did it amount to anything? We don't know; the charges
against Manafort are partly
related
to giving U.S. polling data to an intelligence-linked Russian business associate, Konstantin V.
Kilimnik, as part of these contacts.) But Taibbi's failure to note that the article does acknowledge facts
contrary to the "narrative" also skews his account.
"What I meant to write is, I
wasn't
skeptical," he said.
Leaving aside the sloppiness (it's "Hounshell,"
and the second article was published six months later, not a year later), Taibbi's account here is way off.
Yes, Hounshell got a
mostly negative
reaction to his piece on Twitter, though it was no pitchfork-wielding mob. But there's no
indication his reversal had anything to do with social-media sniping: Hounshell's second piece was a reaction
to Trump's odd behavior at the Helsinki summit and his attacks on NATO. ("What I meant " was, of course, a
joke.)
Taibbi also makes no mention of instances in which
mainstream media did shoot down or push back against false Russiagate narratives.
Vox
published a
piece
by Zack Beauchamp in May 2017 cautioning Democrats against falling for Trump/Russia conspiracy
theories peddled by the likes of Mensch, attorney Seth Abramson, and national security expert John Schindler.
The New York
Times
ran
a piece
days before the election headlined, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to
Russia." Foer's
October 31, 2016
Slate
article claiming that there was a secret
electronic communication channel between the Trump campaign and a Russian bank was
debunked
the next day by
The Washington Post
.
Finally, Taibbi's critique rests on a false binary.
He writes, "There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If
he isn't, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign." But in fact, there are plenty
of gray areas and many different versions of what "Trump/Russia" means -- from "Trump is a foreign agent" to
"Trump was fine with accepting election help from Putin." Plenty of news outlets gave credence to the second
scenario, not the first.
It would be good to see a fair and
comprehensive analysis of media coverage of Russiagate. But it's not going to come from Davis, Taibbi, or
Greenwald. Media groupthink and malpractice should be criticized, but this can be done without lumping all of
the "mainstream media" together in a mass indictment of "fake news."
As for the left-wing Russiagate skeptics being
vindicated: most of them have staunchly insisted that there is no evidence the Kremlin engaged in an effort to
undermine our election. And Glenn Greenwald's position
seems to be
that even if it did, America was asking for it because we meddle, too. In this scheme of
things, then-Secretary of State Clinton expressing sympathy with the Russians who took to the streets in
2011–2012 to protest a rigged election is morally equivalent to Russian agents stealing the private
communications of American political organizations.
Myth: The fact that the Trump administration is tough on Russia disproves the Trump/Russia story.
For the record: I don't believe Trump is a "Russian
tool." It's clear that he has taken a number of positions that are at odds with Russia's interests, including
on Venezuela (from which he
said
the other day that "Russia has to get out"). His administration includes a number of Russia hawks,
from National Security Advisor John Bolton to high-level official
Fiona Hill
.
On the other hand, it's hard to say how much of
Washington's current Russia policy happens in spite of Trump. The White House has repeatedly
tried
to weaken and
spike
Russia sanctions, despite a rare bipartisan consensus in Congress for tough policies. He was
reportedly
highly reluctant to agree to the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which he now cites as
evidence that he's tougher on Russia than Obama. And he has made some definite Russia-friendly moves -- such as
calling
for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 when he attended the G7 summit in Quebec last
summer.
But, once again, the truth of Russiagate can be
quite bad for Trump without Trump being a knowing Putin pawn. If Trump knowingly went along with a
Kremlin-directed effort to help his campaign -- even with no quid pro quo -- that may not be criminal conspiracy,
but surely it is a betrayal of the American people. (And no, it's not remotely comparable to using opposition
research collected in part from intelligence sources within the Russian establishment; to
equate the two
, as some Trump partisans have done, is tantamount to suggesting that there's no difference
between intelligence-gathering and spying for a foreign power.)
In the past two years, there has been a lot of
wild, and sometimes outright deranged, speculation on Trump/Russia. A lot of Russiagate zealots got carried
away, buoyed by the seeming victories of mounting Trump/Russia revelations ("BOOM"!). Now, they're paying the
price.
Right now, the shoe is on the other foot. The
anti-Russiagate crowd, dizzy from its apparent triumph, is getting way ahead of the evidence in declaring
Russiagate a "hoax" and proclaiming that Trump has been both legally and morally vindicated. It seems a bit
foolhardy when, among other things, there are legal proceedings still underway, including Stone trial and a
still-active
grand jury
.
Am I expecting a new "bombshell" that will finally
spell the end for Trump? No -- and, for the record, I do not want impeachment. But I do think that after the
past three years, one lesson we should all have learned is that no one can predict what twists are coming in
the crazy plots of
The Trumpman Show
.
And then Stephen Cohen of The Nation , another voice of reason, sent me a copy of his
book, "
War With Russia? " It's a collection of his heretical writings about our new, unnecessary
Cold War, and the opening essay ,
adapted from a talk he gave in Washington D.C., made me ashamed of my silence.
"Some people who privately share our concerns -- again, in Congress, the media,
universities and think tanks -- do not speak out at all. For whatever
reason -- concern about being stigmatized, about their career, personal
disposition -- they are silent. But in our democracy, where the cost of dissent
is relatively low, silence is no longer a patriotic option," Cohen wrote, adding, "We
should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my
guidance, and I always advise, 'Even petty penalties for dissent in regard to Russia could
adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family
and thus to your future prospects. Your time to fight lies ahead'."
Well, what was my excuse?
Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller has now turned in his findings, and there's not much
there. For weeks beforehand, mainstream media warned about this -- exhorting
readers against succumbing to feeling "disappointed".
Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted , it would have
been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We
could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.
Right before the species-ending war with Russia.
In their fanatic loyalty to the narrative, what used to be my favorite media have stridently
reminded us that, Mueller aside, "it's not over!" The "focus of the investigation" will move
now to the New York prosecutors, to House committees. The American intelligentsia will
continue to dream up wild theories -- they'll be Scotch-taped on every vertical
surface, connected by bits of yarn and magic marker scribbles and hyperverbal mania.
The question now is, has the Mueller report finally freed up the rest of us to challenge the
more insane flights of fantasy? Or is it instead so close to the 2020 presidential
elections -- and so legally dangerous for some of the intelligence insiders who
have tried to bring down the president -- that skeptical journalists more than
ever will be bullied to keep silent?
Rootless Whataboutism
As a test case -- a first step on the road to journalistic recovery --
can I suggest we at least retire the insane, Orwellian term "whataboutism?"
Whataboutism really deserves consideration as a "Word of the Year", and not in a good way.
There have been multiple non-ironic media reports about this odious concept,
on NPR , in the
Huffington Post ,
in The Washington Post , you name it.
"His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow," The Washington Post
told us awhile back, "but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet
propaganda tactic 'whataboutism,' the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting
moral equivalency between two things that aren't necessarily comparable."
NPR's version also claims that whataboutism is a Soviet-tainted practice. "It's not exactly
a complicated tactic -- any grade-schooler can master the
'yeah-well-you-suck-too-so-there' defense," NPR says. "But it came to be associated with the
USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and
afterward, as Russia."
Yet in my experience, it's not so much a Soviet tactic as an American one --
specifically, it's a way of demanding a loyalty oath to the anti-Trump resistance.
I have occasionally dared express skepticism about the entire overblown story that Russia
was involved in our 2016 elections at all. That's right. I don't buy it. I am not
entirely convinced that "Russian bots and trolls" infected anyone's mind by, say, taking
positions both for and against gun control after the Parkland high school mass shooting, or
by setting up
anti-masturbation hotlines , or by
giving bad reviews to "Star Wars: the Last Jedi."
I am also not entirely convinced that the Russians, having supposedly decided at the highest
levels of their government to try to sink Hilary Clinton's candidacy, couldn't think of
anything more clever than to spear-phish campaign manager John Podesta's G-mail.
Nor do I
share the concerns of The Times of London that the Russian animated cartoon "Masha
and the Bear" is part of a soft propaganda drive to weaken the minds of Estonian children ahead
of their eventual annexation by Red Army tanks.
Yet before I can even offer any subtler qualification of all this -- sure,
there is Russian-government, let's say, "illicit computer and social media activity" out there,
mixed with a lot of other noise signals (click-bait farms, which explains at least some of the
infamous Internet Research Agency's activities; ordinary Russians with pro-Kremlin positions
and personal Facebook accounts; and yes, people sitting on their beds who weigh 400 pounds),
but it has to be weighed against -- I'll be cut off.
"That's whataboutism ," I've been told flatly.
It's actually not -- that doesn't even meet the absurd quasi-official
definitions of this new Kafkaesque term -- but that's the whole point.
Disagreement is by its very nature whataboutist . Every skeptical question, after all,
could technically begin, "But what about ?"
Of course, it's far, far worse if I truly commit a whataboutism and -- God
forbid! God forbid! – I express curiosity about The New York Times
reporting about millions flowing to the Clintons and associated with the Russian purchase
of American uranium mines.
Whataboutism! It's so comparable to the old Soviet thought crimes --
Trotskyite, wrecker, cosmopolitan, rootless cosmopolitanism Every time I hear someone
flag a statement as guilty of whataboutism, I mentally add " rootless whataboutism."
People tell me Mueller missed the point. It's about Russian oligarch and Kremlin money,
invested in Trump real estate -- it's not over! All hail the Southern District
prosecutors! OK, let's see it, I'm open to that possibility. But if all Russian money is
tainted just because it's "oligarchical" -- good luck defining that
! -- then is it O.K. for the spouse of then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to
take $500,000 for a single hour's work, a speech in Moscow, for one of the most famous
"oligarch" banks?
"That's whataboutism! NPR and The Washington Post say that's a
Soviet-favored tactic! Your loyalty is thus suspect two-fold. Have you had contact with
any Russian nationals?"
Communists and Crickets
"EVIDENCE POINTS TO RUSSIA AS MAIN SUSPECT IN BRAIN INJURY ATTACKS ON DOZENS OF U.S.
DIPLOMATS" was the report by
MSNBC in September 2017, and they flogged that big scoop for months, and have never
really apologized for it.
Two dozen American diplomats in Cuba suffered headaches, dizziness and other vague symptoms
they blamed on strange sounds -- sounds some of them tape-recorded and supplied
to journalists, doctors and the government. "It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets," was
the opening line of the Associated Press report about the recordings (which you can
listen to yourself here ).
But no. Not crickets. As MSNBC reported, our intelligence services had intercepted
Russian communications (!) revealing the sounds were "some kind of microwave weapon,"
one so sophisticated that our top government minds were at a loss.
We might not know how it works, MSNBC reported, but we did know it was a weapon, and
"now Russia is the leading suspect."
"This is not an accident," reported anchorwoman Andrea Mitchell then. "This is not a
microwave listening device gone bad. This is an attack -- against American
diplomats and intelligence officers, and this was targeting."
What an amazing allegation. The Russian government was beaming a mysterious, high-tech
weapon at our citizens ; we had intercepted communications that made this
clear.
For more than a year, I and colleagues with Russia-reporting experience would be grilled
about this, and would just have to shrug apologetically. We just didn't know what to say. It
didn't make a lot of face-value sense -- why exactly would Russian agents, amid
all this rabid anti-Russia hysteria, beam a secret brain-frying weapon at two-dozen random
American diplomats and their family members in Cuba, for weeks apparently? What would be the
logic behind giving these random-seeming people headaches and making them dizzy and even
causing "brain injuries similar to concussions"?
As a physician, I also shared the s
kepticism of colleagues published about this in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. Playing odds, I agreed with those critics that I would have assumed either a
mass psychogenic illness or a viral infection more likely etiologies than a secret Siberian
death ray. I also read "brain injuries similar to concussions" as, "brain injuries that don't
show up on objective testing." (Of course, I've not examined any of these patients or reviewed
their cases so it's not for me to say.)
But in our fevered Russophobic environment, no one wanted to entertain alternative
scenarios -- after all, we don't even understand this sophisticated
weapon, which our intelligence agencies assure us (anonymously) they have intercepted Russian
communications bragging about, so how dare we debate the logic behind its use? (Maybe
this is how they control the president!)
Then three months ago, American scientists published in a peer-review journal their analysis
of the dastardly recordings and
identified the sounds : Crickets. Caribbean crickets.
Specifically, the echoing call of the male, short-tailed indies. During mating season.
But did MSNBC apologize, or retract?
Crickets.
Instead, during a historically cold week this winter, MSNBC star Rachel Maddow used
the excuse of a government panel about energy security to go on a Jack D. Ripper about Russia
someday deciding to freeze middle America to death.
"It is like negative 50 degrees in the Dakotas right now. What would happen if Russia killed
the power in Fargo today? What would happen if all the natural gas lines that service Sioux
Falls just 'poofed', on the coldest day in recent memories, and it wasn't in our power
whether or not to turn them back on?" Maddow asked. "What would you do if you lost heat indefinitely --
as the act of a foreign power! -- on the same day the temperature in
your front yard matched the temperature in Antarctica? I mean, what would you and your family
do?"
Gee, I don't know Rachel. What would my family and I do if Russia launched a nuclear weapon
at my front yard? I guess we'd all die. I guess I don't know who to trust anymore, I feel
exhausted by the news, sick of it all, I just want to stop caring, and you seem to feel the
same, and omigosh Rachel, we've been infected by the red virus!
'They Hate our Freedoms'
James Comey, the former FBI director, testified before the Senate after his firing that the
Russians are "coming after America," because, "They think that this great experiment of ours is
a threat to them, and so they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as
possible."
Right. It's because "they hate our freedoms."
Where have I heard that before?
People had been waiting breathlessly for Mueller's report, but in reality, everything we
needed to know was right there in the first report -- the January 6, 2017, grand
announcement, the big reveal by our Intelligence Community -- the consensus of
CIA, FBI and NSA -- "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S.
Elections."
I remember finishing that report at the time and thinking:
Holy Cow, they have nothing.
Nothing!
Of the 15 pages with any meat to them in that report, seven were a long, bizarre complaint
about the existence and activities of RT (formerly RussiaToday ), the
Kremlin-sponsored English-language news channel.
Our intelligence agencies reported that RT has become "the most-watched foreign news
channel in the UK," had more YouTube viewers than the BBC or CNN , and was
surpassing al-Jazeera in New York and Washington D.C. ( Voice of America , which
is the U.S. government version of RT , has no sense of humor or passion and so no
viewers anywhere outside of Foggy Bottom.)
RT's success was, per the intelligence report, thanks to a combination of lavish
Kremlin funding and an alluring editorial slant. The intelligence report quoted RT's
editor as saying her station got lots of new viewers after offering sympathetic coverage of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. The intelligence report continued:
In an effort to highlight the alleged "lack of democracy" in the United States, RT broadcast,
hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the
political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does
not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a "sham." RT's reports
often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread
infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use RT has also focused on
criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the
US national debt. Some of RT's hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and
have predicted that government corruption and "corporate greed" will lead to US financial
collapse RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts
on public health
This was hilarious of course -- a public snit by our intel communities about
Russians racking up big numbers among American viewers in Washington and New York , just
by offering mildly critical takes on drone killings and fracking and "alleged Wall Street
greed" ("alleged"? Really ?). We were promised a major assessment of any improper
Russian influences on our 2016 electoral process and we got -- this? A formal
complaint that Russian TV gave Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein too much air time?
All this bitching and moaning about RT -- which, remember, is not some
secret plot, but just a public TV station you can go watch on YouTube or not watch
-- takes up well more than half of that grand intelligence community assessment.
It really speaks volumes about what was on their minds. And again, my conclusion reading it two
years ago was: So, they've got nothing.
The one caveat, though, was that there was a classified appendix. There's always a
classified appendix. So, who knew what was in that ? After all, immediately and in the
two years since, intelligence officials have occasionally been cited -- always
anonymously! --
in The Guardian ,
The New Yorker , and The
New York Times -- as claiming to have intercepted communications between the
Trump team and the Russian government.
Well, by now, we should realize the appendix is a myth.
First, we now know that
at least part of it -- and, I would guess, probably all of it --
was nothing more than the Steele report, the infamous document first posted on
BuzzFeed , that collection of anti-Trump opposition research paid for by the Hilary Clinton
campaign. (You know -- the pee tape stuff.)
And we now also know, courtesy of Robert Mueller's report, that there are no "intercepted
communications" between Russians and the Trump campaign teams. Just like there are no Russian
intercepts about secret Siberian brain-frying rays in Cuba, because that, again, was the mating
call of a short-tailed Caribbean cricket.
I don't know what's funnier about all of this -- and it is damned funny,
really -- the fact that all of this has actually happened , or the fact
that I feel the need to come out of journalistic retirement to help point it out.
A
President With a Traitor's Heart -- for Six More Years
And that's the way it is, and has been, all along for these past two years. There have been
non-stop media allegations that, one way or another, our narcissistic, loud-mouthed, overtly
racist U.S. president has a traitor's heart. Any errors or inaccuracies -- and
there have been a shocking number of retracted "scoops," as well as screwups like the Caribbean
crickets that have just been ignored -- are excused in service of this larger
truth: Our president has a traitor's heart.
But I already knew that! We all did!
We knew it the moment he said , "Russia, if you're listening, I
hope you'll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" -- referencing
some official e-mails of Hilary Clinton's that were improperly handled and got deleted. (Among
the onion layers of irony to this political season is that Trump pioneered the 21st century
witch hunt. There has never been any evidence that Clinton's deleted emails represent anything
at all -- yet Trump hammered away at this as if it mattered, until one day it
did. And he didn't even suggest investigations, he skipped straight to "lock her up!").
Being racist, or stupid, or sexist, or a bully, or a New York real estate developer
-- all of these are deep character flaws. They are not always crimes. (Sexually
assaulting someone is always a crime, however, even if you are a TV star and remember
your breath mints.)
And yet, again, we already knew all of this. Remember this transcript
from The New York Times ?
Trump : I did try and fuck her. She was married and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I
took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you
where they have some nice furniture." I took her out furniture -- I moved on
her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there.
Trump : Yeah, that's her [peeking out a trailer window at a different target, an
approaching actress] . I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You
know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them.
It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Billy Bush [a fawning minor TV personality] : Whatever you want.
Trump : Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
I share your pain. And I have no doubt he'd trade his own son for majority ownership of a
moderately nice golf course. But I'm also, frankly, no longer very interested in him. I'm much
more interested in us -- the rest of us.
What happened to us?
Well, I'll amend that slightly. I am of course quite interested in seeing Donald Trump leave
office. I suspect, however, that these two-plus years of journalistic malpractice --
a politically-motivated Red Scare at a time when we don't even have any Reds anymore,
just Russians -- has locked in his second term. (What's that? Impeachment
you say? Oh please. He'd set up a government-in-exile in Mar-a-Lago and then he'd be around for
twenty more years instead of six. And he'd have half the nation with him the entire
time.) So thank you for that, MSNBC and NPR and New York Times.
"... Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly even flatten their party. ..."
The tides are shifting. Something's in the wind. And it's not just the fecund vapors of
spring. The political soap opera of RussiaGate ended like a fart in a windstorm last weekend,
leaving Mr. Mueller's cheerleaders de-witched, bothered, and bewildered. And then a crude
attempt was made to cram the Jussie Smollett case down Chicago's memory hole. These two
unrelated hoaxes emanating out of Wokester Land may signal something momentous: the end of the
era when anything goes and nothing matters .
Welcome to the new era of consequences! All of a sudden, a whole lot of people who have been
punking the public-at-large will have to answer for their behavior. Despite the fog of
misdirection blowing out of The New York Times , The WashPo , CNN, and MSNBC,
it's become obvious that the RussiaGate hoax was kicked off by Hillary Clinton's campaign and a
cabal of Obama appointees in several executive agencies. The evidence is public, fully
documented, and overwhelming that the so-called Steele Dossier was the sole animating
instrument in both the 2016 pre-election effort to incriminate the Golden Golem of Greatness,
and the Mueller Investigation launched post-election to cover-up those same political misdeeds
of the Clinton campaign, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, NSA, and State
Department.
It's also very likely that Robert Mueller learned that the Steele Dossier was a fraud in the
summer of 2017, if not shortly after his appointment in May of that year, and yet he dragged
out his investigation for almost two years in order to defame and antagonize Mr. Trump -- and
deflect attention from the ugly truth of the matter. It is certain Mr. Mueller knew that the
Steele Dossier was purchased by Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS political "research" company, which
was simultaneously in the paid employ of Mrs. Clinton and the Russian political lobbying agency
Prevezon (as reported by Sean
Davis in The Federalist ). If the FBI brass did not bring that to Mr. Mueller's attention
right away, then either their incompetence is epic or they are criminally liable for concealing
the hoax.
There is your essential collusion , and a lot of participants are going down because
of it. Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful
inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael
Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it
is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for
chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others
will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will
have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly
even flatten their party.
In another instance of justice miscarried, charges in the Jussie Smollett racial attack hoax
were dismissed in a hasty, unannounced motion by the assistant to Cook County Prosecutor Kim
Foxx, who had pretended to recuse herself from the case, but actually did not follow the proper
procedure for doing it. Ms. Foxx has apparently been consorting with members of Jussie
Smollett's family and with Michele Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, a Chicago
political operator. It's easy to imagine what they were bargaining about: the fear that Mr.
Smollett would have a very hard time serving any sort of prison sentence, given his celebrity
status, his sexual orientation, and the laughable idiocy of his crime. It was probably a
reasonable fear -- but not a viable excuse for summarily dropping the case. The further excuse
that he had already paid the price by hanging out in Jessie Jackson's Operation Push
headquarters for two days is also a joke, of course.
The Chicago police chief and mayor objected loudly, as did the Illinois Prosecutors Bar
Association, which declared the move was "abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in
criminal courthouses across the State." An understatement for sure. What's next for Jussie? The
City of Chicago will tote up the cost of investigating his stupid prank and haul him into civil
court to compel him to pay for it.
Further and greater consequences will emanate from the Smollett hoax. Despite former
Vice-president Joe Biden's recent lamentations over the wickedness of "white man's culture,"
many American's will show a renewed interest in that hoary old system devised by white folks
called Anglo-American law, which includes such niceties as due process. The Jussie Smollett
scam may be the end of many intersectional culture heroes getting a free pass on their
bad behavior. Won't that be
refreshing?
"... Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's probe should be released to the public. ..."
"... A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news organizations. ..."
President Donald Trump and a key ally, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, said Monday that after Robert Mueller closed
his Russia probe, they want an investigation of the investigators.
Graham said at a news conference that Attorney General William Barr should appoint a new special counsel to examine why the U.S.
government, under President Barack Obama, decided to open an investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, and whether
it was an excuse to spy on Trump's campaign.
"Was it a ruse to get into the Trump campaign?" Graham said at the news conference. "I don't know but I'm going to try to find
out."
Trump told reporters at the White House that unspecified "people" behind the Russia probe would "be looked at."
The remarks show that Trump and some of his allies have retribution and score-settling on their minds after Mueller found no evidence
that the president or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin's election interference. It's unclear whom Trump wants investigated,
but possibilities include former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017; Obama's CIA Director John Brennan, whom Trump
stripped of his security clearance last year; and other former intelligence and Justice Department officials who have vocally criticized
the president.
The stage is also set for dueling and contradictory congressional investigations. In the House, controlled by Democrats, several
committees have opened investigations into the president's financial and business affairs, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler
said Sunday he wants Barr to testify soon on his finding that Mueller didn't produce sufficient evidence that Trump obstructed justice
by interfering in the Russia inquiry.
The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, on Monday blocked a vote on a measure by the Democratic leader, Chuck
Schumer of New York, calling for Mueller's report to be made public. McConnell said Barr should have time to consider which portions
of the report can be publicly released given concerns about classified information, ongoing investigations and other information
protected by law.
Republican Allies
Several other Republicans backed Graham and Trump on Monday. Senate Oversight Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said
he'd like to work with Graham "to get those answers for the American public."
"We need to find out what happened," he said in an interview.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian
conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's
probe should be released to the public.
"Let them decide for themselves whether this investigation was warranted -- or whether it was a two-year long episode of political
targeting, driven by FBI and DOJ executives who wanted to retaliate against a legitimately elected president," Meadows said in an
interview.
Graham said his committee would also look into the FBI's handling of the inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
use of a private email server, saying that Comey's actions in that investigation "did affect" the 2016 election. Comey held a news
conference in July 2016 to announce that Clinton wouldn't be charged with a crime, and then announced less than two weeks before
the election that the investigation had been re-opened after additional emails were discovered.
'Evil Things'
Trump's indication that unnamed people responsible for the probe would be investigated was vague. He didn't name anyone, and after
he made similar remarks on Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters that Barr hadn't been directed
to open any investigations of Democrats.
"People that have done such harm to our country," Trump complained on Monday. "We've gone through a period of really bad things
happening. Those people will certainly be looked at. I've been looking at them for a long time and I'm saying, why haven't they been
looked at. They lied to Congress. Many of them. You know who they are. They've done so many evil things."
Trump added that he hasn't considered pardoning anyone convicted in connection to Mueller's probe.
Graham said he planned to talk with Barr on Monday and hoped to hold a public hearing with the attorney general to explain his
findings in the Mueller probe. Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress on Sunday summarizing Mueller's findings, which have not
been publicly released.
"I'm asking him to lay it all out," Graham said.
Both Trump and Graham said they support Barr publicly releasing as much of Mueller's report as possible. The investigation turned
out "100 percent" as it should have, Trump told reporters.
Dossier Distribution
Trump has previously singled out individuals over their role in the probe, calling for an investigation into the "
other side " of the investigation. He's mentioned Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI employees Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page, and Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr.
Graham also said he advised his friend and Senate colleague John McCain to give the FBI the so-called Steele dossier on Trump,
rebutting the president's accusations that McCain tried to hinder his 2016 election.
Graham told reporters that McCain, an Arizona Republican who died last year, had shown him the unverified collection of intelligence
reports on Trump's links to Russia that was put together by a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Steele was commissioned to
compile the information by an opposition research firm hired by Democrats.
McCain put the dossier in his safe and handed it over to the FBI the next day, Graham said.
A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news
organizations.
-- With assistance by Billy House
( Updates with McConnell blocking Schumer measure in seventh paragraph. ) Published on March 25, 2019 12:37 PM
Updated on March 25, 2019 5:58 PM
"... I suspect that the cool aid is not working effectively these days and that far too many people see through the charades and lies. An interesting story lurks behind this and the entire 'hate Russia' and 'monkey Mueller' episode. ..."
"... The attitudes of the masses are spinning out of the manipulative hands of the deep state and the oligarchs ..."
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. ..."
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
"... the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense ..."
"... Most of those reporters were going to slant their stories the way their bosses wanted. Their jobs are just too nice to do otherwise. Getting Trump as Hillary's opponent had to have been a goal for the majority of them. He was the patsy who would become squished roadkill in the treads of The Most Experienced Presidential Candidate In History. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is a knowledgeable, well-prepared, reasonable, experienced, even-tempered, hardworking candidate, while her opponent is a stubbornly uninformed demagogue who has been proven again and again to be a liar on matters big and small. There is no objective basis on which to equate Hillary Clinton to her opponent. ..."
"... The author had it half right. Turns out the voters knew quite a bit about Trump, and still preferred him to the Butcher of Libya. ..."
Thaks b, now that is a delightful question to pose on the eve of April fool's day.
My suggestion is that Cambridge Analytica and others backing Trump and the yankee imperial
machine have been taking measurements of USA citizens opinions and are staggered by the
results. They are panicked!
I suspect that the cool aid is not working effectively these days and that far too many
people see through the charades and lies. An interesting story lurks behind this and the
entire 'hate Russia' and 'monkey Mueller' episode.
The attitudes of the masses are spinning out of the manipulative hands of the deep state
and the oligarchs. Do any of our comrades have a handle on this type of research and the
implication for voter attitudes?
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent
political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure
to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf
Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us
so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or
(IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about
private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense
Thanks for the Taibbi link. I hadn't seen it, and found him to be in good form. I do think
he ought to have spoken more about how bad Trump's Primary opponents were.
Most of those reporters were going to slant their stories the way their bosses wanted.
Their jobs are just too nice to do otherwise. Getting Trump as Hillary's opponent had to have
been a goal for the majority of them. He was the patsy who would become squished roadkill in
the treads of The Most Experienced Presidential Candidate In History. More on that for people
with strong stomachs:
Hillary Clinton is a knowledgeable, well-prepared, reasonable, experienced, even-tempered,
hardworking candidate, while her opponent is a stubbornly uninformed demagogue who has been
proven again and again to be a liar on matters big and small. There is no objective basis
on which to equate Hillary Clinton to her opponent.
The author had it half right. Turns out the voters knew quite a bit about Trump,
and still preferred him to the Butcher of Libya.
Warren supported Hillary that the;s a huge black spot on her credentials. She also king of a hawk in forign policy diligitly repeated
stupid Depart of State talking points and making herself a fool. I especially like here blabbing about authoritarian regimes. From former
Harvard professor we should expect better that this.
To a certain extent he message about rigged system is authentic as She drive this horse for a long time. But that does
not means that she can't betray here electorate like Trump or Obama. She perfectly can. And is quite possible. Several details of her
biography suggest that she is a female careerist -- using dirty tricks to be promoted and paying her gender as an offensive weapon
(looks also at her use of Cherokee heritage claim)
But there is no ideal people and among establishment candidates she is the most electable despite all flows of her foreign
policy positions.
Notable quotes:
"... Comparing Elizabeth Warren to Trump is disingenuous. Trump is just ranting and defensive, without any evidence to back up his claims. What Elizabeth Warren is saying is just a matter of paying attention. ..."
"... This analysis completely ignores the outrageous, overarching influence of money and financial privilege over American politics. Equating Bill Clinton's dalliance with Trump's disrespect for all norms of decency and the truth? Please. Warren is right. Just look at the legislative obscenity of the recent tax bill and then try and equivocate they left and the right. I am not buying this false equivalency. ..."
"... Please, Elizabeth Warren is nothing like Trump. She's a brilliant, honest, tireless fighter for ordinary Americans. She wants a fair shake for them, just as FDR wanted a fair shake -- a "New Deal" -- for our Country. ..."
"... The so-called "left" in America (moderates anywhere else on the globe) have never varied from saying that money = power. They still say that today, and raise money like crazy for candidates thereby proving their own point. ..."
"... Conservatives in America (far-right extremists anywhere else on the globe) are much quieter about the influence of dough, but raise money like crazy for candidates thereby proving the "left's" point. ..."
The president and the senator both want you to know that our system is "rigged."
... ... ...
For decades, the left sought to dethrone the idea of truth. Truth was not an absolute. It was a matter of power. Of perspective.
Of narrative. "Truth is a thing of this world," wrote Michel Foucault. "Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics'
of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true."
Then Kellyanne Conway gave us "alternative facts" and Rudy Giuliani said, "
Truth isn't truth"
-- and progressives rushed to defend the inviolability of facts and truth.
For decades, the left sought to dethrone reverence for the Constitution. "The Constitution," wrote progressive historian Howard
Zinn, "serves the interests of a wealthy elite" and enables "the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law
-- all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity."
Then
Donald Trump attacked freedom of the press and birthright citizenship, and flouted the emoluments clause, and assailed the impartiality
of the judiciary. And progressives rediscovered the treasure that is our Constitutional inheritance.
... ... ...
To an audience of nearly 500 new graduates and their families at the historically black college, the Massachusetts senator laid
out a bleak vision of America. "The rules are rigged because the rich and powerful have bought and paid for too many politicians,"
she said. "The rich and powerful want us pointing fingers at each other so we won't notice they are getting richer and more powerful,"
she said. "Two sets of rules: one for the wealthy and the well-connected. And one for everybody else," she said.
"That's how a rigged system works," she said.
It was a curious vision coming from a person whose life story, like that of tens millions of Americans who have risen far above
their small beginnings, refutes her own thesis. It was curious, also, coming from someone who presumably believes that various forms
of rigging are required to un-rig past rigging. Affirmative action in college admissions and aggressive minority recruitment
in corporations are also forms of "rigging."
But however one feels about various types of rigging, the echo of Trump was unmistakable. "It's being proven we have a rigged
system," the president said
at
one of his rallies last year . "Doesn't happen so easy. But this system -- gonna be a lot of changes. This is a rigged system."
Trump's claim that the system is rigged represents yet another instance of his ideological pickpocketing of progressives. From
C. Wright Mills ("The Power Elite") to Noam Chomsky ("Manufacturing Consent"), the animating belief of the far left has been, as
Tom Hayden put it, that we live in a "false
democracy," controlled by an unaccountable, deceitful and shadowy elite. Trump has names for it: the globalists; the deep state;
the fake news. Orange, it turns out, is the new red.
Of course, Warren and Trump have very different ideas as to just who the malefactors of great wealth really are. Is it Sheldon
Adelson or George Soros? The Koch brothers or the Ford Foundation? Posterity will be forgiven if it loses track of which alleged
conspiracy to rig the system was of the far-right and which was of the far left.
What it will remember is that here was another era in which a president and one of his leading opponents abandoned the prouder
traditions of American politics in favor of paranoid ones. Compare Warren's grim message to Bill Clinton's sunny one from his first
inaugural: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
At some point, it will be worth asking Senator Warren: Rigged compared to when? A generation ago a black president would have
been unthinkable. Two generations ago, a woman on the Supreme Court. And rigged compared to what? Electoral politics in Japan, which
have been dominated by a single party for decades? The class system in Brazil, dominated by a single race for centuries?
Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at
The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Warren is saying the system is rigged to suppress the middle class and poor in favor of the wealthy, which is easy to substantiate.
Trump is saying the system is rigged to suppress the white right, which is easy to refute. One statement is an economic fact,
the other is a racist trope. There is no equivalence here. ScottW Chapel Hill, NC Dec. 20, 2018
Sen. Warren supports Medicare for All, meaningful banking/financial regulations, regulations that benefit consumers, a living
wage, etc. Trump supports none of these policies--not a one. Trying to equate Trump with Warren is just stupid.
Comparing Elizabeth Warren to Trump is disingenuous. Trump is just ranting and defensive, without any evidence to back up his
claims. What Elizabeth Warren is saying is just a matter of paying attention. I don't need to list all the ways in which money
buys everything in politics. It's always a matter of following the money. Bret Stephens conveniently avoids looking at economics.
His supposed counterexamples are at best irrelevant to the issue: We've had a black President. We have women on the Supreme Court.
How are those examples proof that the system isn't rigged in favor of the wealthy and corporations? No doubt he thinks Plutocracy
is part of the natural order of things. He should go back to the Wall Street Journal where his myopia is more appropriate. MarnS
Nevada Dec. 20, 2018 Times Pick
Unfortunately Bret there are no "optimists" in the GOP, including yourself being one who has bounced back and forth in your
positions regarding the Trump presidency. Though you have found your way on CNN or MSNBC spouting your disappointments about the
state of the nation, the fact remains is that your a hardened, right wing opinion writer who may have less of an ideal when it
comes to America being a democratic nation. No, you can conveniently ignore the actions of your conservative party in there gerrymandering,
in their changing the rules for governors of the Democrat persuasion, or gross deliberate voter suppression that has placed your
party in power positions by, in effect, stealing elections. You are a writer with a forked tongue trying, at times in a passive
manner, to separate yourself from Trump, and the evilness of the current GOP Party without understanding that the definition of
"conservative" has changed to the radical. And that is documented by your writings in the WSJ. Yet, you cannot even dream about
truly being on the left side of an argument other than beating your breast with the fact that the GOP has disappeared, as we have
known it, in the hands of radicalism (which prior to Trump you participated in the escalation of radical conservatism), and your
party can never be revived as it once was...and we all pray it never will be so.
This analysis completely ignores the outrageous, overarching influence of money and financial privilege over American politics.
Equating Bill Clinton's dalliance with Trump's disrespect for all norms of decency and the truth? Please. Warren is right. Just
look at the legislative obscenity of the recent tax bill and then try and equivocate they left and the right. I am not buying
this false equivalency.
FYI, Foucault was offering critiques of "regimes of truth," not of truth itself. That's very different. Like most historians,
he spent an impressive amount of time in archives where he collected evidence in order to write books that give truthful accounts
of the past. You make a caricature of Foucault, and then of the entire left.
Rich Casagrande Slingerlands, NY Dec. 20, 2018 Times Pick
Please, Elizabeth Warren is nothing like Trump. She's a brilliant, honest, tireless fighter for ordinary Americans. She wants
a fair shake for them, just as FDR wanted a fair shake -- a "New Deal" -- for our Country. While much of the rest of the world was
turning to communism or fascism, FDR saved American capitalism by shaking it up. Oh how we could use a large dose of that today.
Whoa! Line by line, Mr Stephens offers statements that are way off base and should be refuted. Are you saying you disagree
with Warren? Do you think the "system" in America for the last 400 years has not been generally "rigged" against African-Americans?
But the gist of his column, and the main argument of conservatives these days, is that the left and the right are equally out
of line; that what the right says and does may be bad, but the left does the same sort of thing and is just as bad. This is not
true Bret, and you know it. The left desperately tries to find the high road, and anyone who supports Trump these days or believes
in most of his policies is either someone who has abandoned morality or is a fool. And that is the truth, Bret.
Calling out our system as "rigged" is nothing new for Sen. Warren. She's been stating that publicly since being a regular Bill
Moyer's guest on his PBS program 20 years ago -- and clearly already on a "prep for national politics" stump. What undercuts her
own integrity regarding "rigged" is that she chose, after much wait & anticipation, to throw her support to Hillary Clinton in
the summer of 2016. Not Bernie Sanders. She knew HRC had little integrity. And it's highly likely she knew the DNC primary was
rigged in favor of Clinton -- as it's widely been proven.
My point here highlights one of several reasons why Sen. Warren is unelectable
in the 2020 presidential general election. This is not to compare her in any way to Trump -- he's a venal, disturbed & dangerous
traitor to our country. However, if winning the WH in 2020 is the goal, Elizabeth Warren ain't got the goods to get the necessary
votes across our Republic.
There's a good case to be made that the far left exists in two separate dimensions. I offer myself in evidence. Among the policies
and social changes I advocate: Medicare for all Aggressively progressive taxation.
I don't recognize any freedom to corner as much wealth as one can while other people must labor at two or three jobs just to
feed their families on peanut butter.
I do think there's a bit of rigging afoot. Restrictions on the ownership of firearms comparable to those in Japan.
A society free from all forms of identity discrimination or prejudice. I'm bitterly opposed to racism, anti-Semitism, sexism,
homophobia; any example you care to give, including those without short handles, such as prejudice against Muslims or transgender
people.
Yes, I know I have this in common with decent conservatives, but I'm thinking of partisan realities in the US today. I should
add that I don't mind the prospect of WASPS like me becoming just another minority.
But-- I can't picture myself as a socialist -- hair combed straight back, and all that.
The rigorously progressive personality type rubs me the wrong way. Leftist cant grates on every fiber of my being. Che Guevara
T-shirts make the lip curl. When my knee jerks, it jerks against things like that old leftist conceit that truth is what you make
it. I look at the far-left agenda and see a lot to like. I look at the far-left milieu and see didactic arrogance, frigidity,
and pat attitudes. I'm a Democrat in disarray.
The so-called "left" in America (moderates anywhere else on the globe) have never varied from saying that money = power. They
still say that today, and raise money like crazy for candidates thereby proving their own point.
Conservatives in America (far-right
extremists anywhere else on the globe) are much quieter about the influence of dough, but raise money like crazy for candidates
thereby proving the "left's" point.
Reality? Money in America is everything. Period. Just try to run for office, influence policy,
and/or change the direction of the country as a sole, intelligent, concerned poor person and see how far you get.
What people notice, they often forget unless media work to remind them. The end of the
Democrats began as far back as the 1980s, with the Reagan Dems -- a handful of conservative
Democrats who represented "sensible politics." These merged with the Clinton right wing,
which successfully took over the Democratic Party in the 1990s. Just as the Reagan
administration obtained significant "influence" over the MSM, the Clinton administration
obtained significant "influence" over the new (online/cable) media marketed to middle class
liberals. Media shapes broad public opinion. Robert Reich has been a valued player (effective
propagandist) on the Clinton wing since the '90s.
Trump will come through this mess just fine. My impression is that the role of media
during this administration is to keep public focus off of what's actually happening in DC by
amplifying the Russian Tale and every delicious scandal that can even vaguely e connected to
it. It keeps the public preoccupied, chasing ghosts, so that those who are in power can do
what they're doing without interruption.
Eddie S , March 19, 2019 at 21:19
While Reich often writes-about & supports liberal/progressive issues, I still recall
how he effectively caved to Bill Clinton and his 'Republican-lite' programs, notably
'free-trade/globalization', which undercuts Reich's stated support for unions. I lost most of
my modest respect for him at that point -- he apparently felt it was more important to be 'an
insider' in a presidential administration than to stand up for his reputed viewpoints.
But sophistication of intelligence agencies now reached very high level. Russiage was pretty dirty but pretty slick operation. British
thre letter againces were even more devious, if we view Skripals poisoning as MI5/Mi6 "witness protection" operation due to possible
Skripal role in creating Steele dossier. So let's keep wanting the evnet. The election 2020 might be event more interesting the Elections
of 2016. Who would suggest in 2015 that he/she elects man candidate from Israel lobby instead of a woman candidate from the same lobby?
Notable quotes:
"... The consistent derogation of Trump in the New York Times or on MSNBC may be helpful in keeping the resistance fired up, but it is counterproductive when it comes to breaking down the Trump coalition. His followers take every attack on their leader as an attack on them. ..."
"... Adorno also observed that demagoguery of this sort is a profession, a livelihood with well-tested methods. Trump is a far more familiar figure than may at first appear. The demagogue's appeals, Adorno wrote, 'have been standardised, similarly to the advertising slogans which proved to be most valuable in the promotion of business'. Trump's background in salesmanship and reality TV prepared him perfectly for his present role. ..."
"... the leader can guess the psychological wants and needs of those susceptible to his propaganda because he resembles them psychologically, and is distinguished from them by a capacity to express without inhibitions what is latent in them, rather than by any intrinsic superiority. ..."
"... The leaders are generally oral character types, with a compulsion to speak incessantly and to befool the others. The famous spell they exercise over their followers seems largely to depend on their orality: language itself, devoid of its rational significance, functions in a magical way and furthers those archaic regressions which reduce individuals to members of crowds. ..."
"... Since uninhibited associative speech presupposes at least a temporary lack of ego control, it can indicate weakness as well as strength. The agitators' boasting is frequently accompanied by hints of weakness, often merged with claims of strength. This was particularly striking, Adorno wrote, when the agitator begged for monetary contributions. ..."
"... Since 8 November 2016, many people have concluded that what they understandably view as a catastrophe was the result of the neglect by neoliberal elites of the white working class, simply put. Inspired by Bernie Sanders, they believe that the Democratic Party has to reorient its politics from the idea that 'a few get rich first' to protection for the least advantaged. ..."
"... Of those providing his roughly 40 per cent approval ratings, half say they 'strongly approve' and are probably lost to the Democrats. ..."
One might object that Trump, a billionaire TV star, does not resemble his followers. But this misses the powerful intimacy that he
establishes with them, at rallies, on TV and on Twitter. Part of his malicious genius lies in his ability to forge a bond with people
who are otherwise excluded from the world to which he belongs. Even as he cast Hillary Clinton as the tool of international finance,
he said:
I do deals – big deals – all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance.
These are hard-driving, vicious cut-throat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table
and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage.
With these words he brought his followers into the boardroom with him and encouraged them to take part in a shared, cynical exposure
of the soiled motives and practices that lie behind wealth. His role in the Birther movement, the prelude to his successful presidential
campaign, was not only racist, but also showed that he was at home with the most ignorant, benighted, prejudiced people in America.
Who else but a complete loser would engage in Birtherism, so far from the Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Harvard aura that elevated
Obama, but also distanced him from the masses?
The consistent derogation of Trump in the New York Times or on MSNBC may be helpful in keeping the resistance fired up, but
it is counterproductive when it comes to breaking down the Trump coalition. His followers take every attack on their leader as an
attack on them. 'The fascist leader's startling symptoms of inferiority', Adorno wrote, 'his resemblance to ham actors and asocial
psychopaths', facilitates the identification, which is the basis of the ideal. On the Access Hollywood tape, which was widely assumed
would finish him, Trump was giving voice to a common enough daydream, but with 'greater force' and greater 'freedom of libido' than
his followers allow themselves. And he was bolstering the narcissism of the women who support him, too, by describing himself as
helpless in the grip of his desires for them.
Adorno also observed that demagoguery of this sort is a profession, a livelihood with well-tested methods. Trump is a far
more familiar figure than may at first appear. The demagogue's appeals, Adorno wrote, 'have been standardised, similarly to the advertising
slogans which proved to be most valuable in the promotion of business'. Trump's background in salesmanship and reality TV prepared
him perfectly for his present role. According to Adorno,
the leader can guess the psychological wants and needs of those susceptible to his propaganda because he resembles them
psychologically, and is distinguished from them by a capacity to express without inhibitions what is latent in them, rather than
by any intrinsic superiority.
To meet the unconscious wishes of his audience, the leader
simply turns his own unconscious outward Experience has taught him consciously to exploit this faculty, to make rational use
of his irrationality, similarly to the actor, or a certain type of journalist who knows how to sell their sensitivity.
All he has to do in order to make the sale, to get his TV audience to click, or to arouse a campaign rally, is exploit his own
psychology.
Using old-fashioned but still illuminating language, Adorno continued:
The leaders are generally oral character types, with a compulsion to speak incessantly and to befool the others. The famous
spell they exercise over their followers seems largely to depend on their orality: language itself, devoid of its rational significance,
functions in a magical way and furthers those archaic regressions which reduce individuals to members of crowds.
Since uninhibited associative speech presupposes at least a temporary lack of ego control, it can indicate weakness as well
as strength. The agitators' boasting is frequently accompanied by hints of weakness, often merged with claims of strength. This was
particularly striking, Adorno wrote, when the agitator begged for monetary contributions. As with the Birther movement or Access
Hollywood, Trump's self-debasement – pretending to sell steaks on the campaign trail – forges a bond that secures his idealised status.
Since 8 November 2016, many people have concluded that what they understandably view as a catastrophe was the result of the
neglect by neoliberal elites of the white working class, simply put. Inspired by Bernie Sanders, they believe that the Democratic
Party has to reorient its politics from the idea that 'a few get rich first' to protection for the least advantaged.
Yet no one who lived through the civil rights and feminist rebellions of recent decades can believe that an economic programme
per se is a sufficient basis for a Democratic-led politics.
This holds as well when it comes to trying to reach out to Trump's supporters. Of those providing his roughly 40 per cent
approval ratings, half say they 'strongly approve' and are probably lost to the Democrats. But if we understand the personal
level at which pro-Trump strivings operate, we may better appeal to the other half, and in that way forestall the coming emergency.
What actually happened with RussiaGate? A cabal of government officials colluded with the
Hillary Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 election and, failing to achieve their
desired outcome, engineered a two-years-plus formal inquisition to deflect attention from their
own misconduct and attempt to overthrow the election result.
The Cable News characters, quite a few of them lawyers, were litigating the living shit out
of the story on Sunday night in their usual spirit of obdurate rank dishonesty. For instance,
Jeffrey Toobin, who plays Attorney General on CNN, went off on the infamous 2016 Trump Tower
Meeting in which the president's son, Donald, Jr., met with Russian lawyer Natalia V.
Veselnitskaya. Toobin omitted to mention that Ms. Veselnitskaya was, at that very time, on the
payroll of Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton's "oppo" research contractor. In other words, Trump
Junior was set up.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between
the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the
Obama White House, striving to prevent the election of a TV reality show star, and to disable
him afterwards -- also of the news media's role in the whole interminable scam of RussiaGate.
Their fury and despair were as vivid the night of March 24, 2019, as on November 8, 2016. And
now they will attempt to spark off a sequel.
Rachel Maddow, for instance, struggling to maintain her dignity after two years playing
Madame DeFarge on MSNBC, tried to console her fans with the prospect of Mr. Trump getting raked
over the coals by the DOJ's Southern District of NY prosecutors for crimes as yet unpredicted
-- really, whatever they might find if they turn over enough rocks in Manhattan. Perhaps she
doesn't know how the justice system actually works in this country: we prosecute crimes not
persons. In places like Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, you first choose a person
to eliminate and then fit them to a crime. If no crime can be found, one is easily
manufactured. In the USA, a predicate crime is required before you can launch a prosecution.
Perhaps the actual Attorney General, Mr. Barr, will advise the avid staff of the Southern
District of NY how this works.
There remains also, the rather sweeping panorama of misconduct and probable crime among the
government (and former government) players in the agencies mentioned above. Does the full
Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump colluded
with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton's employees? And that this document was used time
and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller not
acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?
You are forced to ask: did Mr. Mueller play an honorable role in this epic, multilayered
scandal? And is Mr. Mueller himself an honorable character, or something less than that? I
believe we'll find out. The other team is coming to bat now -- and just in time for MLB's
opening day, too. The Mueller report has been a shocking disappointment to the so-called
"resistance," but what about the as-yet-unreleased DOJ Inspector General's report on these very
matters ? Or the parallel investigation of federal prosecutor John Huber, who is charged
specifically with looking into the malfeasance of the RussiaGate investigators? Or whatever
action the Attorney General himself launches in the wake of all this? Or whether Mr. Trump
finally declassifies the mountains of documents behind the simple failure to find him guilty of
any crime? My favorite college professor and mentor, David Hamilton, once put a curious
question to us when we were vexing him for some reason now forgotten: "Why," he asked, "Did
Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times?"
So, If they would trample Trump's constitutional rights by abusing this bogus fisa warrant
system, shouldn't we assume they are 10 times as likely to abuse it to spy on average
americans, who have no chance of protecting themselves from the police state they have built
since 9-11? Revoke the patriot act. It is unconstitutional anyway, though Trump rewarded the
man who helped write it with the Supreme court position. We have a small window to claw back
the rights they stripped from us. If we don't do it now, when these programs are called into
question, these deep state turds will do whatever they can to consolidate their hold on the
US. I'm not too hopeful, myself. Seeing the blatant piracy they are attempting in Venezuela,
even after the failures in Iraq and Syria, doesn't do much to console me as to America's
future. My relatives came here from England and Germany with little more than the clothes on
their backs. It may be time to look for greener pastures if we are going to be a proxy of
Israel, and a deep state, stripped of our inherent rights bit by bit until we aren't allowed
to leave.
First is the multipart crime committed by Hillary Clinton and her cabal of deep state
co-conspirators to rig a primary, which they did against Bernie Sanders, then attempt to
steal an election by using various intelligence connections in the FBI and CIA to dig up dirt
on candidate Trump in the form of a fake Russia dossier, then petition the DOJ with only
parts of it, to get a warrant to spy on him and ultimately discredit him. Then in the event
he won, use that dossier to concoct a fake Trump/Russia collusion scandal in order to
delegitimize and hopefully reverse the Trump Presidential victory. This was treasonous and
seditious to its core and those conspirators should be investigated as thoroughly as Mueller
investigated Trump and all of his acquaintances.
The second was the Mainstream media's part in all of this mess. They so eagerly bought
into the false narrative and went out of their way, like good little bolsheviks, and
disseminated unproven and unsubstantiated "fake news" that was fed to them each morning by
democrat operatives and consultants, 24/7/365 . Every mainstream media reporter (and I use
that term loosely), and every late night talk host on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY
Times, Washington Post, and others, as well as every guest pundit opined without proof, and
pounded the table to every lemming who would listen, that Trump had to be guilty and was in
fact guilty because, well, they didn't like him. These reporters and pundits spread rumors,
called him names such as racist and nazi, etc, etc, with no basis in fact, which was an
historically new low, even for state based propaganda. (FOX news, to their credit, did not).
This agenda driven media overstepped the boundaries of good reporting and journalistic
ethical standards and set the news business back 250 years. What American journalists,
reporters and pundits did in the name of the first amendment "free press" was a national and
global disgrace.
Well said. You forget to mention, as did the article, Mueller's seditious criminal past.
Worst of all - Madcow and the rest of the MSM did a serious smear job on the Russian
government, at a time of already heightened propaganda against a country that could reduce
the USA to ashes. Also - there is the collusion of the UK government and the equally
ridiculous Skripal affair.
It is profoundly sad none of the ringleaders and real provocateurs will be prosecuted, and
things will continue to deteriorate until there is a nuclear war. Because the entire system
is rotten to the core and the citizens don't care about truth or justice.
Thanks for your additional comments. While I'm hopeful Hillary and her co-conspirators
will be investigated, indicted, tried and found guilty of sedition and treason in breaking
laws of at least 6 different acts, I don't believe Republicans have the spine or intestinal
fortitude to make their case, even if they have proof beyond any reasonable doubt to the
extent a first year law student could argue and win the case open and shut.
Also, I do not believe, even for one Milli-second, that public verbal sparring of
political leaders or their hyperbole in the midst of tough negotiations, will ever lead
civilized nations of the world to a nuclear war. it is done purely for effect and political
strategy in their home nations.
That said, you are correct that the media's continuously negative anti-Trump, anti-America
tone for two straight years, did not help trade negotiations or international relations, and
in fact, put the US at a distinct disadvantage. It's a small wonder President Trump has
achieved all the successes he has in spite of this. He deserves great credit.
Mueller knew this was all lies and BS within weeks of taking the job and put on this
charade for 2 YEARS and ruined the lives of innocent people. Mueller is not the good guy here
at all.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary
campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White
House...
After the IG report is released in April, we need to start real investigations.
Congressional and Senate hearings are kabuki! President Trump needs to hire outside lawyers
as a special counsel to get to the bottom of this treason! I don't trust anyone in DOJ to do
that!
It's on..Trump just made an extremely strong statement about "this must NEVER happen to
ANY President EVER again" in response to a question from a journo..
This implies they have any concept of decency or shame to begin with.
They've been planning the SpecialCounsel-Russiagate to Congressional-Obstruction pivot
since 2017... as continued albatross around Trump & MAGA's neck.
Trump better get voter fraud under control to win 2020.
3. IMO a great opportunity has been lost for improving relations with the Russian
thermonuclear power. Only hyper-nationalist madmen like Brennan and Clapper and ignorant Jingos
like Bolton and Pompeo can imagine that an improvement in relations with a country which can
destroy you was not a good idea. Trump hoped for that and the Russiagate hoax blocked any
possibility for improvement. The Russian government unsuccessfully sought to tinker with our
election? Yes, and they will again. That is part of the Game of Nations. Grow up, Americans! It
is our responsibility to foil such attempts. We have done similar things since we first emerged
on the world stage. We can make a list of those events if you like.
... ... ...
5. Nadler, Schiff and Elijah Cummings wish to continue the farcical pursuit of Trump on all
sides of earth until he "spouts black blood and roll fin out." As has been said, the House
committees headed by these people lack the funds, personnel and authorities to dig up the
masses of data which Mueller's office possessed. It is for this reason that they want all the
Mueller data. They hope to sift through it to find things that they can claim constitute
grounds for a plausible bill of impeachment. Well pilgrims, Barr would be wise to remember that
the Mueller report AND all its supporting documents are Executive Branch assets, not assets of
the Congress. There is no reason to give the Congress anything that is classified (secret),
Grand Jury testimony or information that should be concealed to allow for the functioning of
the presidency (Executive Privilege). So, don't give it to them! Let them sue you. Let the
Supreme Court decide.
"... The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies. ..."
"Some time ago I suggested that this implausible and histrionic Russia-gate investigation fomented by the Clintonistas appears
to be a thinly-veiled fishing expedition. The target is not any significant 'collusion' to throw the election, but much more likely
[to be] obstruction of justice, coming off dodgy private real estate deals and assorted financial arrangements involving money
laundering..."
Jesse, 11 January 2018
Russiagate was a diversion and a distraction from the real work to be done, that of reforming the political and financial systems
and putting an end to this predatory economy and its damaging bubbles. No one in the public was a winner in this.
The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has
followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any
sustainable recovery.
But Clintons are mobsters in disguise, so what's the difference. Jared Kushner father is as close to a mobster as one can get (hiring a prostitute to compromise relative is one of his tricks)
Notable quotes:
"... Don't ever think the Democratic establishment is your friend. They want you to die in foreign wars and your children to work in starvation-wage service jobs until they're 70 so that the top 0.1% can buy their kids' way into Yale ..."
Don't ever think the Democratic establishment is your friend. They want you to die in foreign wars and your children to
work in starvation-wage service jobs until they're 70 so that the top 0.1% can buy their kids' way into Yale
Navi 9:50 AM - 22 Mar 2019
"It's already happening" while the DCCC is trying their best to stop primary challenges is a little shortsighted no? If you
don't call out what is wrong what are you really 'fixing'? We can walk and chew gum at the same time!
I want to say this is the Zabinski Point (apparently the lowest dry point in the
geographic US) in the D party's recent history, but I fear it could get lower still.
The actual lowest point in the state might be at the bottom of the artificially created
lake-the Salton Sea, as at the surface it's -236 feet, and the claim is the bottom is 5 feet
higher than Badwater, but who knows.
It was created in 1905, when a diversion of the Colorado River went out of control for 2
years, until they were able to stop the flow.
"Zabriskie Point." A truly apt metaphor for the modern political landscape.
My favourite foreign movie metaphor for the Democrat Party would be Bertolucci's "The
Conformist."
Note that the candidate swears to be "faithful" to the "interests, welfare and success of
the Democratic Party," but not to its principles. That's because there aren't any.
Readers may enjoy picking through the bafflegab, because I think you could drive a whole
fleet of trucks through the loopholes. Here, for example, is Benjamin
Studebaker's view : "A Second Term for Trump is Better Than Beto."
Nobody, after all, said that success had to be immediate ; perhaps a short term
failure improves the ultimate welfare and prospects for success for the party.
In a way, this McCarthy-ite armraising is a kludge, another symptom of a fraying system:
Exactly as we can no longer, apparently, trust voters to pick a President, and so must give
veto power to the intelligence community, so we can no longer trust primary voters to pick a
candidate, and the "National Chairperson" must step in if they somehow get the wrong answer.
Pesky voters!
His greatest accomplishment may well be that he has caused Washington's Swamp Dwellers to rise from the ooze and expose themselves
for all the world to see. That's weakened them immeasurably, perhaps fatally. To be sure, that's no small thing, and the next
Trump to come along is now on full alert as to who & what to bring with him.
You nailed it. Even if they do eventually succeed in foiling Trump, things will never be the same again. The whole world is watching
the circus in Washington, and so Washington's brand ('democracy') is now shot. 2016 was indeed an annus mirabilis! " things will
never be the same again. The whole world is watching the circus in Washington.."
It looks and sounds like dementia – as if a sick person behaving inappropriately, showing unprovoked aggression (like some
Alzheimer patients), using silly or senseless phrasing, and having the unreasonable demands and uncontrolled fits of rage like
a spoiled child. The marasmic McCain, marasmic Pelosi, and hysterical Max Boot, the openly lying Clapper and the hate-filled profiteer
Brennan.
As I have written here and elsewhere, President Swamp Drainer needs to get control of the DoJ. He got rid of Comey, which was
good, but got Rosenstein and Mueller in response. Meanwhile Jeff Sessions is twiddling his thumbs re the Russia witch hunt. Perhaps
his recusal was appropriate, but he's not doing anything whatsoever regarding Swamp Draining. So it feels like he's a disingenuous
old guard GOPer, who wants to obstruct any real progress, while dragging his feet with do-nothingness obscured behind a facade
of law enforcement community boosterism. By this tactic the GOP attempts to stall until 2020, when it can then point at Trump's
failures (failures they have enabled by their stalling, wink wink) and then campaign to take "their" party back. In short, Sessions
may just be an anti-Trump "mole" planted in the single most important position with regard to swamp draining, in order to ***prevent***
any swamp draining.
Let me be clear: in the last 24 years the DC political class has gone almost entirely criminal, with the last 13 years dedicated
to serial war crimes. In this sort of situation the DoJ, AG, and FBI head, becomes corrupted, and turns away from the rule of
law to become a shield for the DC criminal despotism.
So watch closely what happens next. Just today rumors have come out -- though I've been speaking of this for several weeks
now -- that there is talk in the White House about ***recess appointments*** . We have reached the crucial moment, and I for one
am surprised that, as important as this is, it has not been prominent in public discussion until now. The "August" was scheduled
to begin at the end of business tomorrow, July 28th. Because of the health care business, McConnell has postponed it for two weeks,
so let's call it for close of business Friday, August 11th. That's fifteen days from now.
When Congress goes home fifteen days from now, this country and the world may very well change forever. Go to Wikipedia and
look up "recess appointment". Here's what you will find:
" a recess appointment is an appointment by the President of a federal official while the U.S. Senate is in recess.
Recess appointments are authorized by Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which states:
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting
Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session .
If Trump is the fighter I think he is, then this is what he has been waiting for, ever so patiently these last six months.
Notice that the Congress cannot countermand recess appointments. Recess appointments end by expiration, and then only at the end
of the following Congressional session. Other than impeachment, Congress cannot stop Trump from doing this .
So Trump dumps Sessions, purges the anti-Trump prosecutors from previous administrations, and appoints a new FBI head and dozens
of fire-breathing swamp-draining prosecutors who immediately start doling out orange jumpsuits. He could -- not saying that he
would execute this "nuclear option" -- but he could lock up virtually the entire Congress on war crimes charges; Neocons for conspiracy
to commit war crimes; Cheney, Addington, Yoo, and Bybee to the Hague for torture; Hillary and Obama for Libya.
Control of the DoJ is the key.
The next two weeks will show whether Trump is the real deal, or just another schlub.
"A pension is not a 'gratuity.' A pension is wages you could have taken in cash, but
prudently and conservatively set aside for your old age. It's your money. If your
employer, for every pay period, does not set aside and designate it to go into a
pension plan, your employer is stealing from you. The way to get this is to require pay
stubs to itemize the amount of money that has been contributed to your pension plan."
David Cay Johnston
"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations,
or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we've lost sight
of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony. We are neglecting a torrent of
market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment. We are turning our
backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash
social benefits. We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation."
Jeffrey Sachs
"We are coming apart as a society, and inequality is right at the core of that. When
the 90 percent are getting worse off and they're trying to figure out what happened,
they're not people like me who get to spend four or five hours a day studying these
things and then writing about them -- they're people who have to make a living and get
through life. And they're going to be swayed by demagogues and filled with fear about
the other, rather than bringing us together.
President Theodore Roosevelt said we shall all rise together or we shall all fall
together, and we need to have an appreciation of that.
I think it would be easy for someone to arrive in the near future and really create
forces that would lead to trouble in this country. And you see people who, they're not
the leaders to pull it off, but we have suggestions that the president should be
killed, that he's not an American, that Texas can secede, that states can ignore
federal law, and these are things that don't lack for antecedents in America history
but they're clearly on the rise.
In addition to that, we have this large, very well-funded news organization that is
premised on misconstruing facts and telling lies, Faux News that is creating, in a
large segment of the population -- somewhere around one-fifth and one-fourth of it --
belief in all sorts of things that are detrimental to our well-being.
So, no, I don't see this happening tomorrow, but I have said for many years that if we
don't get a handle on this then one of these days our descendants are going to sit down
in high-school history class and open a textbook that begins with the words:
The
United States of America was
and then it will dissect how our experiment in
self-governance came apart."
Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) is expected to introduce a new tax bill today. The senator
says his bill would tax the sale of stocks, bonds and derivatives at a 0.1 rate. It would apply
to any transaction in the United States. The senator says his proposal would clamp down on
speculation and some high frequency trading that artificially creates more market
volatility.
"... As Sen. Elizabeth Warren has famously said with respect to cabinet and other political appointments, "Personnel Is Policy." You can see the outline of the Trump administration's real policies being shaped before our eyes via his proposed cabinet appointees, covered by Politico and other sites. ..."
"... Sanders, Warren and others should hold Trump's feet to the fire on the truly populist things he said and offer to work with him on that stuff. Like preserving Social Security and Medicare and getting out of wars. ..."
Not surprised at all. The election is over, the voters are now moot. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren
has famously said with respect to cabinet and other political appointments, "Personnel Is Policy."
You can see the outline of the Trump administration's real policies being shaped before our eyes
via his proposed cabinet appointees, covered by Politico and other sites.
Also no mention of NAFTA or renegotiating trade deals in the new transition agenda. Instead
there's just a bunch of vague Chamber of Commercesque language about making America attractive
to investors. I think our hopes for a disruptive Trump presidency are quickly being dashed.
Sanders, Warren and others should hold Trump's feet to the fire on the truly populist things
he said and offer to work with him on that stuff. Like preserving Social Security and Medicare
and getting out of wars.
As to the last point, appointing Bolton or Corker Secretary of State would be a clear indication
he was just talking. A clear violation of campaign promises that would make Obama look like a
choirboy. Trump may be W on steroids.
I can't imagine how he's neglected to update his transition plan regarding nafta. After all,
he's already been president-elect for, what, 36 hours now? And he only talked about it umpteen
times during the campaign. I'm sure he'll renege.
Hell, it took Clinton 8 hours to give her concession speech.
On the bright side, he managed to kill TPP just by getting elected. Was that quick enough for
you?
This just in .Saint Obama is no longer infallible among Dems. Winds of change are blowing. Six months ago, you couldn't get
away with saying this kind of thing.
"The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Obama will receive the sum - equal to his annual pay as president - for a speech
at Cantor Fitzgerald LP's healthcare conference, though there has been no public announcement yet."
=======================================
Sheer coincidence that what Obama campaigned on and what Obama governed on appear to be influenced by rich people. Physics prevents
single payer health care .dark energy, dark matter, dark, dark, money ..
Until a strong majority of dems are ready to say what is patently obvious to anyone even mildly willing to acknowledge reality,
i.e., that policy is decided not by a majority of voters, but by a majority of dollars, than there is simply no hope for reform.
Oh please, stop quoting Andy Slavitt, the United Healthcare Ingenix algo man. That guy is
the biggest crook that made his money early on with RX discounts with his company that he and
Senator Warren's daughter, Amelia sold to United Healthcare.
He's out there trying to do his own reputation restore routine. Go back to 2009 and read
about the short paying of MDs by Ingenix, which is now Optum Insights, he was the CEO and
remember it was just around 3 years ago or so he sat there quarterly with United CEO Hemsley
at those quarterly meetings.
Look him up, wants 40k to speak and he puts the perception out there he does this for
free, not so.
I think you're missing the context. Lambert is quoting him by way of showing that the
sleazy establishment types are just fine with him. Thanks for the extra background on that
particular swamp-dweller, though.
Alex Azar is a Dartmouth grad (Gov't & Economics '88) just like Jeff Immelt (Applied
Math & Economics '78). So much damage to society from such a small department!
Since 2014, Ross has been the vice-chairman of the board of Bank of Cyprus PCL, the
largest bank in Cyprus.
He served under U.S. President Bill Clinton on the board of the U.S.-Russia Investment
Fund. Later, under New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Ross served as the Mayor's
privatization advisor.
This isn't about taxing wealth. It's about taxing power, privilege and greed. This
isn't about punishing oligarchy. This is about saving democracy. The concentration of wealth
parallels the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it is economic climate change
with consequences equally as dire as global warming on all lifeforms.
The challenge will be no less difficult, replete with a powerful lobby of deniers and
greed-mongers ready for war against all threats to their power and position. Their battle cry
is apres moi, le deluge -- as if taxing wealth and privilege is barbarians at the gate and
the demise of civilization rather than curbing cannibals driven not by hunger but voracious
greed. Everywhere climate change deniers are being drowned out by a rational majority who now
see the signs of global warming in every weather report and understand what this means for
their children if we continue to emulate ostriches.
Likewise, the same majority now sees the rising tide of inequality and social
dysfunction and what that means for the future as a global caste system condemns nearly all
of us -- but mainly our progeny -- to slavery in servitude to our one percent
masters.
Elizabeth Warren is no nerd. She's our Joan of Arc. And it's up to us to make sure she
isn't burned alive by the dark lords as she rallies us to win back our country and our
future.
the two issues, inequality of wealth and global warming, are related. The vast wealth of
the Koch Brothers enables them to drown out rational debate with propaganda. Propaganda must
be abolished.
@FunkyIrishman I think Trump intentionally or inadvertently has destroyed anything
resembling the status quo. It's the political equivalent of Newton's Third Law of Motion:
that for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Trump is the ugly face of unbridled power and privilege, leavened only by vainglory
ignorance.
He's the equivalent of melting icecaps and stranded polar bears when it comes to the
concentration of wealth and economic climate change. His utter failure will be the rational
majority's success in plowing a better and more equitable path forward. There's been nothing
more radical than Trump. He's made radical solutions compelling and necessary. And
inevitable.
@Yuri Asian: "This isn't about taxing wealth. It's about taxing power, privilege and
greed." Their is plenty of power, privilege and "greed" in our nation's capital, and it is
practiced daily by individuals who are elected and un-elected.
@Jim Thanks for your reply and appreciation. I'm lucky to be an Editor's Pick as there are
so many great comments by thoughtful and articulate NYT readers, particularly those who
follow Krugman's columns. I agree with your sense of wealth as a social disease that's highly
contagious. We need a vaccine and I hope Sen. Warren is it and she inoculates a strong
majority by 2020.
November 2018 has Come; 2020 is Coming Vallejo Jan. 28
@Anne-Marie
Hislop
I agree, Anne - Marie. There was a time when being rich carried a responsibility to
contribute more to the world than those with less; a responsibility to serve society overall,
and one's country and community in particular. Also the rich were expected to have better
manners and more discerning taste than those who worked because they had the free time to
study and model grace and refinement.
In addition, the wealthy were expected to be patrons of the arts, the sciences, and
religion by contributing money and time to support practioners, research, and experimentation
in these areas.
Finally, the wealthy were expected to raise children who were role models, leaders, and
volunteers who contributed emotionally and spiritually to their schools and communities.
Compare Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt to Paris Hilton or the tRump family.
Amen and hallelujah, and I'm an atheist. For those asleep or oblivious, we're in the new
gilded age. But faux gold, as evidenced by the occupant sitting in the Oval Office.
These " Job Creators " are creating Jobs only for shady attorneys and accountants
specializing in creative mathematics, sham Corporations, Trusts and TAX avoidance. See: the
Trump Family.
What's the average, law abiding citizen to do ??? Absent actually eating the Rich, WE must
overhaul the entire system.
Warren is very nerdy, and very necessary. Unfortunately, the great majority of Men will
not vote for any Woman, not yet. See: Trump. She would be a most excellent choice for VP, the
back-up with a genius IQ and unstoppable work ethic. President ??? A modern day, working
man's Teddy OR Franklin Roosevelt, and His name is Senator Sherrod Brown, Of the very great
state of Ohio. MY native state. Think about it, it's the perfect pair.
I particularly like Elizabeth Warren's ability to talk policy. But as a career academic
I also realize that she sounds to most like a law professor giving a lecture. Unfortunately,
I don't think this is a winning formula but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
Yesterday a billionaire threatened the Democratic Party with certain defeat in the 2020
Presidential election if the Party chose a candidate not to his liking. Increasing
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few will ultimately spell the end of our
democracy.
If there were ever a politician for our time, the second and more egregious gilded age,
it should be Elizabeth Warren. She INVENTED the Consumer Financial Protection Burueau! She
has studied the big banks and Wall Street for decades! She knows how they operate better than
anyone on the planet. She is the Teddy Roosevelt of our time, but are we smart enough to
elect her?
My wife and I find Warren to be the most impressive candidate we've seen in a long time.
She has the mastery of detail that can actually move our country to where it should be. No
lazy demagoguery, either -- and she communicates well.
The primary purpose of taxes should be to raise necessary revenues, not the confiscation
of "excessive" wealth. Making the case for the moral and practical necessity to contribute
more would be more effective than the tiresome scapegoating of the wealthy.
@RR I happen to live in one of those Scandinavian paradises. I, nor my family, have ever
had a problem with ''care''. We also have higher education paid for through a moderately
higher tax structure. (perhaps 10% average higher than the U.S.) I sleep like a baby and all
is taken care of. (as well as 5 weeks vacation per year) You are welcome to visit
anytime.
@Shiv, the wealthiest 20% of Americans also have about 90% of the wealth (as of 2013,
probably higher now). According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 20% in income paid about
87% of individual federal income taxes in 2018. But income tax is just a portion of tax.
Personal income taxes were about 48% of federal revenues in 2017, payroll tax was 35%.
Since payroll taxes are regressive, the top 20% of income tax payers pay a considerably
lower percentage of total taxes than the percentage of the nation's wealth they control.
Saying those paying more in taxes than they receive in direct benefits and services are
'paying all the taxes' is simplistic and deceptive. It isn't even accurate to say that they
are completely funding the transfers and services to the bottom 50%, since the federal
government operates at a deficit.
The deficit is covered in large part by debt owed to the social security fund, which is
funded through payroll taxes. When you include state and local taxes, it looks like the
percentage of total taxes paid by each income quintile is not far off from the percentage of
total income that they bring in.
We probably all remember the scene where Chinatown's detective, J. J. Gittes, asks the bad
guy, Noah Cross, "How much are you worth?" And Cross says, "I've no idea."
There are two take-aways from this. One is the low marginal utility of wealth at Mr.
Cross's level. This is what makes the optimal progressivity of a wealth tax positive. But the
second is the literal take-away: he really doesn't know. Nobody knows.
So, as Prof. Piketty points out (pp. 518ff of his book), the value of even a nominal
wealth tax in terms of transparency -- forcing the system to determine what the distribution
of wealth actually is -- is substantial, aside from revenue generation. If we're going to
give wealth a vote, via Citizens United etc., then wealth should at least have to
register.
As this op-ed shows, even a majority of Republicans ALREADY supports this idea. So the
problem is not so much getting rid of the GOP's fake news, but having a voter turnout where
the demographics of those who vote reflect the demographics of the entire population. In
2016, a whopping 50% of citizens eligible to vote, didn't vote. And the lack of political
literacy among many progressives has certainly been a factor here. So what is needed is for
ordinary citizens to start engaging in real, respectful debates with their family, friends,
neighbors, colleagues etc. again, to make sure that everybody votes. Only then will we have
more impact on what happens in DC than Big Money.
This is a superb insight you are providing....the 'critique' of Late Capitalism from the
perspective of 'Systems Stability'. I work in the field of Distributed Systems Management
though Cloud for Living. The way with Distributed Decision Making is, in a number of
situations it is a lot more resilient and powerful. There are advantages of Command &
Control decision making (war for example). But in Late Capitalism that concentration of
Decision Making in hand of few has gone too far.
To understand all this, to figure out the relevance of Distributed Decision Making, to
articulate all this to masses and then to formulate sane policy proposals out of all that -
that is not a simple task. So Sen. Warren, please continue the 'nerding'. I am Kamala Harris
constituency, but the intellectual heft Warren is bringing to this campaign; I love that. She
needs to bring her such big guns for a couple of marquee social issues as well as about
America's Foreign Policy. Obviously, it cannot degenerate into 63 details policy papers like
HRC.
The trick is to make the campaign about few core issues and then there to 'have the house
cleaned' - completely worked out theory, understanding, explanation and policy proposals.
Hope E. Warren does that, she is capable no doubt. (Predictable election cycles - such a good
thing with American System....for a while just to think and discuss things apart from the
Orange Head in White House - it is so refreshing...)
J suspect that the notion that proposals to raise taxes sharply on the wealthy are too
left-wing for American voters is wishful thinking or propaganda by the wealthy, on whom many
pundits and analysts rely, one way or another, for their jobs. "It's difficult to get a man
to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." I don't know
whether I agree with Warren on enough things to support her, but I hope this idea influences
the Democratic platform and becomes reality.
@Tom The current Republican Party is toxic – to democracy, truth, ethics, human
health, human survival, equality, education, nature, love... most anything a decent person
values. We can get rid of it and still have a two-party system of reasonable people who
disagree on the best way to solve problems.
I read somewhere that the Davos crowd was intent on speeding up the development of robots
to do those jobs so they wouldn't have to deal with pesky humans who want an occasional
break.
As a person who has done fairly well, there is no end to your "needs" once your start
getting wealthy. Let's take flying. First, you are happy to get a deal every now and then on
a flight to Hawaii. After a while, you earn status, so now you want to be first in line, have
baggage privileges and get into premium economy with an extra 5 inches of leg space. Then,
it's enough status to "earn" business class upgrades. Next you have to have business class on
every flight, so you pay up. There's first class, but now you can afford NetJets where you
get fractional ownership of a jet to fly almost anytime you like. If you get even wealthier,
you get your own jet with an on demand staff. It's "worth it" as your time is valuable. It
goes on and on. Every time you get more, you can't live without it. You feel like you deserve
it because you've worked so hard for that money. Knowing some of those super rich, they will
complain about those fascist attacking their success. They "donate" a lot to candidates whose
job it is to protect their wealth. While Warren's ideas via Piketty are really interesting,
maybe we need to work on our culture and values so people understand what they are doing when
they expect that jet with a staff that waits in them like royalty. Then let's invest in the
IRS to stop the cheating that deprives our citizens of at least $200 billion/year. After
that, let's look at closing loopholes and increasing taxes.
Until we get the money out of elections, the moneyed will control those elected. I'm not
sure what our elected officials are more afraid of - meeting with their electorate and facing
our anger, or voting against Grover Norquist et al.
During the primaries and the subsequent campaign, Democratic candidates should run
explicitly and continually as new Teddy Roosevelts, using his words and images of him --
presenting the Democratic Party as the Roosevelt Republican alternative when it comes to
taxation policy. It would reduce right-wing attempts to cast them as Maduros-in-waiting to
pure late-night comic fodder: which is what they properly are. In fact, they should identify
past Republican champions of as many of their policy proposals as possible and run as
"Democrats: the Real Republicans."
Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie have blown open up a discussion that had been locked
down since Reagan -- tax the rich. Krugman is too timid.
Time to radically redistribute wealth from the capitalist class to the people in the form
of jobs and social benefits.
Tax the banks and corporation to 40+% and end all tax incentives -- corporate welfare.
Apple used its tax break to buy back stock to enrich investors. Facebook bought up
competitors like Instagram and suppresses start-ups. A hedge fund bought Toys R Us, loaded it
with debt, then bankrupted it.
The right-wing turn of rural white Americans is largely due to economic anxiety resulting
from the industrialization of agriculture and global commodification of grain -- all the
profits leave farm communities for mega-corporations based in cities and Wall Street, as well
as global capitalist de-industrialization.
Americans on both the right and left believe the system is rigged, because it is. Warren's
tax on personal assets is the first baby step. To win 2020, Democrats have to secure the vote
of minorities, women, and Millennials, and peel off some white working-class voters. They
have to fight for working people against the capitalists.
And we have to keep educating people, in large part at taxpayers expense, so they can
continue to speak up as you have. The idea that everything, education, healthcare,
prescriptions, housing, food, etc has to be on a max-out-profit basis is not sustainable for
a decent society. If you look into the history of successful billionaire families who might
profess that government should not be used to create equal financial opportunity, you may
find that they have benefited from U.S. government policies themselves to get to where they
are. So why prevent others from having the opportunity to join them ?
@Bill A small transaction tax on sales of stocks would not raise that much money. What it
would do is much more useful -- put program trading and the arbitraging of tiny, tiny price
differences on huge, huge trades out of business. The sort of liquidity they provide is not
needed by the market and is not worth the price we pay for it.
Absolutely agree with R. Law--the carried interest loophole has got to go. That's probably
contributed more to the aggrandizement of oligarchical fortunes than just about anything
else. But I'd also add two more modest suggestions: --Eliminate the cap on individual Social
Security contributions. There's no reason it should fade to black at $132,900 gross annual
income. It should be applicable to ALL earned (and unearned) income. --Institute a small
stock trade/financial transactions tax; even a 0.1% rate here would raise significant
revenue, and it also might curb a lot of wild equities speculation. But, of course, none of
this is likely until we can get big money out of politics; it's impossible to get
representatives to represent their actual constituents, rather than their oligarchic campaign
funders, if the latter are the prime source of campaign money. So, as the risk of repeating
myself: --Publicly funded elections, with low three digit limits on individual campaign
contributions and NO corporate, organizational, church, or (yes, even) union contributions.
No PAC's, 501's, or any other letter/number combinations. --Reinstatement of the Fairness
Doctrine. --Legislative repeal of the Citizens United decision.
@Tom "Wealthy people reinvest their money in economic ventures that grow their wealth,
which generates greater productivity while creating jobs and wealth for the society." Like,
for example, the investments that caused the 2008 Republican Great Recession for example?
That plan hasn't worked since Reagan. And taxing 2%-3% of enormous wealth is hardly taking
away "all the wealth of individuals!" We also need to roll back estate tax to pre-Reagan
policies.
So businessmen and financiers need checks and balances, and these checks and balances
include high taxation and occasionally breaking a business into pieces because it is too big
and powerful. We broke up Rockefeller's company. We should be thinking about Amazon, Google,
Facebook, and even Microsoft. We are using Word and Excel because Microsoft owned the
operating system they run under, not because they were better products. Now we are stuck with
their strengths, weaknesses, and odd habits.
Boy do I wish I could share Dr, Krugman's hopefulness. But after the Supreme Court
decision equating money with speech and one of the two major political parties literally a
"wholly owned subsidiary" of those very 0.01%, as the ancestral Scot in laments, "I hae me
doots."
@Blair A Miller....Rewarded for hard work and talent? Well that is the myth. There is a
case to be made that capitalism rewards greedy and unethical people who have a talent for
working the system. There is also no question that it rewards monopolists and the
fortunate.
@Kurt Heck It doesn't. That's precisely why we have to stop the GOP strategy to pass tax
cut after tax cut for the wealthiest all while making life even more difficult for the other,
very hard-working 99%. And if you believe that in order to be a billionaire today you must
work hard, it's time to update your info. Most of them inherited a fortune already, together
with the knowledge needed to engage in financial speculation, which in the 21st century is
totally disconnected from the real economy - or rather, they PAY experts to engage in
financial speculation, and that's it.
It's time for the most industrious to at least be able to pay the bills, get the education
and healthcare they want, and become represented in Congress again. THAT is why we need a tax
increase for the extreme rich, all while increasing the minimum wage, and expanding Medicaid
and Medicare. THAT is how we'll finally become an entirely civilized country too. Not by
adding trillions and trillions to the debt just to make the extreme wealthy even wealthier,
as the GOP just did again.
The NYTimes reported in October, "Over the past decade, Jared Kushner's net worth has
quintupled to almost $324 million. And yet, for several years running, Mr. Kushner paid
almost no federal income taxes." Let's not get lost in the details of how we do it:
taxing wealth, making income taxes more progressive, restoring the estate tax, or something
else. Let's remember that Jared Kushner is the poster boy for our current (extremely unfair)
tax system.
I care about taxes and wealth inequality, so I like that Warren is talking about them. I'm
also a bit of a policy wonk, so I like the fact that Warren focuses on policy issues. As a
classically trained economist, though, I know how quickly others' eyes glaze over when I get
too excited about anything related to finance or economics. The vast majority of people lack
the patience for it. Too many think they understand far more than they really do because they
read a handful of articles and watched CNBC a couple times. And when people believe they
already know something, they're unlikely to greet new ideas with an open mind. A wealth tax
makes sense to me on a lot of levels. I just hope Senator Warren keeps the explanation as
simple as possible. For every wonk she wins over, she risks pushing two rubes away if she
makes it any more complicated. It's unfortunate that we live in the Twitter era of gadfly
attention spans, but we do. Dems need to do a better job of distilling their platform to
bumper stickers. If they do that, the polity might actually remember some of their talking
points.
Win or lose, Elizabeth Warren will bring the lion's share of ideas to this presidential
season. It's one to say that you support a trendy concept, but it's quite another to have
thought through the implications of your proposals - and be prepared to first defend, and
then implement them. Warren is, and will be - from Day 1. We shouldn't settle for "hope and
change" this time; we need a President in 2021 capable of thinking her way through a maze of
societal problems, and unafraid to passionately, untiringly champion her preferred
option.
Paul, as an aside, do you think that we would have lost the House of Representatives in
2010 if someone had opted for that much larger stimulus package that you, Joe Stiglitz and
Robert Reich were recommending (thus causing the economy to more quickly and fully rebound in
time for the midterms)?
@Tom A 2% tax on wealth from $50 million to $1000 million, will have minimal impact on the
mega rich, with hopefully maximum benefit going to those who need government assistance.
The primary purpose of Citizens United was to allow the wealthy a back door into
stealing our public institutions and public contracts along with reducing the taxes on
passive income for their own personal expansion of wealth. While I agree this is a form of
class warfare, the rich have won the war. Instead of thinking of this as confiscation,
consider it insurance for keeping your head up.
As Yascha Mounk has been saying for years, democracy isn't about a firm belief in the
power of the people, or a belief in personal liberty - above all, its support is determined
by one thing: whether it is delivering results for the majority of the population. If it
doesn't, it loses support; and unfortunately, for decades now, it hasn't been delivering
results. Even Obama, the great liberal hope, stacked his cabinet and advisors with the likes
of Geithner, Bernanke, and Sommers, appointing people to the FTC who were too soft to
trust-bust or aggressively tackle mergers. I am of the belief that Trump was a warning. We
got him because ordinary people have been losing faith that the government is working for
them. If we want to regain that faith, we need a government (meaning both an Executive and a
Legislature) that is prepared to go full FDR in 2021. Trust bust corporations that have
decreased power of workers by consolidating labor market, and the power of consumers by
monopolizing goods and services. Expand social security. Cut the red tape to build millions
of desperately-needed housing units. Take away the excess wealth of the plutocrats, and their
political power. Expand voting rights. Make unionization easier, and healthcare more
affordable by socializing it. Without this, we run the risk of losing our democracy. 2020 is
do or die. Warren has a record of fighting for this. She has my vote.
If the people who make their fortunes in America because of Americans don't want to
support the country that helped them perhaps they should consider this: our sweat, our hard
work, and our tears were a vital part of their success. It doesn't matter how brilliant the
idea is or smart the inventor is or how cleverly the product is marketed. If the public isn't
ready for it, it won't sell and money won't be made. There is a lot of luck involved in
making a fortune. Part of that luck depends upon us and our willingness to buy into what is
being sold. Yes, the inventor or the creator has to have the drive to succeed. S/he has to
accept failure, work very hard, and have faith that s/he will succeed.
It's nonsense to claim that Bill Gates would not have created Windows if he knew he'd be
taxed at very high rates. He didn't know if it would succeed as well as it did. The purpose
of taxes is to support the country. It's to have a government that can fund basic research to
help us, create nationwide rules to ensure that milk in New York is milk in North Dakota, and
to regulate those little things like roads, bridges, water safety, and keep the country safe.
Any exceedingly rich corporation or person who doesn't want to support that is not patriotic
in the least. They are greedy.
The American Revolution was a revolt of American born property holders, not of the
peasants or the slaves. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are both very strong on
property rights. The rights of an individual to own property free from seizure by the
government is at the heart of Liberalism. We live in a two party state. If we truly
eliminated the Republican party we'd be no different than China. America only gets better if
the Republican party gets better. The Democratic party could use some improvement too. I
support Warren's tax plan. It's a reasonable and sensible move, not just a bunch of poorly
thought out hot air.
This is but one in a long line of cogent reasonable suggestions to tax mega rich a little
more. Unfortunately while the economics makes sense, these schemes fail politically because
enough of the vast majority of much poorer people in the middle class can be convinced that
there is something unfair by singling out the successful.
The Steve Jobs story, whereby a poor boy with a great idea should be able to make tons of
money. The only way a change will come is if the middle class' eyes can be opened to the fact
that for every Steve Jobs there are thousands of Jay Gatsbys who inherited their wealth and
privilege and who now spend much of their time and money ensuring that the laws are written
so that they can keep their wealth.
The inequity of the present laws, via tax loopholes and corporate subsidies to favour the
very rich should be highlighted, showing the middle class how they are constantly being
ripped off in order to fund the rich.
There are polls and then there is reality. In Alabama in 2003, a newly-elected
conservative Republican governor proposed a constitutional amendment to raise taxes on the
wealthiest Alabamans. The measure was defeated 67.5%-32.5% with low-income voters opposing it
by a significant margin. In Washington in 2010, voters defeated a referendum to impose a
modest income tax on the state's wealthiest residents. (There is no income tax in
Washington.)
It seems unlikely that in the state with the country's most regressive tax system that 65%
of the voters are wealthy. Despite language in the referendum that guaranteed it could never
be applied to lower incomes without a vote of the people and a provision to lower property
taxes by 20%, paranoia, not reason, ruled the day. It lost 65%-35%.
Polling is easy. But when concrete proposals go to the voters, the wealthy interests
overwhelm voters with fear and lies, and the voters, complacent and ill-informed, can be
easily manipulated. Conservative Alabama and liberal Washington State both defeated measures
that would have helped their state finances significantly.
The money raised was to be spent on education, health care for the elderly and other
radical things some of which would have helped the poor, but lower income voters cast their
votes as though, despite their current conditions, they'd be subject to the taxes tomorrow or
next month or next year.
@Acajohn "Why isn't there one billionaire or multi billion dollar company that actually
takes pride in paying their fair share?" Like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the two richest
men in America, who have pledged to follow Carnegie's example, and taken actions to do
so?
The notion that Sanders has no deep understanding of the policies that he champions is a
stroke of common wisdom that is not very wise, as anyone who ever bothered going to he web
site would find. In 2016, at least, it was chalk full of issues and positions with a long
section on how it could be paid for.
Krugman seemed to shun him for reasons that were never clear to me, but Sanders' proposals
had the ear of quite a few economists.
Even Krugman's crush, Thomas Piketty was intrigued. I'm thrilled that both Warren and
Sanders are in this, and if the primary were today I could probably toss a coin. But I find
this constant picking at Bernie Sanders and his "flailing arms" to be grating and uninformed.
It's akin to asking him to just smile more.
Not just Roosevelt. "The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery
to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing
property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all
from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in
geometrical progression as they rise." - Thomas Jefferson, October 28, 1785.
"An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the
rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state
hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property." - Benjamin Franklin,
July 29, 1776.
"All property ... seems to me to be the creature of public convention. Hence the public
has the right of regulating descents and all other conveyances of property, and even of
limiting the quantity and the uses of it." - Benjamin Franklin, December 25, 1783.
Senator Warren should consider a few adjustments to her plan. First, tax capital gains
income at the same rate as earned income. Eliminate the carried interest deduction and close
some other egregious loopholes (including the new "pass through" income loophole). Finally,
give the wealth tax a nine year period after which it would have to be renewed. Call it a
"Patriotism Tax". Pledge to use it for infrastructure improvements and debt reduction. I
think that could be very popular.
That is a radical plan, one tried many times before. It fails because humans are not
perfect, and not perfectible. They try to accumulate wealth and power, are jealous of each
other's possessions and mates, and try to create circumstances that favor their offspring
over others of the next generation.
The fields of human evolutionary biology and psychology tell us that your plan can not and
will not work. Not only that, countless Utopians have tried this in the past. Most fail
within months, even with a small group of people who all supposedly love one another. All
societies founded on the belief that humans are perfectible have failed. Societies founded on
the belief that humans will be venal, corrupt, and power-hungry tend to have the safeguards
that allow them to survive. That's why the constitution is full of "checks and balances".
Don't think you can replace them with a society of peace and love where we will all live in
quiet harmony. You can only replace them with better checks and balances if you hope to
succeed. John Lennon's "Imagine" is a lovely song. But it's just a wish list, not a
manifesto.
Yes, what kind of person, especially one with obscene wealth, prefers to keep every penny
rather than pay taxes that make our country function? Why isn't there one billionaire or
multi billion dollar company that actually takes pride in paying their fair share?
Sanders said little about taxation. In his debates with Clinton, he advocated scrapping
the ACA and starting de novo, whereas Clinton suggested legislation to improve it. Thanks in
part to Sanders' attacks on Clinton, both personally and on policy, Trump got elected and the
Republicans have tried in every possible way to destroy it. On this issue, will Pelosi and
Warren follow the so-called progressivism of Sanders?
I don't get your criticism of Rajiv either. Rajiv know what he is talking about. The rich
can never have enough; more is not enough. We see it all the time. We need to eliminate the
dynasties and equalize the democracy.
Existing wealth and annual income are two very different things. Both are now problems.
Existing wealth disparity is the accumulation of all the last 40 years of income disparity,
plus the "work the money did" to pile itself up higher. Our laws magnified the wealth
disparity. That was deliberate and calculated. Our laws allow it to pile up without the
former taxation at death to trim it back. We charge only half the tax rate on the "work" of
the money itself, the special "capital gains" rate. It is specially privileged from taxes,
which is entirely new over these last few Presidential Administrations. It was said that
would encourage job growth. It never did. Nobody who knew anything about the subject ever
really believed it would. What is now proposed by Warren is to fix what they so deliberately
broke. This would not come up if they had not done that first. And if we hadn't done this,
we'd have had the job growth this stifled, from the consumer purchasing power it took to pile
up as wealth, much of it speculative and overseas.
Conservative voters are against taxes because *if* they get rich they don't want to pay
them. As a liberal I, on the other hand, would be *delighted* to have to pay this tax!
By all means let's tax the rich. But what I find most alarming is Kamala Harris's call for
yet ANOTHER tax cut for the middle class. Every since the days of Saint Ronnie, Americans
have been misled into believing they deserve tax cut after tax cut. And the result for the
commons (those goods and services that we share) has been disastrous. Americans already pay
lower taxes than most of the developed world. Yet the candidates are also calling for more
benefits: Medicare for All and free college. The defense establishment continues to clamor
for more resources. What we need is to increase taxes on the rich along with a robust tax
enforcement system, so that Americans see that EVERYONE is pulling their weight, according to
their means.
Redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation is as American as apple pie. In
addition to taxing wealth, there should be a significant estate tax on the top 1%. Getting
rich is for many the American Dream, but that does not entitle the rich to endless wealth
forever. Others should have an opportunity to take their shot.
A couple of points: at the turn of the 20th Century (about the time that Teddy
Roosevelt was railing against the rich), John D Rockefeller had more lawyers on staff than
the United States Government. Rockefeller's net worth at that point (they had not yet broken
up Standard Oil at that point), was $1 billion, at a time when the total receipts of the US
Government were $700 billion.
Krugman also mentions Piketty and his book. A central theme in Piketty's book, not
mentioned here, was that there is no countervailing force that naturally takes us back to a
more equitable distribution of wealth.
That only occurred because the world suffered through two world wars, and a depression,
out of which came a determination by FDR to use government as a countervailing force. And so
it is not an accident that the Republican Party is trying to kill government because that is
the only large, countervailing force known to be effective. Do we really want a world where a
Jeff Bezos has more lawyers on staff than the US Government? Don't laugh; something similar
has happened in the past.
@dajoebabe For the last 40 years, we have had the GOP tell us that government is the
problem and lower tax rates will supercharge economic growth. Now we have a nation with a
superpower's army, third rate infrastructure, a porous social safety net and a mediocre
education system. Granted that government cannot solve all problems (nor should it try!), but
the evidence is clear that the effects of our disinvestment in ourselves is now coming to the
fore. If we are truly at the point where raising the marginal tax rate on a very small number
of households will cause economic collapse, then our capitalist system has failed and should
be replaced.
Interesting ideas, but to get Americans (read Republicans) to swallow this whole is
doubtful. Perhaps some marketing is in order. Let's not call this a tax. Let's call it a
gift. High value households would give to the government agency of their choice (Social
Security, Veteran's Affairs, EPA etc..), garner a modest tax credit as in charity donations,
and as a plus receive a full accounting of how their money was spent by an independent
auditor. Their gifts could be publicized on social media, thus generating the kind of
attention that could generate higher and higher donations. Just a thought.
We could also use Teddy Roosevelt's anti-corruption and environmental values as well. I
think he is one Republican completely disowned by the current Republican Party. While I
do not believe Elizabeth Warren has any chance to be President, her candidacy will certainly
force intelligent debate on the Democratic Platform for 2020. She will make a tremendous
Treasury Secretary and break the Goldman Sachs stranglehold on that position.
Let's not stop with progressive taxes on the income and wealth of corporations and
individuals. We need to ban monopolies outright, and limit the market share of oligopolies to
something like 20%. And we should even limit the fraction of a corporations' shares (e.g.
10%) that can be owned by any one entity (corporal or corporate), and make privately-held
corporations go public once they reach a certain size.
There's a lesson we can learn from Mother Nature: "Too big to fail" really means "Too
big to exist"!
Maybe Piketty instead of Teddy Roosevelt -- but the rates for the wealthy should be
higher, especially for passive income, to force the rich if for no other to avoid taxation to
invest their money in the economy.
@Linda: Your comment is just wonderful, and gets to the crux of what is right, fair,
decent, moral. Some super wealthy people will always be superficial and greedy, and others
will always be generous, and have profound character and depth.
People who are remembered with the greatest respect, fondness, reverence, and joy, are not
those who have amassed fortunes, but those who have done what they could with their fortunes,
for those who would never have fortunes. Or people who sacrificed for others, if not with
their fortunes, then by other means. It is not desirable to be remembered for being selfish,
greedy, and financially predatory like trump and his ilk.
Aside from the fact that a a massive concentration of wealth is inimical to a functioning
democracy because it inevitably leads to a concentration of power, if the tax code is meant
to give incentives to productive behavior, what is less of an incentive to being productive
than inheriting hundreds of millions of dollars?
I personally knew an heiress from one of the most famous wealthy families of the 20th
century; the name would be familiar. She was a good person, but a drug addict. So was her
brother. No one needs to start life with a hundred million dollars. It's not healthy.
tax and spend is what a government is for. Spending it on infrastructure as opposed to
increasing the already bloated pentagon budget and not on a wall, would be preferable.
And reallocation, so that for instance teaching becomes a viable career choice again, would
be a very useful government task. I don't know whether mr. Coctosin ever worked in the
private industry but if he did he must have seen a lot of waste. Though willful blindness is
of course "so expected from" the right.
"Conficatory taxes on excessive wealth" is a sin tax-a tax on greed. There is only so
much money on person can use in a lifetime if it is to be more than a competitive status and
power symbol and is not given back as an investment to build society and the future.
The numbers-$50 million are HUGE. Anyone, with that kind of money who could resent paying
1% toward the future and toward society is simply, selfishly and sinfully, GREEDY! It's about
time the excessively wealthy, who do not allow their wealth to trickle down as wages, or even
trickle through the economy as investments for the benefit of society, are taxed because it
has become apparent that only taxes will force them to let go of their wealth.
Trump making his tax returns public has nothing to do with IRS staffing. And yes, a better
staffed IRS does a better job of catching tax cheats. (No idea why they never nailed Trump's
father, though.)
We will only have a government for the people if it's a government BY the people. That
means politicians who REALLY are just like you and me, not always very charismatic, not
always your ideal best friend, or a "savior", or common sense spiritual leader such as
Michelle Obama, but instead people who flaws, all while being decent citizens, with a very
clear moral compass, AND the skills and intellectual capacity to know how to design new,
science-based law projects and how to obtain political agreements in DC without even THINKING
of starting to stop implementing already existing law (= shutting down the Executive branch
of government).
Warren would be an excellent Cabinet member. But people vote for President on an emotional
level, and I don't think Warren has that emotional charisma. It's excellent that she is
running and running early, because that way she can set some of the parameters of discussion,
which is what she's doing now.
Just how much money does somebody really need? The Bezos divorce is going to result in two
people having "only" 70 billion dollars each. 1 billion, 10 billion, 70 billion; at some
point, how can you tell? At some point, doesn't it just become a number?
@Yuri Asian Best comment I have read on this subject, Thank you. It should be understood
that the wealthy just don't care and are very un- American. Wealth in our society will equal
slavery for everyone else and it has already begun. See the republican tax plan if you have
any doubts.
Two points: If you add the compound interest forgone on the amount paid in SS taxes I
wonder if the calculation changes. The wealth of the over 65 group is very differentially
distributed, just like wealth in general. Think what the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the
Walmart heirs and Warren Buffet do to that distribution.
Just because Ellen is 70 does not mean she is participating in the relative wealth growth
of the over 65 cohort you note. I imagine with few exceptions most very wealthy people are
over 65, but that does not mean the reverse is true, that most over 65 are wealthy or even
comfortable. For a large number SS is their main source of support, and rampant ageism makes
it very difficult for even healthy over 65 years to find a job to supplement it.
Taxing SS is a form of double taxation. People with high incomes could still be taxed on
their income after excluding SS. Or, since you are so concerned about the people collecting
more in SS than they paid in, taxation could start on all benefits exceeding that figure.
(And you seem totally unconcerned with all the people who collect nothing or much less than
they paid in. If you are worried about one group not being in balance you should be equally
worried about the other group not being in balance.
I am ok with both because I consider SS to be an insurance program. I don't pay income
taxes on my insurance proceeds paid for by premiums on which I did pay taxes.
The shutdown taught a clear lesson: people squarely located in the middle class (in this
case, federal workers) cannot afford to miss a single paycheck.
Add that awareness to the cluelessness of the wealthy who, with the attention brought to
them by their position in the trump administration, put that cluelessness on full display --
and add the awareness that the trump tax break benefitted the wealthy only while saddling the
nation with debt -- put those together, and we will find positive support for what amounts to
a relative pinprick of sacrifice from the ultra wealthy, as proposed by Warren and likeminded
Congresswomen.
American public policy is designed to concentrate wealth at the top and impoverish the
bottom. Progressive taxation is but one measure to correct the economic structure that
results in death and destitution, even among fully employed workers. Health care for all and
living wages are additional measures.
Extreme poverty in America is a result of public policy which further enriches the
wealthy. Course correction is a moral imperative.
It's a giant leap to say that a 2% tax or a higher marginal rate is the confiscation of
wealth. It's also a giant leap imply that only the very wealthy reinvest their money. Where
do you think the dividends and gains in your 401K account go? They are reinvested! The key
point is that many of the very wealthy have used their wealth and influence to change the tax
code and other laws to their benefit. There is zero evidence that a lower marginal tax rate
on the wealthy has any correlation to job creation, but there is a very strong correlation
between lower tax rates and income disparity.
Taxes are the necessary fact of a thriving civilization. When confronted by the trained
mindset of anti-tax rhetoric issuing from a clone of selfish leadership, I simply say; if it
were not for taxes, we'd all be driving on rutted dirt roads and dying young. Tax the rich so
they survive the slings and arrows of discontent they created. They will thank us for it
later.
You already pay a wealth tax, if you own a home. It's called "property tax". Why should
the very wealthy not pay a property tax, too? But in the present condition, they do not, and
can easily hide their wealth from view, and pass it to their heirs without paying any tax.
Which just adds and adds to the concentration of wealth among the few.
Of course it makes perfect sense. Which is why those uber-rich people will not allow this
to happen. They'll do everything they can to shut down Ms. Warren. It's what they do
If I were doing tax policy from scratch, I'd include both the Warren wealth tax, a
progressive income tax culminating with the AOC 70% marginal rate, treat capital gains as
regular income, eliminate the carried interest loophole, and investigate the taxing of all
"non-profits" including religious and political organizations. I would replace the standard
deduction and personal exemption with a universal basic income. I would reduce the military
budget and provide at least a buy-in to medicare.
Anything less that than, I don't consider "radical."
If the Democratic party continues to do nothing to address the problem of the top .1
percemt owning 90 percent of American wealth, we are destined to sit idly by as the
heartbreaking inequities and divisions of this country deepen.... and this means, too, that
we will be doing very little to address the deeper causes of a certain kind of American
desperation and violence.
It's time to address the radically warped system with sensible countermeasures. This is,
in my view, a moderate position that moderate, sensible politicians will promote. Doing
nothing to address this enormous problem is the most radical position of all.
I work and pay taxes and have done so for 40 years. I'm happy to pay taxes, not because
I'm dependent on them, but because I realize a few things that make you uncomfortable:
1. No one does it by themselves; we all rely on others at work, at home and in life; we're
part of society; we are not solo warriors on some mystical heroic island
2. Not everyone is as fortunate as I; I'm glad the poor, the disabled, the unlucky, the
elderly, the uneducated and the unskilled can get a modicum of government assistance when
their chips are own
3. Canadians and Europeans and the Japanese do not suffer from 'dependency' syndrome;
they're hardworking people with healthy market economies who have decent government that
regulate healthcare extortion and corporate extortion to a minimum; it's a pretty humane
arrangement
4. Corporations and CEO's have been redistributing upward for about fifty years; 20:1
CEO:worker pay was the 1960's norm....now a 350:1 ration is common.
5. Tax rates for the rich and corporations have collapsed from the 1950's to 2019; the
right-wing pretends they're high, but they're not. 6. America has the greatest health-care
rip-off in the world at 17% of GDP; it's an international 'free-market' disgrace that no
foreign country would touch a 300-foot pole because it would bankrupt them, just as it
bankrupts Americans.
Keep living in a 1787 time tunnel and see where it gets you. Or buy a calendar...and
evolve.
[Drive toward] Equality is the basis of society; it has always been close to my heart.
Thank you, Paul Krugman, for standing clearly for economic equality.
The purpose of taxes is not only to fund public necessities, but also to encourage society
to behave in a manner which is good for all of society.
Thus, in World War 2 income tax was set quite high, to discourage consumption of scarce
resources.
It is not scapegoating the wealthy to have them pay a proportional share of their wealth
to fund the public good, and to, in a small way, discourage inherited wealth. It is through
our society that they are able to accumulate their wealth, it follows that they should have
incentive to preserve and further that society.
I agree completely with a progressive tax on net wealth. Piketty proposed this in "Capital
in the Twenty-first Century" back in 2014. I'm happy to hear that Elizabeth Warren has picked
up the idea.
The elegance of it is that it does not prevent the wealth-motivated from seeking high
incomes and accumulating a lot of wealth in their lifetime. But it reduces the incentive to
earn an ever-higher income, and it prevents the wealthy from creating wealth dynasties.
And consider this: even a 90% tax on inherited wealth would mean, for someone who
accumulated a $10 billion estate, that their heirs would receive a $1 billion inheritance as
a grubstake. Not a bad start in life, if I say so myself.
Almost any tax measure to re-distribute wealth is appropriate in a nation that values
economic justice. However, answering the question of just how people accumulate billions,
while so many others struggle so hard to remain in place. First, it is necessary to dispense
with the fiction that the wealthy earned it so let them keep it.
No one person or one family EARNS billions. The hard work necessary to create wealth
belongs to many hard working and creative people and to numerous public institutions that
make its creation possible.
Both are entitled to a fair share of the wealth they help to create. It is the laws and
even traditions that allow one individual to CAPTURE and keep so much wealth. And those laws
and traditions need to be changed.
Start with a Living Wage plus full benefits for all workers and salary scales that are
reasonable, not the 1:300 that some CEO's currently enjoy. End golden parachutes for retiring
or even fired executives and tax unearned income at the same rate as earned income. Equal
opportunity cannot stand without economic justice.
No, part of the purpose of taxes should be to counteract the normal power of capital
that causes the formation of massive personal fortunes which distort the economy relied on by
all. It's not scapegoating to try to put our economy back in balance, to curtail its division
into the Main St. economy, currently starved by that wealth division so heavily favoring the
fabulously wealthy, and the shadow economy of Wall St. gambling, commodity market
manipulation, and asset ownership.
The DNC takes Deep State to a whole new level. They have this thing called "Superdelegates",
which has veto power over the little people.
The SJWs and Bernie bots may be too dumb to know who their real daddies are, but the
Superdelegates know exactly whose ring they need to kiss to regain power: the same globalist
capitalist Davos scums who now have Trump exactly where they want him, between their legs
sucking up while busy implementing their agendas of endless wars and endless immigration.
The Superdelegates will never let things get too far with the socialists, they're good for
entertainment, to give off the pretense of a real race. I'm betting my money on Kirsten
Gillibrand -- Dems know if there's a woman who could beat Trump, she needs to be a blonde.
Uncle Joe has too many skeletons in his closet. It's just a matter of time before the
cockroaches come out of the woodwork and #MeToo him into the orbits.
What's wrong with Tulsi's fundraisers? They are not PAC money and $125/plate is not that
expensive. Tulsi has a huge disadvantage, because she isn't getting any coverage. Tulsi's
dinners are not sponsored by Corporate money.
Warren said to Cenk Uygur(in a NEW interview!) that her refusal of corporate donations
only extends to the primaries. She said [we] need corporate donations- or as she calls them-
"everything in our arsenal to beat Trump". Still want to lump her in with Bernie?
Never Completely Trust anyone, so thoroughly research everyone before supporting anyone on
anything to be fully aware of who benefits and how, since you may or may not benefit at all
11:16
hours Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, 26 February 2019
Liz Warren is talking about what Bernie talked about in '16. I'm concerned that she has
progressive rhetoric but centrist instincts. Her voting record isn't as progressive as I
believe is necessary. She needs to be able to withstand scrutiny if she hopes to attract
progressive voters. Rhetoric and platitudes aren't enough... #LeadersNeedToLeadByExample
I don't think I'm alone in finding a big difference that was not mentioned in the video.
While I greatly appreciate Elizabeth Warren, and those clips you showed from earlier today
were very encouraging, there is just a quality Bernie and Tulsi share that is very rare among
politicians. Something about the way they speak, their past actions, and ways they don't
speak, just hit home really hard a believability that they are extremely genuine and from the
heart. I see some of this from EW, but, Bernie and Tulsi are just incredibly impressive in
regard to this quality... it doesn't feel like supporting a politician, it feels like
supporting a kind of way of being and appreciation for what we all are so many of us try to
make our way of life. fwiw, I think it's also a big part of AOC's appeal.
Elizabeth Warren is a cautious, cowardish (her behaviour during 2016 was disgusting), but pretty energetic careerist. Her views will
quickly change under pressure, so good talking points will never translated into real policies.
The fact the wealthy control the USA is not news. This is the fact of life and always be. the
question is how to reach optimal middle point when interest of the bottom 80% standard of living
do not deteriorate.
Probably close to Barack Obama who also utters all right things during election complain and then blatantly betrayed his
voters.
She clearly is the top anti-corruption candidate and will expose the level of corruption in
Washington. So she is preferable to Kamala Harris and other establishment candidates.
The fight between organized and rich few and unorganized and poor many became hotter right
now. But what is the power base of anti-neoliberal movement. That can be only trade unions, which
were decimated. So the first step might be to restore the power of unions.
Notable quotes:
"... Elizabeth Warren is a progressive with no backbone who supports the military industrial complex ..."
"... Warren missed her moment when she failed us in 2016. She'd be VP today, and thinking about running in 2024. She shied away and instead, we have Trump ..."
Elizabeth Warren is weak. She did not have the courage to stand up to the Clinton machine
in 2016 when she could have made a difference by standing up against corruption. Now she is
waffling on what it means when she says she supports Medicare for All, as now she is open to
tweaking the Republican "Affordable" Care Act. She won't fight for us. We need real fighters.
We need Bernie and Tulsi.
I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Elizabeth Warren but in the last few years
she's shown that she's not as reliable as i thought she was. She's way to soft when it comes
to calling out the corruption in the dem party. She's also shown she's more willing to bend
to the will of the Dem establishment and that is not the kind of President we need right now.
I'll be posting a video on her campaign soon & unfortunately I'll have to tear into her a
lot more than you did in this video
Elizabeth Warren is a progressive with no backbone who supports the military industrial
complex. She will lose to Trump if she gets the nominee. Tulsi is a real progressive with
balls. #Tulsi2020
Warren missed her moment when she failed us in 2016. She'd be VP today, and thinking about
running in 2024. She shied away and instead, we have Trump.
I don't think she has the ability
to motivate she could have had back then. I don't think she has the savvy to beat Trump. We
need Tulsi or Bernie, the rest would lose in the general.
tomjulio2002, 1 week ago
Sorry but there is no comparison between Warren and Sanders.
Warren is either at best a coward (see primary 2016) or at worst a con (at lot of words but no action when it matters). So
not much will change with her, except that Trump would be gone. Then we will get a worse than Trump next time around when
people get even more disappointed and desperate.
For Sanders, you know for sure that he means what he says and that he intends to try.
The question is whether he will have the courage to go for it when the going gets tough. Or will he buckle like he did at
the 2016 convention thinking best to get half a loaf than risking to get nothing.
With Sanders, there is at least a chance (albeit a slim one in my opinion) of big changes happening on the issues like
Medicare for all, Green New Deal, Free public college...
For me, Warren is a no go.
Also Gabbard is clearly a fighter but I am still hazy on some of her positions. But I will take her before I even take
another look at Warren (if somehow Warren becomes the nominee).
Weren't
superdelegates people who, in the era before cars, would represent groups who are unable to travel to the voting stations
(long distances).
The superdelegates have the "right" to change the vote because their candidate could die while the
superdelegate is traveling. or any major development.
When they return to cast the vote they have a choice.
In the 21st
century it is unacceptable to keep such traditions and policies.
CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party
understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do
things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters
very well.
VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I
don't like the Democratic Party's policies.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize
who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to
serve those voters.
Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who
disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster
for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children.
They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't
necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by
the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years?
I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively,
I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks.
But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots,
the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they
realize who their own voters are.
Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who
their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.
CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a
substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing
in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect
them.
VANCE: Yes.
CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded
wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of
nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."
VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives
in D.C. I know you live in D.C.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work
on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of
everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican
candidates these days.
"... Why does the USA care about internal Venezuelan politics? Because it cares about every country's politics and demands every country bow down and kneel to the USA. The voters, aka morons, support this, both liberal and right wing, and have for generations. ..."
"... The morons pay their taxes to meddle in other countries and for a giant military to slaughter people who do not obey. ..."
Venezuela invasion thing is double-faceted: a trap for Trump & a bluff. if the
invasion is, then bye-bye 2020 election, mission accomplished. if no invasion on sight then
the bluff of Pompeo-Bolton-Abrams is called & the 2020 reelection assured. Venezuela in
the role of bait.
The real issue lies in the voting class which cowers in fear all day long and
seeks saviors every four years via rigged circus. Trump = Obama = CIA meddling in every
country. Presidents never change, only the perception of the morons changes.
Why does the USA care about internal Venezuelan politics? Because it cares about every
country's politics and demands every country bow down and kneel to the USA. The voters, aka
morons, support this, both liberal and right wing, and have for generations.
The morons pay their taxes to meddle in other countries and for a giant military to
slaughter people who do not obey. Freedom at the point of a gun. Nothing quite says
democracy like having the US president tell the Venezuelans how to run their country.
"... You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. ..."
"... Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means. ..."
"... Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party. ..."
"... Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world. ..."
"... Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/ ..."
"... The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course. ..."
"... Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys. ..."
"... It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so ..."
"... If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. ..."
"... See also this primer on Mueller's MO. ..."
"... The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished. a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians. ..."
"... At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population? ..."
"... The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. ..."
"... Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry. ..."
For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had
somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.
An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business
contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian
click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media.
Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence
that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump.
Finally the conspiracy theory has run out of steam. Russiagate
is finished :
After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016
election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats
and Republicans on the committee.
...
Democrats and other Trump opponents have long believed that special counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional investigators would
unearth new and more explosive evidence of Trump campaign coordination with Russians. Mueller may yet do so, although Justice
Department and Congressional sources say they believe that he, too, is close to wrapping up his investigation.
Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies
were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the
dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair.
In a recent statement House leader Nancy Pelosi was reduced
to accuse Trump campaign officials of doing their job:
"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to
influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...
No one called her out for spouting such nonsense.
Russiagate created a lot of damage.
The alleged Russian influence campaign that never happened was used to
install censorship on social media. It was used
to undermine the election of progressive Democrats. The weapon salesmen used it to push for more NATO aggression against Russia.
Maria Butina, an innocent Russian woman interested in good relation with the United States, was
held in solitary confinement
(recommended) until she signed a paper which claims that she was involved in a conspiracy.
In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out
of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train continue from
there.
Posted by b on February 12, 2019 at 01:38 PM |
Permalink
Comments next
page " Legally, Maria Butina was suborned into signing a false declaration. If there were the rule of law, such party or
parties that suborned her would be in gaol. Considering Mueller's involvement with Lockerbie, I am not holding my breath. FWIW the
Swiss company that made the timers allegedly involved in Lockerbie have some
comments of its own .
I will be really glad when this 'get Russia' craziness is over, but I suspect even if the Mueller investigation has nothing,
all the same creeps will be pulling out the stops to generate something... Skripal, Integrity Initiative, and etc. etc. stuff
like this just doesn't go away overnight or with the end of this 'investigation'... folks are looking for red meat i tell ya!
as for Maria Butina - i look forward to reading the article.. that was a travesty of justice but the machine moves on, mowing
down anyone in it's way... she was on the receiving end of all the paranoia that i have come to associate with the western msm
at this point...
Hillary's loss is actually best explained as her throwing the election to Trump . The Deep State wanted a nationalist
to win as that would best help meet the challenge from Russia and China - a challenge that they had been slow to recognize.
= ... to smear Wikileaks as a Russian agent
The DNC leak is best explained as a CIA false flag.
= ... to remove and smear Michael Flynn
Trump said that he fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence but Flynn's conversations with the Russian Ambassador after Obama threw
them out for "meddling" in the US election was an embarrassment to the Administration as Putin's Putin's decision not to respond
was portrayed as favoritism toward the Trump Administration.
You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in
the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. This is typical behavior for conspiracy
theorists.
I hope that Russiagate is indeed "finished", but I think it needs to be draped with garlic-clove necklaces, shot up with silver
bullets, sprinkled with holy water, and a wooden stake driven through its black heart just to make sure.
I don't dispute the logical argument B. presents, but it may be too dispassionately rational. I know that the Russiagate
proponents and enthralled supporters of the concept are too invested psychologically in this surrealistic fantasy to let go, even
if the official outcome reluctantly admits that there's no "there" there.
The Democratic Party, one of the major partners mounting the Russophobic psy-op, has already resolved to turn Democratic committee
chairmen loose to dog the Trump administration with hearings aggressively flogging any and all matters that discredit and undermine
Trump-- his business connections, social liaisons, etc.
They may hope to find the Holy Grail: the elusive "bombshell" that "demands" impeachment, i.e., some crime or illicit conduct
so heinous that the public will stand for another farcical impeachment proceeding. But I reckon that the Dems prefer the "soft"
impeachment of harassing Trump with hostile hearings in hopes of destroying his 2020 electability with the death of a thousand
innuendoes and guilt-by-association.
Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt
to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate
the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means.
Put more succinctly, I fear that Russiagate won't be finished until Rachel Maddow says it's finished. ;)
Once a hypothesis is fixed in people's minds, whether true or not, it's hard to get them to let go of it. And let's not forget
how many times the narrative changed (and this is true in the Skripal case as well), with all past facts vanishing to accommodate
a new narrative.
So I, like others, expect the fake scandal to continue while many, many other real crimes (the US attempted
coup in Venezuela and the genocidal war in Yemen, for instance) continue unabated.
Putin solicits public input for essential national
policy goals . If ever there was a template to follow for an actual MAGAgenda, Putin's Russia provides one. While US politicos
argue over what is essentially Bantha Pudu, Russians are hard at work improving their nation which includes restructuring their
economy.
Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI,
and within the entire Democrat Party.
I very much doubt it it is over. Trump is corrupt and has links to corrupt Russians. Collusion, maybe not, but several
stinking individuals are in the frame for, guess what - ...bring it on... The fact that Hilary was arguably even worse (a point
made ad-nauseum on here) is frankly irrelevant. The vilification of Trump will not affect the warmongers efforts. He is a useful
idiot
for a take on the alternative reality some are living in
emptywheel has an article up on the nbc link b provides and the article on butina is discussed in the comments section...
as i said - they are looking for red meat and will not be happy until they get some... they are completely zonkers...
Blooming Barricade , Feb 12, 2019 2:55:18 PM |
link
Now that this racket has been admitted as such, I expect all of the media outlets that devoted banner headlines, hundreds of thousands
of hours of cable TV time, thousands of trees, and free speech online to immediately fire all of their journalists and appoint
Glenn Greenwald as the publisher of the New York Times, Michael Tracey at the Post, Aaron Matte at the Guardian, and Max Blumenthal
at the Daily Beast.
Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this
to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity
Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western
world.
The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly
4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most
of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course.
Then of course Russia has to be surrounded by NATO should they try and take over Europe by surging through the Fulda gap./s
Then of course there are the professional pundits who have built careers on anti Russian propaganda, Rachel Maddow for instance
who earns 30,000$ per day to spew anti Russian nonsense.
Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically
justified by its diabolical policies.
I'm sorry b is so down on Conspiracy Theories, since they reveal quite real staged homicidal false flag operations of US power.
Feeding into the stigmatizing of the truth about reality is not in the interests of the earth's people.
somehow I see this "revelation: tied to Barr's approaching tenure. I think they (FBI/DOJ) didn't want his involvement in their
noodle soup of an investigation and the best way to accomplish that was to end it themselves. I also suspect that a deal has been
made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone.
So we will see no investigation of Hillary, her 650,000
emails or the many crimes they detailed (according to NYPD investigation of Weiner's laptop) and the US will continue to be at
war all day, every day. Team Swamp rules.
Meanwhile, MSM is prepping its readers for the possibility that the Mueller report will never be released to us proles. If that's
the case, I'm sure nobody will try to use innuendo to suggest it actually contains explosive revelations after all...
Harry, its vitally important as the US desperately wants to keep Europe under its thumb and to stop this European army which
means Europe lead by Paris and Berlin becomes a world power. Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia is to keep it out of the
EU bloc.
Well, the liberal conspiracy car crash ensured downmarket Mussolini a second term, it appears...Hard Brexit Tories also look likely
to win thanks to centrist sabatoge of the left. You reap what you sow, corporate presstitutes!
Sane people have predicted the end of Russiagate almost as many times as insane people have predicted that the "smoking gun that
will get rid of Trump" has been found. And yet the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds on, while social media is more and more censored.
I expect it all to continue until the 2020 election circus winds up into full-throated mode, and no one talks about anything but
the next puppet to be appointed. Oops, I mean "elected".
You also need to behead the corpse, stuff the mouth with a lemon and then place the head down in the coffin with the body in
supine (facing up) position. Weight the coffin with stones and wild roses and toss it into a fast-flowing river.
Russiagate won't be finished until a wall is built around Capitol Hill and all its inhabitants and worker bees declared insane
by a properly functioning court of law.
I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone. So we will see no
investigation of Hillary ...
Underlying your perspective is the assumption that USA is a democracy where a populist "outsider" could be elected President,
Yet you also believe that Hillary and the Deep State have the power to manipulate government and the intelligence agencies and
propose a "conspiracy theory" based on that power.
Isn't it more likely that Trump made it clear (behind closed doors, of course) that he was amenable to the goals of the Deep
State and that the bogus investigation was merely done to: 1) cover their own election meddling; 2) eliminate threats like Flynn
and Assange/Wikileaks; 3) anti-Russian propaganda?
Dowd, Trump's former lawyer on Russiagate stated there may not even be a report. If this is the case then the Zionist rulers have
gotten to Mueller who no doubt figured out that the election collusion breadcrumbs don't lead to Putin, they lead to Netanyahu
and Zionist billionaire friends! So Mueller may have to come up with a nothing burger to hide the truth.
B is the only alternative media blogger I've followed for a significant amount of time without becoming disenfranchised. Not because
he has no blind spot - his is just one I can deal with... optimism.
I will believe Russiagate is finished when expelled Russian staff gets back, when the US returns the seized Russian properties,
when the consulate is Seattle reopens and when USA issues formal apology to Russia.
Posted by: hopehely | Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM |
link
Nobody has ever advanced the tiniest shred of credible evidence that 'Russia' or its government at any level was in any way implicated
either in Wikileaks' acquisition of the DNC and Podesta emails or in any form of interference with the Presidential election.
This has been going on for three years and not once has anything like evidence surfaced.
On the other hand there has been an abundance of evidence that those alleging Russian involvement consistently refused to listen
to explore the facts.
Incredibly, the DNC computers were never examined by the FBI or any other agency resembling an official police agency. Instead
the notorious Crowdstrike professionally russophobic and caught red handed faking data for the Ukrainians against Russia were
commissioned to produce a 'report.'
Nobody with any sense would have credited anything about Russiagate after that happened.
Thgen there was the proof, from VIPS and Bill Binney (?) that the computers were not hacked at all but that the information
was taken by thumbdrive. A theory which not only Wikileaks but several witnesses have offered to prove.
Not one of them has been contacted by the FBI, Mueller or anyone else "investigating."
In reality the charges from the first were ludicrous on their face. There is, as b has proved and every new day's news attests,
not the slightest reason why anyone in the Russian government should have preferred Trump over Clinton. And that is saying something
because they are pretty well indistinguishable. And neither has the morals or brains of an adolescent groundhog.
Russiagate is over, alright, The Nothingburger is empty. But that means nothing in this 'civilisation': it will be recorded
in the history books, still to be written, by historians still in diapers, that "The 2016 Presidential election, which ended in
the controversial defeat of Hillary Clinton, was heavily influenced by Russian agents who hacked ..etc etc"
What will not be remembered is that every single email released was authentic. And that within those troves of correspondence
there was enough evidence of criminality by Clinton and her campaign to fill a prison camp.
Another thing that will not be recalled is that there was once a young enthusiastic man, working for the DNC, who was mugged
one evening after work and killed.
The 'no collusion' result will only spur the 'beginning of the end' baboons to shout even more, they'll never stop until they
die in their beds or the plebs of the Republic made them adore the street lamp posts, you'll see. The former is by far more likely,
the unwashed of American have never had a penchant for foreign affairs except for the few spasms like Vietnam.
There was collusion alright but the only Russians who helped Trump get elected and were in on the collusion are citizens of ISRAEL
FIRST, likewise for the American billionaires who put Trump in the power perch. ISRAEL FIRST.
That's why Trump is on giant billboards in Israel shaking hands with the Yahoo. Trump is higher in the polls in Israel than
in the U.S. If it weren't that the Zionist upper crust need Trump doing their dirty work in America, like trying today get rid
of Rep. Omar Ilhan, then Trump would win the elections in Ziolandia or Ziostan by a landslide cause he's been better for the Joowish
state than all preceding Presidents put together. Mazel tov to them bullshet for the rest of us servile mass in the vassal West
and Palestinians the most shafted class ever. Down with Venezuela and Iran, up with oil and gas. The billionare shysters' and
Trump's payola is getting closer. Onward AZ Empire!
He proved himself so easy to troll during the election. It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all
along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.
At least Germany has the good sense not to throw taxpayer money at the F-35.
German F-35 decision sacrifices NATO capability for Franco-German industrial cooperation I don't know what they have
in mind with a proposed airplane purchase. If they need fighters, buy or lease Sweden's Gripen. If attack airplanes are what they're
after, go to Boeing and get some brand new F-15X models. If the prickly French are agreeable to build a 6th generation aircraft,
that would be worth a try.
Regarding Rachel Maddow, I recently had an encounter with a relative who told me 1) I visited too many oddball sites and 2)
he considered Rachel M. to be the most reliable news person in existence. I think we're talking "true believer" here. :)
It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate
they could manipulate.
Considering how those "intelligence agencies" are hard pressed to find their own tails, even if you allow them to use both
hands, it would surprise me.
That Trump would turn out to be a tub of jello in more than just a physical way has been a surprise to an awful lot of us.
Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting
peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their
Government Lackeys.
It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made
that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do
it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it
to be so
Allowed the bipartisan support for the clamp down on alt media with censorship by social media (Deep State Tools) and funded
by the Ministry of Truth set up by Obama in his last days in office to under the false pretense of protecting us from foreign
governments interference in elections (except Israel of course) . Similar agencies have been set up or planned to be in other
countries followig the US example such as UK, France, Russia, etc.
Did anyone really expect Mr "Cover It Up " Mueller to find anything? Mueller is Deep State all the way and Trump is as well,
not withstanding the "Fake Wrestling " drama that they are bitter enemies. All the surveillance done over the past 2-3 decades
would have so much dirt on the Trumpet they could silence him forever . Trump knew that going in and I sometimes wonder if he
was pressured to run as a condition to avoid prosecution. Pretty sure every President since Carter has been "Kompromat"
If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO
Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation,
propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Russians and likely at the behest of the Russian state interfered and it was fair payback for Yeltsin's election. It is time to
move on but not in feigned ignorance of what was done. Was it "outcome" affecting, possibly, but not clearly and if the US electoral
college and electoral system generally is so decrepit that a second level power in the world can influence then its the US's fault.
It's not like the 2000 election wasn't a warning shot about the rottenness of system and a system that doesn't understand a
warning shot deserves pretty much what it gets. But there's enough non-hype evidence of acts and intent to say yes, the Russians
tried and may have succeeded. They certainly are acting guilty enough. but still close the book move and move on to Trump's 'real'
crimes which were done without a Russian assist.
I seem to recall former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray saying that it was not a hack and that he had been handed
a thumb drive in a field near American University by a disgruntled Democrat whistleblower. Further, I seem to recall William Binney,
former NSA Technical Leader for intelligence, conducting an experiment to show that internet speeds at the time would not allow
the information to be hacked - they knew the size of the files and the period over which they were downloaded. Plus, Seth Rich.
So why does anyone even believe it was a hack, @32 THN?
Just another comment re Mueller. There is a great documentary by (Dutch, not Israeli---different person) Gideon Levy, Lockerbie
Revisited. The narration is in Dutch, but the interviews are in English, and there is a small segment of a German broadcast. The
documentary ends abruptly where one set of FBI personnel contradict statements by another set of FBI personnel. See also
this primer on Mueller's MO.
reply to Les 42
"It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they
could manipulate."
Not the intelligence agencies, the Military IMO. They knew HC for what she was; horrifically corrupt and,again IMO,they know
she is insane.
They saw and I think still see Trump as someone they could work with, remember Rogers (Navy) of the NSA going to him immediately
once he was elected? That was the Military protecting him as best they could.
They IMO have kept him alive and as long as he doesn't send any troops into "real" wars, they will keep on keeping him alive.
This doesn't mean Trump hasn't gone over to the Dark Side, just that no military action will take place that the military command
doesn't fully support.
Again, I could be wrong, he could be backed by fiends from Patagonia for all I really know:)
The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the
democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to
increase military spending; and more, more, more war.
Boy, I hope Jackrabbit sees this. Everyone knows I believe Trump is the anointed chosen of the Zionist 1%. There was no Russia
collusion; it was Zionist collusion with a Russian twist...
Oh yeah! Forgot to mention the latest. Trump is asking Kim to provide a list of his nuclear scientists! Before Kim acts on this
request, he should call up the Iranian government for advise 'cause they have lots of experience and can warn Kim of what will
happen to each of those scientists. They'll be put on a kill-list and will be extrajudicially wacked as in executed. Can you believe
the chutzpah? Trump must think Kim is really stupid to fall for that one!
Aye! The thought of six more years of Zionist pandering Trump. Barf-inducing prospect is too tame.
The view from the hermitage is, we are in the age of distractions. Russiagate will be replaced with one of a litany of distractions,
purely designed to keep us off target. The target being, corruption, vote rigging, illegal wars, war crimes, overthrowing sovereign
governments, and political assasinations, both at home and abroad. Those so distracted, will focus on sillyness; not the genuine
danger afoot around the planet. Get used to it; it's become the new normal.
@76Hw
I have yet to read anything more delusional, nay, utterly preposterous. Methinks you over-project too much. Even Trump would have
a belly-ache laugh reading that sheeple spiel. You're the type that sees the giant billboard of Zionist Trump and Yahoo shaking
hands and drones on and on that our lying eyes deceive us and it's really Trump playing 4-D chess. I suppose when he tried to
pressure Omar Ilhan into resigning her seat in Congress yesterday, that too was reverse psychology?
Trump instagramed the billboard pic, he tweeted it, he probably pasted it on his wall; maybe with your kind of wacky, Trump
infatuation, you should too!
Russiagate is finished because Mueller discovered an embarrassing fact: The collusion was and always will be with Israel. Here's
Trump professing his endless love for Zionism:
Trump Resign
Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished.
a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the
lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians.
Most designs of armed nation states provide the designers with information feedback and the designers use that information
to appoint more obedient politicians and generals to run things, and to improve the design to better serve the designers. The
armed rule making structure is designed to give the designers complete control over those targeted to be the governed. Why so
stupid the governed? ; always they allow themselves to be manipulated like sheep.
When 10 angry folks approach you with two pieces of ropes: one to throw over the tree branch under which your horse will be
supporting you while they tie the noose around your neck and the other shorter piece of rope to tie your hands behind ..your back
you need at that point to make your words count , if five of the people are black and five are white. all you need do is
say how smart the blacks are, and how stupid the whites are, as the two groups fight each other you manage your escape. democrat
vs republican= divide to conquer. gun, no gun = divide to conquer, HRC vs DJT = divide to conquer, abortion, no abortion = divide
to conquer, Trump is a Russian planted in a high level USA position of power = divide to conquer, They were all in on it together,,
Muller was in the white house to keep the media supplied with XXX, to keep the law enforcement agencies in the loop, and to advise
trump so things would not get out of hand ( its called Manipulation and the adherents to the economic system called Zionism
For the record, Zionism is not related to race, religion or intelligence. Zionism is a system of economics that take's no captives,
its adherents must own everything, must destroy and decimate all actual or imaginary competition, for Zionist are the owners and
masters of everything? Zionism is about power, absolute power, monopoly ownership and using governments everywhere to abuse the
governed. Zionism has many adherents, whites, blacks, browns, Christians, Jews, Islamist, Indians, you name it among each class
of person and walk of life can be found persons who subscribe to the idea that they, and only they, should own everything, and
when those of us, that are content to be the governed let them, before the kill and murder us, they usually end up owning everything.
1. why the Joint non nuclear agreement with Iran and the other nuclear power nations, that prevented Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, was trashed? Someone needs to be able to say Iran is developing ..., at the right time.
2. Why Netanyohu made public a video that claimed Iran was developing nuclear stuff in violation of the Iran non nuclear agreement,
and everybody laughed,
3. Why the nuclear non proliferation agreement with Russia, that terminated the costly useless arms race a decade ago, has
been recently terminated, to reestablish the nuclear arms race, no apparent reason was given the implication might be Russia could
be a target, but
4. why it might make sense to give nukes to Saudi Arabia or some other rogue nation, and
5. why no one is allowed to have nuclear weapons except the Zionist owned and controlled nation states.
Statement: Zionism is an economic system that requires the elimination of all competition of whatever kind. It is a winner
get's all, takes no prisoners, targets all who would threaten or be a challenge or a threat; does not matter if the threat is
in in oil and gas, technology or weapons as soon as a possibility exist, the principles of Zionism would require that it be taken
out, decimated, and destroyed and made where never again it could even remotely be a threat to the Empire, that Zionism demands..
Hypothesis: A claim that another is developing nuclear weapon capabilities is sufficient to take that other out?
I am glad that most commenters understand that Russiagate will not go away. But the majority appear to miss the real reason. Russiagate
is not an accusation, it is the state of mind.
At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on
decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already
brainwashed population?
The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away
from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. Of course, the most ironic in the affair is that it is the so called
US "intellectuals", academics and other assorted cretins who are the most fervent proponents. If you were wondering how Russia
can make such amazing defensive weapons that US can only deny exist and wet dream of having, there is your answer. It is the state
of mind. The whole of US establishment are legends in their on lunch time and totally delusional about the reality surrounding
them - both Russiagate and MAGA cretins, no report can help the Russiagate nation.
Finally, I am thinking of that crazy and ugly professor bitch from the British Cambridge University who gives her lectures
naked to protest something or other. I am so lucky that I do not have to go to a Western university ever again. What a catastrophic
decline! No Brexit can help the Skripal nation.
Russiagate is finished, but is DJT also among the rubble?
Hardly any money for the border wall and still lingering in the ME?
If Hoarsewhisperer proves to be correct above re: DJT, he will really have to knock our socks off before election 2020. To
do this he will have to unequivocally and unceremoniously withdraw from the MENA and Afghanistan and possibly declare a National
Emergency for more money for the wall.
The problem is, when he does this, he will look impulsively dangerous and this may harm his mystique to the lemmings who need
a president to be more "presidential."
My money is on status quo all the way to 2020 and the rethugz hoping the Dems will eat their own in an orgy of warring identities.
The collusion story may be faltering, but the blame for Russia poisoning the Skripals lives on. The other night on The News Hour,
"Judy" led off the program with this: "It has been almost a year since Kremlin intelligence officers attempted to kill a Russian
defector in the British city of Salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. That attack, and the subsequent death of a British
woman, scared away tourists and shoppers, but authorities and residents are working to get the town's economy back on track. Special
correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports."
Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others,
the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry
of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry.
Here is one recent example. You know the measles outbreak in the US Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Russians. How do we know.
A government funded research grant. The study found that 899 tweets caused people to doubt vaccines. Looks like money is
to be had even by academics for the right results.
"... You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. ..."
"... Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means. ..."
"... Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party. ..."
"... Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world. ..."
"... Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/ ..."
"... The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course. ..."
"... Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys. ..."
"... It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so ..."
"... If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. ..."
"... See also this primer on Mueller's MO. ..."
"... The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished. a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians. ..."
"... At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population? ..."
"... The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. ..."
"... Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry. ..."
For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had
somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.
An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business
contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian
click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media.
Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence
that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump.
Finally the conspiracy theory has run out of steam. Russiagate
is finished :
After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016
election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats
and Republicans on the committee.
...
Democrats and other Trump opponents have long believed that special counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional investigators would
unearth new and more explosive evidence of Trump campaign coordination with Russians. Mueller may yet do so, although Justice
Department and Congressional sources say they believe that he, too, is close to wrapping up his investigation.
Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies
were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the
dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair.
In a recent statement House leader Nancy Pelosi was reduced
to accuse Trump campaign officials of doing their job:
"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to
influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...
No one called her out for spouting such nonsense.
Russiagate created a lot of damage.
The alleged Russian influence campaign that never happened was used to
install censorship on social media. It was used
to undermine the election of progressive Democrats. The weapon salesmen used it to push for more NATO aggression against Russia.
Maria Butina, an innocent Russian woman interested in good relation with the United States, was
held in solitary confinement
(recommended) until she signed a paper which claims that she was involved in a conspiracy.
In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out
of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train continue from
there.
Posted by b on February 12, 2019 at 01:38 PM |
Permalink
Comments next
page " Legally, Maria Butina was suborned into signing a false declaration. If there were the rule of law, such party or
parties that suborned her would be in gaol. Considering Mueller's involvement with Lockerbie, I am not holding my breath. FWIW the
Swiss company that made the timers allegedly involved in Lockerbie have some
comments of its own .
I will be really glad when this 'get Russia' craziness is over, but I suspect even if the Mueller investigation has nothing,
all the same creeps will be pulling out the stops to generate something... Skripal, Integrity Initiative, and etc. etc. stuff
like this just doesn't go away overnight or with the end of this 'investigation'... folks are looking for red meat i tell ya!
as for Maria Butina - i look forward to reading the article.. that was a travesty of justice but the machine moves on, mowing
down anyone in it's way... she was on the receiving end of all the paranoia that i have come to associate with the western msm
at this point...
Hillary's loss is actually best explained as her throwing the election to Trump . The Deep State wanted a nationalist
to win as that would best help meet the challenge from Russia and China - a challenge that they had been slow to recognize.
= ... to smear Wikileaks as a Russian agent
The DNC leak is best explained as a CIA false flag.
= ... to remove and smear Michael Flynn
Trump said that he fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence but Flynn's conversations with the Russian Ambassador after Obama threw
them out for "meddling" in the US election was an embarrassment to the Administration as Putin's Putin's decision not to respond
was portrayed as favoritism toward the Trump Administration.
You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in
the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. This is typical behavior for conspiracy
theorists.
I hope that Russiagate is indeed "finished", but I think it needs to be draped with garlic-clove necklaces, shot up with silver
bullets, sprinkled with holy water, and a wooden stake driven through its black heart just to make sure.
I don't dispute the logical argument B. presents, but it may be too dispassionately rational. I know that the Russiagate
proponents and enthralled supporters of the concept are too invested psychologically in this surrealistic fantasy to let go, even
if the official outcome reluctantly admits that there's no "there" there.
The Democratic Party, one of the major partners mounting the Russophobic psy-op, has already resolved to turn Democratic committee
chairmen loose to dog the Trump administration with hearings aggressively flogging any and all matters that discredit and undermine
Trump-- his business connections, social liaisons, etc.
They may hope to find the Holy Grail: the elusive "bombshell" that "demands" impeachment, i.e., some crime or illicit conduct
so heinous that the public will stand for another farcical impeachment proceeding. But I reckon that the Dems prefer the "soft"
impeachment of harassing Trump with hostile hearings in hopes of destroying his 2020 electability with the death of a thousand
innuendoes and guilt-by-association.
Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt
to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate
the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means.
Put more succinctly, I fear that Russiagate won't be finished until Rachel Maddow says it's finished. ;)
Once a hypothesis is fixed in people's minds, whether true or not, it's hard to get them to let go of it. And let's not forget
how many times the narrative changed (and this is true in the Skripal case as well), with all past facts vanishing to accommodate
a new narrative.
So I, like others, expect the fake scandal to continue while many, many other real crimes (the US attempted
coup in Venezuela and the genocidal war in Yemen, for instance) continue unabated.
Putin solicits public input for essential national
policy goals . If ever there was a template to follow for an actual MAGAgenda, Putin's Russia provides one. While US politicos
argue over what is essentially Bantha Pudu, Russians are hard at work improving their nation which includes restructuring their
economy.
Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI,
and within the entire Democrat Party.
I very much doubt it it is over. Trump is corrupt and has links to corrupt Russians. Collusion, maybe not, but several
stinking individuals are in the frame for, guess what - ...bring it on... The fact that Hilary was arguably even worse (a point
made ad-nauseum on here) is frankly irrelevant. The vilification of Trump will not affect the warmongers efforts. He is a useful
idiot
for a take on the alternative reality some are living in
emptywheel has an article up on the nbc link b provides and the article on butina is discussed in the comments section...
as i said - they are looking for red meat and will not be happy until they get some... they are completely zonkers...
Blooming Barricade , Feb 12, 2019 2:55:18 PM |
link
Now that this racket has been admitted as such, I expect all of the media outlets that devoted banner headlines, hundreds of thousands
of hours of cable TV time, thousands of trees, and free speech online to immediately fire all of their journalists and appoint
Glenn Greenwald as the publisher of the New York Times, Michael Tracey at the Post, Aaron Matte at the Guardian, and Max Blumenthal
at the Daily Beast.
Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this
to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity
Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western
world.
The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly
4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most
of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course.
Then of course Russia has to be surrounded by NATO should they try and take over Europe by surging through the Fulda gap./s
Then of course there are the professional pundits who have built careers on anti Russian propaganda, Rachel Maddow for instance
who earns 30,000$ per day to spew anti Russian nonsense.
Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically
justified by its diabolical policies.
I'm sorry b is so down on Conspiracy Theories, since they reveal quite real staged homicidal false flag operations of US power.
Feeding into the stigmatizing of the truth about reality is not in the interests of the earth's people.
somehow I see this "revelation: tied to Barr's approaching tenure. I think they (FBI/DOJ) didn't want his involvement in their
noodle soup of an investigation and the best way to accomplish that was to end it themselves. I also suspect that a deal has been
made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone.
So we will see no investigation of Hillary, her 650,000
emails or the many crimes they detailed (according to NYPD investigation of Weiner's laptop) and the US will continue to be at
war all day, every day. Team Swamp rules.
Meanwhile, MSM is prepping its readers for the possibility that the Mueller report will never be released to us proles. If that's
the case, I'm sure nobody will try to use innuendo to suggest it actually contains explosive revelations after all...
Harry, its vitally important as the US desperately wants to keep Europe under its thumb and to stop this European army which
means Europe lead by Paris and Berlin becomes a world power. Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia is to keep it out of the
EU bloc.
Well, the liberal conspiracy car crash ensured downmarket Mussolini a second term, it appears...Hard Brexit Tories also look likely
to win thanks to centrist sabatoge of the left. You reap what you sow, corporate presstitutes!
Sane people have predicted the end of Russiagate almost as many times as insane people have predicted that the "smoking gun that
will get rid of Trump" has been found. And yet the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds on, while social media is more and more censored.
I expect it all to continue until the 2020 election circus winds up into full-throated mode, and no one talks about anything but
the next puppet to be appointed. Oops, I mean "elected".
You also need to behead the corpse, stuff the mouth with a lemon and then place the head down in the coffin with the body in
supine (facing up) position. Weight the coffin with stones and wild roses and toss it into a fast-flowing river.
Russiagate won't be finished until a wall is built around Capitol Hill and all its inhabitants and worker bees declared insane
by a properly functioning court of law.
I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone. So we will see no
investigation of Hillary ...
Underlying your perspective is the assumption that USA is a democracy where a populist "outsider" could be elected President,
Yet you also believe that Hillary and the Deep State have the power to manipulate government and the intelligence agencies and
propose a "conspiracy theory" based on that power.
Isn't it more likely that Trump made it clear (behind closed doors, of course) that he was amenable to the goals of the Deep
State and that the bogus investigation was merely done to: 1) cover their own election meddling; 2) eliminate threats like Flynn
and Assange/Wikileaks; 3) anti-Russian propaganda?
Dowd, Trump's former lawyer on Russiagate stated there may not even be a report. If this is the case then the Zionist rulers have
gotten to Mueller who no doubt figured out that the election collusion breadcrumbs don't lead to Putin, they lead to Netanyahu
and Zionist billionaire friends! So Mueller may have to come up with a nothing burger to hide the truth.
B is the only alternative media blogger I've followed for a significant amount of time without becoming disenfranchised. Not because
he has no blind spot - his is just one I can deal with... optimism.
I will believe Russiagate is finished when expelled Russian staff gets back, when the US returns the seized Russian properties,
when the consulate is Seattle reopens and when USA issues formal apology to Russia.
Posted by: hopehely | Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM |
link
Nobody has ever advanced the tiniest shred of credible evidence that 'Russia' or its government at any level was in any way implicated
either in Wikileaks' acquisition of the DNC and Podesta emails or in any form of interference with the Presidential election.
This has been going on for three years and not once has anything like evidence surfaced.
On the other hand there has been an abundance of evidence that those alleging Russian involvement consistently refused to listen
to explore the facts.
Incredibly, the DNC computers were never examined by the FBI or any other agency resembling an official police agency. Instead
the notorious Crowdstrike professionally russophobic and caught red handed faking data for the Ukrainians against Russia were
commissioned to produce a 'report.'
Nobody with any sense would have credited anything about Russiagate after that happened.
Thgen there was the proof, from VIPS and Bill Binney (?) that the computers were not hacked at all but that the information
was taken by thumbdrive. A theory which not only Wikileaks but several witnesses have offered to prove.
Not one of them has been contacted by the FBI, Mueller or anyone else "investigating."
In reality the charges from the first were ludicrous on their face. There is, as b has proved and every new day's news attests,
not the slightest reason why anyone in the Russian government should have preferred Trump over Clinton. And that is saying something
because they are pretty well indistinguishable. And neither has the morals or brains of an adolescent groundhog.
Russiagate is over, alright, The Nothingburger is empty. But that means nothing in this 'civilisation': it will be recorded
in the history books, still to be written, by historians still in diapers, that "The 2016 Presidential election, which ended in
the controversial defeat of Hillary Clinton, was heavily influenced by Russian agents who hacked ..etc etc"
What will not be remembered is that every single email released was authentic. And that within those troves of correspondence
there was enough evidence of criminality by Clinton and her campaign to fill a prison camp.
Another thing that will not be recalled is that there was once a young enthusiastic man, working for the DNC, who was mugged
one evening after work and killed.
The 'no collusion' result will only spur the 'beginning of the end' baboons to shout even more, they'll never stop until they
die in their beds or the plebs of the Republic made them adore the street lamp posts, you'll see. The former is by far more likely,
the unwashed of American have never had a penchant for foreign affairs except for the few spasms like Vietnam.
There was collusion alright but the only Russians who helped Trump get elected and were in on the collusion are citizens of ISRAEL
FIRST, likewise for the American billionaires who put Trump in the power perch. ISRAEL FIRST.
That's why Trump is on giant billboards in Israel shaking hands with the Yahoo. Trump is higher in the polls in Israel than
in the U.S. If it weren't that the Zionist upper crust need Trump doing their dirty work in America, like trying today get rid
of Rep. Omar Ilhan, then Trump would win the elections in Ziolandia or Ziostan by a landslide cause he's been better for the Joowish
state than all preceding Presidents put together. Mazel tov to them bullshet for the rest of us servile mass in the vassal West
and Palestinians the most shafted class ever. Down with Venezuela and Iran, up with oil and gas. The billionare shysters' and
Trump's payola is getting closer. Onward AZ Empire!
He proved himself so easy to troll during the election. It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all
along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.
At least Germany has the good sense not to throw taxpayer money at the F-35.
German F-35 decision sacrifices NATO capability for Franco-German industrial cooperation I don't know what they have
in mind with a proposed airplane purchase. If they need fighters, buy or lease Sweden's Gripen. If attack airplanes are what they're
after, go to Boeing and get some brand new F-15X models. If the prickly French are agreeable to build a 6th generation aircraft,
that would be worth a try.
Regarding Rachel Maddow, I recently had an encounter with a relative who told me 1) I visited too many oddball sites and 2)
he considered Rachel M. to be the most reliable news person in existence. I think we're talking "true believer" here. :)
It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate
they could manipulate.
Considering how those "intelligence agencies" are hard pressed to find their own tails, even if you allow them to use both
hands, it would surprise me.
That Trump would turn out to be a tub of jello in more than just a physical way has been a surprise to an awful lot of us.
Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting
peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their
Government Lackeys.
It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made
that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do
it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it
to be so
Allowed the bipartisan support for the clamp down on alt media with censorship by social media (Deep State Tools) and funded
by the Ministry of Truth set up by Obama in his last days in office to under the false pretense of protecting us from foreign
governments interference in elections (except Israel of course) . Similar agencies have been set up or planned to be in other
countries followig the US example such as UK, France, Russia, etc.
Did anyone really expect Mr "Cover It Up " Mueller to find anything? Mueller is Deep State all the way and Trump is as well,
not withstanding the "Fake Wrestling " drama that they are bitter enemies. All the surveillance done over the past 2-3 decades
would have so much dirt on the Trumpet they could silence him forever . Trump knew that going in and I sometimes wonder if he
was pressured to run as a condition to avoid prosecution. Pretty sure every President since Carter has been "Kompromat"
If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO
Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation,
propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Russians and likely at the behest of the Russian state interfered and it was fair payback for Yeltsin's election. It is time to
move on but not in feigned ignorance of what was done. Was it "outcome" affecting, possibly, but not clearly and if the US electoral
college and electoral system generally is so decrepit that a second level power in the world can influence then its the US's fault.
It's not like the 2000 election wasn't a warning shot about the rottenness of system and a system that doesn't understand a
warning shot deserves pretty much what it gets. But there's enough non-hype evidence of acts and intent to say yes, the Russians
tried and may have succeeded. They certainly are acting guilty enough. but still close the book move and move on to Trump's 'real'
crimes which were done without a Russian assist.
I seem to recall former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray saying that it was not a hack and that he had been handed
a thumb drive in a field near American University by a disgruntled Democrat whistleblower. Further, I seem to recall William Binney,
former NSA Technical Leader for intelligence, conducting an experiment to show that internet speeds at the time would not allow
the information to be hacked - they knew the size of the files and the period over which they were downloaded. Plus, Seth Rich.
So why does anyone even believe it was a hack, @32 THN?
Just another comment re Mueller. There is a great documentary by (Dutch, not Israeli---different person) Gideon Levy, Lockerbie
Revisited. The narration is in Dutch, but the interviews are in English, and there is a small segment of a German broadcast. The
documentary ends abruptly where one set of FBI personnel contradict statements by another set of FBI personnel. See also
this primer on Mueller's MO.
reply to Les 42
"It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they
could manipulate."
Not the intelligence agencies, the Military IMO. They knew HC for what she was; horrifically corrupt and,again IMO,they know
she is insane.
They saw and I think still see Trump as someone they could work with, remember Rogers (Navy) of the NSA going to him immediately
once he was elected? That was the Military protecting him as best they could.
They IMO have kept him alive and as long as he doesn't send any troops into "real" wars, they will keep on keeping him alive.
This doesn't mean Trump hasn't gone over to the Dark Side, just that no military action will take place that the military command
doesn't fully support.
Again, I could be wrong, he could be backed by fiends from Patagonia for all I really know:)
The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the
democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to
increase military spending; and more, more, more war.
Boy, I hope Jackrabbit sees this. Everyone knows I believe Trump is the anointed chosen of the Zionist 1%. There was no Russia
collusion; it was Zionist collusion with a Russian twist...
Oh yeah! Forgot to mention the latest. Trump is asking Kim to provide a list of his nuclear scientists! Before Kim acts on this
request, he should call up the Iranian government for advise 'cause they have lots of experience and can warn Kim of what will
happen to each of those scientists. They'll be put on a kill-list and will be extrajudicially wacked as in executed. Can you believe
the chutzpah? Trump must think Kim is really stupid to fall for that one!
Aye! The thought of six more years of Zionist pandering Trump. Barf-inducing prospect is too tame.
The view from the hermitage is, we are in the age of distractions. Russiagate will be replaced with one of a litany of distractions,
purely designed to keep us off target. The target being, corruption, vote rigging, illegal wars, war crimes, overthrowing sovereign
governments, and political assasinations, both at home and abroad. Those so distracted, will focus on sillyness; not the genuine
danger afoot around the planet. Get used to it; it's become the new normal.
@76Hw
I have yet to read anything more delusional, nay, utterly preposterous. Methinks you over-project too much. Even Trump would have
a belly-ache laugh reading that sheeple spiel. You're the type that sees the giant billboard of Zionist Trump and Yahoo shaking
hands and drones on and on that our lying eyes deceive us and it's really Trump playing 4-D chess. I suppose when he tried to
pressure Omar Ilhan into resigning her seat in Congress yesterday, that too was reverse psychology?
Trump instagramed the billboard pic, he tweeted it, he probably pasted it on his wall; maybe with your kind of wacky, Trump
infatuation, you should too!
Russiagate is finished because Mueller discovered an embarrassing fact: The collusion was and always will be with Israel. Here's
Trump professing his endless love for Zionism:
Trump Resign
Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished.
a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the
lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians.
Most designs of armed nation states provide the designers with information feedback and the designers use that information
to appoint more obedient politicians and generals to run things, and to improve the design to better serve the designers. The
armed rule making structure is designed to give the designers complete control over those targeted to be the governed. Why so
stupid the governed? ; always they allow themselves to be manipulated like sheep.
When 10 angry folks approach you with two pieces of ropes: one to throw over the tree branch under which your horse will be
supporting you while they tie the noose around your neck and the other shorter piece of rope to tie your hands behind ..your back
you need at that point to make your words count , if five of the people are black and five are white. all you need do is
say how smart the blacks are, and how stupid the whites are, as the two groups fight each other you manage your escape. democrat
vs republican= divide to conquer. gun, no gun = divide to conquer, HRC vs DJT = divide to conquer, abortion, no abortion = divide
to conquer, Trump is a Russian planted in a high level USA position of power = divide to conquer, They were all in on it together,,
Muller was in the white house to keep the media supplied with XXX, to keep the law enforcement agencies in the loop, and to advise
trump so things would not get out of hand ( its called Manipulation and the adherents to the economic system called Zionism
For the record, Zionism is not related to race, religion or intelligence. Zionism is a system of economics that take's no captives,
its adherents must own everything, must destroy and decimate all actual or imaginary competition, for Zionist are the owners and
masters of everything? Zionism is about power, absolute power, monopoly ownership and using governments everywhere to abuse the
governed. Zionism has many adherents, whites, blacks, browns, Christians, Jews, Islamist, Indians, you name it among each class
of person and walk of life can be found persons who subscribe to the idea that they, and only they, should own everything, and
when those of us, that are content to be the governed let them, before the kill and murder us, they usually end up owning everything.
1. why the Joint non nuclear agreement with Iran and the other nuclear power nations, that prevented Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, was trashed? Someone needs to be able to say Iran is developing ..., at the right time.
2. Why Netanyohu made public a video that claimed Iran was developing nuclear stuff in violation of the Iran non nuclear agreement,
and everybody laughed,
3. Why the nuclear non proliferation agreement with Russia, that terminated the costly useless arms race a decade ago, has
been recently terminated, to reestablish the nuclear arms race, no apparent reason was given the implication might be Russia could
be a target, but
4. why it might make sense to give nukes to Saudi Arabia or some other rogue nation, and
5. why no one is allowed to have nuclear weapons except the Zionist owned and controlled nation states.
Statement: Zionism is an economic system that requires the elimination of all competition of whatever kind. It is a winner
get's all, takes no prisoners, targets all who would threaten or be a challenge or a threat; does not matter if the threat is
in in oil and gas, technology or weapons as soon as a possibility exist, the principles of Zionism would require that it be taken
out, decimated, and destroyed and made where never again it could even remotely be a threat to the Empire, that Zionism demands..
Hypothesis: A claim that another is developing nuclear weapon capabilities is sufficient to take that other out?
I am glad that most commenters understand that Russiagate will not go away. But the majority appear to miss the real reason. Russiagate
is not an accusation, it is the state of mind.
At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on
decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already
brainwashed population?
The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away
from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. Of course, the most ironic in the affair is that it is the so called
US "intellectuals", academics and other assorted cretins who are the most fervent proponents. If you were wondering how Russia
can make such amazing defensive weapons that US can only deny exist and wet dream of having, there is your answer. It is the state
of mind. The whole of US establishment are legends in their on lunch time and totally delusional about the reality surrounding
them - both Russiagate and MAGA cretins, no report can help the Russiagate nation.
Finally, I am thinking of that crazy and ugly professor bitch from the British Cambridge University who gives her lectures
naked to protest something or other. I am so lucky that I do not have to go to a Western university ever again. What a catastrophic
decline! No Brexit can help the Skripal nation.
Russiagate is finished, but is DJT also among the rubble?
Hardly any money for the border wall and still lingering in the ME?
If Hoarsewhisperer proves to be correct above re: DJT, he will really have to knock our socks off before election 2020. To
do this he will have to unequivocally and unceremoniously withdraw from the MENA and Afghanistan and possibly declare a National
Emergency for more money for the wall.
The problem is, when he does this, he will look impulsively dangerous and this may harm his mystique to the lemmings who need
a president to be more "presidential."
My money is on status quo all the way to 2020 and the rethugz hoping the Dems will eat their own in an orgy of warring identities.
The collusion story may be faltering, but the blame for Russia poisoning the Skripals lives on. The other night on The News Hour,
"Judy" led off the program with this: "It has been almost a year since Kremlin intelligence officers attempted to kill a Russian
defector in the British city of Salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. That attack, and the subsequent death of a British
woman, scared away tourists and shoppers, but authorities and residents are working to get the town's economy back on track. Special
correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports."
Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others,
the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry
of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry.
Here is one recent example. You know the measles outbreak in the US Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Russians. How do we know.
A government funded research grant. The study found that 899 tweets caused people to doubt vaccines. Looks like money is
to be had even by academics for the right results.
"... To that end, the senator from Florida on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to limit corporate buybacks. Unlike a plan pitched by Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer earlier this month, Rubio's plan would seek to end preferential tax treatment of share buybacks, by decreeing that any money spent on buybacks would be considered - for tax purposes - a dividend paid to shareholders, even if individual investors didn't actually part with any stock. ..."
"... Any tax revenue generated by these changes could then be used to encourage more capital investment, Rubio said. As part of the proposal, Rubio would make a provision in the tax law that allows companies to deduct capital investment permanent (that provision is currently set to expire in 2022). ..."
"... But before lawmakers take their next steps toward regulating how and when companies should return excess capital to shareholders, they might want to take a look at a column recently published by WSJ's "Intelligent Investor" that expounds a concept called "the bladder theory." ..."
"... But the law most likely to govern here is the Law of Unintended Consequences. ..."
"... That companies bought back a record $1 trillion worth of stock last year while employers like GM slashed jobs and closed factories has stoked criticisms of the Trump tax cuts, but as the gulf between the rich and the poor grows ever more wide (a phenomenon for which we can thank the Federal Reserve and other large global central banks) it's worth wondering: facing a simmering backlash to one of the most persistent marginal bids in the market place, have investors already become too complacent about proposals like Rubio's? ..."
"... Worse, since they're largely funded by increased corporate debt (!) they amount to corporate strip-mining by senior management. This is disgraceful and dangerous. The debt will bust some corporations when the inevitable next downturn comes. ..."
"... This buyback cancer, which has grown rapidly because of corrupt SEC thinking and perverse tax incentives, requires urgent treatment. ..."
For better or worse, Republican Senator and one-time presidential candidate Marco Rubio
isn't about to let
the Democrats own the fight to curtail one of the most flagrant examples of post-crisis
corporate excess. And if he can carve out a niche for himself that might one day help him
credibly pitch himself as a populist firebrand, much like the man who went on to claim the
presidency after defeating him in the Republican primary, well, that sounds to us like a
win-win.
To that end, the senator from Florida on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to limit corporate
buybacks. Unlike a plan pitched by Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer earlier this month, Rubio's
plan would seek to end preferential tax treatment of share buybacks, by decreeing that any
money spent on buybacks would be considered - for tax purposes - a dividend paid to
shareholders, even if individual investors didn't actually part with any stock.
According to CNBC
, the plan calls for every shareholder to receive an imputed portion of the funds equivalent to
the percentage of company stock they own, which, of course, isn't the same thing as directly
handing capital to shareholders (it simply changes the tax rate that the company buying back
the shares would pay).
Ultimately, Rubio hopes that these changes would discourage companies from buying back
stock. Those companies that continued to buy back shares would help contribute to higher
revenues by increasing the funds that can be taxed, while also raising the rate at which this
money can be taxed. Any tax revenue generated by these changes could then be used to encourage
more capital investment, Rubio said. As part of the proposal, Rubio would make a provision in
the tax law that allows companies to deduct capital investment permanent (that provision is
currently set to expire in 2022).
But before lawmakers take their next steps toward regulating how and when companies should
return excess capital to shareholders, they might want to take a look at a column recently
published by WSJ's
"Intelligent Investor" that expounds a concept called "the bladder theory."
Overall, however, buybacks (and dividends) return excess capital to investors who are free
to spend or reinvest it wherever it is most needed. By requiring companies to hang onto their capital instead of paying it out, Congress might
- perhaps - encourage them to invest more in workers and communities.
But the law most likely to govern here is the Law of Unintended Consequences. The history of investment by corporate managers with oodles of cash on their hands isn't
encouraging. Hugh Liedtke, the late chief executive of Pennzoil, reportedly liked to quip
that he believed in "the bladder theory:" Companies should pay out as much cash as possible,
so managers couldn't piss all the money away.
That companies bought back a record $1 trillion worth of stock last year while employers
like GM slashed jobs and closed factories has stoked criticisms of the Trump tax cuts, but as
the gulf between the rich and the poor grows ever more wide (a phenomenon for which we can
thank the Federal Reserve and other large global central banks) it's worth wondering: facing a
simmering backlash to one of the most persistent marginal bids in the market place, have
investors already become too complacent about proposals like Rubio's?
We ask only because
the Dow soared more than 350 points on Tuesday, suggesting that, even as Rubio added a
bipartisan flavor to the nascent movement to curb buybacks, investors aren't taking these
proposals too seriously - at least not yet.
Celotex
This still doesn't address the insider trading aspect of stock buybacks, with insiders front-running the buyback.
vladiki
No one's arguing that if a company's groaning with cash then buybacks make sense. But it's the other 95% of of them that
are the problem. Compare the 20 year graphs of buybacks with corporate profits, corporate debt, corporate tax paid, corporate
dividends paid.
They tell you what everyone in higher management knows - that they're a tax-free dividend mechanism pretending to be
"capital rationalisation".
Worse, since they're largely funded by increased corporate debt (!) they amount to corporate strip-mining by senior
management. This is disgraceful and dangerous. The debt will bust some corporations when the inevitable next downturn comes.
This buyback cancer, which has grown rapidly because of corrupt SEC thinking and perverse tax incentives, requires
urgent treatment.
james diamond squid
Everyone is in on this ponzi. I'm expecting tax deductions for buying stocks/homes.
The USSR had elections of various types. They meant nothing because the Party owned
everybody.
We have elections that are far more like Soviet elections than the average 'conservative'
voter can allow himself to imagine. The great difference Soviet elections and ours today is
who – what entity – owns the system, meaning which cultural values rule,
dictate.
Ours is the Anglo-Zionist Empire. This is the end game of the Judaizing heresies that
destroyed Christendom. This nightmare is where WASP culture leads and always lead.
Krugman is a dangerous neoliberal propagandist... And he essentially kills Democratic Party
appeal to voters by trying to equate protest against immigration and racism.
To claim the Clinton neoliberal Democrats who are directly or indirectly responsible for
killing of million of "brown people" and bombing a dozen of countries support for civil rights is
a real, Nazi-propaganda like, stretch...
I consider myself socially conservative and economically liberal and I very bitterly
reject the idea that I am a "racist". The left has to stop tossing around the word "racist"
to essentially mean "anything they dislike" and "anyone they disagree with". I am not a
racist, and I defy anyone to prove I am. Dr. Krugman, if you are going to call 50% of the
voters in the US "racists"....well, consider what happened when your pal Hillary called us
"deplorables in a basket". How'd that work out for her?
Democrats love to eat their own. We have one of the most racist presidents to ever hold
office in modern times, yet some Democrats are going after Northam over some dumb stunt that
happened decades ago. Is he a good leader NOW? Does he support good policies NOW? Is
Northam's behavior really any worse (blackface versus sexual misconduct) than someone who
just got a seat on the Supreme Court? Wow, this is like watching an episode of The Twilight
Zone. Republicans have a strategic advantage because, while Democrats get all twisted up in
identity politics, Republican leaders are only tightly focused on serving the rich and
powerful at the expense of average Americans. No party disunity there. Democrats need to
start focusing on the basic, kitchen table issues that average Americans care about, like
affordable health care, affordable housing and affordable higher education. With that strong
streak of self-destruction that runs through Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is needed more than ever
in the people's House where badly needed legislation has to move forward.
A Democrat could beat Trump if he was pro-single payer, pro family, pro-union, anti-war,
and for the aggressive taxing of ultra high wealth if he could just shut down the flagrant
abuse of our immigration laws and border. That candidate can't win the primary though because
not welcoming the infinite number of suffering illegal immigrants to share these expensive
benefits or wanting law and order to immigration earns a label of "racist" in the Democratic
Party. Trump will win in 2020 unless dems stop with the wild misuse of the word racist.
"Racial hostility" is what I, a white male, feel from the Democrats. It's a common thread
among the reluctant Trump supporters I know - they are disgusted by Trump, but they won't
support the Democrats for that reason. My 66-year-old father recently said to me, for the
first time, "well, you know, I'm a racist."
This man voted for Obama, but I wouldn't be surprised if he casts his vote for Trump in
2020 because the left has lost all credibility in his eyes. They call my dad a racist over
and over, but he knows he's a fair person, so he's accepted that the "racist" label isn't
that big of a deal.
I have a hard time getting my head around the author's use of "racist". For example
'economically liberal, socially conservative politicians -- let's be blunt and just say
"racist populists."' Where does he get that connection from? Certainly not from any
dictionary I have seen. I realize that the left has adopted the habit of calling everyone
they disagree with "racist", but this article seems to completely disconnect the word from
its meaning. In fact, I have to wonder whether any of the labels he is using, "conservative",
"liberal", "populist", etc. are anchored to their literal meanings. Making sense of what he
is talking about is impossible if his words have no well defined meaning.
This analysis is simple, elegant, and completely wrong. Libertarians are far from a
majority, but far more than 4%. Probably about 20-25%. "Live and let live" isn't quite that
dead. The two party kakistocracy gives people few opportunities to express it in elections.
Sorry Professor, but there are plenty of us who don't care who you marry, make cakes for,
dress up as, smoke, grow, say, write, spend your money on, put in your or in your body, just
so long as you leave us alone. In a dim past it was called Liberalism. Before that it was
called Liberty.
On economic issues, especially on social programs, the public is to the left of the
Democrats but the numbers of the public who are racist populist are sizable enough for the
Republicans to successfully exploit it every election cycle. That's why Trump carried the
white working class voters and enough of the suburban and college educated white voters to
win the electoral votes.
This is the dilemma of the Democrats for they cannot win elections without working class
white support. Racism, and the history of it, is like a curse spelled upon the American
political system and as long as there are politicians, mostly Republicans, and others who
politically and financially benefit from appealing to racism, true democracy and racial
harmony will never arrive in America.
The democrats really shot themselves in the foot when they decided to take the stand that
those who want less immigration or legal immigration are "racists". That is the wedge the
will drive off the most important block which is the working class midwestern men. If only
there were a democrat or an outsider that could stomach being called a racist who was
conservative on immigration but liberal on economics, pro-worker, families then he could beat
Trump. Otherwise with Kamala or someone that does not appeal to rust-belt workers, there will
be 4 more years of Trump. Mark my words.
I take issue with two ideas of Mr Krugman: the statement that Trump is not a true 'racist
populist' ...what does that mean anyway? , and that Democrats are moving too left,
endangering their prospects. The first idea is that Trump is not keeping a racist agenda is
clearly false. His Muslim ban, immigration policies and mass detentions are all following
thru on racist ideas. Why Krugman does not feel these are somehow playing to a racist base,
and is faking begs credulity. The second idea that Dems are moving too far is not supported
by polls that show a majority of people support Medicare for all and taxes on billionaires.
The country's middle class has been beaten down for 30 years and now is the time to correct
that!
"Voters want an economic move to the left -- it's just that some of them dislike
Democratic support for civil rights, which the party can't drop without losing its soul." The
Democratic Party lost its soul long ago Paul. It lost it when it championed free trade,
unguarded borders, Nafta, destroyed defense budgets, tolerated the indecency of Bill Clinton,
allowed unions to become corrupt, failed to fix Social Security and bankrupted every American
downtown and small business for the pursuit of the mythological better jobs and better living
through more imports of products from China as our factories closed and our industries moved
offshore. The Democratic Party has betrayed America for the last 30 years and now you're
lamenting the loss of Democratic Party members and conservative left wingers. The Democrats
moved too far left many years ago. The issues Paul are jobs, industry, affordable housing and
healthcare, education for our children, and retirement with dignity. Not to forget safety
without sacrificing our right to self-defense. The Republicans and the Democrats equally and
together polluted our Democratic institutions. They've corrupted our judicial processes and
disenfranchised minorities. We don't need a coffee billionaire or any other billionaire. We
need decent, hardworking, intelligent and socially responsible citizens who want legitimate
government and institutions. Not corruption from Wall St. or Washington DC. Where are the
legitimate candidates?
"... Much the same could have been said about the last days of the USSR, or for that matter the last phase of the 30 Years War or the Napoleonic Wars. As back then, so now: The old elite and new authoritarians actively crushing the new group, well, they are are actively crushing _themselves_ at an even greater rate than they are crushing the new group. ..."
"... Example: Decay of Democratic leadership -- which is now, apparently, two old crazy people, one of which has active dementia. Waiting in the wings we see various groups that hate each other and propose what is pretty clearly a loot and burn approach to governing the US. They vary only in whom they will loot and what they will burn. ..."
"... Example: Decay of the media, which now knows it is as ineffective as Russian propaganda towards the USSR's end, and apparently either doesn't care or is unable to change. ..."
"... If resource scarcity prompts armed response, well, humanity has enough shiny new weapons _and untried weapons technologies_ to produce destruction as surprising in its extent as WW I and WW II were for their times [1] (or as the self supporting tercio was during the 30 Years War). ..."
The third trend is the only place where hope can reside. This trend – what I have
previously ascribed to a group I call the "dissenters" – understands that radical new
thinking is required. But given that this group is being actively crushed by the old
liberal elite and the new authoritarians, it has little public and political space to
explore its ideas, to experiment, to collaborate, as it urgently needs to.
Much the same could have been said about the last days of the USSR, or for that matter
the last phase of the 30 Years War or the Napoleonic Wars. As back then, so now: The old
elite and new authoritarians actively crushing the new group, well, they are are actively
crushing _themselves_ at an even greater rate than they are crushing the new group.
Example: Decay of Democratic leadership -- which is now, apparently, two old crazy
people, one of which has active dementia. Waiting in the wings we see various groups that
hate each other and propose what is pretty clearly a loot and burn approach to governing the
US. They vary only in whom they will loot and what they will burn.
Example: Decay of the media, which now knows it is as ineffective as Russian
propaganda towards the USSR's end, and apparently either doesn't care or is unable to
change.
Example: Reaction to yellow vests in France, which drew the reactions described in Cook's
article (at the root of this comment thread). "Back to your kennels, curs!" isn't effective
in situations like this, but it seems to be the only reply the EU has.
New groups take over when the old group has rotted away. At some point, Cook's third
alternative will be all that is left. The real question is what will be happening world wide
at that point. If resource scarcity prompts armed response, well, humanity has enough
shiny new weapons _and untried weapons technologies_ to produce destruction as surprising in
its extent as WW I and WW II were for their times [1] (or as the self supporting tercio was
during the 30 Years War).
Counterinsurgency
1] To understand contemporary effect of WW I on survivors, think of a the survivors of a
group playing paintball who accidentally got hold of grenade launchers but somehow didn't
realize that until the game was over. WW II was actually worse -- people worldwide really
expected another industrialized war within 20 years (by AD 1965), this one fought with
nuclear weapons.
"... By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans. ..."
"... Quip, then Clear, Simple Statement. ..."
"... The thing that worries me is that congress might find some way to remove her or shut her up if she continues to ruffle neoliberal feathers like this. ..."
"... Fascinating as this is, I worry that AOC might get the "Rosa Luxembourg" treatment from the present day power elites. ..."
This is a must-watch clip. I hesitate to add much commentary, as anything I write will
likely not add all that much, and might instead only distract from the original.
Nonetheless, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes! I will hazard adding some commentary.
I only ask that you watch the clip first. It'll only take five minutes of your time. Just
something to ponder on what I hope for many readers is a lazy, relaxing Sunday. Please watch
it, as my commentary will assume you've done so.
How to Explain What's At Stake with a Complex Subject
I've spent many, many years thinking about how business influences public policy – and
trying to get people to understand some of the details of how that's done, in a variety of
contexts.
Here, AOC breaks down one aspect of the problem, and clearly and succinctly explains what's
the deal, in terms that've obviously resounded with people and led them to share her primer
with their friends.
Quip, then Clear, Simple Statement. She opens with a self deprecating aside –
perhaps a bit too self-deprecating, as she doesn't pause long enough to elicit many chuckles.
Am I imagining a sense of "What's she up to?" emanating from the (sparse) crowd in that quick
initial establishing shot of the hearing chamber?
And then explains what she's up to:
Let's play a lightning round game.
I'm gonna be the bad guy, which I'm sure half the room would agree with anyway, and I want
to get away with as much bad things as possible, really to enrich myself and advance my
interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people.
I've enlisted all of you as my co-conspirators, so you're going help me legally get away
with all of this."
Framing. Turning this into a lightning round taps into popular culture. Most TV
viewers know what a lightning round is, certainly far more than regularly watch congressional
hearings on C-Span.
And using the Q & A format requires those summoned to testify at the hearing to affirm
each of her points. This reminded me a bit of the call and response technique that some
preachers employ.
By structuring this exercise in a lightning round format, each witness can only answer yes
or no, allowing little room to obfuscate – I'm looking at you, Bradley A. Smith, chairman
of the Institute for Free Speech (IFS). (Here's a link to the Washington Post op-ed AOC refers
to:
Those payments to women were unseemly. That doesn't mean they were illegal. )
AOC has no time for any waffling, "Okay green light for hush money, I can do all sorts of
terrible things, It's totally legal now for me to pay people off " She's not just working from
a great script – but is quick on her feet as well. Nice!
Simple Language, Complex Points
The language is simple, and sounds like the way ordinary people speak – "bad
guy," Followed later by "super bad guy."
"Totally."
"Okay great."
"Fabulous."
"Okay, so, awesome."
I think it's easier for her to do this, because she's not a lawyer. Even when she's
discussing questions of legality, she doesn't slip into legalese -- "super legal" isn't the
sort of phrase that would trip easily from the tongues of most lawyers– even recovering
ones, or those who got sidetracked into politics.
Repetition of One Point: This is All Legal
AOC channels Michael Kinsley's observation, "The scandal isn't what's illegal, the scandal
is what's legal." I hesitate to repeat that saying here, as for political junkies, it's been
been heard all too many times before.
AOC fleshes out the details of a message many Americans understand: the system is broken,
and under the current laws, no one's going to jail for doing any of this stuff. Instead, this
is standard operating procedure in Washington. And that's the case even though as this May
headline for report by the Pew Research Centre's headline makes clear:
Most Americans want to limit campaign spending, say big donors have greater political
influence .
AOC has great skill in understanding how language works, it is kind of mesmerizing
watching her thinking and talking on her feet -- she intertwines big narratives with smaller
ones seamlessly. Just brilliant.
She is gifted. She has demonstrated remarkable poise in her reactions to Pelosi. She
refuses to sling dirt, instead acting in deference to her power with a confidence that her
own principles will eventually prevail. It's an incredibly wise approach and extremely
counter-intuitive to most.
by supporting pelosi, calling her a progressive she shows acknowledgement of her role in
the system. it may be the confidence that her principles of being part of the club will
prevail. if you pay any attention at all to the system you'd understand it isn't broken, it
works as designed.
This past summer right around the time she went to Iowa with Bernie that she was on a
Sunday morning talk show. The host asked a question that was pointed and would pin most pols
into a corner they'd likely not want to be pinned to. AOC hesitated, thought, and said, "Yes,
i'll grant that. I agree with that." or something very similar.
Her hesitation and then acceptance told me two things:
1. She knows herself and she's not frightened by it. Other pols lapse into meaningless
nonsense and think defense first. AOC just moves forward aggressively because she's confident
in what she believes in.
2. She knows her audience. She understands who she's talking to.
Criticism just bounces off someone like that.
I had already seen the Now This video, and what is striking to me is that we have social
media content producers like Now This that are willing to treat AOC seriously and give a
platform for her ideas, unlike the TV news or most newspapers. Now This and AJ+ (Al Jazeera
social video) specialize in making videos viral, so they are the proximate cause of this
video going viral, unlike some earlier AOC videos.
Now This is owned by Group Nine Media which is an independent
startup that has received millions in venture funding as well as a significant investment by
Discovery Media, according to Wikipedia.
Also, Facebook's role is interesting because they are still allowing at least some
left-leaning videos to go viral.
How much longer will we have these outlets before they turn into CNN, MSNBC, NYT,
etc.?
Thanks for this, JLS. I was very impressed with AOC when I first saw her campaign video in
her race against Joe Crowley. Since that time she has become a force of nature not just in
Washington but across the country and internationally. I believe she is most impressive
politician I have ever seen and I am in my late sixties. She is simply thrilling to watch and
I think she appeals to many outside of her progressive base. Naturally the Washington Post,
with its neocon and neoliberal editorial page, will use every tool at its disposal to
discredit her and any other progressive.
The thing that worries me is that congress might find some way to remove her or shut
her up if she continues to ruffle neoliberal feathers like this.
While it would be a very extreme measure, do you think that Congress might try to place
her under Censure, and possibly even try building a case for Congressional Expulsion on bogus
charges? It would be a very underhanded thing to do, but on the other hand, the neoliberals
in both parties in Washington D.C. probably want to mount her head on a wall at this
point.
AOC isn't beholden to the corporate donor/lobbyist/consultant owners of the Dem estab. If
she isn't spending 30 hours a week dialing-for-dollars, and is free to represent her voters
interests, she might give other Dems ideas, especially the younger ones . Gasp! can't have
that! (/s)
I saw this one on Friday .captivating and jaw-dropping. I almost couldn't believe she just
got as blunt as that.
I wonder if she's preparing anything to get a little revenge on Pelosi for the brilliantly
withering scorn she dropped on the GND, turning it into the "Green Dream". I found myself
laughing and annoyed at the same time.
Pelosi knows she's got a grip on the reigns of power and she's happy to rub it in the face
of the new freshman class of what she sees as little more than noisemakers (not to dismiss
the power of the noisemakers, they've done more than I could have anticipated).
AOC and friends have cards to play .let's see how they play them. They can't directly
attack her, of course, they need her. But they can get attention, pressure and embarrass her
to take various actions.
AOC is not reacting to Trump's socialism challenge. She is ignoring it as if it came from
someone unqualified to be president. Imagine that. Or from masterful legislators so
compromised by corruption they will only change when they get good and frightened. It might
take a while because they have been too impervious to fear anything for so many decades they
might not realize they are in danger. They might as well be very, very stupid. No, she's not
taking the bait. Instead, she is pointing out what a corrupt thing both branches of
government are, the legislature and, even worse and more dangerous, the president, and not
merely because he is controlled by the military. She's playing chess for now. Checkmate will
probably come from left field in the form of an economic collapse. Nothing to see here. Move
along.
Fascinating as this is, I worry that AOC might get the "Rosa Luxembourg" treatment
from the present day power elites.
Murder has become a standard operating procedure for American operatives overseas; see drone
warfare as an example. The logic of Empire predicts that in general, the tactics used by the
Empire overseas will be brought back to the Homeland for eventual use against domestic
'enemies.'
The 'Tinfoil Hat Cadres' can cite numerous examples of domestic killings with suspicious ties
to internal politics. In the main, these 'examples' of evil are tied to individuals and
smaller groups of the power elites. I fear that political murder has become normalized inside
America's political classes.
Many here joke about "Mr. or Mz. 'X' better not take any small airplane flights for the
foreseeable future." It may be a 'joke' to us, but it certainly is not a joke to those
viewing their impending demise from 10,000 feet up in the air.
They probably will not have to go to that much trouble. They can always invent a
quasi-legal or illegal procedure to remove her from the senate, like the example I gave above
with Censure or Expulsion. Plus, this will be officially-sanctioned by Washington D.C. and
all of the major media outlets will be able to portray it as getting rid of a troublemaker
who did not want to be a team player.
Freuddian slip that, " remove her from the senate"? Actually, there have been open calls
from within the establishment to primary her, or most recently, to gerrymander her House
district out of existence. But that would just free her up to run for US Senate. It has been
suggested that possibility might cause Sen. Schumer to put the kabosh on any effort to
eliminate her district. As for a primary challenge, while it certainly would mean lots of
walking around money for a select group of Democratic political consultants (the Republicans
seem to have slurped up all the foreign regime-change work for this cycle), given AOC's
position as the first or second most popular politician in the country (right up there with
Bernie), that seems like a fool's errand.
Nice to know that anyone is saying this in a public forum.
In a bit of coincidence, I heard and adviser to Jerry Brown recite the current political
system's creed, saying that just because candidates get money from special interests doesn't
mean they're captives to those interests. It was astonishing to hear because the speaker said
this without the slightest hesitation The rest of us in the room paused for a moment.
I replied that psychological studies demonstrate that if I give you a piece of gum, not
millions in campaign contributions, you're likely to be more favorably disposed to what I
say.
so we agreed to disagree. Personally, I've interpreted reciting this creed as a kind of
initiation the prerequisite to belong to the religion that currently governs the country, not
as something the guy actually believed. Like Michael Corleone's recitation at his children's
christening Sure, it's a toxic religion, but there are so many of those the cult of
vengeance, for example (why else would Americans incarcerate so many people).
The context of AOC's hypothetical 100%-PAC-financed campaign:
Meet the Most Corporate PAC-Reliant Reps in Congress
Here are the eight House representatives who took more than two-thirds of their overall
campaign funding in the 2018 cycle from PACs representing corporations and corporate trade
associations:
My interpretation of the relationship between Pelosi and AOC.
I don't think at all that Pelosi is out to crush AOC. She certainly does not agree with
most of AOC's policies (after all Pelosi's path to power was different and she is irrevocably
wedded to it) but I think she operates on a different plane here.
Pelosi's rise to power was arduous and her success came from her brilliance in overcoming
a wide range of obstacles. She is focused, smart, relentless and ruthless. She earned her
power and will not give it away. (what she uses her power for is not really relevant in this
discussion)
I think she recognizes in AOC a woman not that dissimilar to herself but separated by a
couple of generations. She will not try and destroy her as AOC is not a meaningful threat to
her and she can leverage politically from AOC's huge impact in ways only Pelois is likely to
know how to do. She will make AOC earn her own power by proving she can overcome obstacles
and has the smarts and fortitude to take what she wants in spite of what her opponents do to
stop her (opponents come from all directions in politics) – just as she did. That kind
of behavior is what Pelosi respects. She could have prevented AOC from being on the committee
she used as a platform for the above exposure of corruption but she did not – and it is
certain that Pelosi was aware of the potential for AOC to use it to her advantage, or not. So
AOC just passed a test there will be many more. She may eventually fall, or she may be one of
the rare occurrences of someone rising to prominence and changing the world. She is where she
is at at 29 years old! I am sure that scares the crap out of her political opponents as
anyone can see tremendous upside for her should she continue to develop. Here's wishing her
luck – we need people like her more than any other kind by far.
I'd take it, but sounds wishful. Never underestimate incompetence. Pelosi is where she is
not because of brilliance but because she is the bag lady.
Pelosi might have made a deal to get her support for speaker, which was more important to
her.
Or she might think that AOC would quiet down once she got up on the totem pole, just as she
would have done.
Seems unlikely for somebody that believes in the rich and powerful Uber alles would otherwise
support somebody that wants to topple that temple.
AOC's appointment to Fin Svcs is an interesting one. House Oversight Environmental sub
committee is useful to Pelosi to have AOC go after Trump, but I'm not sure what Pelosi gets
out of the Fin Svcs committee. A quid pro quo for Speaker support makes some sense on the
surface.
Interesting as well, AOC turned down an appointment to the Select GND committee and
explained it as a timing issue, being asked after her previous two appointments and
not having the bandwidth to take on the Select committee and do her job well.
I can read some things into that:
– AOC values those two committee assignments. She's pretty wise to not bite off more
than she can chew.
– That Select committee is pretty meaningless. She got the resolution she wanted
introduced.
– Did Pelosi underestimate her early and then try to bury her with work? Or did she
force her to compromise either the spotlight she will have tearing people up on FS and
Oversight or the content of the GND resolution?
I think you have two very savvy political women facing off here, both know it, and both
are working a long term game of chess. The generational gap is a huge advantage and
disadvantage for both. For now, they are going to leverage it/each other and play their
roles. Sometime before the DNC convention in 2020 pieces are going to be played that changes
the dynamic. The outcome of that will dictate the path post 2020 convention. The odds of a
progressive House are slim. Progressive President a little better. AOC will need Pelosi
especially with a Progressive Presidency. Pelosi will need her with a Progressive President.
Centrist President relegates AOC to noise in terms of actual House business.
AOC is exposing the corruption of paid politics. Virginia Democrats, Donald Trump, and
Jeff Bezos illuminate the dark secrets that the plutocratic system uses to keep the connected
in line. This is breaking down. Oligarchs are at war. Neoliberalism is stealing life away
from the little people and destroying the world. She is a noble in the good old fashion
classical sense. Compare her to Adam Schiff. This is visceral. This is good versus evil.
Brings back fond memories of Alan Grayson's rundowns of the republican healthcare plan (if
you do get sick, die quickly) and socializing losses (now we all own the red roof inn).
AOC was even more riveting than Alan Grayson. I'd forgotten about the Bernanke grilling,
although his marvelous skewering of the Fed general counsel (Alvarez, I think his name was)
about where all the gazillion dollars of bailout money went was also pretty special. "Answer
the question." "Congressman, I did answer the question." "No you didn't. Answer the
question."
We're going to see more of this in the future remember, AOC doesn't do "call time," so
she'll have plenty of opportunities to engage in hearings like this.
She and the panel missed an important opportunity to point out that what gets you on a
committee is raising money from the industry regulated by that committee. Instead they just
said there is no illegality in working on related legislation.
Maybe this uniquely Article I corruption, didn't fit with her The President Is Even Worse
thesis. But she has the skills to tie it to Article II, revolving door scams. I hope she does
so soon.
I know that Big Oil is a baddie nic on AOC's quiver, but why not hit at the black heart of
HighFinance,, and their kin, WhiteShoeBoy Big-n-Legal who are, mostly likely, some of the
biggest, and most manipulative donors around. I think loosing arrows constantly the earl
cos., to the exclusion of other nefarious principals might loose some steam, especially when
most of the country's citizens rely considerably on FFs as a means of fueling their ground
transport, to say nothing of air travel. An example : She could hit Biden by name, with
regard to his imput and substantial influence, in passing legislation that has only screwed a
generation .. or few !!
So, if she's serious for change, for the better, for the Commons, she needs some specific
bulleyes to aim at, many of whom are within her own party !
It's not clear to me how this hearing happened, Can anyone enlighten? Can AOC just
schedule her own hearings on her own topics, call her own witnesses? I have no idea how those
committees work.
I've been alive forever
And I wrote the very first law
I put the weasel words together
I am power and I write the laws
I write the laws that make my wealth increase
I write the laws of war and other hateful things
I write the laws that let the poor folks die
I write the laws, I write the laws
My home lies far above you
But my claws are deep into your soul
Now, when I ignore your cries
I'm young again, even though I'm very old
I write the laws that make my wealth increase
I write the laws of war and other hateful things
I write the laws that let the poor folks die
I write the laws, I write the laws
Oh my greed makes you dance
And lets you know you have no chance
And I wrote foreclosure laws so you must move
Dejection fills your heart
Well, that's a real fine place to start
It's all for me it's not for you
It's all from you, it's all for me
It's a worldwide travesty
I write the laws that make my wealth increase
I write the laws of war and other hateful things
I write the laws that let the poor folks die
I write the laws, I write the laws
I write the laws that make my wealth increase
I write the laws of war and other hateful things
I write the laws that let the poor folks die
I write the laws, I write the laws
I am power and I write the laws
'We have a system that is fundamentally broken.' -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is
explaining just how f*cked campaign finance laws really are.
" Subscribe to NowThis:
http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe
In the latest liberal news and political news, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made
headlines at a recent congressional hearing on money in politics by explaining and inquiring
about political corruption. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, aka AOC, went into the issues of
lobbyists and Super PACs and how the political establishment, including Donald Trump, uses big
money to their advantage, to hide and obfuscate, and push crooked agendas. Alexandria Ocasio
Cortez is a rising star in the Democratic Party and House of Representatives.
NowThis is your premier news outlet providing you with all the videos you need to stay up to
date on all the latest in trending news. From entertainment to politics, to viral videos and
breaking news stories, we're delivering all you need to know straight to your social feeds. We
live where you live.
Love this feisty congresswoman. I can see why AOC is dislike by the right and even many
democrats. She's in DC to work for the American ppl and not enrich herself or special
interest. Love the 2018 class and hope they make changes and clean up DC.
AOC is amazing, pointing out all the fundamental wrongs in our political system. I hope
she stays in Congress as long as possible to spread her influence.
AOC is speaking out when no one else will about the corruption in Washington. She is
disliked because she is actually fighting for people. This makes me want to move to New York
just so I can vote for her. Keep it up the pressure.
She is going to be needing extra security. She's poised to take them down and we know how
these things have been handled in the past. I'm loving her fearlessness but worry for her
safety. May she be protected and blessed. SMIB
"An aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reportedly told insurance executives in
private not to worry about Democrats' push for "Medicare for All." (The Intercept)"
Ryan Grim...February 5 2019...6:00 a.m.
"Less than a month after Democrats -- many of them running on "Medicare for All" -- won
back control of the House of Representatives in November, the top health policy aide to
then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Blue Cross Blue Shield executives and
assured them that party leadership had strong reservations about single-payer health care and
was more focused on lowering drug prices, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
Pelosi adviser Wendell Primus detailed five objections to Medicare for All and said that
Democrats would be allies to the insurance industry in the fight against single-payer health
care. Primus pitched the insurers on supporting Democrats on efforts to shrink drug prices,
specifically by backing a number of measures that the pharmaceutical lobby is opposing.
Primus, in a slide presentation obtained by The Intercept, criticized single payer on the
basis of cost ("Monies are needed for other priorities"), opposition ("Stakeholders are
against; Creates winners and losers"), and "implementation challenges." We have recreated the
slides for source protection purposes.
Democrats, Primus said, are united around the concept of universal coverage, but see
strengthening the Affordable Care Act as the means to that end. He made his presentation to
the Blue Cross executives on December 4..."...
Personally, I am aghast. The Congress critters are in bed with the medical monopolies. One
example, among many:
The congressional endorsement of the ban on the importation of less expensive drugs,
claimed as a matter of safety, is a travesty. In the last several months, I have had two of
the drugs I take daily, recalled because the Chinese manufacturers shipped the drugs with a
measurable concentration of a known carcinogen in them. Safety, my aching ......
Democrats in action on health care include Max Baucus,Tom Daschle, and most infamously, Billy
Tauzin:
"Two months before resigning as chair of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce,
which oversees the drug industry, Tauzin had played a key role in shepherding through
Congress the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill. Democrats said that the bill was "a give-away
to the drugmakers" because it prohibited the government from negotiating lower drug prices
and bans the importation of identical, cheaper, drugs from Canada and elsewhere. The Veterans
Affairs agency, which can negotiate drug prices, pays much less than Medicare does. The bill
was passed in an unusual congressional session at 3 a.m. under heavy pressure from the drug
companies.[4][5]
As head of PhRMA, Tauzin was a key player in 2009 health care reform negotiations that
produced pharmaceutical industry support for White House and Senate efforts.[6]
Tauzin received $11.6 million from PhRMA in 2010, making him the highest-paid health-law
lobbyist.[7] Tauzin now is on the Board of Directors at Louisiana Healthcare Group. "
"Advocate groups attended a Senate Finance Committee meeting in May 2009 to protest their
exclusion as well as statements by Baucus that "single payer was not an option on the table."
Baucus later had eight protesters removed by police who arrested them for disrupting the
hearing. Many of the single-payer advocates said it was a "pay to play" event.[44][45][46] A
representative of the Business Roundtable, which includes 35 memberships of health
maintenance organizations, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, admitted that other
countries, with lower health costs, and higher quality of care, such as those with
single-payer systems, have a competitive advantage over the United States with its private
system.[47]
At the next meeting on health care reform of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus had five
more doctors and nurses removed and arrested.[48][49][50] Baucus admitted a few weeks later
in June 2009 that it was a mistake to rule out a single payer plan[51] because doing so
alienated a large, vocal constituency and left President Barack Obama's proposal of a public
health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.[51]
Baucus has used the term "uniquely American solution" to describe the end point of current
health reform and has said that he believes America is not ready yet for any form of single
payer health care. This is the same term the insurance trade association, America's Health
Insurance Plans (AHIP), is using. AHIP has launched the Campaign for an American Solution,
which argues for the use of private health insurance instead of a government backed
program"
"Daschle co-wrote the 2008 book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis ISBN
9780312383015.[55] He and his co-authors point out that "most of the world's highest-ranking
health-care systems employ some kind of 'single-payer' strategy - that is, the government,
directly or through insurers, is responsible for paying doctors, hospitals, and other
health-care providers." They argue that a single-payer approach is simple, equitable,
provides everyone with the same benefits, and saves billions of dollars through economies of
scale and simplified administration. They concede that implementing a single-payer system in
the United States would be "politically problematic" even though some polls show more
satisfaction with the single-payer Medicare system than private insurance.[56]"
Health care giant Aetna will be the first official client for the former Democratic
leader, who's now running his own consulting shop within the law firm Baker Donelson. Daschle
will lobby for the health insurer on Obamacare implementation and Medicare and Medicaid rule
changes, according to a filing with the Senate Secretary.
"For fifteen years, Tauzin was one of the more Conservative Democrats in the United States
House of Representatives. Even though he eventually rose to become an assistant majority
whip, he felt shut out by some of his more liberal colleagues and sometimes had to ask the
Republicans for floor time. When the Democrats lost control of the House after the 1994
elections, Tauzin was one of the cofounders of the House Blue Dog Coalition, a group of
moderate-to-conservative Democrats.
.......
However, on August 8, 1995, Tauzin himself became a Republican"
"... Voters by the millions dislike our cozying up to Wall Street, our hopelessly out-of-touch elitism, our support for never-ending military entanglements, our blindness to the plight of rural communities decimated by globalization, and our failure to expand opportunities for American workers. So what are we going to do about it? Well, after taking all this into account, after taking a good hard look at ourselves and doing some serious soul-searching, I'm pleased to announce that .... Democrats will continue to run on the same set of platitudes we've been trotting out since at least the 1990s. ..."
If last year's election showed us anything, it's that anger and resentment are on the rise.
I hear it from small business owners and working-class families, from millennials and retirees.
There's a sense that we've lost our way, and that the blame rests squarely on our nation's
leadership. Simply put, Americans are sick of being patronized and sick of the same old ideas
that we, as Democrats, are going to keep offering them over and over and over again.
The frustration is palpable. People are fed up with the status quo. Citizens from all walks
of life are sitting around their dinner tables, talking about how they've had it with all the
usual proposals that, once more, we will be repackaging and spoon-feeding to them in a way
that's entirely transparent and frankly condescending.
That's something every American can count on.
It's no wonder voters are furious. Politics-as-usual has failed them, and they desperately
want change that the Democratic Party has no plan to bring about in any meaningful way. But let
me assure you, when our constituents tell us they've had enough broken promises, when they say
our actions haven't addressed their needs, we listen. We hear your concerns -- hear them loud
and clear -- then immediately discard them and revert back to the exact same ineffectual
strategies we've been rallying behind for years.
It doesn't take a genius to see what the polls are telling us. Voters by the millions
dislike our cozying up to Wall Street, our hopelessly out-of-touch elitism, our support for
never-ending military entanglements, our blindness to the plight of rural communities decimated
by globalization, and our failure to expand opportunities for American workers. So what are we
going to do about it? Well, after taking all this into account, after taking a good hard look
at ourselves and doing some serious soul-searching, I'm pleased to announce that .... Democrats
will continue to run on the same set of platitudes we've been trotting out since at least the
1990s.
I just had this insight and wanted to share it here.
I am 70 and am thinking that when I was growing up the US Democrats represented the
concepts of socialism and the Republicans that of capitalism. Today I see the Democrats as
representing capitalism and Republicans representing fascism.
A commenter on another thread asked me about my China socialism focus and referred to the
US Interstate highway system initiated in the Eisenhower era when the marginal tax rate was
in the low 90 percent range. America has and continues to embrace aspects of socialism they
refuse to believe exists in America.......the effects of MSM brainwashing and propaganda.
China is attempting a mixed economy favoring socialism AFAICT
Radio Sputnik's Loud and Clear spoke with Daniel Lazare,
a journalist and author of three books, "The Frozen Republic," "The Velvet Coup" and "America's
Undeclared War," about what we can expect from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation
in 2019, its third year of operation.
"A House committee can keep the ball rolling indefinitely," Lazare noted. "Nothing solid has
turned up about collusion in the Russiagate story. Yet, the story keeps going and going, a new
tidbit is put out every week, and so the scandal keeps somehow perpetuating itself. And even
though there's less and less of substance coming out, so I expect that'll be the pattern for
the next few months, and I expect that the Democrats will revv this whole process up to make it
sort of seem as if there really is an avalanche of information crashing down on Trump when
there really isn't."
investigation, noting it had produced little to nothing of substance in support of the
thesis justifying its existence: that Russia either colluded with the Trump campaign or
conspired to interfere in the US election to tilt it in Trump's favor.
Indeed,
report after
report on the data that has been provided to Congress by tech giants like Facebook, Twitter
and Google show an underwhelming performance by any would-be Russian actors. In contrast to the
apocalyptic claims by Democrats and the mainstream media about the massive disinformation
offensive waged by Russian actors, the websites, social media accounts, post reach and ad money
associated with "Russians" is always
dwarfed by the equivalent actions of the Trump campaign and the campaign of its rival in
the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, along with their throngs of supporters
across the US corporate world, both of whom sunk hundreds of millions into winning the
social media game.
Among the chief motivations for Democrats going into 2019 is that "Democrats are now the
party of war," Lazare said, noting that Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi called Trump's
prospective withdrawal from Syria a "Christmas gift to ISIS [Daesh]."
"This is the raison d'etre for Russiagate: they're trying to maneuver Trump into
hostilities with Russia, China, North Korea, etc. I mean, this is foreign policy by
subterfuge it's about keeping 2,000 troops in Syria as well, and getting Americans' heads
blown off in Afghanistan, all of which the Democrats want to do. The whole thing is backroom
government of the worst kind."
Meanwhile, the modern Republican Party is all about cutting taxes on the rich and benefits for the poor and the middle class.
And Trump, despite his campaign posturing, has turned out to be no different.
Hence the failure of our political system to serve socially conservative/racist voters who also want to tax the rich and preserve
Social Security. Democrats won't ratify their racism; Republicans, who have no such compunctions, will -- remember, the party establishment
solidly backed Roy Moore's Senate bid -- but won't protect the programs they depend on.
Paul Krugman is a baby boomer, pissant globalizer bastard, but he has made reasonable comments about immigration in the past.
Paul Krugman is a high IQ moron who has occasional bouts of clarity on the anti-worker aspects of mass legal immigration and illegal
immigration. Krugman had it right in 2006 when he said that mass immigration lowers wages for workers in the USA.
Krugman in NY Times 2006:
First, the benefits of immigration to the population already here are small. The reason is that immigrant workers are, at least
roughly speaking, paid their "marginal product": an immigrant worker is paid roughly the value of the additional goods and services
he or she enables the U.S. economy to produce. That means that there isn't anything left over to increase the income of the people
already here.
My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That's just
supply and demand: we're talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production,
so it's inevitable that this means a fall in wages. Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz have to go through a lot of number-crunching to turn
that general proposition into specific estimates of the wage impact, but the general point seems impossible to deny.
However, Krugman is also a relentless partisan hack. So his expert analysis always ends up supporting the current Democrat
talking points -- whatever they may be.
Here, Krugman is disparaging any move to the center as the DNC wants to keep the Dems unified on the left and keep Schultz
(or anyone like him) out of the race. Of course, the real reason Schultz has massively negative polling is because the Democrat
establishment has been savaging him for precisely this reason.
Likewise, to Krugman a "Racist" politician is anyone who holds the same immigration position as Krugman did in 2006, which
is now anathema to the Dem's new Open Borders electoral strategy.
It's only a matter of time until Krugman starts talking up Kamala Harris as the best thing that could happen for the economy.
Bottom line: Krugman – like any economist who was gifted with a fake Nobel Prize in Economics by his wealthy patrons (the Nobel
Prize in Economics does not exist – check out wikipedia!) – is a whore whose only function is to protect the left flank of our
corrupt and rapacious elite.
He's not a moron, and he's certainly not a liberal. His job – which pays very well mind you – is to pretend to be a sorta-kinda
Keynesian New Dealer, but in reality, anything that the rich wants, he will end up defending. And even if he sorta kinda claims
to be opposing something that the rich want which will impoverish the rest of us, when it comes to the bottom line, he will ruthlessly
attack any opposition to these policies.
First of all financial oligarchy should be taxes and Glass-Steagall reinstalled. Reinstallation of Grass-Steagall is very important
as well as raising capital gains taxes. So Warren should concentrate on attacking financial casino first...
Notable quotes:
"... We already saw this with minimum wage proposals, where minimum wages were raised by voter initiative, while Democratic candidates refuse to endorse them and lost. ..."
"... Yet kurt insists that we shouldn't be critical of the corrupt and comatose Democratic leadership, even though they clearly don't represent the vast majority of Democrats. I mean, what's democracy for, if not to follow corrupt leaders in lock step? ..."
"... If the Democratic elite is so enamored of taxing the wealthy, why is it that the DCCC never manages to stand candidates who share that view? ..."
"... Democratic perfidy on taxes dates back to JFK, when Kennedy (a plutocrat) starting cutting them on the his class. After that Tip O'Neill exacerbated the Democratic sell-out by embracing Reagan's tax cuts. ..."
"... It is time for America to live up to it's hyperbole. There are two parties in America. The GOP represents the top 1 %. The Clinton Democrats represent the top 10 %. ..."
"... The unrepresented 90 %, pay the bills, fight the wars, and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. ..."
"... A 50% reduction in the military budget would serve two masters. Firstly, it may force, a long overdue, economic efficiency on an out of control, wasteful monopolist, that has lost it's way. I'm pretty sure they can provide, at the least, the lame defense they have been providing, at half the cost. Secondly, with the savings, we can provide our citizens with health care, including dental. ..."
"... Our military will scream loudly, like the despots they idolize. Luckily, we have a cadre of true American soldiers that can replace the corrupt dogs of war, currently in control. ..."
Polls show that Democrats overwhelmingly favor the two AOC proposals and probably the Warren proposal as well.
Problem is that the corrupt, sclerotic and comatose Democratic establishment (Pelosi, Schumer) would rather squelch such proposals,
preferring to lose elections to endorsing and enacting them.
We already saw this with minimum wage proposals, where minimum wages were raised by voter initiative, while Democratic
candidates refuse to endorse them and lost.
Green New Deal, wealth tax, and 70% income tax are campaign issue made in heaven for Pelosi, Schumer, and party leaders...but
they are nowhere to be found. They regard the proposals as politically unfeasible, because their handlers are staunchly opposed.
Yet kurt insists that we shouldn't be critical of the corrupt and comatose Democratic leadership, even though they clearly
don't represent the vast majority of Democrats. I mean, what's democracy for, if not to follow corrupt leaders in lock step?
"Oh - Pelosi is supportive of a much higher marginal rate and welcomes AOC and has said so repeatedly so there's that."
Stop you're lying.
"You and your bretheren should double check your thoughts about Pelosi and Schumer - recognize the difference between political
posturing and reality - and then check to see if what you believe has a real basis in reality or if it is just the bothsidism
of the press providing you with the BS position of the right."
Follow your own advice. You lie constantly and are full of it.
Democratic perfidy on taxes dates back to JFK, when Kennedy (a plutocrat) starting cutting them on the his class. After that Tip
O'Neill exacerbated the Democratic sell-out by embracing Reagan's tax cuts.
Pelosi is following a long tradition of Democrats who pander to the wealthy...behaving like Republicans but trying to make-believe
that they represent we, the people.
Sure, we should fix the income tax...but that largely leaves out established wealth...plutocrats who largely live off their rents.
I pay at a rate of almost 2% on my house...France had a wealth tax...it can be done. Sweeping it under the rug, as Democrats
love to do, only guarantees that it will be buried, the implicit Democratic position.
In any case, the income tax and wealth tax proposals are ideal for Democrats...if they want to win elections rather than simply
pander to their wealthy donors.
It is time for America to live up to it's hyperbole. There are two parties in America. The GOP represents the top 1 %. The Clinton
Democrats represent the top 10 %.
The unrepresented 90 %, pay the bills, fight the wars, and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
A 50% reduction in the military budget would serve two masters. Firstly, it may force, a long overdue, economic efficiency on an out of control, wasteful monopolist, that has lost it's way.
I'm pretty sure they can provide, at the least, the lame defense they have been providing, at half the cost. Secondly, with the savings, we can provide our citizens with health care, including dental.
Our military will scream loudly, like the despots they idolize. Luckily, we have a cadre of true American soldiers that can replace
the corrupt dogs of war, currently in control.
Is anyone else tired of the longest, least productive waste of war in American history ? What
have we achieved, where are we going with this ? More war.
We are being fed a fairy tale of war about what men, long dead, did. And the reason they did
it. America is being strangled by the burden of belief that now is like then.
By the patrician men and women administrators, posturing as soldiers like the WW2 army, lie
for self profit. Why does anyone believe them ? Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, each an economic
decision, rather than a security issue.
Capitalists need their options regulated and their markets ripped from their control by the
state. Profits must be subject to use it to a social purpose or heavily taxed. Dividends
executive comp and interest payments included
Well done! Much clearer than your usual. There are several distinct motivations for taxes. We
have been far enough from fairness to workers, for so long, that we need to use the tax
system to redistribute the accumulated wealth of the plutocrats.
So I would say high marginal rates are a priority, which matches both objectives. Wealth
tax is needed until we reverse the massive inequality supported by the policies of the last
40 years.
Carbon tax and the like are a different thing, use of the tax code to promote a particular
policy and reduce damage to the commons.
"...we need to use the tax system to redistribute the accumulated wealth of the plutocrats.
So I would say high marginal rates are a priority..."
Forgive me, but high marginal rates (which I hugely favor) don't "redistribute the
accumulated wealth" of the plutocrats. If such high marginal rates are ever enacted, they'll
apply only to the current income of such plutocrats.
You merged paragraphs, and elided the next one. The way I see it, high rates are a
prerequisite to prevent the reaccumulation of obscene wealth, and its diversion into
financial gambling.
But yes that would be a very slow way to redistribute what has already accumulated.
Didn't mean to misinterpret what you were saying, sorry. High rates are not only "a
prerequisite to prevent the reaccumulation of obscene wealth," they are also a reimposition
of fair taxation on current income (if it ever happens, of course).
Wealth tax is needed until we reverse the massive inequality supported by the policies of the
last 40 years. Carbon tax and the like are a different thing, use of the tax code to promote
a particular policy and reduce damage to the commons.
"
more wisdom as usual!
Although wealth tax will be unlikely, it could be a stopgap; could also be a guideline to
other taxes as well. for example, Elizabeth points out that billionaires pay about 3% of
their net worth into their annual tax bill whereas workers pay about 7% of their net worth
into their annual tax bill. Do you see how that works?
it doesn't? this Warren argument gives us a guideline. it shows us where other taxes
should be adjusted to even out this percentage of net worth that people are taxed for. Ceu,
during the last meltdown 10 years or so ago, We were collecting more tax from the payroll
than we were from the income tax. this phenomenon was a heavy burden on those of low net
worth. All this needs be resorted. we've got to sort this out.
and the carbon tax? may never be; but it indicates to us what needs to be done to make
this country more efficient. for example some folks, are spending half a million dollars on
the Maybach automobile, about the same amount on a Ferrari or a Alfa Romeo Julia
quadrifoglio, but the roads are built for a mere 40 miles an hour, full of potholes.
What good is it to own a fast car like that when you can't drive but 40 -- 50 miles an
hour? and full of traffic jams. something is wrong with taxation incentives. we need to get a
better grid-work of roads that will get people there faster.
Meanwhile most of those sports cars just sitting in the garage. we need a comprehensive
integrated grid-work of one way streets, roads, highways, and interstates with no traffic
lights, no stop signs; merely freeflow ramp-off overpass interchanges.
Jesus Christ said, in so many words, that a man's worth will be judged by his generosity and
his avarice.
" 24And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children,
how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to pass through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 26They were even more
astonished and said to one another, "Who then can be saved?"
"People on the left that identify as Democratic socialist, the left that supports Sanders or
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for them, Bernie got robbed in 2016," said Michael Kazin, the
Georgetown University historian and co-editor of Dissent. "They think the
Establishment is always looking for someone to go against Bernie -- to run against progressives
in the party and stop them from being ascendant. I think they are suspicious of Beto because he
has taken oil and gas money, he's becoming the darling of big donors, and Obama likes him."
Being liked by Obama, who won two presidential elections and left office with an 90
percent favorable rating among Democrats, might not seem like a disadvantage in a
Democratic primary. But to many on the left, Obama's sins are plentiful: he bailed out Wall
Street, half-assed the stimulus package and health-care reform, deported more undocumented
immigrants than any president, and prosecuted drone warfare that left piles of civilian
casualties across the Middle East. What especially chafes Sanders-style progressives is that
Obama cloaked a centrist neoliberal agenda in a soaring, feel-good rhetoric that charmed voters
and made them forget about all the bad stuff.
Obama was cool. So is O'Rourke. The lines, then, are quickly being drawn: Beto is just a
Davos Democrat on a skateboard.
"I'm not sure we need another Obama, or another of any Democrat we've had recently,"
Elizabeth Bruenig recently
wrote in The Washington Post, urging caution before Democrats rush to O'Rourke's
corner. "I think the times both call for and allow for a left-populist candidate with
uncompromising progressive principles. I don't see that in O'Rourke." She labeled O'Rourke
"progressive-ish," pointing to his "thin" statements on energy regulation and his membership in
the New Democrat Coalition, "a centrist caucus with Clintonian views on health care, education,
and trade."
Taming of financial oligarchy and restoration of the job market at the expense of outsourcing and offshoring is required in the
USA and gradually getting support. At least a return to key elements of the New Deal should be in the cards. But Clinton wing of Dems
is beong redemption. They are Wall Street puddles. all of the them.
Issues like Medicare for All, Free College, Restoring Glass Steagall, Ending Citizen's United/Campaign finance reform, federal jobs
guarantee, criminal justice reform, all poll extremely well among the american populace
If even such a neoliberal pro globalization, corporations controlled media source as Guardian views centrist neoliberal Democrats
like Booker unelectable, the situation in the next elections might be interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin ..."
"... 2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy. ..."
In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic
party. Booker ,
Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice)
and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders' single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college
tuition for most Americans.
But outward appearances aren't everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late -- on
Wall Street. According to
CNBC , all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone's Jonathan
Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.
Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which
just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and
Gillibrand weren't far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and
other powerful executives.
When CNBC's story about
Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support
for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take "no corporate Pac money". But what's most telling isn't
that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street's money, it's that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn't take
their contributions, she's signaling that she's just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus
their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional
coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.
Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn -- advertising, staff and
conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries,
the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites
might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their
victims weak.
Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances,
the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.
The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don't have a labor-backed social democratic party that could
create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It's telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's
recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: "We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values
across sectors."
Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think
there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments
like that, it doesn't take fake news to convince working-class Americans that
Democrats don't really have their interests at heart.
Of course, the Democratic party isn't a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic
socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn't going to
scare capital away from the Democratic party, it's going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.
Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of
Bernie Sanders . It seems likely that he will run
for president, but he's been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising
ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team's experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal
will morph into all-out war.
Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It's afraid of the Democrats who will take them on -- and those,
unfortunately, are few and far between.
Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin
Just like universal health care, let's give up, it's too hard, we're not winners, we're not number one or problem solvers
and besides, someone at some time for some reason might get something that someone else might not get regardless if that someone
else needs it. Let's go with the Berners who seem to believe there will never be none so pure enough to become president.
The corporate state does not cast the votes. The public does.
Leaning farther to the left on issues like universal healthcare and foreign wars would be agreeing with the public. Not only
the progressive public, but the GENERAL public. The big money donors are the ONLY force against the Democrats resisting these
things.
2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform
that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and
well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy.
Bernie's challenge will "morph into all-out war". "Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats", blah, blah, blah. But we're
going to continue to play along? Why? Oh yeah, Bhaskar Sunkara will have us believe "There is no alternative". Remember TINA?
Give it up, man, just give it up.
One dollar, one vote.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
We can't turn this sinking ship around unless we know what direction it's going. So far, that direction is just delivering money
to private islands.
Democrats have a lot of talk, but they still want to drive the nice cars and sell the same crapft that the Republicans are.
Taxing the rich only works when you worship the rich in the first place.
Election financing is the single root cause for our democracy's failure. Period.
I really don't care too much about the mouthing of progressive platitudes from any 2020 Dem Prez candidate. The only ones that
will be worth voting for are the ones that sign onto Sanders' (or similar) legislation that calls for a Constitutional amendment
that allows federal and state governments to limit campaign contributions.
And past committee votes to prevent amendment legislation from getting to a floor vote - as well as missed co-sponsorship opportunities
- should be interesting history for all the candidates to explain.
Campaign financing is what keeps scum entrenched (because primary challengers can't overcome the streams of bribes from those
wonderful people exercising their 'free speech' "rights" to keep their puppet in govt) and prevents any challenges to the corporate
establishment who serve the same rich masters.
Lol, Social Security, Medicare, unemployement protections, so many of the things you mentioned, and so much more, were from the
PROGRESSIVE New Deal, which managed to implement this slew of changes in 5 years! 5 years! You can't criticize "progressives"
in one sentence and then use their accomplishments to support your argument. Today, the New Deal would be considered too far left
by most so called "pragmatic liberals." I assume you are getting fully behind the proposed "Green New Deal" then, right?
Vintage59 pointed out lots of things people have changed. Here's an exhaustive list of the legislation passed by people
who didn't get elected but were more progressive than the people who did:
There is also a steadily growing list of Democrats who did worse in elections than a hypothetical Democratic candidate had
been projected to do.
The party can either continue being GOP-Lite or it can start winning elections. It can't do both.
Nobody is going to get elected on a far left platform. Not in the USA and not anywhere. That's just a fact. And everybody
is going to need $$$ in the campaign. Of course candidates are going to suck up to Wall street and business in general.
And we would have been a thousand percent better off with HRC in the white house than we are now with the Trumpostor.
We don't need a candidate with far-left platform, we need one that is left-leaning at all. HRC and her next generation of clones
are mild Republicans.
Those who want to push the Democrats to the left in order to win perhaps need to stop talking to each other and talk to
people who live outside of LA and NY. If you stay within your bubble it seems the whole world thinks like you.
How old will Sanders be in 2020?
The people (outside the coasts) lean to the left some big issues. Medicare for all. Foreign wars. etc.
A sane person might ask why in the hell the left-side party is leaning farther to the right than the general public.
Sanders is a dinosaur. If there is a reason for Wall Street to be wary of him then it is that the mentally challenged orange
guy may win another term if the Democrats run with Sanders.
Hopefully, Sanders will understand what many of his supporters do not want to see: At some time age becomes a problem. If
the Democrats decide to move to the left rather than pursuing a pragmatic centrist approach, Ocasio-Cortez might be an option.
If they opt for the centrist alternative, it might be Harris or Gillibrand. Or, in both cases, a surprise candidate. But Sanders'
time is over, just as Biden's Bloomberg's.
It's true, but Trump is such a clusterfuck that an 80yo president is still be a better situation. Many countries have had rulers
in their 80s at one time or another.
Trump is clearly showing early-stage dementia now. Compare footage of him 10+ years ago to anything within the last 6-12 months
and it's obvious. The stress levels of being the POTUS + blackmailed by Putin + investigations bearing down on him . . . it's
wearing him down fast.
Anti-trust would be a very good place to start with.
Universal healthcare is a lot harder than you seem to think. I'd love it, but getting there means putting so many people out
of work, it'll be a massive political challenge, even if corporations have no influence. Progressives might be better off focusing
on how to ensure the existing system works better and Medicaid can slowly expand to fill the universal roll in the future.
Where has offering candidates who actually have a chance to win gotten us? Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the ADA, Title
9, Social Security, and more. None of these exist without constant changes. All took years to pass against heavy opposition. None
went far enough. All were improvements.
The list of wrongheaded things that were also passed is longer but thinking nothing changes because it takes time is faulty
logic.
Our capitalist predators are still alive and well. The finance, insurance, and real estate
organizations are the worst predators in the USA.
They will eat your babies if you let them.
Nancy Pelosi is worth several hundred million dollars. I don't think she's a Marxist in
the classical sense. Although she would fit the classic Soviet politburo member with their
private dachas on the Black Sea. I would argue she and her ilk across both parties have
enabled massive market concentration across many many sectors just in the past 4 decades.
They're elitists who back an oligarchy of their fellow elitists. They are the basis for the
symbiotic relationship between Big Business and Big Government. As Steve Bannon calls them,
they're the Party of Davos. IMO, the only difference between the two parties are their
rhetoric. Both of course engage in identity politics with the Democrats focused on the SJW
virtue signaling while the Republicans have for decades channeled the evangelicals.
Trump is an outsider. They consider him to be an uncouth nouveau riche. And are appalled
that his media savvy upended their Borg candidates. Nancy believes she is now the
opposition leader with the mandate from the Party of Davos to ensure the defeat of
Trump. This brouhaha over SOTU is just the first skirmish. I wouldn't underestimate
Trump in these media centered battles. While the corporate media who as Bannon calls the
opposition party creates the perception of a Trump administration in chaos, the Deplorables
are still backing him. His approval rating at this midway point in his presidency is no worse
than Obama and even GOP megagod Reagan. It's the reaction of the people from the heartland
when he served the Clemson team Big Macs and fries compared to the derisive commentary of the
urban/suburban crowd.
McConnell is also a card carrying member of the Party of Davos or else he would have
jumped to invite Trump to speak from the Senate. But Trump's shtick is the people's leader.
So he should speak from a heartland location. Your suggestion is a good one. Another could be
a cornfield in Iowa, the first primary state where all the Democrats presidential contenders
will be camping out soon.
As usual, the pledge ultimately never changes, New jobs and No increase in taxes. Americans
love tag lines even though our infrastructure, poor education et al is the result of fear of
taxation. Both parties use the same tag line, we certainly get what we pay for.
Yep,
The party has circled its wagons.
They insist that the Evil Vlad stole the last election.
Therefore, no need to examine Obama's centrist/neoliberal policies and the socio-economic
conditions that fueled the rejection of Hillary.
We're doomed to repeat our errors.
The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo.
The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big
factor in our 2016 loss. Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was -
voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against
their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street.
HRC would have been nominated in '08 if she had kissed more Wall Street you-know-what.
That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to
remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment,
etc.
Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with
both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our
politics.
Therefore, you can expect the Russian trolls to be coming for her in force. If you read
anything negative about Warren in the coming months, check the source and don't trust the
accuracy.
"Mounting a campaign against [financial] plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical
Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity.
What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for
those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of
the situation."
"... The French bourgeoisie is the politically most experienced ruling class in Europe. It has no illusions about the challenge it faces. Le Point put its file on the revolt of the vests under the self-telling title "What is waiting us". ..."
"... But it's not only the king who is naked. The whole system is naked. In the many pages devoted by the magazine to demonstrate that what the Vests want is unfeasible, not even a single serious word is written about what needs to be done to deal with the deep causes which led the French to revolt. Today's capitalism of Macron, Merkel and Trump does not produce a Roosevelt and New Deal or Popular Fronts – and we have to wait to see if it will produce a Hitler as some are trying to achieve. For the time being, it only produces Yellow Vests! ..."
"... In Oscar Wilde's masterpiece "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the main character looks every night at his horrible real self in the mirror. But he looks at it alone. ..."
"... This is where Macron made his most fatal mistake, being arrogant and markedly cut off from reality – with the confidence given to him by the mighty elite forces, which elected him and by his contempt of the common people which characterizes him. ..."
"... Observing Macron, the people understood what lied ahead for them. They felt their backs against the wall – they felt that they had only themselves to rely on, that they had to take themselves action to save themselves and their country. ..."
"... This was the decisive moment, the moment the historical mission of Macron was achieved . By establishing the most absolute control of Finance over Politics, he himself invited Revolution. His triumph and his tragedy came together. ..."
"... Many established "leftists" or "radical" intellectuals, who used to feverishly haul capitalism over the coals – although the last thing they really wanted was to experience a real revolution during their lifetime – they too, stand now frightened, looking at an angry Bucephalus running ahead of them. They prefer a stable capitalism, of which they can constitute its "consciousness", writing books, appearing on shows and giving lectures, analyzing its crises and explaining its tribulations. They idea that the People could at some point take seriously what they themselves said, never crossed their minds either! ..."
"... Today, four out of five French people disapprove of Macron's policies and one in two demands that he resigns immediately. We assume that this percentage is greater than the percentage of Russians who wanted the ousting of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. ..."
"... France is currently almost in a state of Power Vacuum . The president and the government cannot in essence govern and the people cannot tolerate them. It is not a situation of dual power, but a situation of dual legitimacy , in Mélenchon 's accurate description. ..."
"... This is a typical definition of a revolutionary situation . As history teaches us, the emergence of such a situation is necessary but not sufficient condition for a victorious Revolution. What is required in or order to turn a rebellion into a potentially victorious Revolution, is a capable and decided leadership and an adequate strategy, program and vision. These elements do not seem to exist, at last not for now, in today's France, as they did not exist in May 1968 or during the Russian Revolution of February 1917. Therefore, the present situation remains open to all possible eventualities; there must be no doubt however, that this is the beginning of a period of intense political and class conflicts in Europe, and that the Europe, as we know it, is already history. ..."
"... Or at least, for the people to be given the opportunity to develop an effective way of controlling state power. ..."
"... By reversing Marx's famous formula in German Ideology , the ideas of the dominant class do not dominate society. This is why the situation can be described as revolutionary. ..."
"... Although it is difficult to form an opinion from afar about how the situation may unfold, the formation of a such a United Front from grassroots could perhaps offer a way out with regards to the need for a political leadership for the movement, or even of the need to work out a transitional economic program for France, which must also serve as a transitional program for Europe . ..."
"... Contrary to how things were a century ago, certain factors such as the educational level of the lower social classes, the existence of a number of critical, radical thinkers with the necessary intellectual skills and the Internet, render such a possibility a much more realistic scenario today, than in the past. ..."
The magazine LePoint is one of the main media outlets of the French
conservative "centre-right". One of its December issues carries the cover title France
Faces its History. 1648, 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 four centuries of revolutions.
The cover features also a painting by Pierre-Jérôme Lordon, showing people
clashing with the army at Rue de Babylone , in Paris, during the
Revolution of 1830. Perhaps this is where Luc Ferry, Chirac's former minister, got his idea
from, when, two days ago, he asked the Army to intervene and the police to start shooting and
killing Yellow Vests.
Do not be surprised if you haven't heard this from your TV or if you don't know that the
level of police repression and violence in France, measured in people dead, injured and
arrested, has exceeded everything the country has experienced since 1968. Nor should you
wonder why you don't know anything about some Yellow Vest's new campaign calling for a
massive run on French banks. Or why you have been lead you to believe that the whole thing is
to do with fuel taxes or increasing minimum wage.
The vast majority of European media didn't even bother to communicate to their readers
or viewers the main political demands of the Yellow Vests ; and certainly, there hasn't
been any meaningful attempt to offer an insightful interpretation of what's happening in
France and there is just very little serious on-the-ground reporting, in the villages and
motorways of France.
Totalitarianism
Following Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, European Powers formed the Holy Alliance banning
Revolutions.
Nowadays, Revolutions have just been declared inconceivable (Soros – though not just
him – has been giving a relentless fight to take them out of history textbooks or, as a
minimum, to erase their significance and meaning). Since they are unthinkable they cannot
happen. Since they cannot happen they do not happen.
In the same vein, European media sent their journalists out to the streets in Paris on
Christmas and New Year's days, counted the protesters and found that they weren't too many
after all. Of course they didn't count the 150,000 police and soldiers lined up by Macron on
New Year's Eve. Then they made sure that they remain "impartial" and by just comparing
numbers of protesters, led viewers to think that we are almost done with it – it was
just a storm, it will pass.
The other day I read a whole page article about Europe in one of the most "serious" Greek
newspapers, on 30.12. The author devoted just one single meaningless phrase about the Vests.
Instead, the paper still found the way to include in the article the utterly stupid statement
of a European Right-Wing politician who attributed the European crisis to the existence of
Russia Today and Sputnik! And when I finally found a somewhat more serious article online
about the developments in France, I realized that its only purpose was to convince us that
what is happening in France surely has nothing to do with 1789 or 1968!
It is only a pity that the people concerned, the French themselves, cannot read in Greek.
If they could, they would have realized that it does not make any sense to have "Revolution"
written on their vests or to sing the 1789 song in their demonstrations or to organize
symbolic ceremonies of the public "decapitation" of Macron, like Louis XV. And the French
bourgeois press would not waste time everyday comparing what happens in the country now with
what happened in 1968 and 1789.
Totalitarianism is not just a threat. It's already here. Simply it has omitted to
announce its arrival. We have to deduce its precence from its results.
A terrified
ruling class
The French bourgeoisie is the politically most experienced ruling class in Europe. It has
no illusions about the challenge it faces. Le Point put its file on the
revolt of the vests under the self-telling title "What is waiting us".
A few months ago, all we had about Macron in the papers was praise, inside and outside of
France – he was the "rising star" of European politics, the man who managed to pass the
"reforms" one after the other, no resistance could stop him, he would be the one to save and
rebuild Europe. Varoufakis admired and supported him, as early as of the first round of the
2017 elections.
Now, the "chosen one" became a burden for those who put him in office. Some of them
probably want to get rid of him as fast as they can, to replace him with someone else, but
it's not easy – and even more so, it is not easy given the monarchical powers conferred
by the French constitution to the President. The constitution is tailored to the needs of a
President who wants to safeguard power from the people. Those who drafted it could not
probably imagine it would make difficult for the Oligarchy also to fire him!
And who would dare to hold a parliamentary or presidential election in such a situation,
as in France today? No one knows what could come out of it. Moreover, Macron does not have a
party in the sense of political power. He has a federation of friends who benefit as long as
he stays in power and they are damaged when he collapses.
The King is naked
"The King is naked", points out Le Point's editorial, before, with almost sadistic
callousness, posing the question: "What can a government do when a remarkable section of the
people vomits it?"
But it's not only the king who is naked. The whole system is naked. In the many pages
devoted by the magazine to demonstrate that what the Vests want is unfeasible, not even a
single serious word is written about what needs to be done to deal with the deep causes which
led the French to revolt. Today's capitalism of Macron, Merkel and Trump does not produce a
Roosevelt and New Deal or Popular Fronts – and we have to wait to see if it will
produce a Hitler as some are trying to achieve. For the time being, it only produces Yellow
Vests!
They predicted it, they saw it coming, but they didn't believe it!
Yet they could have predicted all that. It would have sufficed, had they only taken
seriously and studied a book published in France in late 2016, six months before the
presidential election, highlighting the explosive nature of the social situation and warning
of the danger of revolution and civil war.
The title of the book was "Revolution". Its author was none other than Emmanuel Macron
himself. Six months later, he would become the President of France, to eventually verify, and
indeed rather spectacularly, his predictions. But the truth is probably, that not even he
himself gave much credit to what he wrote just to win the election.
By constantly lying, politicians, journalists and intellectuals reasonably came to believe
that even their own words are of no importance. That they can say and do anything they want,
without any consequence.
In Oscar Wilde's masterpiece "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the main character looks every
night at his horrible real self in the mirror. But he looks at it alone.
This is where Macron made his most fatal mistake, being arrogant and markedly cut off from
reality – with the confidence given to him by the mighty elite forces, which elected
him and by his contempt of the common people which characterizes him.
Unwise and Arrogant, he made no effort to hide – this is how sure he felt of
himself, this is how convinced his environment was that he could infinitely go on doing
anything he wanted without any consequences (same as our Tsipras). Thus, acting foolishly and
arrogantly, he left a few million eyes to see his real face. This was the last straw that
made the French people realize in a definite way what they had already started figuring out
during Sarkozy's and Hollande's, administration, or even earlier. Observing Macron, the
people understood what lied ahead for them. They felt their backs against the wall –
they felt that they had only themselves to rely on, that they had to take themselves action
to save themselves and their country.
There was nobody else to make it in their place.
Macron as a Provocateur.
Terror in Pompeii
This was the decisive moment, the moment the historical mission of Macron
was achieved . By establishing the most absolute control of Finance over Politics, he himself invited
Revolution. His triumph and his tragedy came together.
It was just then, that Bucephalus (*) sprang from the depths of historical Memory,
galloping without a rider, ready to sweep away everything in his path.
Now those in power look at him with fear, but fearful too are both the "radical right" and
the "radical left". Le Pen has already called on protesters to return to their homes and give
her names to include in her list for the European election!
Mélenchon supports the Vests – 70% of their demands coincide with the program
of his party, La France Insoumise – but so far he hasn't dared to join the
people in demanding Macron's resignation, by adopting the immense, but orphan, cry of the
people heard all over France: "Macron resign". Perhaps he feels that he hasn't got the steely
strength and willpower required for attempting to lead such a movement.
The unions' leadership is doing everything it can to keep the working class away from the
Vests, but this stand started causing increasing unrest at its base.
Many established "leftists" or "radical" intellectuals, who used to feverishly haul
capitalism over the coals – although the last thing they really wanted was to
experience a real revolution during their lifetime – they too, stand now frightened,
looking at an angry Bucephalus running ahead of them. They prefer a stable capitalism, of
which they can constitute its "consciousness", writing books, appearing on shows and giving
lectures, analyzing its crises and explaining its tribulations. They idea that the People
could at some point take seriously what they themselves said, never crossed their minds
either!
In fact, this is also a further confirmation of the depth of the movement. Lenin ,
who, in any event knew something about revolutions, wrote in 1917: "In a revolutionary
situation, the Party is a hundred times farther to the left than the Central Committee and
the workers a hundred times farther to the left than the Party."
"Revolutionary
Situation" and Power Vacuum
Today, four out of five French people disapprove of Macron's policies and one in two
demands that he resigns immediately. We assume that this percentage is greater than the
percentage of Russians who wanted the ousting of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917.
France is currently almost in a state of Power Vacuum . The president and
the government cannot in essence govern and the people cannot tolerate them. It is not a
situation of dual power, but a situation of dual legitimacy , in
Mélenchon 's accurate description.
This is a typical definition of a revolutionary situation . As history
teaches us, the emergence of such a situation is necessary but not sufficient condition for a victorious Revolution. What is required in or order to turn
a rebellion into a potentially victorious Revolution, is a capable and decided leadership and
an adequate strategy, program and vision. These elements do not seem to exist, at last not
for now, in today's France, as they did not exist in May 1968 or during the Russian
Revolution of February 1917. Therefore, the present situation remains open to all possible
eventualities; there must be no doubt however, that this is the beginning of a period of
intense political and class conflicts in Europe, and that the Europe, as we know it, is
already history.
People's Sovereignty at the center of demands
Starting from fuel tax the revolting French have now put at the centre of their demands,
in addition to Macron's resignation, the following:
preserving the purchasingpower of the poorest social strata, e.g.
with the abolition of VAT on basic necessities to ensure decent standards of living for the
entire population,
the right of people to provoke referendums on any issue, the Citizens'
Initiative Referendum (RIC), including referendums to revokeelectedrepresentatives (the President, MPs, mayors, etc. ) when they violate their mandate,
all that in the context of establishing a SixthFrenchRepublic .
In other words, they demand a profound and radical " transformation " of the
Western bourgeois-democratic regime, as we know it, towards a form of directdemocracy in order to take back the state, which has gradually and in a totalitarian
manner – but while keeping up democratic appearances – passed under direct and
full control of the Financial Capital and its employees. Or at least, for the people to be
given the opportunity to develop an effective way of controlling state power.
These are not the demands of a fun-club of Protagoras or of some left-wing or right-wing
groupuscule propagating Self-Management or of some club of intellectuals. Nor are they the
demands of only the lowest social strata of the French nation.
They are supported, according to the polls and put forward by at least three quarters of
French citizens, including a sizeable portion of the less poor. In such circumstances, these
demands constitute in effect the Will of the People, the Will of the Nation.
The Vests are nothing more than its fighting pioneers. And precisely because it is the
absolute majority of people who align with these demands, even if numbers have somewhat gone
down since the beginning of December, the Vests are still wanted out on the streets.
By reversing Marx's famous formula in German Ideology , the ideas
of the dominant class do not dominate society. This is why the situation can be
described as revolutionary.
And also because it is not only the President and the Government, who have been debunked
or at least de-legitimized, but it's also the whole range of state and political
institutions, the parties, the unions, the "information" media and the "ideologists" of the
regime.
The questioning of the establishment is so profound that any arguments about violence and
the protesters do not weaken society's support for them. Many, but not all, condemn violence,
but there are not many who don't go on immediately to add a reminder of the regime's social
violence against the people. When a famous ex-boxer lost his temper and reacted by punching a
number of violent police officers, protesters set up a fundraising website for his legal
fees. In just two hours they managed to raise around 120.000 euro, before removing the page
over officials' complaints and threats about keeping a file on anyone who contributes money
to support such causes.
Until now, an overwhelming majority of the French people supports the demands while an
absolute majority shows supports for the demonstrations; but of course, it is difficult to
keep such a deadlock and power-void situation going for long. They will sooner or later
demand a solution, and in situations such as these it is often the case that public opinion
shifts rapidly from the one end of the political spectrum to the other and vice versa,
depending on which force appears to be more decisive and capable of driving
society out of the crisis.
The organization of the Movement
Because the protesters have no confidence in the parties, the trade unions, or anyone else
for that matter, they are driven out of necessity into self-organization, as they already do
with the Citizens' Assemblies that are now emerging in villages, cities and motorway camps.
Indeed, by the end of the month, if everything goes well, they will hold the first "
AssemblyofAssemblies ".
Similar developments have also been observed in many revolutionary movements of this kind
in various countries. A classic example is the spontaneous formation of the councils (
Soviets ) during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
Although it is difficult to form an opinion from afar about how the situation may unfold,
the formation of a such a United Front from grassroots could perhaps offer a
way out with regards to the need for a political leadership for the movement,
or even of the need to work out a transitional economic program for
France, which must also serve as a transitional program for Europe .
Contrary to how things were a century ago, certain factors such as the educational level
of the lower social classes, the existence of a number of critical, radical thinkers with the
necessary intellectual skills and the Internet, render such a possibility a much more
realistic scenario today, than in the past.
Because the movement's Achilles' Heel is that, while it is already in the process of
forming a political proposition, it still, at least for now, does not offer any economic
alternative or a politically structured, democratically controlled leadership.
Effective Democracy is an absolute requirement in such a front, because it is the
only way to synthesize the inevitablydifferentlevels of
consciousness within the People and to avoid a split of the movement between "left"
and "right", between those who are ready to resort to violence to achieve their ends and
those who have a preference for more peaceful, gradual processes.
Such a " front " could perhaps also serve as a platform for solidifying a
program and vision, to which the various parties and political organizations could
contribute.
In her CritiqueoftheRussianRevolutionRosaLuxemburg , the leader of the German Social Democracy was overly critical
of the Bolsheviks , even if, I think, a bit too severe in some points. But she closes
her critique with the phrase: " They at least dared "
Driven by absolute Need, guided by the specific way its historical experience has formed
its consciousness, possessing a Surplus of Consciousness, that is able to feel the
unavoidable conclusions coming out of the synthesis of the information we all possess, about
both the "quality" of the forces governing our world and the enormous dangers threatening our
countries and mankind, the French People, the French Nation has already crossed the
Rubicon.
By moving practically to achieve their goals at a massive scale, and regardless of what is
to come next, the French people has already made a giant leap up and forward and, once more
in its history, it became the world's forerunner in tackling the terrible economic,
ecological, nuclear and technological threats against human civilization and its
survival.
Without the conscious entry of large masses into the historical scene, with all the
dangers and uncertainties that such a thing surely implies, one can hardly imagine how
humanity will survive.
Yep,
The party has circled its wagons.
They insist that the Evil Vlad stole the last election.
Therefore, no need to examine Obama's centrist/neoliberal policies and the socio-economic
conditions that fueled the rejection of Hillary.
We're doomed to repeat our errors.
The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo.
This is the realistic perspective we have to adopt in the US: the Democratic establishment
is part of the neoliberal machinery that has generated Bush's wars, Obama's bank bailouts,
deportations, and drone executions, and now Trump's anti-democratic populism.
"... Bernie's bid was crushed by Clinton's superdelegates. No amount of throwing money against him in the direct sense was doing any good. He took popular positions on issues and stubbornly stayed on-message. ..."
In regards to the Hillary v Bernie question, it also didn't help that the primary vote was
wildly skewed by so-called 'superdelegates,' who don't actually commit their votes until the
DNC convention, but were being counted by the media as having already voted for Hillary,
which made it appear to many of the uninformed that Bernie didn't have any chance of winning,
which may have been intended to keep Bernie supporters home on primary day under the
assumption that Hillary was unbeatable.
As sensible as your suggestions may be, what you're calling for would require at least three
constitutional amendments to be practical - including scrapping the first amendment.
Maybe we should strive towards attainable goals instead?
Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play
up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the
Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage
together.
Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American
politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting
phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince
the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,'
while anything that raises taxes is bad. Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of
the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the
deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that
many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.
Progressive believe in inclusion and if that is "moralistic rhetoric" then so be it.
The litany goes "round and round.
Hillary Clinton:
" you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of
deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you
name it!
"Barack Obama:
"Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the
presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion "
Bernie's bid was crushed by Clinton's superdelegates. No amount of throwing money against him
in the direct sense was doing any good. He took popular positions on issues and stubbornly
stayed on-message.
Half of Americans don't bother voting for president. Why is the American media full only of people who insist that the country
is divided in half between Democrat and Republican supporters? Where are the people of influence who think it's a problem and
reflects poorly on the country that half of eligible voters don't see a reason to participate, and that it's worth changing things
in order to get more people to change their minds about that?
Both parties are content with being unpopular, but with political mechanisms ensuring they stay in power anyway. The Democrats
aren't concerned with being popular. They're content with being a token opposition party that every once in a while gets a few
token years with power they don't put to any good anyway. It pays more, I guess.
It still looks like if Americans want to live in a progressive country, they'll have to move to one. But as it is clear that the
neoliberalism of establishment Democrats has little or nothing to offer the poor and working class, or to non-wealthy millennials,
the times they are a-changing.
These corporate-Dem candidates are not being forced to sell out to win elections. Quite the
opposite in fact. They are risking losing their elections for the sake of selling out.
Surely, many will comment that Democrats have no choice but to take the money in order to be
competitive. I have one truism for such folks to ponder: Why would you trust your allegiance
to those who don't care if you win?
Basic logic: rich people win the general election either way, so long as the
primary-winning Democrat is in their pocket (the GOP is always on their side). So this
monetary affection is certainly more about fixing an no-lose general than it is about ousting
Trump, or any Republican.
"As Democratic Elites Reunite With Neocons, the Party's Voters Are Becoming Far More
Militaristic and Pro-War Than Republicans" [Glenn Greenwald, T
he Intercept ].
'But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support
for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents
overwhelming favor their removal.
The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support
withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support
withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent."
Those of you who followed my midterms worksheets will recall that the liberal Democrat
establishment packed the ballot with MILOs (candidates with Military, Intelligence, and Law
enforcement backgrounds, or Other things, like being a DA), preparing the way for further
militarization of the Party, and ultimately for war.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
Did Krugman just issue a veiled warning to Pelosi, Schumer, and Clinton Democrats? Did he see
this as a teaching moment for them? Has he turned from unabashed megaphone for establishment
Democrats to an honest broker, willing to explain economics to Demcoratic Big Money
parasites? Could be... If so, this might be a turning point for Krugman from partisan hack to
honest broker!
As always, Robert Reich pulls fewer punches: "Do not ever underestimate the influence of
Wall Street Democrats, corporate Democrats, and the Democrats' biggest funders. I know. I've
been there.
In the 2018 midterms, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, big
business made more contributions to Democrats than to Republicans. The shift was particularly
noticeable on Wall Street. Not since 2008 have donors in the securities and investment
industry given a higher percentage to Democratic candidates and committees than to
Republicans.
The moneyed interests in the Democratic party are in favor of helping America's poor and
of reversing climate change – two positions that sharply distinguish them from the
moneyed interests in the Republican party.
And maybe, just maybe, Krugman, in a veiled warning to Democrats enamored with Trump's tax
cuts, has decided to trump partisan loyalty with economic reality...as any decent economist
should do.
EMichael and kurt will be disappointed, very disappointed that Krugman sided with AOC over
corrupt, sclerotic, corporate Democrats...
There is no reason to think that mainstream liberals would not just go along with whatever
direction the liberal establishment takes. OTOH, there is a major difference in the context
between the rank and file of mainstream liberals and the actual liberal establishment itself.
Mainstream liberals just want to fit in and win elections. They are concerned with
electability and the constraints of legislative process. There is nothing wrong with that. It
is the role of the rank and file.
However, AOC is correct. It is radicals that bring about all significant change.
Mainstream radical is an oxymoron. After radicals cause change then it is no longer radical,
but it becomes mainstream instead.
In contrast, the liberal establishment is also concerned with electability because that is
what they do for a living, either get elected or ride along on the coattails of the elected,
but they are elites and elitists not to be separated from the status quo economic
establishment without considerable consternation. However, the elitists' trepidation over
being separated from their wealthy elite supporters would be greatly reduced by severe limits
on private campaign financing. Still, it would be a rare elected official that would rather
eat in a soup kitchen than a five-star restaurant both for the good food and for the good
company. In both regards though that depends upon what your definition of "good" is.
"Mainstream liberals just want to fit in and win elections..." And they are precisely they
kind of "go-along to get along types" who let bad things happen...and then pretend to not
understand what went wrong...Vietnam, Iraq, GWOT, Glass-Steagall repeal, trade
liberalization/offshoring profits, banksters who go Scot free after bringing the economy
down. The list goes on.
There are leaders, followers, and radicals. One can choose to be any one or two or those they
want, but no more than two. It is not very rewarding to be a radical from the back of the
line unless there is also a radical to follow at the front of the line. Leaders that are also
followers inherit the status quo and guard it like it was their own because it is. Radical
leaders rarely succeed, but often die young.
Trump is a bad example of a leader, but he follows his nose at least rather than just the
status quo. Trump has a nose for trouble and he cannot resist its stench any more than a
jackal or hyena can resist rotting carrion. Fortunate for Trump the US has a long history of
stockpiling trouble for future consumption that reaches all the way back to colonial times.
Trump likes to think that orange is the new black, but the old black, brown, and red are
still around and neither yellow nor orange can take their place.
The majority of people are just plain old followers. If people think that there is chaos
in the world already, just imagine what it would be like if most people were not just plain
old followers. The status quo always has the advantage of the natural force of inertia.
"...banksters who go Scot free after bringing the economy down. The list goes on."
Because you believe in government as done by Putin, Maduro, Saddam, Saudi Arabia, etc:
jail, torture, kill enemies by the people in power being the law.
You reject the US Constitution where voters are allowed to elect Republicans who legalize
fraud and theft by deception based on voters wanting the free lunch of easy credit requiring
bankers have no liability for the bad loans from easy credit. You reject the US Constitution
prohibition on retroactive laws criminalizzing legal actions.
Only if you were leading protests in the 90s in opposition to laws making credit easy for
below $80,000 workers whether buying houses or trucks/SUV.
Only if you were picketing real estate agents and car dealers from 2001 to 2005 to keep
out customers, you were not doing enough to stop easy credit.
The GOP was only dellivering what voters wanted, stuff they could not afford paid for by
workers saving for their retirement.
Elections have consequences.
The elections from 1994 to 2004 were votes for free lunch economics. The GOP promised and
delivered free lunch economic policies.
In 2005, voters on the margins realized tanstaafl, and in 2006 elected Pelosi to power,
and Pelosi, representing California knows economies are zero sum, so she increased costs to
increase general welfare. One of the costs was reccognizing the costs, and benefits, of the
US Constitution.
In 2008, she did not try to criminalize past action, and when she could not get the votes
to punish the bankers who bankrupted the institutions they ran by prohibiting bonuses in the
future,, she insread delivered the best deal possible for the US Constitutional general
welfare.
I think Bernie wanted all voters who voted GOP to lose their jobs, or maybe he simply
believes in free lunch economist claims that welfare payments in Ohio and Michigan are higher
than union worker incomes.
Maybe he thinks bankruptcy court nationalize businesses, not liquidate them.
Or maybe he figured the solution was a 21st Century Great Depression which would elect a
socialist instead of a capitalist FDR, and he would get to run all the automakers, all the
food industry, and employ all the workers deciding what they can buy?
I can never figure out how the economy would work if Bernie were running it. He talks
about Europe, but never advocates the cost of EU economy that is part of EU law: the VAT. All
EU members must have a VAT that is a significant cost to every person in the EU.
Free lunch economics is when you promise increased benefits with no costs, or lower
costs.
Free lunch Trump and free lunch Bernie differ only in their winners, but their losers are
always the same.
When progressives argue for unlimited increases in debt just like Reagan, they are
rejecting the pokicies of FDR, Keynes, the US when the general welfare increased most by
increasing assets faster than debt.
"'elitists' trepidation over being separated from their wealthy elite supporters would be
greatly reduced by severe limits on private campaign financing." Which is why so many liberal
establishment politicians...per Reich...pay only lip service to real campaign finance reform.
Being parasites, they feed off of their hosts and dare not disrupt the gravy train.
"elitists' trepidation over being separated from their wealthy elite supporters would be
greatly reduced by severe limits on private campaign financing."
So, the wealthy liberal elites who pay no taxes by cleverly paying all revenue to workers
need to be punished because they pay too much to too many workers?
Warrren Buffett has never paid much in taxes even when tax rates on corporations were over
50% and individuals reached over 70%. Money paid to workers, directly or indirectly, was and
still is the number one tax dodge.
Unless you go to a sales tax aka VAT which taxes all revenue, expecially business income
paid to workers.
VAT is an income tax with zero tax dodges aka loopholes aka deductions.
""'elitists' trepidation over being separated from their wealthy elite supporters would be
greatly reduced by severe limits on private campaign financing." Which is why so many liberal
establishment politicians...per Reich...pay only lip service to real campaign finance reform.
Being parasites, they feed off of their hosts and dare not disrupt the gravy train."
In your view, its the poor who create high paying jobs?
It's wrong to listen to people who convince rich people to give their money to people
paying US workers to build factories, wind farms, solar farms battery factories,
transportation systems, vehicles, computer systems in the US?
Instead Democrats should listen to people who have never created long term paying jobs,
but only pay elites who run campaigns using mostly unpaid workers, or workers paid only a few
months every few years? Like Bernie does?
When it comes to how to run a "Green New Deal", I want the policy crafted by someone who
listens to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and the CEOs of California energy corporations,
tech companies, who are commited to consuming more and more energy that requires no fossil
fuels. Listening to Home Depot and Walmart building managers and retail sales managers should
be a priority. All these guys both focus on paying more workers, and selling more to workers
paid more.
AOC and Bernie seem to listen to the Lamperts who are destroying the value of companies
like Sears by "taxing" both the customers, workers, and owners, by giving money to people who
don't work to produce anything.
I make going to RealClearPolicy, Politics, etc a daily practice to see how bad
progressives are at selling their policies, making it easy for find all sorts of costs,
without any benefits to anyone.
The New Deal was not about taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. The New
Deal was about paying workers more.
In 1930, half the population still lived on farms. (They might work off the farm, but they
were farmworkers first.) The problem for farmers is Europe had recovered from the war and was
no longer sending gold to the US to secure loans to buy food, but instead repaying the loans
by shipping high value food to the US, wine, cheese, etc, and that meant too much food drove
prices down, which meant farmworkers earned less and less.
One of the first laws set minimum prices for food, enforced by destroying crops, or
government overpaying for food like milk, cheese, bread, which the government gave away to
the poor who could never buy this food. It was not about giving food away, but about paying
workers, the farmers, ranchers, etc. Giving the food to the poor who could not afford to buy
food was simply to avoid the attacks on FDR for destroying good food to drive up farmer pay.
Which was the truth.
FDR talked about creating a healthy workforce to make America great, then about building a
healthy soldier. Ike in the 50s and JFK in the 60s campaigned on creating healthy soldiers.
And smart, educated soldiers and workers.
The policies of liberals was about better workers, richer workers.
Conservatives since Reagan has been about cutting the costs of workers. Sold based on
consumers benefiting from lower cost workers, because consumees are never workers, workers
never consumers, because if workers equal consumers, economics must be zero sum.
By attracting the intense ire of the GOP, AOC activates the negative polarization of lib
pundits and makes them look for ways to defend left policy items they'd attack in any other
scenario. It's very effective at pushing the discourse forward.
"But the Democrats' moneyed interests don't want more powerful labor unions. They are not in
favor of stronger antitrust enforcement against large corporations."
So, you think beef at $10 plus per pound, salad greens at $5 plus per pound, a fast food
meal at $10 plus, is a winning issue for Democrats?
Or by powerful labor unions, you mean for only white male blue collar factory workers,
long haul white truckers, white construction workers?
Making all work pay enough to reach middle class status at the low end will not happen by
unions because many parts of the US, and workers, and jobs, will oppose unions. Instead,
labor laws and enforcement to lift wages and working conditions rapidly in conservative
regions are required.
Better to get the minimum wage in Indiana and Kansas to $10 than in California to $15.
More important to get farm workers fully covered by Federal law like factory workers, with
exemptions only for farmer family members.
Raising incomes in low living cost regions will not raise prices much nationally, but
increase living standards among the most disadvantaged who feel "left behind".
Automatic increases annually of 10% for 7 years, then indexed by cpi.
Constantly emphasizing this minimum is way below what the low wage is in SF, NYC, LA, but
the goods produced will be bought and thus wages paid mostly by high income liberal elites.
Conservatives sticking it to liberals!
Wow... you need to do a lot better at shopping sales. I wait for sales and then buy burger
at $2.50, crud cuts at $3-4, and can frequently get t-bone and ribeye for under $5.
BUT, on the larger scale, what is the difference if I pay $1 a pound for burger and earn
$20K a year, or I pay $3 for burger and earn $60K a year?
Inflation punishes savers? Really? What is the difference if I earn 3% at 2% inflation or
1% at 0% inflation? The answer is, none.
"In that case, however, why do we care how hard the rich work? If a rich man works an extra
hour, adding $1000 to the economy, but gets paid $1000 for his efforts, the combined income
of everyone else doesn't change, does it? Ah, but it does – because he pays taxes on
that extra $1000. So the social benefit from getting high-income individuals to work a bit
harder is the tax revenue generated by that extra effort – and conversely the cost of
their working less is the reduction in the taxes they pay."
This is not right. Heck, it's not even wrong.
Say the $1000 is for a surgery. The social benefit is the tax they pay on it? The surgery
itself is irrelevant?
Krugman confuses the flow of money, which supports and correlates with production, with
the actual production, the real "social benefit".
If you invent a widget that everyone on earth is willing to pay $1 over cost to get,
congratulations, you just earned $7 billion.
Now, does that mean you get to consume $7 billion worth of stuff other people produce? I
think so.
Or, does it mean you get to trap the world in $7 billion of debt servitude from which it
is impossible for them to escape, because you are hoarding, and then charging interest on,
the $7 billion they need to pay back their debts.
The key is to understand that money is created via debt. Money has value because people
with debt need to get it to repay their debts.
If we all decide BitCoin is worthless, then BitCoin is worthless. It has no fundamental
usefulness.
If we all decide money is worthless, then a bunch of people with debt will gladly take it
off our hands so that they can repay their debt. Heck, they may even trade us stuff to get
the debt... which is why money is NOT worthless.
If $1 per day make everyone live better with no added climate change, PLUS paid an extra $7
billion per day to production workers, service workers, that would be good, or bad?
Say, the $7 billion in wages was to sing and dance so no matter where in the world he was,
he was entertained by song and dance?
Economies are zero sum. Every cost has an equal benefit aka income or consumption. Work
can't exist without consumption, consumption without work.
"If $1 per day make everyone live better with no added climate change, PLUS paid an extra $7
billion per day to production workers, service workers, that would be good, or bad?"
Obviously, good. Which is what I say in my post.
"Money is merely work in the past or future."
Money is other peoples' debt. They have borrowed money into existence and then spent it
into the economy, AND they have pledged to do work in the future, to get the money back so
they can repay the debt.
That "doing work in the future to get the money back" is only possible if the people with
the money actually spend it back into the economy.
The problem is that the people in debt also agreed to pay interest, and the people with
the money want to keep collecting the interest... so keep holding the money... making it
absolutely impossible for those with debt to pay it back.
I'm saying is that there is obligation on both sides. There is obligation on the part of
people with debt to produce goods and services and sell them for money to repay their debts,
AND for that to be possible, there is obligation on those with money to actually spend the
money...
Contrary to CONservative opinion, money is not created by work, it is earned by selling,
and that means for the economy to function, there has to be spending.
We need a tax code with very high top rates, but deductions for spending and capital
investing... not to take from the rich, but rather to force them to spend and invest to get
deductions.
Clinton Democrats (DemoRats) are so close to neocons that the current re-alliance is only natural and only partially caused by
Trump. Under Obama some of leading figures of his administration were undistinguishable from neocons (Samantha Power is a good
example here -- she was as crazy as Niki Haley, if not more). There is only one "war party in the USA which
continently consists of two wings: Repugs and DemoRats.
Notable quotes:
"... Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham , one of the country's most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton , who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump's decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon. ..."
"... That's not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that "the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm's way" ..."
"... But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent. ..."
"... This case is even more stark since Obama ran in 2008 on a pledge to end the war in Afghanistan and bring all troops home. Throughout the Obama years, polling data consistently showed that huge majorities of Democrats favored a withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan ..."
"... While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining ..."
"... At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives , even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that predated Trump ). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and has multilevel alliances with warmongering institutions. ..."
"... By far the most influential [neo]liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents , while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a "national security liberal" who was "all about counterterrorism"). ..."
"... All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It's inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation -- which will endure long after Trump is gone -- is well under way. ..."
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S December 18 announcement that he intends to withdraw all U.S.
troops from Syria produced some isolated support in the
anti-war wings of bothparties , but largely provoked
bipartisan outrage among in Washington's reflexively pro-war establishment.
Both
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the country's most reliable war supporters, and Hillary
Clinton, who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient
hawkishness, condemned Trump's decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror
jargon.
But while official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from
Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump's Syria
withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition.
That's not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the
proposition that "the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as
Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm's
way" far more than they agree with the pro-war view that "the U.S. needs to keep troops in
places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help support our allies fight terrorism and
maintain our foreign policy interests in the region."
But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support
for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents
overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in
2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump
voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent.
A similar gap is seen among those who voted Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections (28
percent support withdrawal while 54 percent oppose it), as opposed to the widespread support
for withdrawal among 2018 GOP voters: 74 percent to 18 percent.
Identical trends can be seen on the question of Trump's announced intention to withdraw half
of the U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, where Democrats are far more supportive of keeping
troops there than Republicans and independents.
This case is even more stark since Obama ran in 2008 on a pledge to end the war in
Afghanistan and bring all troops home. Throughout the Obama years, polling data
consistently showed that huge majorities of Democrats favored a withdrawal of all
troops from Afghanistan:
With Trump rather than Obama now advocating troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, all of this
has changed. The new polling data shows far more support for troop withdrawal among Republicans
and independents, while Democrats are now split or even opposed . Among 2016 Trump voters,
there is massive support for withdrawal: 81 percent to 11 percent; Clinton voters, however,
oppose the removal of troops from Afghanistan by a margin of 37 percent in favor and 47 percent
opposed.
This latest poll is far from aberrational. As the Huffington Post's Ariel Edwards-Levy
documented early this week , separate polling shows a similar reversal by Democrats on
questions of war and militarism in the Trump era.
While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should
continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to
withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining. "Those who voted for
Democrat Clinton now said by a 42-point margin that the U.S. had a responsibility to do
something about the fighting in Syria involving ISIS," Edwards-Levy wrote, "while Trump voters
said by a 16-point margin that the nation had no such responsibility." (Similar trends can be
seen among GOP voters, whose support for intervention in Syria has steadily declined as Trump
has moved away from his posture of the last two years --
escalating bombings in both Syria and Iraq and killing far more civilians , as he
repeatedly vowed to do during the campaign -- to his return to his other campaign pledge to
remove troops from the region.)
This is, of course, not the first time that Democratic voters have wildly shifted their
"beliefs" based on the party affiliation of the person occupying the Oval Office. The party's
base spent the Bush-Cheney years denouncing war on terror policies, such as assassinations,
drones, and Guantánamo as moral atrocities and war crimes, only to suddenly support those
policies once they
became hallmarks of the Obama presidency .
But what's happening here is far more insidious. A core ethos of the anti-Trump #Resistance
has become militarism, jingoism, and neoconservatism. Trump is frequently attacked by Democrats
using longstanding Cold War scripts wielded for decades against them by the far right: Trump is
insufficiently belligerent with U.S. enemies; he's willing to allow the Bad Countries to take
over by bringing home U.S. soldiers; his efforts to establish less hostile relations with
adversary countries is indicative of weakness or even treason.
By far the most influential [neo]liberal media outlet,
MSNBC, is
stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents , while
even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the
pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a
"national security liberal" who was "all about counterterrorism").
All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first
time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and
imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max
Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of
conscience. It's inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly
pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation --
which will endure long after Trump is gone -- is well under way.
"... Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble, which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible without 2008 events. ..."
Barkley insists on a left-right split for his analysis of political parties and their attachment to vague policy tendencies
and that insistence makes a mess of the central issue: why the rise of right-wing populism in a "successful" economy?
Naomi Klein's book is about how and why centrist neoliberals got control of policy. The rise of right-wing populism is often
supposed (see Mark Blyth) to be about the dissatisfaction bred by the long-term shortcomings of or blowback from neoliberal policy.
Barkley Rosser treats neoliberal policy as implicitly successful and, therefore, the reaction from the populist right appears
mysterious, something to investigate. His thesis regarding neoliberal success in Poland is predicated on policy being less severe,
less "shocky".
In his left-right division of Polish politics, the centrist neoliberals -- in the 21st century, Civic Platform -- seem to disappear
into the background even though I think they are still the second largest Party in Parliament, though some seem to think they
will sink in elections this year.
Electoral participation is another factor that receives little attention in this analysis. Politics is shaped in part by the
people who do NOT show up. And, in Poland that has sometimes been a lot of people, indeed.
Finally, there's the matter of the neoliberal straitjacket -- the flip-side of the shock in the one-two punch of "there's no
alternative". What the policy options for a Party representing the interests of the angry and dissatisfied? If you make policy
impossible for a party of the left, of course that breeds parties of the right. duh.
Likbez,
Bruce,
Blowback from the neoliberal policy is coming. I would consider the current situation in the USA as the starting point of this
"slow-motion collapse of the neoliberal garbage truck against the wall." Neoliberalism like Bolshevism in 1945 has no future,
only the past. That does not mean that it will not limp forward in zombie (and pretty bloodthirsty ) stage for another 50 years.
But it is doomed, notwithstanding recently staged revenge in countries like Ukraine, Argentina, and Brazil.
Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble,
which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible
without 2008 events.
At least half of Americans now hate soft neoliberals of Democratic Party (Clinton wing of Bought by Wall Street technocrats),
as well as hard neoliberal of Republican Party, which created the " crisis of confidence" toward governing neoliberal elite in
countries like the USA, GB, and France. And that probably why the intelligence agencies became the prominent political players
and staged the color revolution against Trump (aka Russiagate ) in the USA.
The situation with the support of neoliberalism now is very different than in 1994 when Bill Clinton came to power. Of course,
as Otto von Bismarck once quipped "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." and another
turn of the technological spiral might well save the USA. But the danger of never-ending secular stagnation is substantial and
growing. This fact was admitted even by such dyed- in-the-wool neoliberals as Summers.
This illusion that advances in statistics gave neoliberal access to such fine-grained and timely economic data, that now it
is possible to regulate economy indirectly, by strictly monetary means is pure religious hubris. Milton Friedman would now be
laughed out the room if he tried to repeat his monetarist junk science now. Actually he himself discarded his monetarist illusions
before he died.
We probably need to the return of strong direct investments in the economy by the state and nationalization of some assets,
if we want to survive and compete with China. Australian politicians are already openly discussing this, we still are lagging
because of "walking dead" neoliberals in Congress like Pelosi, Schumer, and company.
But we have another huge problem, which Australia and other countries (other than GB) do not have: neoliberalism in the USA
is the state religion which completely displaced Christianity (and is hostile to Christianity), so it might be that the lemming
will go off the cliff. I hope not.
The only thing that still keeps neoliberalism from being thrown out to the garbage bin of history is that it is unclear what
would the alternative. And that means that like in 1920th far-right nationalism and fascism have a fighting chance against decadent
neoliberal oligarchy.
Previously financial oligarchy was in many minds associated with Jewish bankers. Now people are more educated and probably
can hang from the lampposts Anglo-Saxon and bankers of other nationalities as well ;-)
I think that in some countries neoliberal oligarchs might soon feel very uncomfortable, much like Soros in Hungary.
As far as I understood the level of animosity and suppressed anger toward financial oligarchy and their stooges including some
professors in economics departments of the major universities might soon be approaching the level which existed in the Weimar
Republic. And as Lenin noted, " the ideas could become a material force if they got mass support." This is true about anger as
well.
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political
distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which
has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up
of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was
without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates
that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was
appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video.
And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal
establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the
basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the
Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants
to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of
them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two
evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the
narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to
money and power.
Politically Obama was a "despicable coward", or worse, a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public policy courses. ..."
"... Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement, SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress. ..."
"... And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance. ..."
"... He had a mandate for change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes. ..."
"... Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. ..."
"... People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do. ..."
"... The citizens of this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities than they did. ..."
"Democratic left playing a long game to get 'Medicare for All'" [Bloomberg Law]. "'We don't have the support that we need,'
said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who will co-chair the Progressive Caucus. She said that she'd favor modest expansions
of Medicare or Medicaid eligibility as a step toward Medicare for All. 'I am a big bold thinker; I'm also a good practical
strategist,' Jayapal said.
'It's why the Medicare for All Caucus was started, because we want to get information to our members so people feel
comfortable talking about the attacks we know are going to come.'" • So many Democrat McClellans; so few Democrat Grants.
"Progressives set to push their agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail. The GOP can't wait." [NBC]. "While the party
has moved left on health care, many Democrats seem more comfortable offering an option to buy into Medicare or a similar public
plan rather than creating one single-payer plan that replaces private insurance and covers everyone. Progressives, led by Rep.
Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and her Medicare For All PAC, plan to whip up support for the maximalist version and advance
legislation in 2019." • The "maximalist version" is exactly what Jayapal herself, quoted by Bloomberg, says she will not seek.
Not sure whether this is Democrat cynicism, sloppy Democrat messaging, or poor reporting. Or all three!
The problem is unlike 1933 large sections of the electorate just wanted more Republican
economics to "deal" with the aftermath. That is the difference between a moderate
recession(historically) and a collapse like the early 1930's had when the British Empire and
the de Rothschild dynasty finally collapsed.
40% didn't want anything the Obama Administration came up with succeed. 40% wanted more
than they could possible politically come up with and that left 20% to actually get something
done. You see why the Democrats had to take losses.
Even if Health Care, which was controversial in the party was nixed for more "stimulus",
Democrats look weak. Politically, Stimulus wasn't that popular and "fiscal deficit" whiners were going to whine
and there are a lot of them.
Naked Capitalism ignores this reality instead, looking for esoteric fantasy. I would argue
Democrats in 2009-10 looked for short term political gain by going with Health Care reform
instead of slowly explaining the advantage of building public assets via stimulus, because
the party was to split on Health Care to create a package that would satisfy enough
people.
Similar the Republican party, since Reagan had done the opposite, took short term
political gain in 2016, which was a mistake, due to their Clinton hatred.
Which is now backfiring and the business cycle is not in a kind spot going forward, which
we knew was likely in 2016.
So not only does "Republican fatigue" hurt in 2018, your on the political defensive for
the next cycle. Short-termism in politics is death.
A 50 state strategy, or no 50 state strategy, it really doesn't matter. Democrats were
going to take losses. The key is, making sure the party is unified enough to run public
policy courses.
I truly don't understand your point of view. I also don't understand your claim that NC
deals in fantasy.
Your points make little sense in the face of what people wanted in 2016 that Obama could
have delivered without interference from the Republicans. Things like anti-trust enforcement,
SEC enforcement aka jailing the banksters, not going into Syria, not supporting the war in
Yemen (remember he did both of those on his own without Congress), not making the Bush tax
cuts permanent, not staying silent on union issues and actually wearing those oft mentioned
comfortable shoes while walking a picket line, the list of what could have been done and that
people supported goes on and on. None of which required approval from Congress.
There's even the bland procedural tactic of delaying the release of the Obamacare exchange
premium price increases until after the election in 2016. He could have delayed that notice
several months and saved Hillary a world of hurt at the polls. But he chose not to use the
administrative tools at his disposal in that case. He also could have seen the writing on the
wall with the multiple shut down threats and gotten ahead of it by asking Congress that if
you are deemed an essential employee you will continue to be paid regardless of whether your
department is funded during a shutdown. With 80% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck
that would have been a huge deal.
And speaking of the ACA, we know that Obama and others did whatever they could to kill
single payer and replace it with Romneycare 1.5. The language in the bill and the controversy
surrounding it show that no one thought this would give them a short term political
advantage. If anything, the run up to the vote finally made enough citizens realize that they
didn't hate government insurance, they just hated insurance. And here were the Democrats and
Obama, forcing people to buy expensive insurance.
Obama took a huge organization that could have helped him barnstorm the country (OFA) just
like what Bernie is doing now and killed it early in his first term. He had a mandate for
change. He had a majorities in both houses. He had the perfect bully pulpit. He chose not to
use any of it. He and others killed the support for local parties. The Democrats needed the JFA with Hillary because Obama had pretty much bankrupted the party in 2012. A commitment to
all 50 states would have been huge and would have helped Hillary get on the ground where she
needed to shore up support by a few thousand votes.
Obama and the Democrats took losses from 2008 on because they promised to do what their
constituents voted them in to do and then decided not to do it. By the time 2016 rolled
around, there were estimates which placed 90% of the counties in the US as not having
recovered from the disaster in 2007. Hillary ran on radical incrementalism aka the status
quo. Who in their right mind could have supported the status quo in 2016?
The Democrats lost seats at all levels of government because of their own incompetence,
because of their cowardice, because of their lazy assumptions that people had nowhere else to
go. So when record numbers of people didn't vote they lost by slim margins in states long
considered True Blue. There is nothing cyclical about any of that.
People don't have Republican fatigue. They don't have Democrat fatigue. They simply don't
see the point in voting for people who won't do what they're voted in to do.
The citizens of
this country want change. They want higher wages and lower prices. They want less war. They
want less government interference. They want their kids to grow up with more opportunities
than they did.
Obama and Hillary and all the rest of the Democrats stalking MSM cameras could
have delivered on some of that but chose not to. And here we are. With President Trump. And
even his broken clock gets something right twice a day, whereas Team Blue has a 50/50 chance
of making the right decision and chooses wrong everytime.
Please provide better examples of your points if you truly want to defend your
argument.
And, that often mentioned reason for voting for Democrats, the Supreme Court. Neither
Obama nor the Democrats fought for their opportunity to put their person on the Supreme
Court. Because of norms I guess. Which actually makes some sense because it broke norms.
Because they simply don't care
I truly don't understand why you think any of that. Most mystifying is your claim that
anyone thought ACA would provide short term political benefit?
You know how Obamacare could have given Hillary a short term political gain? If Obama had
directed HHS to delay releasing any premium increase notices until after the election.
Otherwise, you'd have to support your argument a lot better. NC has the least fantastical
commentary base of any website I've seen.
This is complete and utter nonsense. Your calling depicting NC as "fantasy" is a textbook
example of projection on your part.
The country was terrified and demoralized when Obama took office. Go read the press in
December 2008 and January 2009, since your memory is poor. He not only had window of
opportunity to do an updated 100 days, the country would have welcomed. But he ignored it and
the moment passed.
Obama pushed heath care because that was what he had campaigned on and had a personal
interest in it. He had no interest in banking and finance and was happy to let Geither run
that show.
As for stimulus, bullshit. Trump increased deficit spending with his tax cuts and no one
cares much if at all. The concern re deficit spending was due to the fact that the Obama
economic team was the Clinton (as in Bob Rubin) economics team, which fetishized balanced
budgets or even worse, surpluses. We have explained long form that that stance was directly
responsible for the rapid increase in unproductive household debt, most of all mortgage debt,
which produced the crisis.
"... According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our institutions." ..."
A central theme of the hysteria over alleged "Russian meddling" in US politics is the
sinister effort supposedly being mounted by Vladimir Putin "to undermine and manipulate our
democracy" (in the words of Democratic Senator Mark Warner).
According to the narrative fabricated by the intelligence agencies and promoted by the
Democratic Party and the corporate media over the past year and a half, Putin and his minions
hacked the Democrats and stirred up social divisions and popular grievances to secure the
election for Donald Trump, and they have been working ever since to destroy "our
institutions."
Their chosen field of battle is the internet, with Russian trolls and bots infecting the
body politic by taking advantage of lax policing of social media by the giant tech companies
such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
To defend democracy, the argument goes, these companies, working with the state, must
silence oppositional viewpoints -- above all left-wing, anti-war and socialist viewpoints --
which are labeled "fake news," and banish them from the internet. Nothing is said of the fact
that this supposed defense of democracy is a violation of the basic canons of genuine
democracy, guaranteed in the First Amendment to the US Constitution: freedom of speech and
freedom of the press.
But what is this much vaunted "American democracy?" Let's take a closer look.
The
two-party monopoly
In a vast and complex country with a population of 328 million people, consisting of many
different nationalities, native tongues, religions and other demographics, spanning six time
zones and thousands of miles, two political parties totally dominate the political
system.
The ruling corporate-financial oligarchy controls both parties and maintains its rule by
alternating control of the political institutions -- the White House, Congress, state houses,
etc. -- between them. The general population, consisting overwhelmingly of working people, is
given the opportunity every two or four years to go to the polls and vote for one or the
other of these capitalist parties. This is what is called "democracy."
The monopoly of the two big business parties is further entrenched by the absence of
proportional representation, which it makes it impossible for third parties or independent
candidates to obtain significant representation in Congress.
The role of corporate
money
The entire political process -- the selection of candidates, elections, the formulation of
domestic and foreign policies -- is dominated by corporate money. No one can seriously bid
for high office unless he or she has the backing of sponsors from the ranks of the richest 1
percent -- or 0.01 percent -- of the population. The buying of elections and politicians is
brazen and shameless.
Last month's midterm elections set a record for campaign spending in a non-presidential
year -- $5.2 billion -- a 35 percent increase over 2014 and triple the amount spent 20 years
ago, in 1998. The bulk of this flood of cash came from corporations and multi-millionaire
donors.
In the vast majority of contests, the winner was determined by the size of his or her
campaign war chest. Eighty-nine percent of House races and 84 percent of Senate races were
won by the biggest spender.
Democratic candidates had a huge spending advantage over their Republican opponents,
exposing the fraud of their attempt to posture as a party of the people. The securities and
investment industry -- Wall Street -- favored Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 52
percent to 46 percent.
Elections are anything but a forum to openly and honestly discuss and debate the great
issues facing the voters. The real issues -- the preparation for new wars, deeper austerity
and further attacks on democratic rights -- are concealed behind a miasma of attack ads and
mudslinging. The research firm PQ Media estimates that total political ad spending will reach
$6.75 billion this year. In last month's elections, the number of congressional and
gubernatorial ads rose 59 percent over the previous, 2014, midterm.
The setting of policy and passage of legislation is helped along by corporate bribes,
euphemistically termed lobbying. In 2017 alone, corporations spent $3 billion to lobby the
government.
Ballot access restrictions
A welter of arcane, arbitrary and anti-democratic requirements for gaining ballot status,
which vary from state to state, block third parties from challenging the domination of the
Democrats and Republicans. These include filing fees and nominating petition signature
requirements in the tens of thousands in many states. Democratic officials routinely
challenge the petitions of socialist and left-wing candidates who are likely to find support
among young people and workers.
Media blackout of third party candidates
The corporate media systematically blacks out the campaigns of third party and independent
candidates, especially left-wing and socialist candidates. The exception is candidates who
are either themselves rich or who have the backing of wealthy patrons.
Third party candidates are generally excluded from nationally televised candidates'
debates.
In last month's election, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Congress in
Michigan's 12th Congressional District, Niles Niemuth, won broad support among workers, young
people and students for his socialist program, but received virtually no press
coverage.
Voting restrictions
Since the stolen election of 2000, when the Supreme Court shut down the counting of votes
in Florida in order to hand the White House to the loser of the popular vote, George W. Bush,
with virtually no opposition from the Democrats or the media, attacks on the right of workers
and poor people to vote have mounted.
Thirty-three states have implemented voter identification laws, which, studies show, bar
up to 6 percent of the population from voting. States have cut back early voting and absentee
voting and shut down voting precincts in working class neighborhoods. A number of states
impose a lifetime ban on voting by felons, even after they have done their time. In 2013, the
Supreme Court gutted the enforcement mechanism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with no real
opposition from the Democrats. The United States is one of the few countries that hold
elections on a work day, making it more difficult for workers to cast a
ballot.
Government of, by and for the rich
The two corporate parties have overseen a social counterrevolution, resulting in a
staggering growth of social inequality. In tandem with this process, the oligarchic structure
of society has increasingly found open expression in the political forms of rule. Alongside
the erection of the infrastructure of a police state -- mass surveillance, indefinite
detention, the militarization of the police, Gestapo raids on workplaces and attacks on
immigrants, the ascendancy of the military in political affairs, internet censorship -- the
personnel of government have increasingly been recruited from the rich and the
super-rich.
More than half of the members of Congress are millionaires, as compared to just 1 percent
of the American population. All the presidents for the past three decades -- George H. W,
Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama -- have either been multi-millionaires going
in or have cashed in on their presidencies to become multi-millionaires afterward. In the
person of the multi-billionaire real estate speculator and con man Donald Trump, the
financial oligarchy has directly taken occupancy of the White House.
In The State and Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "Bourgeois democracy,
although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under
capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for
the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor."
Greenwald Goes Ballistic On Politico "Theory" Guardian's Assange-Manafort Story Was
Planted By Russians
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/28/2018 - 20:25 105 SHARES
After The Guardian attempted to shovel what appears to be a wholly fabricated story down our
throats that Trump campaign manager met with Julian Assange at the London Embassy - Politico
allowed an ex-CIA agent to use their platform to come up with a ham-handed cover story ever;
Russia tricked The Guardian into publishing the Manafort-Assange propaganda.
To that end, The Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald (formerly of The Guardian ) ripped Politico an
entirely new oriface in a six-part Twitter dress down.
Greenwald also penned a
harsh rebuke to the Guardian 's "problematic" reporting in a Tuesday article titled: "It Is
Possible Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange. If True, There Should Be Ample Video and Other
Evidence Showing This."
In sum, the Guardian published a story today that it knew would explode into all sorts of
viral benefits for the paper and its reporters even though there are gaping holes and highly
sketchy aspects to the story.
It is certainly possible that Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and even Donald Trump himself
"secretly" visited Julian Assange in the Embassy. It's possible that Vladimir Putin and Kim
Jong Un joined them.
And if any of that happened, then there will be mountains of documentary proof in the form
of videos, photographs, and other evidence proving it . Thus far, no such evidence has been
published by the Guardian. Why would anyone choose to believe that this is true rather than
doing what any rational person, by definition, would do: wait to see the dispositive evidence
before forming a judgment?
The only reason to assume this is true without seeing such evidence is because enough
people want it to be true. The Guardian knows this. They knew that publishing this story
would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets
would hyperventilate over it , and that they'd reap the rewards regardless of whether the
story turned out to be true or false. It may be true. But only the evidence, which has yet to
be seen, will demonstrate that one way or the other. -
Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
In short, The Guardian tried to proffer a load of easily disprovable claims - which if not
true, are pure propaganda. Once it began to blow up in their face, Politico let an
ex-CIA operative try to save face by suggesting Russia did it . Insanity at its finest.
Ever since Alan Rusbridger. left the Guardian as Chief Editor and made room for Assange
and Snowden etc., it seems that they have been infiltrated by the CIA and Luke H. gets
attention for his stories and Russia-hatred. The ENglish have been conditioned to hate Russia
and the Guardian will do anything to discredit Russia with whatever silly stories. Now they
are begging for money to survive: well, NO, because you went along with fake news to get some
money: corrupt, unlike Alan Rusbridger, Assange, Manning and Snowden.
Doesnt matter, 1/2 of our population is convinced, that our governmemt would never do to
the USA. what they do to other countries for the past 60 years.
Yep, the Russian Collusion / interference is so weak. Look at this story, it's breaking
and will be huge. Epstine's dirty details released, Muller looks pretty bad.
Greenwald Goes Ballistic On Politico "Theory" Guardian's Assange-Manafort Story Was
Planted By Russians
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/28/2018 - 20:25 105 SHARES
After The Guardian attempted to shovel what appears to be a wholly fabricated story down our
throats that Trump campaign manager met with Julian Assange at the London Embassy - Politico
allowed an ex-CIA agent to use their platform to come up with a ham-handed cover story ever;
Russia tricked The Guardian into publishing the Manafort-Assange propaganda.
To that end, The Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald (formerly of The Guardian ) ripped Politico an
entirely new oriface in a six-part Twitter dress down.
Greenwald also penned a
harsh rebuke to the Guardian 's "problematic" reporting in a Tuesday article titled: "It Is
Possible Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange. If True, There Should Be Ample Video and Other
Evidence Showing This."
In sum, the Guardian published a story today that it knew would explode into all sorts of
viral benefits for the paper and its reporters even though there are gaping holes and highly
sketchy aspects to the story.
It is certainly possible that Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and even Donald Trump himself
"secretly" visited Julian Assange in the Embassy. It's possible that Vladimir Putin and Kim
Jong Un joined them.
And if any of that happened, then there will be mountains of documentary proof in the form
of videos, photographs, and other evidence proving it . Thus far, no such evidence has been
published by the Guardian. Why would anyone choose to believe that this is true rather than
doing what any rational person, by definition, would do: wait to see the dispositive evidence
before forming a judgment?
The only reason to assume this is true without seeing such evidence is because enough
people want it to be true. The Guardian knows this. They knew that publishing this story
would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets
would hyperventilate over it , and that they'd reap the rewards regardless of whether the
story turned out to be true or false. It may be true. But only the evidence, which has yet to
be seen, will demonstrate that one way or the other. -
Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
In short, The Guardian tried to proffer a load of easily disprovable claims - which if not
true, are pure propaganda. Once it began to blow up in their face, Politico let an
ex-CIA operative try to save face by suggesting Russia did it . Insanity at its finest.
Ever since Alan Rusbridger. left the Guardian as Chief Editor and made room for Assange
and Snowden etc., it seems that they have been infiltrated by the CIA and Luke H. gets
attention for his stories and Russia-hatred. The ENglish have been conditioned to hate Russia
and the Guardian will do anything to discredit Russia with whatever silly stories. Now they
are begging for money to survive: well, NO, because you went along with fake news to get some
money: corrupt, unlike Alan Rusbridger, Assange, Manning and Snowden.
Doesnt matter, 1/2 of our population is convinced, that our governmemt would never do to
the USA. what they do to other countries for the past 60 years.
Yep, the Russian Collusion / interference is so weak. Look at this story, it's breaking
and will be huge. Epstine's dirty details released, Muller looks pretty bad.
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is
toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is
uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly
about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables
program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.
When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address
the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism,
would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non
threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.
In 2016, when the Greens made
this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform
irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a
non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now
except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.
To quote
Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to
everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions
currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."
Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political
position.
"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent
upon the Democratic Party."
For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more
convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class
interests at play.
"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical
policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and
exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth
face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of
world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting
the Democrats
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically
fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient
facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of
establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with
delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of
their class.
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the
Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back
into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!
Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by
expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into
the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing
these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real
life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional
declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any
practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic
political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And
working for socialist revolution is no one of them.
What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class
emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling
elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling
elite.
What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized
greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and
working people self rule?
Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all
about.
National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for
Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.
Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of
entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed
to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own
opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.
The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any
social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called
technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or
detrimental.
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the
telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have
only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be
liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve
socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it
is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the
system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation,
and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma
of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of
palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not
convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably
prove the truth of socialism.
In the wake of the sending of bomb-like devices of uncertain capability to prominent critics
of US President Donald Trump and of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue (
both Trump's fault , of course) – plus a migrant invasion approaching the US through
Mexico – there have been widespread calls for toning down harsh and "divisive" political
rhetoric. Of course given the nature of the American media and other establishment voices,
these demands predictably have been aimed almost entirely against Trump and
his Deplorable supporters , almost never against the same establishment that unceasingly
vilifies Trump and
Middle American radicals as literally Hitler , all backed up by the evil
White-Nationalist-in-Chief,
Russian President Vladimir Putin .
Those appealing for more civility and a return to polite discourse can save their breath.
It's much, much too
late for that .
When Trump calls the establishment media the enemies of the people, that's because they
– together with their
passive NPC drones and active Antifa enforcers – are enemies, if by "the people" we
mean the historic American nation. Trump's sin is that he calls them out for what they are.
Trump didn't cause today's polarization, he only exacerbates it because he punches back.
Good, may he continue to do so. Pining for a more well-mannered time in a country that belongs
to another, long-gone era is futile.
American politics is no longer about a narrow range of governing styles or competing
economic interests. It is tribal. Today's "tribes" are defined in terms of affinity for or
hostility to the founding American ethnos characterized by European, overwhelming
British origin (a/k/a, "white"); Christian, mainly Protestant; and English-speaking, as
augmented by members of other groups who have totally or partially assimilated to that
ethnos or who at least identify with it (think of
Mr. Hamadura in The Camp of the Saints ).
(Unfortunately we don't have a specific word for this core American ethnic identity to
distinguish it from general references to the United States in a civic or geographic sense.
(Russian, by contrast, makes a distinction between ethnic
русский (russkiy) and civic/geographical российский (rossiiskiy).)
Maybe we could adapt Frank Lloyd Wright's " Usonian "? "Or Americaner," comparable to Afrikaner?
"Or Anglo-American
"?)
Since the Left gave up on its original focus on industrial workers as the revolutionary
class, the old bourgeois/proletarian dichotomy is out. Tribes now line up according to
categories in a plural
Cultural Marxist schematic of oppressor and victim pairings , with the latter claiming
unlimited redress from the former. As the late Joe Sobran said, it takes a lot of clout
to be a victim in America these days. The following is a helpful guide to who's who under
the new dispensation:
In most of the above categories there are variations that can increase the intensity of
oppressor or victim status. For example, certified victimhood in a recognized category confers
extra points, like Black Lives Matter for race (it is racist to suggest that " all
lives matter ") or a defined religious group marginalized by "hate" (mainly anti-Jewish or
anti-Muslim , but not something like anti-Buddhist, anti-Rastafarian, or even anti-atheist
or anti-Satanist because no one bothers about them; anti-Christian victimhood is an oxymoron
because "Christian" is inherently an oppressive category). In addition, meeting the criteria
for more than one category confers enhanced victimhood under a principle called "
intersectionality ."
In the same way, there are aggravating factors in oppressor categories, such as being a
policeman (an enforcer of the structure of oppression regardless of the officer's personal
victim attributes, but worse if straight, white, Christian, etc.) or a member of a "hate"
subculture (a Southerner who's not vocally self-loathing
is a presumed Klan sympathizer ; thus, a diabetic, unemployed, opioid-addicted Georgia cracker is an
oppressor as the beneficiary of his "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity," notwithstanding
his socio-economic and health status). Like being Southern, living
while genetically Russian is also an aggravating factor.
Creatively shuffling these descriptors suggests an entertaining game like Mad Libs , or perhaps an endless series of
jokes for which you could be fired if you told them at work:
Two people walk into a bar.
One is a Baptist, straight, male Virginia state trooper whose ancestors arrived at
Jamestown
.
The other is a one-legged, genderqueer
, Somali
DervishWIC recipient
illegally in the US on an expired student visa.
So the bartender says [insert your own punch line here] .
The victim side accuses its opponents of a litany of sins such as racism, sexism,
homophobia, Islamophobia, etc., for which the solution is
demographic and ideological replacement – even while
denying that the replacement is going on or intended. This is no longer ordinary political
competition but (in an inversion of von Clausewitz attributed to Michel Foucault) politics "
as the
continuation of war by other means ." In its immediate application this war is a second
American civil war, but it can have immense consequences for war on the international stage as
well.
To attain victory the forces of victimhood championed by the Democratic Party need to
reclaim part of the apparatus of power they lost in Trump's unexpected 2016 win. (Actually,
much of the apparatus in the Executive Branch remains in Democratic hands but is only of
limited utility as a "resistance" under the superficial Trumpian occupation.) As this
commentary appears it is expected that on November 6 the GOP will retain control of the US
Senate but the House of Representatives will flip to the Democrats.
First, on the domestic political front, while Democrats and their MSM echo chamber have
cooled down talk of impeaching Trump, it will return with a vengeance on November 7
(coincidentally, Great
October Socialist Revolution Day ) if the House changes hands. In contrast to the GOP's
dithering in the area of investigations and hearings relevant to the
US-UK Deep State conspiracy to overturn the 2016 election (which will be buried forever),
the Democrats will be utterly ruthless in using their power with the single-minded purpose of
getting Trump out of office before 2020. They won't waste much time on the phony Russian
"collusion" story (Robert Mueller's report will be an obscenely expensive dud), they'll focus
like a laser on getting Trump's tax returns and dredging up anything they can from his long
involvement in the sharp-elbowed, dog-eat-dog world of New York property development and
construction, confident they can find something that qualifies as a high crime or
misdemeanor. ( Some racist
language couldn't hurt, either.) The model will be Richard Nixon's Vice
President Spiro Agnew , who was forced out of office on charges relating to his time in
Maryland politics years earlier. Even the GOP's retention of the Senate would be far from a
guarantee that Trump won't be removed. It's easily foreseeable that a dozen-plus Republican
Senators would be thrilled to get rid of Trump and restore the party's status quo ante with
Mike Pence in the Oval Office. As with Nixon, Republicans will panic at whatever dirt the
Democrats dig up and demand Trump resign for the "good of the country and the party," as
opposed to the way Democrats formed a protective phalanx around Bill Clinton. Unlike Nixon,
Trump might choose to fight it out in the Senate and might even prevail. In any case, a
change in control of just one chamber means an extended political crisis that will keep Trump
boxed in and perpetually on the defensive.
Third and most ominously, chances of a major war could increase exponentially. If Trump
is fighting for his life, chances of purging his
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team will go from slim to none.
Any hope of a
national interest-based policy along the lines Trump promised in 2016 – and which
still seems to be his personal preference – will be gone. Thankfully, South Korea's
President Moon Jae-in has run with the ball through last year's opening and hopefully
the momentum for peace in Northeast Asia will be self-sustaining. With any luck, the
Khashoggi
imbroglio between Washington and Riyadh will lead to America's " downplaying and
eventually abandoning the anti-Iranian obsession that has so far overshadowed our
regional policy" and to an end the carnage in Yemen, even as the Syria war
lurches toward resolution . Still, the US remains addicted to
ever-increasing sanctions , and despite warnings from both Russia and China that they are
prepared for war – warnings virtually ignored by the US media and political class
– the US keeps pressing on all fronts: outer space, the Arctic, Europe (withdrawal from
the INF treaty),
Ukraine , the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait,
Xinjiang , and elsewhere. Trump is expected to meet with Putin and Chinese President Xi
Jinping following the US election, but they may have to conclude that he is not capable of
restraining the war machine nominally under his command and will plan accordingly.
In Homage to
Catalonia (1938), his memoir of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell describes how his
wife was rudely woken by a police-raid on the hotel room she was occupying in Barcelona:
In the small hours of the morning there was a pounding on the door, and six men marched
in, switched on the light, and immediately took up various positions about the room,
obviously agreed upon beforehand. They then searched both rooms (there was a bathroom
attached) with inconceivable thoroughness. They sounded the walls, took up the mats, examined
the floor, felt the curtains, probed under the bath and the radiator, emptied every drawer
and suitcase and felt every garment and held it up to the light. ( Homage to Catalonia , ch.
14)
The police conducted this search "in the recognized OGPU [then the Russian
communist secret-police] or Gestapo style for nearly two hours," Orwell says. He then notes
that in "all this time they never searched the bed." His wife was still in it, you see, and
although the police "were probably Communist Party members they were also Spaniards, and to
turn a woman out of bed was a little too much for them. This part of the job was silently
dropped, making the whole search meaningless."
Orwell's story suggests a new word to me: typhlophthalmism , meaning "the practice
of turning a blind eye to essential but inconvenient facts" (from Greek typhlos
, "blind," + ophthalmos
, "eye"). But it's a long word, so let's call it typhlism for short. Shorter is
better, because the term could be used so often today. Orwell's story is an allegory of modern
Western politics and social commentary, where so many essential but inconvenient facts are
"silently dropped" from analysis.
October
23, 2018globinfo
freexchange
Through his own humorous style, comedian Lee Camp pointed out something quite
serious. As he explained, Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, fulfilled all the
conditions necessary to run for president of the United States.
One key condition is certain and obvious: tons of money.
Another one, is to pretend to be religious. And this condition is, of course, particularly
important in the America of Donald Trump. Indeed, as Camp says, the former Atheist Mark
Zuckerberg has suddenly found religion.
And the most recent fulfilled condition by Facebook's boss, was to secure the alliance with the
US deep state.
Indeed , on October 11, Facebook announced the removal of 559 pages and 251
accounts from its service, accusing the account holders of " spam and coordinated
inauthentic behavior. " The primary thread connecting victims of the purge seems to be that
they are critics and/or opponents of the American political "mainstream" or
"establishment."
Also, as Ben Norton of the Real
News points out, Facebook has done this multiple times now. We've seen numerous
pages that have been removed. We've also seen the scare of so-called fake news. And what's
troubling about this is that some of the partners Facebook has in its crackdown on so-called
fake news, vetting pages like these that have been removed, one of the partners is the
Atlantic Council . The Atlantic Council is essentially a kind of unofficial NATO,
funded by the United States government and the European Union along with NATO. Among the other
fact-checkers that have partnered with Facebook to screen so-called fake news is the Weekly
Standard . The Weekly Standard is a neo-conservative website that itself published
false information in the lead-up to the Iraq war, which it strongly supported.
And what about Jeff Bezos? He invested on the mainstream media propaganda power by buying "
one of the leading daily American newspapers, along with The New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times, and The Wall Street Journal. The Post has distinguished itself through its political
reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S.
government. " Quite influential on the US political developments.
Right after this key move, Alternet immediately identified the conflicts of interest since the Washington Post would never
reveal the fact that Bezos signed a $600 million contract with the CIA.
It seems that another multi-billionaire rushed to proceed in the necessary actions that could
build a bridge towards the US presidency.
And recently, Jeff Bezos attempted to fix his image by raising minimum wage to $15 an hour for
Amazon workers. The move came out from the pressure exercised by Bernie Sanders and the
progressive movement. Yet, it seems to be another neoliberal-style trick
.
All these indications point to the fact that the liberal plutocracy is determined to 'fire' its
faithful political puppets in the Democratic party, who are rapidly losing popularity and have
become 'inefficient' to serve its interests.
Besides, the progressive movement has already marked some significant victories in the
ideological battlefield. For example, big money and wealthy donors become more and more
repulsive in the eyes of progressive voters and younger generations. And this has become clear
in practice, with the unprecedented victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives
who beat establishment Democrats without the help of the big money.
As the liberal plutocrats understand that it is now pointless to spend money for buying
politicians, they will attempt to take over the Democratic party by themselves. Otherwise, the
party will fall in the hands of the progressives and they will be left without political power.
The liberal plutocrats will use the power of the corporate media to sell themselves as the sole
antidote to Donald Trump.
It is highly unlikely to see this in the 2020 presidential election. The liberal plutocrats
probably prepare the ground to take over the Democratic party in 2024. We may see Mark
Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos fighting in the Democratic primaries and then, fighting for the
presidency against someone from the Trump 'school', like Nikki
Haley .
The anti-globalist part of the big capital that supported Trump will prefer this development
instead of an uncontrollable progressive movement that will hold political power. Then,
plutocrats of all sides will do what the big capital always does. They will clear up things
between them. In one thing they are unquestionably united: crushing the resistance of the
ordinary people from below.
The Democrats are politically responsible for the rise of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Obama said following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump. ..."
"... The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout), pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man." ..."
"... This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to exploit discontent among impoverished social layers. ..."
Pelosi's deputy in the House, Steny Hoyer, sums up the right-wing policies of the Democrats,
declaring: "His [Trump's] objectives are objectives that we share. If he really means that,
then there is an opening for us to work together."
So much for the moral imperative of voting for the Democrats to stop Trump! As Obama said
following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their
differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock
and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump.
The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama
administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout),
pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass
surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and
intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies
against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to
sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the
anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man."
This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the
working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers
obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to
exploit discontent among impoverished social layers.
The same process is taking place internationally. While strikes and other expressions of
working class opposition are growing and broad masses are moving to the left, the right-wing
policies of supposedly "left" establishment parties are enabling far-right and neo-fascist
forces to gain influence and power in countries ranging from Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland
to Brazil.
As for Gay's injunction to vote "pragmatically," this is a crude promotion of the bankrupt
politics that are brought forward in every election to keep workers tied to the capitalist
two-party system. "You have only two choices. That is the reality, whether you like it or not."
And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy
is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting
you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today --
falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war.
The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation "graveyard of social protest
movements," and for good reason. From the Populist movement of the late 19th century, to the
semi-insurrectional industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s, to the mass anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and the eruption of
international protests against the Iraq War in the early 2000s -- every movement against the
depredations of American capitalism has been aborted and strangled by being channeled behind
the Democratic Party.
"... Donald Trump has been transforming American society not by legislation but by using his executive powers to put people in charge of government agencies who are inimical to their stated goals. It is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse ..."
"... By contrast, Trump is imposing a regime that was incubated long ago by people such as Grover "Starve the Beast" Norquist and every other libertarian think-tank funded by the Koch Brothers et al. The big bourgeoisie might not like the bad taste, racism and thuggish behavior of the Trump administration but they couldn't be happier with the results. This is an elected government that has fulfilled its deepest policy aspirations and that shows a willingness to push the Democrats back on their heels, so much so that someone like Mikie Sherrill lacks the courage to defend policies that might win elections down the road. After all, if she is unseated, she can always go back to a job as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. What happens to someone working in Walmart's is not her business, after all. ..."
Ever since the Democratic Party abandoned its New Deal legacy and adopted the neoliberal
centrism associated with the Carter presidency and then cast in stone by the Democratic
Leadership Council in 1985, each election loss has generated a chorus of remonstrations in the
left-liberal press about the need to run "progressive" candidates if the party wants to win.
The latest instance of this was a post to the Jacobin FB page that stated: "By running
to the right, Democrats insist on losing twice: at the polls and in constructing an inspiring
agenda. Bold left-wing politics are our only hope for long-term, substantive victory."
The question of why Democrats are so okay with losing has to be examined closely. In some
countries, elections have huge consequences, especially in Latin America where a job as an
elected official might be not only a source of income for a socialist parliamentarian but a
trigger for a civil war or coup as occurred in Costa Rica in 1948 and in Chile in 1973
respectively.
In the 2010 midterm elections, there was a massive loss of seats in the House of
Representatives for the Democrats. In this month's midterm elections, the Democrats hoped that
a "Blue Wave" would do for them what the 2010 midterms did for the Republicans -- put them in
the driver's seat. It turned out to be more of a "Blue Spray", not to speak of the toothless
response of House leader Nancy Pelosi who spoke immediately about how the Democrats can reach
across the aisle to the knuckle-dragging racists of the Republican Party.
Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia to follow up on what happened to the "losers" in 2010.
Did they have to go on unemployment? Like Republicans who got voted out this go-round,
Democrats had no trouble lining up jobs as lobbyists. Allen Boyd from Florida sent a letter to
Obama after the BP oil spill in 2010 asking him to back up BP's claim that seafood in the Gulf
of Mexico was okay to eat. After being voted out of office, he joined the Twenty-First Century
Group, a lobbying firm founded by a former Republican Congressman from Texas named Jack Fields.
A 1980 article on Fields describes him as a protégé of ultraright leader Paul
Weyrich.
Glenn Nye, who lost his job as a Virginia congressman, his considerable CV that included
working for the Agency for International Development (AID) and serving in various capacities
during the occupation of Iraq to land a nice gig as Senior Political Advisor for the Hanover
Investment Group.
John Spratt from South Carolina was described by Dow Jones News as "one of the staunchest
fiscal conservatives among House Democrats." That was enough for him to land a job with Barack
Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that was supposed to come up
with a strategy to reduce the deficit. Just the sort of thing that was calculated to lift the
American economy out of the worst slump since the 1930s. Not.
Pennsylvania's Chris Carney was a helluva Democrat. From 2002 to 2004, he was a
counterterrorism analyst for the Bush administration. He not only reported to Douglas Feith in
the Office of Special Plans and at the Defense Intelligence Agency, researching links between
al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but served as an interrogator in Guantanamo. These qualifications
landed him a job as director of homeland security and policy strategy for BAE Systems when the
House of Representatives gig ended. A British security and munitions powerhouse, BAE won a
contract worth £4.4bn to supply the Saudis with 72 fighter jets – some of which
were used to bomb Red Cross and Physician Without Borders hospitals in Yemen.
With such crumb-bums losing in 2010, you'd think that the Democrats would be convinced that
their best bet for winning elections would be to disavow candidates that had ties to the
national security apparatus and anything that smacked of the DLC's assault on the welfare
state. Not exactly. When the candidates are female, that might work in the party's favor like
sugar-coating a bitter pill.
In Virginia, former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger and retired Navy Commander Elaine Luria
defeated Republican incumbents. Air Force veteran Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, former CIA
analyst Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and former Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey also
helped the Democrats regain the House. Sherill calculated that moving to the center would serve
her own and the party's interests. She told MSNBC: "As a Navy helicopter pilot I never flew
Republican missions or Democratic missions, I would have had a very short career. This is
something I do think vets bring to the table, this willingness to work with everyone."
For Sherrill, a newcomer to politics, the 11th has proved to be a tricky terrain. She is
seen as a progressive, but appears wary of carrying the "Trump resistance" banner into the
fray. At Wednesday's debate, Sherrill was determined to show she is more Morris Plains than
Montclair.
There were no heated vows to fight Trump, even though being "appalled" by the president
was what motivated her to run in the first place. The Nov. 6 midterms loom as a referendum on
Trump's presidency, but you would never have guessed that watching Wednesday's contest.
Sherrill repeatedly promised to be bipartisan -- a far cry from the combative,
confrontational tone that many in the party's grass roots are demanding.
On tax policy she sounded more centrist Republican than mainstream liberal Democrat, and
she refused to endorse issues like free community college tuition, which has become a popular
talking point for Democrats and was launched by Gov. Phil Murphy this summer.
"Without understanding how that would be paid for, I haven't supported it because it
sounds like it would raise taxes on our families,'" she said.
The moderate tone puzzled some of her ardent "resistance" activists who mobilized around
her candidacy.
For Eric Fritsch, 32, a Teamster for the film and television industry from West Orange, it
was jarring to hear Sherrill oppose Democratic Party wish-list items like free community
college tuition or "Medicare-for-all" coverage out of fear that it may raise taxes. She used
the same excuse to sidestep supporting a "carbon tax" to reduce global warming.
"By going on the defensive about taxes she is accepting a Republican framing that we don't
want to be responsible with taxes in the first place,'" said Fritsch, who insisted that he
remains a "very enthusiastic" Sherrill supporter.
It should be abundantly clear by now that the Democratic Party leadership will be selecting
a candidate in 2020 in all ways identical to Hillary Clinton but perhaps with a less tawdry
past and less of an appetite for Goldman-Sachs speaking fees. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe
Biden, Andrew Cuomo, et al have no intention of allowing upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
to spoil their plans, even if it means a second term for Donald Trump.
No matter. Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara urges his readers and DSA comrades to plunge ahead
trying to consolidate a "socialist" caucus in the Democratic Party. From his perspective,
working in the Democratic Party seems to be the "most promising place for advancing left
politics, at least in the short term." Keep in mind that Sherrill raised $1.9 million for her
campaign and my old boss from Salomon Brothers Michael Bloomberg ponied up another $1.8 million
just for her TV ads. Does anybody really think that "socialist" backed candidates will be able
to compete with people like Sherrill in the primaries? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was able to
defeat the hack Joe Crowley on a shoestring but that was something of a fluke. Until there is a
massive shake-up in American society that finally reveals the Democratic Party to be the
capitalist tool it has been since Andrew Jackson's presidency, it is likely that a combination
of big money and political inertia will keep the Democratic Party an agent of reaction.
Furthermore, the takeover of the House might turn out to be a hollow victory in the light of
how Trump rules. His strategy hasn't been to push through legislation except for the tax cut.
Remember the blather about investing in infrastructure? His minions in Congress have no
intention of proposing a trillion or so dollars in highway or bridge repair, etc. With Nancy
Pelosi fecklessly talking about how the two parties can collaborate on infrastructure, you can
only wonder whether she has been asleep for the past two years.
Donald Trump has been transforming American society not by legislation but by using his
executive powers to put people in charge of government agencies who are inimical to their
stated goals. It is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse as Malcolm X once put
it. Two days ago, the NY Times wrote about how the "Trump Administration Spares Corporate
Wrongdoers Billions in Penalties". It did not need legislation to help big banks rip off the
public. All it took was naming former head of BankOne Joseph Otting comptroller of the
currency. Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the few Democrats with a spine, called Trump out: "The
president's choice for watchdog of America's largest banks is someone who signed a consent
order -- over shady foreclosure practices -- with the very agency he's been selected to
run."
For all of the dozens of articles about how Trump is creating a fascist regime, hardly any
deal with the difference between Trump and Adolf Hitler. Hitler created a massive bureaucracy
that ran a quasi-planned economy with generous social benefits that put considerable restraints
on the bourgeoisie. Like FDR, he was taking measures to save capitalism. Perhaps if the USA had
a social and economic crisis as deep as Germany's and left parties as massive as those in
Germany, FDR might have embarked on a much more ambitious concentration camp program, one that
would have interred trade unionists as well as Japanese-Americans. Maybe even Jews if they
complained too much.
By contrast, Trump is imposing a regime that was incubated long ago by people such as
Grover "Starve the Beast" Norquist and every other libertarian think-tank funded by the Koch
Brothers et al. The big bourgeoisie might not like the bad taste, racism and thuggish behavior
of the Trump administration but they couldn't be happier with the results. This is an elected
government that has fulfilled its deepest policy aspirations and that shows a willingness to
push the Democrats back on their heels, so much so that someone like Mikie Sherrill lacks the
courage to defend policies that might win elections down the road. After all, if she is
unseated, she can always go back to a job as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. What happens
to someone working in Walmart's is not her business, after all.
Gold age of the USA (say 40 years from 1946 to approximately 1986 ) were an in some way an aberration caused by WWII. As soon
as Germany and Japan rebuilt themselves this era was over. And the collapse of the USSR in 1991 (or more correct Soviet
nomenklatura switching sides and adopting neoliberalism) only make the decline more gradual but did not reversed it. After
200 it was clear that neoliberalism is in trouble and in 2008 it was clear that ideology of neoliberalism is dead, much like
Bolshevism after 1945.
As the US ruling neoliberal elite adopted this ideology ad its flag, the USA faces the situation somewhat similar the USSR
faced in 70th. It needs its "Perestroika" but with weak leader at the helm like Gorbachov it can lead to the dissolution of
the state. Dismantling neoliberalism is not less dangerous then dismantling of Bolshevism. The level of brainwashing of both
population and the elite (and it looks like the USA elite is brainwashed to an amazing level, probably far exceed the level of
brainwashing of Soviet nomenklatura) prevents any constructive moves.
In a way, Neoliberalism probably acts as a mousetrap for the country, similar to the role of Bolshevism in the
USSR. Ideology of neoliberalism is dead, so what' next. Another war to patch the internal divisions ? That's probably
why Trump is so adamant about attacking Iran. Iran does not have nuclear weapons so this is in a way an ideal target.
Unlike, say, Russia. And such a war can serve the same political purpose. That's why many emigrants from the USSR view the current
level of divisions with the USA is a direct analog of divisions within the USSR in late 70th and 80th. Similarities are
clearly visible with naked eye.
Notable quotes:
"... t is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all. ..."
"... "Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls. ..."
"... A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.' ..."
"... The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people. ..."
"... please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back ..."
"... America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work ..."
"... It's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem. ..."
"... And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? ..."
"... The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class... ..."
"The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away," said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD),
last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian,
Mario Puzo's Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble : "I'm going to make him
an offer he can't refuse."
Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the
American empire.
Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing
with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining
economic wealth but relinquishing global power.
As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev's
perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square
kilometers). Gorbachev's failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and
independent countries, and the end of a superpower.
Ironically, the success of Trump's policies will hasten the demise of the American empire:
the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.
This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to
defy Washington's re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting
Monday.
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the
station
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.
The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed
and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania
Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the
two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity's most terrible conflict.
The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to
his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of
American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.
Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs.
Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together,
and is making offers that he considers "fair" but instead is alienating the international
community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions
(800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.
US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7
billion so far in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can
more easily reject the "you are with us or against us" bullying doctrine of US presidents. In
the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses
power as the carrot vanishes.
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A
presidential lesson for Don Trump
More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as
sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the
planet.
They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US
presidential elections, pointing to Washington's violent record of global meddling. They will
cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in
Latin America, the US Army's Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention
(including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its
destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.
Immigrant
cannon fodder
Trump's focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the
flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the
manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants,
mostly Latinos.
Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant
Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked
across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American
citizenship.
On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The
coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American
citizenship – posthumously.
Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of
cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.
Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.
The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically
healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world
– thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.
I am sure that many of us are OK with ending American Empire. Both US citizens and other
countries don't want to fight un-necessary and un-ending wars. If Trump can do that, then he
is blessed.
See a pattern here? Raja Murthy, you sound like a pro-American Empire shill. 1964 Project
Camelot has nothing to do with the current administration. Raja, you forgot to wear your
satirical pants.
The idea and catchy hook of 2016 was Make America Great Again, not wasting lives and
resources on the American Empire. You point out the good things. Who might have a problem
with the end of the American Empire are Globalists. What is wrong with relinquishing global
power and not wasting lives and money?
"The only lives you keep is lives you've given away" That does not ring true. The only
lies you keep are the lies you've given away. What? You're not making any sense, dude. How
much American Empire are you vested in? Does it bother you if the Empire shrinks its death
grip on Asia or the rest of the world? Why don't you just say it: This is good! Hopefully
Trump's policies will prevent you from getting writers' cramp and being confusing--along with
the canon fodder. Or maybe you're worried about job security.
America is a super power, just like Russia. Just like England. However, whom the US
carries water for might change. Hope that's ok.
Trump is an empirial president, just like every other US president. In fact, that's what
the article is describing. MAGA depends upon imperialist domination. Trump and all of US
capitalism know that even if the brain-dead MAGA chumps don't.
Capitalism can't help but seek to rule the world. It is the result of pursuing
capitalism's all-important growth. If it's not US capitalism, it will be Chinese capitalism,
or Russian capitalism, or European capitalism that will rule the world.
The battle over global markets doesn't stop just because the US might decide not to play
anymore. Capitalism means that you're either the global power who is ******* the royal ****
out of everyone else, or you're the victim of being fucked up the *** by an imperialist
power.
The only thing which makes the US different from the rest of the world is its super
concentration of power, which in effect is a super concentration of corruption.
Another day and another ZeroHedge indictment of American capitalism.
And how refreshing that the article compares US capitalism to gangsterism. It's a most
appropriate comparison.
--------------------
Al Capone on Capitalism
It is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the
legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised
crime and capitalist accumulation before
on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided
to put it up on Histomat for you all.
In 1930, Cockburn, then a correspondent in America for the Times newspaper,
interviewed Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, when Capone was at the height of his
power. He recalls that except for 'the sub-machine gun...poking through the transom of a door
behind the desk, Capone's own room was nearly indistinguishable from that of, say, a "newly
arrived" Texan oil millionaire. Apart from the jowly young murderer on the far side of the
desk, what took the eye were a number of large, flattish, solid silver bowls upon the desk,
each filled with roses. They were nice to look at, and they had another purpose too, for
Capone when agitated stood up and dipped the tips of his fingers in the water in which
floated the roses.
I had been a little embarrassed as to how the interview was to be launched. Naturally the
nub of all such interviews is somehow to get round to the question "What makes you tick?" but
in the case of this millionaire killer the approach to this central question seemed mined
with dangerous impediments. However, on the way down to the Lexington Hotel I had had the
good fortune to see, I think in the Chicago Daily News , some statistics offered by an
insurance company which dealt with the average expectation of life of gangsters in Chicago. I
forget exactly what the average was, and also what the exact age of Capone at that time - I
think he was in his early thirties. The point was, however, that in any case he was four
years older than the upper limit considered by the insurance company to be the proper average
expectation of life for a Chicago gangster. This seemed to offer a more or less neutral and
academic line of approach, and after the ordinary greetings I asked Capone whether he had
read this piece of statistics in the paper. He said that he had. I asked him whether he
considered the estimate reasonably accurate. He said that he thought that the insurance
companies and the newspaper boys probably knew their stuff. "In that case", I asked him, "how
does it feel to be, say, four years over the age?"
He took the question quite seriously and spoke of the matter with neither more nor less
excitement or agitation than a man would who, let us say, had been asked whether he, as the
rear machine-gunner of a bomber, was aware of the average incidence of casualties in that
occupation. He apparently assumed that sooner or later he would be shot despite the elaborate
precautions which he regularly took. The idea that - as afterwards turned out to be the case
- he would be arrested by the Federal authorities for income-tax evasion had not, I think, at
that time so much as crossed his mind. And, after all, he said with a little bit of
corn-and-ham somewhere at the back of his throat, supposing he had not gone into this racket?
What would be have been doing? He would, he said, "have been selling newspapers barefoot on
the street in Brooklyn".
He stood as he spoke, cooling his finger-tips in the rose bowl in front of him. He sat
down again, brooding and sighing. Despite the ham-and-corn, what he said was probably true
and I said so, sympathetically. A little bit too sympathetically, as immediately emerged, for
as I spoke I saw him looking at me suspiciously, not to say censoriously. My remarks about
the harsh way the world treats barefoot boys in Brooklyn were interrupted by an urgent angry
waggle of his podgy hand.
"Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the
idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible
chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He
praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with
contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are
run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the
American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning
across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose
bowls.
"This American system of ours," he shouted, "call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call
it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it
with both hands and make the most of it." He held out his hand towards me, the fingers
dripping a little, and stared at me sternly for a few seconds before reseating himself.
A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of
The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I
explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had
said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The
Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing
eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry
reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.'
This article was obviously written by someone who wants to maintain the status quo.
America would be much stronger if it were not trying to be an empire. The biggest lie ever
told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite
is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to
protect or favor the American people.
I truly believe that "America First" is not selfish. America before it went full ******
was the beacon of freedom and success that other countries tried to emulate and that changed
the world for the better.
America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other
countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work.
Empire is a contrivance, a vehicle for psychopathic powerlust. America was founded by
people who stood adamantly opposed to this. Here's hoping Trump holds their true spirit in
his heart.
If he doesn't, there's hundreds of millions of us who still do. We don't all live in
America...
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic],
not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to
call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're
FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials
know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these
(((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain
terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
JSBach1 called you a 'coward', for being EXACTLY LIKE THESE TRAITOROUS SPINELESS
VERMIN who simply just step outside just 'enough' the comfort zone to APPEAR 'real'. IMHO, I
concur with JSBach1 ...your're a coward indeed, when you should know better .....
shame you you indeed!
There is little evidence, Trump's propaganda aside (that he previously called Obama
dishonest for) that the US economy is improving. If anything, the exploding budget and trade
deficits indicate that the economy continues to weaken.
Correct. The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced
stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades
by the Predator Class...
the US can't even raise an army... even if enough young (men) were
dumb enough to volunteer there just aren't enough fit, healthy and mentally acute recruits
out there.
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
"... So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're a right-wing party.) ..."
"... I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement stuff and similar nonsense. ..."
"... If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed legislation. ..."
"... They claim there's a difference between the two parties? ..."
"... But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street, Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general. ..."
"... Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots, and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake. ..."
It's not even decent theatre. Drama is much lacking, character development zilch. The outcome that dems take congress,& rethugs
improve in senate is exactly as was predicted months ago.
The dems reveal once again exactly how mendacious and uncaring of
the population they are. Nothing matters other than screwing more cash outta anyone who wants anything done so that the DC trough
stays full with the usual crew of 4th & 5th generation wannabe dem pols guzzling hard at the corporate funded 'dem aligned' think
tanks which generate much hot air yet never deliver. Hardly suprising given that actually doing something to show they give a
sh1t about the citizenry would annoy the donor who would give em all the boot, making all these no-hopers have to take up a gig
actually practising law.
These are people whose presence at the best law schools in the country prevented many who wanted to be y'know lawyers from
entering Harvard, Cornell etc law school. "one doesn't go to law school to become a lawyer It too hard to even pull down a mil
a year as a brief, nah, I studied the law to learn how to make laws that actually do the opposite of what they seem to. That is
where the real dough is."
Those who think that is being too hard on the dem slugs, should remember that the rethugs they have been indoctrinated to detest
act pretty much as printed on the side of the can. They advertise a service of licking rich arseholes and that is exactly what
they do. As venal and sociopathic as they are, at least they don't pretend to be something else; so while there is no way one
could vote for anyone spouting republican nonsense at least they don't hide their greed & corruption under a veneer of pseudo-humanist
nonsense. Dems cry for the plight of the poverty stricken then they slash welfare.
Or dems sob about the hard row african americans must hoe, then go off to the house of reps to pass laws to keep impoverished
african americans slotted up in an over crowded prison for the rest of his/her life.
Not only deceitful and vicious, 100% pointless since any Joe/Jo that votes on the basis of wanting to see more blackfellas
incarcerated is always gonna tick the rethug box anyhow.
Yeah- yeah we know all this so what?
This is what - the dems broke their arses getting tens of millions of young first time voters out to "exercise their democratic
prerogative" for the first time. Dems did this knowing full well that there would be no effective opposition to rethug demands
for more domestic oppression, that in fact it is practically guaranteed that should the trump and the rethug senate require it,
in order to ensure something particularly nasty gets passed, that sufficient dem congress people will 'cross the floor' to make
certain the bill does get up.
Of course the dems in question will allude to 'folks back home demanding' that the dem slug does vote with the nasties, but
that is the excuse, the reality is far too many dem pols are as bigoted greedy and elitist as the worst rethugs.
Anyway the upshot of persuading so many kids to get out and vote, so the kids do but the dems are content to just do more of
the same, will be another entire generation lost to elections forever.
If the DNC had been less greedy and more strategic they would have kept their powder dry and hung off press-ganging the kids
until getting such a turnout could have resulted in genuine change, prez 2020' or whenever, would be actual success for pols and
voters.
But they didn't and wouldn't ever, since for a dem pol, hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens living on the street isn't
nearly as problematic for them, as the dem wannabe pol paying off the mortgage on his/her DC townhouse by 2020, something that
would have been impossible if they hadn't taken congress as all the 'patrons' would have jerked back their cash figuring there
is no gain giving dosh to losers who couldn't win a bar raffle.
As for that Sharice Davids - a total miss she needed to be either a midget or missing an arm or leg to qualify as the classic
ID dem pol. Being a native american lezzo just doesn't tick enough boxes. I predict a not in the least illustrious career since
she cannot even qualify as the punchline in a circa 1980's joke.
As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts
the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can
still us his bully pulpit to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No Taxes
for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.
The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution' by both houses, and 2020 looks to
be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open Civil War.
There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich,
the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats.
It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas
are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?
Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia, before it becomes part of Xi's PRC
String of Girls.
Reading most of the comments explaining how the D's won/lost,,, the R's won/lost,,, Trump and company won/lost,,, but couldn't
find one post about how America is losing due to the two suffocating party's and a greedy, disunited, selfish, electorate that
wants it all free.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the Majority discovers it can vote itself
largess out of the public treasury,,,,,,, After that the Majority always votes for the candidate 'promising the most' ,,,,,,,
Alex Fraser.
So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right
party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're
a right-wing party.)
It's no big surprise. Last two years it's been the normally self-assured Republicans who, because of their ambivalence about Trump,
have uncharacteristically taken on the usual Democrat role of existential confusion and doubt. Meanwhile the Democrats, in a berserk
batsh$t-insane way, have been more motivated and focused.
So what are these Democrats going to do with this control now that they have it?
I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of
either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement
stuff and similar nonsense.
If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed
legislation. And as for things which are technically only in the power of the Senate such as confirming appointments, here's the
chance for the House to put public moral pressure on Democrats in the Senate. And there's plenty of back-door ways an activist
House can influence Senate business. Only morbid pedantry, so typical of liberal Dembots, babbles about what the technical powers
of this or that body are. The real world doesn't work that way. To the extent I pay attention at all to Senate affairs it'll be
to see what the House is doing about it.
They claim there's a difference between the two parties? And they claim Trump is an incipient fascist dictator? In that case there's
a lot at stake, and extreme action is called for. Let's see what kind of action we get from their "different" party in control
of the House.
But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and
that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street,
Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general.
Nor will any of these new-fangled fake "socialist" types take any action to change things one iota. Within the House Democrats,
they could take action, form any and every kind of coalition, to obstruct the corporate-Pelosi leadership faction. They will not
do so. This "new" progressive bloc will be just as fake as the old one.
Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots,
and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake.
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
Anton Worter , Nov 7, 2018 11:13:25 AM |
57 ">link
@9
As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3
Democrats, then Mike Pence puts the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it
won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can still us his bully pulpit
to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No
Taxes for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.
The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution'
by both houses, and 2020 looks to be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open
Civil War.
There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water,
lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political
Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute
after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are
burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?
Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia,
before it becomes part of Xi's PRC String of Girls.
It's true that progressives lost a bunch of very close races in deep-red districts, but many
of the biggest losses of the night were center-right Democrats. Senator Joe Donnelly of
Indiana, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota were
just some of those so-called "moderate" losers.
I say good riddance.
"... Investigating Trump for the rest of his tenure will keep them from having to do their jobs for Americans. ..."
"... They're going to spend millions of dollars and better yet, millions of hours babbling on and on about Taxes and Trump. ..."
"... With Sessions now out they're already screaming again about Rosenstein and Mueller for Gods sake. And they'll keep that up right until Nov 2020. ..."
"... In many cases, the people have won. The fresh blood going into the House in particular and some new governorships are more important than people realize yet. ..."
"... There are now over 100 women in the House -- a first. ..."
"... I hope the dems stand firm on protecting both programs plus not raising the retirement age. But with Pelosi who knows. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi: Democrats Don't Want a New Direction ..."
should not spend their time "investigating" Trump. Leave that to real journalists (there
are still some around).
If they play it right, the Dems could triple Trump's anxiety and paranoia levels by
keeping relative silence over his corruption, rather than starting a war of words with him.
He wins if they let him weasel his way out of things. Besides that, the Dems will do a
lousy job of trying to go after Trump. They need to spend their time going after Trump's
policies period.
up 13 users have voted. --
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
The corporate Dems have no policies that represent the people who elected them. However,
they are no longer completely surrounded by like thinkers. While the number of progressives
may still be smaller than the numbers of establishment Dems, those progressives DO have an
agenda and the people who want progress MUST support them and let the old guard know that
they will not support obstruction of progressive policies.
Start by telling your congress critter to vote no on Pelosi.
@WindDancer13
The Democrats should be doing everything they can to build up themselves by aggressively
pursuing policies that benefit the people. The Democrats need to stand FOR something.
Otherwise they are just like the old guy shaking his fist at the sky. They can investigate
Trump all they want, but it is waste of time, money, and there will be no impeachment hearing
in the Senate. Besides many of them have so big skeletons in their closets too.
should not spend their time "investigating" Trump. Leave that to real journalists
(there are still some around).
If they play it right, the Dems could triple Trump's anxiety and paranoia levels by
keeping relative silence over his corruption, rather than starting a war of words with
him. He wins if they let him weasel his way out of things. Besides that, the Dems will do
a lousy job of trying to go after Trump. They need to spend their time going after
Trump's policies period.
Investigating Trump for the rest of his tenure will keep them from having to do their jobs
for Americans. The republicans came out with their balls on fire and rescinded and passed
legislation right and left and now that the democrats have the house they're going to look at
Trump's tax returns. For gawd's sake why? Okay.. they find that he did something wrong on
them. Then what? Do they think that if they show he cheated on them then he'll be kicked out
of office? Nope
Look at how many people who Obama tried to appoint were guilty of not paying theirs.
Daschle who came from a medical lobbying firm was supposed to be his secretary of health, but
he hadn't paid his taxes for a decade. Did he go to prison over it? Why no he didn't. Why?
Two Americas. Only little people go to prison for doing .... fill in the blank.
Pelosi is also spouting bipartisanship. Gack! WTF again Nancy? Don't forget pay as you
go.
#3.2 The
Democrats should be doing everything they can to build up themselves by aggressively
pursuing policies that benefit the people. The Democrats need to stand FOR something.
Otherwise they are just like the old guy shaking his fist at the sky. They can
investigate Trump all they want, but it is waste of time, money, and there will be no
impeachment hearing in the Senate. Besides many of them have so big skeletons in their
closets too.
@snoopydawg
Like really? They're going to spend millions of dollars and better yet, millions of hours
babbling on and on about Taxes and Trump. But they'll only go so far as that mess effects all
of them and they good and well know it. But it keeps the divide going and the utter fallacy
of someday sticking it to Trump. They'll come up with nothing and stone wall anything that
threatens their status quo. With Sessions now out they're already screaming again about
Rosenstein and Mueller for Gods sake. And they'll keep that up right until Nov 2020.
destroying the departments they're in charge of. If squeezed, will they sing
like canaries? Cry like babies? Youth wants to know.
If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at
the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all
of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can
play that game!
He did not "win," not by a long shot. Neither did the corporate Dems. It was never really
expected (except maybe by some totally unrealistic people) that the Dems would take the
Senate. The seats that were up for grabs were too limited and in some very, very red areas.
However, we need to pay attention to just how close many of those races were. Some major
dents were put into Rep armor and have left some wounds.
I too was very happy to see McCaskill and Heitcamp defeated. They were both totally
worthless. This could be viewed as the start to cleaning out the "bad" Dems, even if we have
to put up with a few Republicans to do so.
Suppression played a huge role in the results (especially governorships), and that must
not be forgotten. In fact needs to be a focal point for the next two years along with getting
corporate money out of the election system.
Another issue that needs to be dealt with is stopping Trump from dominating the news
cycle. Anyone else notice just how many non-news stories popped up regarding Kavanaugh in the
last week? The public does not need to see Dems foaming at the mouth in response to or in
imitation of Trump. If they do, let the culprit from your voting district know how displeased
you are with their actions (get a few friends to also comment).
In many cases, the people have won. The fresh blood going into the House in particular and some new governorships are
more important than people realize yet. For diversity alone, there were huge strides made yesterday. Seeing so many
progressives take a seat in the House will encourage others for 2020 who will have a lot better chance now to remove some of
the riffraff.
There are now over 100 women in the House -- a first. This means that we are still less than
half way to parity. This needs to be worked on for 2020 along with more progressives. (No,
not all women are equal--I remember Phyllis Shaffly only too well, and there is still HRC to
silence, but overall, women and certainly progressive women have different priorities most of
which align with what people really want and need.) Message to all...less time writing and
contemplating and more time taking action.
In short, I see this as a victory--albeit not as large as we would like--for
progressives.
I hope the dems stand firm on protecting both programs plus not raising the retirement
age. But with Pelosi who knows. I would like to think that she would get major push back if
she tries an Obama grand bargain bullshit. But she lives in a such a bubble though.
This is why people don't vote for the Democratic Party and why the big blue wave of cash
won't win the 2018 midterm elections for them:
In December of 2016 – right after Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic
candidates lost big to Trump, the worst presidential candidate of all time – what
happened? Their leader, Nancy Pelosi was asked directly what the Democratic Party was going
to do to change this heinous defeat.
Know what she said? Do you remember? I do.
She said the Democratic Party wasn't going to change anything. Keep the same policies
they lost the 2016 elections on. Know what they were going to change?
Their marketing. Change the marketing so people "get the message."
Same shit. Different wrapper.
Nancy Pelosi: Democrats Don't Want a New Direction
The leader of Communist China, Chairman Mao, warned the country that revisionists were
threatening to erase all the progress made since the Communist Revolution which brought Mao to
power.
It had been almost 20 years since the bloody revolution, and Mao wanted to reinvigorate the
rebel spirit in the youth. He instructed students to root out any teachers who wove subtle
anti-communist sentiments in their lessons.
Mao encouraged students to rebel against any mindless respect for entrenched authority,
remnants, he said, of centuries of capitalist influence.
Students at Yizhen Middle School, like many others, quickly took up the task. They "exposed"
capitalist intellectual teachers and paraded them around in dunce caps with insulting signs
hung around their necks.
Teachers were beaten and harassed until they confessed to their crimes most of which were,
of course, false confessions to avoid further torture.
It only escalated from there.
What ensued puts Lord of the Flies to shame.
One teacher killed himself after being taken captive by students. Most teachers fled.
Soon the students were left entirely in charge of their school. Two factions quickly
emerged, one calling themselves the East is Red Corps, and the other the Red Rebels.
One student was kidnapped by the East is Red Corps, and suffocated to death on a sock
stuffed in his mouth.
A girl was found to be an East is Red spy among the Red Rebels. She was later cornered with
other East is Red students in a building. She shouted from a window that she would rather die
than surrender. Praising Chairman Mao, she jumped to her death.
Some Red Rebels died from an accidental explosion while making bombs.
Many were tortured, and another student died from his injuries at the hands of the East is
Red Corps.
A female teacher refused to sign an affidavit lying about the cause of death. She was beaten
and gang-raped by a group of students.
Although it might be tempting to see what happened at YMS as mostly relevant to group
adolescent behavior what happened at the school occurred throughout China in government
offices, factories, within the army, and among Chinese of all ages in an eerily similar
way
The students' repressed resentment at having to be so obedient now boiled over into anger
and the desire to be the ones doing the punishing and oppressing
In the power vacuum that Mao had now created, another timeless group dynamic emerged.
Those who were naturally more assertive, aggressive, and even sadistic pushed their way
forward and assumed power , while those who were more passive quietly receded into the
background becoming followers
Once all forms of authority were removed and the students ran the school, there was
nothing to stop the next and most dangerous development in group dynamics. The split into
tribal factions
People may think they are joining because of the different ideas or goals of this tribe or
the other, but what they want more than anything is a sense of belonging and a clear tribal
identity.
Look at the actual differences between the East is Red Corps and the Red Rebels. As the
battle between them intensified it was hard to say what they were fighting for, except to
assume power over the other group.
One strong or vicious act of one side called for a reprisal from the other, and any type
of violence seemed totally justified. There could be no middle ground, nor any questioning of
the rightness of their cause.
The tribe is always right. And to say otherwise is to betray it.
I write this on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.
And like Mao handing down his orders to dispose of capitalist sympathizers, such have the
leaders of each major US political party rallied their supporters.
This is the most important election of our lifetime, they say.
No middle ground. Violence is justified to get our way. Betray the tribe, and be considered
an enemy.
Just like Mao, they have manufactured a crisis that did not previously exist.
The students had no violent factions before Mao's encouragement. They had no serious
problems with their teachers.
Is there any natural crisis occurring right now? Or has the political establishment whipped
us into an artificial frenzy?
This isn't just another boring election, they say. This is a battle for our future.
The students battled over who were the purest revolutionaries.
The voters now battle over who has the purest intentions for America.
Do the factions even know what they are fighting for anymore?
They are simply fighting for their tribe's control over the government.
The battle of the factions at schools across China were "resolved" when Mao came to support
one side or the other. In that sense, it very much did matter which side the students were
on
The government came down hard against the losing faction.
They had chosen wrong and found themselves aligned against the powerful Communist Party.
It won't be a dictator that hands control to one faction or another in this election. It
will be a simple majority. And those in the minority will suffer.
The winners will feel that it is their time to wield power, just as the students were happy
to finally have the upper hand on their teachers.
If Mao didn't have so much power, he could have never initiated such a violent crisis.
And if our government didn't have so much power, it would hardly matter who wins the
election.
Yet here we are, fighting for control of the government because each faction threatens to
violently repress the other if they gain power.
It is a manufactured crisis. A crisis that only exists because political elites in the
government and media have said so.
They decided that this election will spark the USA's "Cultural Revolution."
And anyone with sympathies from a bygone era will be punished.
You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and
brainwashed peers.
When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:
How to Craft a Two Year Plan to Reclaim 3 Specific Freedoms.
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your dreams. It's not as hard as you think
Tribal warfare? You clearly don't understand what's happening here. The Globalist cartel
has created division between two parties to incite chaos and violence. The "warfare" you
reference will be nothing but protesting ->rioting ->anarchy ->police restraint of
the Democrat incited sheeple.
There's no tribalism associated with upholding and preserving the Constitution.
I think the globalists will try to cool it off before things spin out of (((their)))
control. Either that or move to the next phase...world war... so they can just slaughter us
and not have to bother trying to herd the increasingly "woke" goyim live stock.
I have NOT heard about a SINGLE CREDIBLE violent incident where people got hurt FROM THE
RIGHT. All the incidents of "White Fascist Violence" look like FALSE FLAGS and contrived
incidents. The foregoing CAN NOT be said of the Leftist Antifa types including racist La Raza
supporters, racist Blacks who want something for nothing, immigrants from any country who
want to be fully supported because they BREATHE and the Top Group (pun intended) Whites who
do not believe in boundaries, standards or quality of life UNLESS it's their lives. NOT all
Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants are in the Left; but most Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrants
are on the Left and havn't a clue they are responsible for their own prisons because they
cannot REASON and virtue signaling is more important so they are part of the GROUP. Misplaced
EMPHASIS on what is important in creating a CIVILIZED and SAFE society.
"... Dems are fucking bonkers with the caravans. It's as if these fools didn't know Europe does exist and had the same thing happen, on a far bigger magnitude, or didn't learn the lesson - as if Brexit, Le Pen, Lega, Orban and others didn't really exist in their strictly America-centered world. ..."
IMO b is
right. The image works for Trump, not against, on two issues; the border and the ME.
Border
Yes the US Constitution prevents US Troops being used within the country for military
purpose. But the troops are only providing support at the Border.
The reality is the people on the march to the US border all refused an offer from Mexico to
settle in two southern (Mexican) states and receive jobs, free housing, free food, free
education and free healthcare. So much for the PR story of this group as economic
immigrants and sanctuary seekers. They are seen as being in search of the Free Lunch.
These people are being paid (not sure how much) from what I have read and the march is to
create a story of poor souls prevented (by Trump) from obtaining the supposed American
dream.
For voters in the US southwest especially this group is seen as a bunch of scroungers and
Trump as the guy who will keep them out.
The ME
I am not aware of anyone who thinks the US belongs in the ME. Yes, Israel is all for it,
but in the US no one wants troops there. We have lost country after country after country
and some military head just said that after 17 years we are not "winning" in Afghanistan.
These wars are a financial scam in the eyes of many and are for Israel's benefit in the
eyes of many others. I doubt if any troops in recent years have signed up to fight in the
ME so that statement itself is one the NYT will choke on.
But it is the Times, and they play to their now somewhat limited audience who must be told
that the lies they believe are true. If Trump paid for this cartoon, he could probably not be more pleased.
"It's not really possible to excuse the pretense that a band of beggars who plan to ask
for asylum constitute an invasion."
I suppose that is what Assad and the Syrian government thought when the CIA death squads
started trickling into their country under the pretense that they were refugees from the
violence in Libya.
The CIA built lots of death squads in Latin America.
While most of the the "band of beggars" are harmless useful idiots recruited for
the optics, there is a very real possibility that the CIA's death squads from Honduras and
possibly Mexico (have to get out now that AMLO is cracking down) are mingling amongst them.
Why? Page borrowed from the textbook CIA/State Department manual on regime change:
1) Bring protesters into conflict with authorities. 2) Death squads embedded among the protesters kill both protesters and law enforcement
officers. 3) Riots ensue. 5) Complicit corporate mass media winds up the echo chamber forcing the meme that the
violence was the authorities' fault. 6) Profit!
Anywho, it is tough to take serious any accusations of slander against a population that
has been heavily brainwashed since birth. As with a pair of bluejeans that have been washed
several times per day since they were manufactured, over-laundered minds get limp, floppy
and full of holes. Americans' minds are so frayed from daily reprogramming that they cannot
remember what they believed yesterday, much less why they would have believed it.
The possee commitatus law which prohibited federal troops from engaging in domestic law
enforcement has been repealed.
Also, you are aware that Israel is a rogue state in that it does not have a
constitution, it has never defined its borders, it has repeatedly attacked its neighbors,
it is an apartheid state, it has 200-400 illegal nuclear warheads, it engages in mass
punishment of 6 million Arabs the are the dominant peoples of Palestine, and it has pulled
strings to lure the US into wars with Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and Iran.
For these reasons it is perfectly reasonable and accurate and truthful to label such a
rogue state a 'Zionist regime.'
(Now you are informed. Now you should apologize to b.)
One wonders why the NYT is willingly playing into his hands with this.
Because the NYT (and mainstream media in general) have been such psychopathic warmongers
for so long that by now they're really incapable of understanding that there could be any
alternative idea or action. In many states they'd meet the legal definition of
insanity.
Of course Trump is just as insane. He merely wants to do both/and rather than either/or,
as the NYT would have it.
Given that the only characters with speaking parts in the cartoon are hi-profile
non-combatant pro-"Israel" warmongers masquerading as brain-washed grunts, the message it
sends is so mixed that it means whatever the consumer wants it to mean. An attempt at reverse psychology?
Posted by: morongobill | Nov 5, 2018 8:48:58 AM | 5 "I'm a deplorable and proud of it and I believe that this nation needs to make it
crystal clear that the borders mean something."
I don't reckon native americans would agree, particularly since most of those arriving
are indigenous to america. amerika the abortion, has never considered the property rights,
cultures or ethos of other humans anywhere on this old rock. Not in the ME, Asia or more
recently Africa, much less those concerns as they relate to native americans be they those
indigenous to the area that comprises amerika or those who are indigenous to other portions
of the american continents, so I reckon that using this nonsense now to justify racism is
just hypocritical, That it is about as low as it is possible to go. That is compounded to
the n th degree when one considers that the failed states which most of the caravan
peoples originate from suffered failure because amerika the abortion of a place,
deliberately engineered the failures to make amerika's theft of all resources in latin
america, easier and less expensive. Run along and study exactly how amerika has deliberately destroyed Guatemala and Honduras
then come back here and try to justify the attacks on a few hundred thousand of those
people fleeing lawlessness and corruption that the amerikan government has caused in your
name.
Not that it matters - trump or any of his ilk have no chance of preventing the Latin
American influx. Once again if you study history you will discover that over the millennia numerous other
populations have attempted to prevent needs driven migration into what they have
arbitrarily decided are 'their' lands and have used exactly the same techniques the trump
scumbags propose. They inevitably fail. Mass migrations are relentless they cannot be
'blocked' the only viable strategy has been to remove the attraction by ensuring economic
improvement in the areas that migrants come from.
If amerikans actually want to stop the migration, which is debatable since the rich who
control amerika believe increasing the population to be an excellent way to go since they
profit from more humans and increased population density, but let's pretend that ordinary
citizens actually have a say in what happens in amerika, then amerikans need to fix that
which they f**ked. Central amerikans have endured decades of corrupt amerikan installed
'governments' which regarded their primary mission (after trousering all funds in their
purview) to be confiscating all land from the people who have lived on it going back at
least a few thousand years, then selling that stolen land to amerikan corporations, hedge
funds, retirement schemes, AKA any & all of Wall St's scams.
None of the migr Everybody in amerika has been aware of this even tho they pretend they are ignorant of
their culture's rapacious thefts it is impossible for anyone with half a brain not to see 2
+ 2 = 4. So quit whining and either assist the new arrivals or, get yer arse into gear & ensure
your mendacious leadership sets about making amends for the damage done in your name.
nobody remembers anglo persian oil that was ares those iranian gypsy stole it the gas
fields 2. it was not fare fair they kicked are shar out 2 trumped is doing molechs work here hare here. it is vital that latest push on these yemeni ports is a success with a strong tail wind
victory is at hand. a redrawing of the maps is needed and an exodus of musslamics and arab and children of
christ into scotland wales,detroit noray denmark and lovely sweden germany france a big idea may need a new marshall plan trillions of dollars in bonds must be made like
lend lease in great britain it may take 50 years to pay off the debts for this final
solution maybe 100 years or more. never again the man said we must protect the innocent khazar ashkanazi from brutal
goyim. lets do this as paul greengrass said lets roll
Should several thousand knuckle heads attempt to force entry into the United States,... The news story should read as such,... 'Today, a couple thousand knuckleheads attacked our border. We shot them.'
Second: this mass immigration from Latin America is fruit of inumerous American backed
regime changes, aimed at stifling industrialization of the region, thus empoverishing its
peoples.
This
is true even for the Monroe Doctrine poster boy, Mexico .
Dems are fucking bonkers with the caravans. It's as if these fools didn't know Europe
does exist and had the same thing happen, on a far bigger magnitude, or didn't learn the
lesson - as if Brexit, Le Pen, Lega, Orban and others didn't really exist in their strictly
America-centered world.
As a matter of fact, any deliberately illegal entry of anyone into a foreign country
represents per se an invasion. it's just that it's minimal when it's a couple of people,
and not all invasions are armed gangs of conquistadores ready to loot the gold from the
temples, or Mongols on rampage. Not all invasions require military will kill on sight
orders, though. Some measure is required.
Now, where Dems are bloody idiots is that only a part of the progressive wing will see
the caravans as nice people to be welcome. Part of the uber-capitalist wing will see them
as a great opportunity as well, but for very different reasons. The thing is, the inner
subconscious of a majority of Westerners will basically have 2 very different
interpretations of a vast column of people walking towards their border.
One, which is quite recent, occurs if it's a large group of unarmed civilians and
families from a neighbouring country, fleeing it under direct threat of closeby invading
and advancing enemy armies; in this case, the obvious reference in Western psyche,
specially European one, will be WW II and the hosts of panicked civilians fleeing before
the enemy onslaught.
The other reference from the collective psyche, which obviously is the one that lurks in
the mind of most Westerners who saw the vids and pictures of the huge crowds of migrants
back in 2015/16 - and which will likely occur for some Americans as well, with the caravans
-, is obviously the far older picture of the Barbarian Invasions. The ones ironically
called nowadays as "Migration period" by revisionist history in German and Anglo-Saxon
areas, for obvious reasons (they didn't want to tarnish their ancestors by reflecting they
were bloody savages that nearly wiped out civilization, by fear that it would reflect badly
on them); karmic justice puts them now in a bad spot since they're quite forced to consider
the current wave as mere "migration" and no big deal at all, just like in 406.
Of course, there's also karmic justice in having the US tear itself apart and being
slowly invaded by those whose countries it has wrecked beyond recognition for the last
century. But we must be absolutely honest about it. Allowing masses of migrants into the US
isn't about Central Americans deserving a better life in the US, it's about punishing the
US by wrecking it and by pushing it's ever-polarizing political sides towards civil
war.
Section 1076 of the 2006 John Warner National Defense Authorization titled "Use of the
Armed Forces in major public emergencies," provides that "The President may employ the
armed forces... to... restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when,
as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency,
terrorist attack or incident, or other condition... the President determines that...
domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the
State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order... or [to] suppress, in a
State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such...
a condition... so hinders the execution of the laws... that any part or class of its people
is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and
secured by law... or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or
impedes the course of justice under those laws."
So then the Possee Comitatus Act is repealed by the John Warner Act. The federal
government may send troops to the border to kill any American (Central) that throws a rock.
Killing rock-throwers = MAGA.
In answer to your question, IMHO we are witnessing a very choreographed effort at
political theater on the part of both establishment R's and D's to generate interest in the
election. The ultimate point is to divide the country, which from my perspective, as a
lefty who lives and thrives among R's is not that divided as evidenced by the 2016
election. The game is divide and rule.
The elites of the US are very perturbed that Senator Sanders had such a following in the
last go around with 75% popularity while both running establishment candidates had
negatives ratings greater than their positive ones.
Looking at polling in the US it has been reported that a great majority of people in the
country want Single Payer Health Care, including ~50% R's. Additionally, some 80% of the
population agree that climate change is a major issue and want the government to do
something about it. This cuts across both parties. Meanwhile, neither party is actively
pushing Single Payer, while some Democrats show support, while the establishment is
campaigning to save the insurance and pharmaceutical industies' bonanza of ObamaCare.
IMO we have the makings of a united insurrection on our hands and it is a requirement to
keep Americans at war with each other, rather than them realizing they have been fooled by
the media and sociopathic politicians.
Also interestingly, the biggest fear people have in the US, according to the following
poll is corrupt politicians. How do you campaign against that when you have your fingers in
the till?
Additionally, according to this poll the biggest fears other than crooked politicians,
are primarily related to the environment. Neither party is attempting to address this
issue.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. ~William Shakespeare
Notable quotes:
"... Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother? ..."
"... One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats. ..."
"... "In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs. ..."
There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey.
Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman
Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic
with Melgen on the physician's private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who
allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women
acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung
jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85
percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed
a letter , along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite
Julian Assange to
stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel
-- a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped
cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke
Glass-Steagall
, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.
His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is
Bob Hugin , whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200
million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that
is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm
of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby
defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of
the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000
for a supply of 28 pills.
The Senate campaign in New Jersey has seen no discussion of substantive issues. It is dominated by both candidates' nonstop personal
attacks and negative ads, part of the typical burlesque of American politics.
Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don't bother to vote? When all
you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother?
One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive
House districts in this week's elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department.
Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats.
The securities and finance industry
has backed Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the
Center for Responsive Politics . Democratic candidates and political action committees have received $56.8 million, compared
with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given
$174 million to Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And
Michael Bloomberg
, weighing his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.
"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described
an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign
contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.
Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of
the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed,
as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and
critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will
still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are
in for it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his
refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not
to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and
the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic
control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing
on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that has given rise to Trump, are the party
of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics, Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump!
This is ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing another run for the presidency
after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast
elites who want to instill corporate fascism with a friendly face.
Elections USA, Inc: "Scum Vs. Scum." When I went looking for Hedges's weekly column today I
rather expected him to be onto the next Bigger Picture item that he is always adroit at
tackling.
So it was a little surprising that he chose instead to lead with an example of the midterm
races in his state of NJ, the one between disgraced Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and
Republican Bob Hugin.
He never disappoints.
There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political
system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was
censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman
Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The
senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician's private jet and
stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who
allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen,
including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez
was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung
jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats'. He supported the $716 billion
military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a
letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange
to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign
Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel -- a country that routinely and
massively interferes in our elections -- and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke
Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and
investment banks.
In what is so emblematic of how pathetic and corrupt the opposition party, their
presidential candidate came out to throw her support behind such an odious criminal and
corporate whore and to campaign with him. While at the same time the Dems have made no secret
about their intention to crush any candidate who espouses socialist values.
Vote if you want, but it's a charade in which the Duopoly will remain beholden to the same
money interests who paid for both the Red and Blue campaigns.
Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million
Americans don't bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother?
One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week's
elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the
State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are
corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as
Democrats. The securities and finance industry has backed Democratic congressional
candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the
Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic candidates and political action committees have
received $56.8 million, compared with Republicans' $33.4 million, the center reported. The
broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given $174 million to
Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And Michael Bloomberg, weighing
his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.
"In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who
raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and
excitement from the finance sector ," The New York Times reported about current campaign
contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.
Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence
as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw
with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward
prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party
of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the
favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped
from us. Either way we are in for it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a
sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort
to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say
that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic
scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street
and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of
the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with
another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political
system is deep and terminal.
"Plus ça change, Plus c'est la même chose."
But it is always necessary to remind folks that the Greatest Democracy In The World is
not. It is An Auction House To The Highest Bidder.
He goes on to talk about fascism, its characteristics, its incarnation today, and the
elements that pave the way for, which are economic instability, concentrated wealth,
monopoly, a police state, imperialism, etc. It is Neoliberalism which has ushered in fascism
across the globe, plain and simple.
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press
has replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The
banal and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our
emotions are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured
events. We are, at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including
sporting events, reality television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of
this form of entertainment. Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the
modern equivalent of the Roman arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs
corporations billions of dollars, is called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans,
which assure us that the freedoms we cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national
discourse as these freedoms are stripped from us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a
vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24
hours a day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in
perpetuity. You cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and
monitored population in human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is
impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot
use the word "liberty" when the state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate
lethal force against unarmed citizens in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the
word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens, mostly poor people of color, are held in the
largest prison system on earth. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. The
choice is between whom we want to clamp on our chains -- a jailer who mouths politically
correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist. Either way we are shackled.
American Exceptionalism reigns supreme to the Nationalist. He refuses to acknowledge that
the real idea of "freedom" is not owning a munitions factory full of weaponry and putting a
flag on the back of a pickup. It is instead the freedom to not have to live in the shadow of
being foreclosed upon for a medical emergency, to not have to spend almost all of one's
income on rent or mortgage debt, to have more time to spend with loved ones or doing what you
love instead of working a dead end job just to pay the bills. In other words, a socialist
economy heavily regulating the banks and corporations, in which debt peonage would largely
become a thing of the past.
And then there it is. "We are being shackled incrementally," by unseen, unelected and
unacknowledged vipers who use their wealth and power to also make sure we're ignorant and
impotent to the real story.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate
fascism. It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that
consolidates power and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political
philosopher Sheldon Wolin, refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate
tyranny or friendly fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin
pointed out, characterized by anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics,
the Constitution and the iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had
seized all of the levers of power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were
being shackled incrementally. Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He
wrote that "a friendly fascist power structure in the United States, Canada, Western
Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist
Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it
would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no
dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an
outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment."
As far as I'm concerned America has been fascist for a long time, at least since 9/11 but
probably longer. We've been captured by Inverted Totalitarianism. Trump just puts the ugly
villainous face to that Fascism which has been rampant for a long time. Lewis Lapham had a
great piece called, "Due Process: Lamenting the death of
the rule of law in a country where it might have always been missing" that lays out the
case for a how concentrated wealth has pretty much ruled with impunity since the beginning.
(h/t to wendy davis)
How long will we continue to participate in this elaborate Lesser of Two Evil voting
sham?
And these days those who do will surely let you know too. All the Good Zombies will be
smiling for their selfies with their, "I Voted" stickers (now an added bonus to your "voting
experience," as if it were a child's toy inside of a cereal box or something). How long will
it be until we're handed little candies as a reward for voting? In step with the continuation
of the infantilization of interaction in America. Civics? Nah. Stickers? Yeah.
Seems we're fucking doomed. But not unless people turn off the tv's and social media to
begin talking to one another in public as fellow human beings, who as the 99% pretty much
have so many of the same concerns in common.
Partisan ideology, blasted night and day on the propaganda networks, keeping us divided
and conquered, with fear, manufactured distraction and celebrity gossip thrown in, to keep
the lemmings hypnotized from what's really going on.
But he also pulled back from saying one shouldn't vote for the Dems to stem Trump's
insanity, although he quickly added that it wouldn't stop the onslaught of corporate
tyranny.
The only thing giving me hope lately is taking the longview, and the emergence of
whistleblowers/journalists exposing the inner workings of the corporate coup. To what degree
it matters will depend on how many people they reach.
"... Opposition to the unending and expanding wars of American imperialism has been completely excluded from the election campaigns of both the Democrats and Republicans. ..."
"... The Democrats represent a political alliance of Wall Street and privileged sections of the middle class. Over the past two years, their central focus, in addition to the anti-Russia campaign, has been the promotion of the politics of race and gender, particularly through the #MeToo campaign. ..."
"... The aim has been to divide the working class while advancing the interests of factions within the top 10 percent that are competing over positions of power, money and privilege. ..."
"... Trump is himself the product of a protracted decay of democratic forms of rule. Nodal points in this process were the Clinton impeachment in 1998, the theft of the 2000 election, the launching of the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks, accompanied by the erection of a massive apparatus of domestic spying, and the Obama administration's policy of drone assassination, including of US citizens. ..."
Whatever the rhetoric, and however the seats of the Senate and House of Representatives are
allocated, the basic factors that drive American politics will persist. These are:
1. The determination of the ruling class to maintain the global position of American
capitalism through military force, including world war:
This central strategy has dominated American policy for decades. Seventeen years of the "war
on terror," including wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have devastated entire
countries and left more than one million people dead. The Trump administration has officially
announced the end of the "war on terror" and ordered the military to begin preparing for "great
power conflict" with Russia or China.
In the weeks leading up to the elections, the administration withdrew from a key Cold
War-era nuclear arms agreement (the INF Treaty) and threatened to launch preemptive strikes
against Russia. At the same time, it effectively declared a new "cold war" against China. With
no public discussion and on a bipartisan basis, the administration has initiated the largest
military buildup since the end of the Cold War.
Opposition to the unending and expanding wars of American imperialism has been
completely excluded from the election campaigns of both the Democrats and Republicans.
The Democrats fully support the strategic aim of the American ruling class to maintain its
global supremacy through military force. From the beginning of the Trump administration, the
Democrats, channeling powerful sections of the military and intelligence apparatus, have
centered their opposition to Trump on the concern that he was pulling back from war in the
Middle East and confrontation with Russia.
2. The staggering levels of social inequality, which cannot be changed by any election, and
which infect every institution of the capitalist state:
Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, social inequality is at historic highs. Three
individuals now possess more wealth than the bottom half of the population, and just three
families have a combined fortune of $348.7 billion, four million times the median family
wealth. The vast majority of the population confronts the many manifestations of social crisis
-- declining wages, soaring health care costs, a drug overdose epidemic and decaying social
infrastructure.
These conditions are the product of the policies of the Obama administration, which
supported and oversaw the bailout of the banks following the financial meltdown in 2008. Since
Trump's election, the Democrats have collaborated in the implementation of massive tax cuts for
the rich, which they have no intention of rolling back whatever the outcome of the
elections.
The Democrats represent a political alliance of Wall Street and privileged sections of
the middle class. Over the past two years, their central focus, in addition to the anti-Russia
campaign, has been the promotion of the politics of race and gender, particularly through the
#MeToo campaign.
The aim has been to divide the working class while advancing the interests of factions
within the top 10 percent that are competing over positions of power, money and
privilege.
3. The crisis of democratic forms of rule and the turn to authoritarianism:
The crisis of American democracy, of which the Trump administration is an extreme
expression, expresses the alignment of political forms with the oligarchical character of
American society.
While Trump pursues his strategy of developing an authoritarian movement, the Democrats
likewise support the destruction of democratic rights, but in a different way. They have
focused on demands that social media companies censor the internet, under the guise of
combating "fake news" and blocking organizations that "sow discontent." In the course of their
conflict with Trump, they have hailed such enemies of democratic rights as former CIA Director
John Brennan, responsible for torture and domestic spying.
Trump is himself the product of a protracted decay of democratic forms of rule. Nodal
points in this process were the Clinton impeachment in 1998, the theft of the 2000 election,
the launching of the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks, accompanied by the erection of a
massive apparatus of domestic spying, and the Obama administration's policy of drone
assassination, including of US citizens.
span y gjohnsit on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 1:47pm By "win" I mean "Democrats take over the
house".
Here's my humble opinion:
1) For the Democratic establishment it won't mean much. If the drubbings in 2010, 2014, and
2016 can't cause a leadership change, or even an autopsy, then nothing will.
If anything they will blame progressives and embrace a neoliberal center-right agenda even
more.
2) For the Democratic base, OTOH, it'll be devastating. Democratic activists will lose heart
and it will begin the real start of America being a one-party state. The reason I think this is
after you call the other guy a traitor and fascist, and that still isn't enough to defeat him,
what else can you do to motivate your voters?
Expect progressive voter activism to plummet in 2020. The Green Party will probably grow,
but not as fast as the Democrats shrink.
The party is the neoliberal/neoconservative party.
The Democrats do not deserve to win. As a party, they have no policy positions and have
based their entire campaign on the we're not as bad. That does not put food on the table,
create health care security, or create living income jobs. The Democrats showed their true
colors when they voted along with the Republicans to increase the DoD budget beyond what
Trump requested and expanded the powers of surveillance under the President that they
loathe.
Most people do not want to see a phony impeachment hearing which does nothing but drain
all resources away from helping the people. If the Democrats truly wanted to win, they would
be proposing an ambitious platform aimed at helping the American people.
One more thing, would this country be better off with President Pence instead of Trump? As
bad as Trump is, I think Pence would be espousing similar hatred and therefore, would far
worse with his theocratic ideas.
Their voting base will believe the lies over the evidence before their own eyes.
I agree with most points, but disagree with this:
Expect progressive voter activism to plummet in 2020.
Given the option to just let the country turn into a full-fledged Fascist state, the
logical thing to do would be for the progressives to fight even harder. Bernie Sanders is an
example of turning a loss into more action on behalf of the people. (For those who constantly
disparage Sanders because he is not perfect, get over it...no one is and no one will ever be.
Amazon screwed their workers, not Sanders.).
Getting more and more progressives in down ballot positions will be extremely important,
no matter their label.
if the Democrats win . There are other possibilities if the corruptocrats lose -
more likely is that the true left could finally be forced to admit that the theory that the
corporatist fifth column can be reformed was always a pollyannish delusion and (for example)
Bernie will run as a Green. Without a fascist Democratic Party sabotaging him he will win
easily. (Ironically a fascist Dem, in a 3 way race, would only win NY and CA, but draw off
enough votes from Bernie so that he could lose the popular vote but would win the Electoral
College. Trump would only win AZ, TX, MS, ID, AL and SC. the final: Bernie 379, Hillscum 84,
Trump 77) On the other hand, what If 60 million people turn out and vote Democratic, and then
the corruptocrats stab them in the back again? You worry about disillusionment?
Actually it might depend on how the Democrats win or lose. I would rather see 100 Dems but 75
of them Berniecrats rather than 225 "Democrats".
Or maybe you're afraid of a racist/theocratic right coup? That is a very legitimate fear. We
have backed them up against a wall, but we don't know if they're a rat or a tiger. But they
have had 50 years to show us which, and the tiger is still hasn't eaten us. Identity politics
however, (unless you count anti-porn feminism) is less than a decade old and has already
achieved more than racism could hope for. I fear the PC SMERSH more than the racist
Gestapo.
1. For current Democratic incumbents who lose, it will mean a job change with a higher
salary.
For a while, we wondered how Democrats could be so stupid as to engage in behaviors that
might cause their constituents to primary them or vote against them in the general.
Eventually, it became clear: to ensure obedience from officeholders, their owners had been
giving officeholders unemployment insurance in the form of cushy, prestigious, well-paying
jobs to be awarded to officeholders who lost their elected slots. This insulated
officeholders very nicely from the need to cater to pain-in-the-neck constituents.
Take for example, the post-Senate career move of Senator Dodd:
Motion Picture Association of America
In February 2011, despite "repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work
as a lobbyist,"[23][24] Dodd replaced Dan Glickman as chairman of and chief lobbyist for
the Motion Picture Association of America.[25][26]
On January 17, 2012, Dodd released a statement criticizing "the so-called 'Blackout Day'
protesting anti-piracy legislation."[27] Referring to the websites participating in the
blackout, Dodd said, "It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely
on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power... when the
platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite
their users in order to further their corporate interests."[27] In further comments, Dodd
threatened to cut off campaign contributions to politicians who did not support the
Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property
Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation supported by the Motion Picture Association
of America.[28]
Whatever do you suppose qualified Dodd to head the Motion Picture Association?
As an aside, I wonder how Dodd views censorship and/or skewing by the likes of google,
which long since started doing evil, its motto to the contrary; facebook; and twitter
For all other Democratic pols, all over the country, it will mean another two years in
which they make a public show of attacking Trump while just enough of them in D.C. vote for
his budgets, judges, etc. to give him and their corporate sponsors what they want.
2. For the Democratic base, those who eagerly vote blue, no matter who, it will mean--Oh,
screw it. Let's be candid. No one, including the Democratic Party, cares.
3. For Republicans, it would mean a minimum of two more years to be in control of the Oval
Office, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, which is better than a demotion to a
mere trifecta. Continued control typically means larger donations to the controlling party
and its incumbents.
While some may vacillate publicly as to whether or not Trump is good for the Party (*gives
Senator Graham and his ilk the side eye fish eye*), they will, in private, be giddy with glee
about both the money and power, thereby having it both ways, the wet dream
scenario of US politicians.
span y Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 5:05pm
Hillary drops out of the 2020 race and spends the next two years lawyering up.
Meanwhile the Democratic party implodes in an angry round of fingerprinting that
eventually leads to all out street fight between Bernie supporting Progressives and
Establishment Liberals in the run up to the 2020 primary.
Obama tries to play mediator and runs his own slate of phony change agents, but
Berniecrats and lost Hillbots are both hip to the con and aren't having it.
Bernie decides on another run from within, fighting a green tide of corporate payola and
corrupt machine Dems that ends up in a brokered convention.
I hate it when someone only picks out one point of my argument to respond to. Don't
you?
Meanwhile, I suddenly had a picture in my head of HRC running around with a bottle of ink,
a pad to pour it onto, a roller to saturate it with and some unwilling soul grasped by the
wrist and forced to spread their fingers for said fingerprinting.
Crystal ball haze suddenly lifts, and we see the Emerald City in the distance. (Monkeys?
What monkeys?)
Hillary drops out of the 2020 race and spends the next two years lawyering up.
Meanwhile the Democratic party implodes in an angry round of fingerprinting that
eventually leads to all out street fight between Bernie supporting Progressives and
Establishment Liberals in the run up to the 2020 primary.
Obama tries to play mediator and runs his own slate of phony change agents, but
Berniecrats and lost Hillbots are both hip to the con and aren't having it.
Bernie decides on another run from within, fighting a green tide of corporate payola
and corrupt machine Dems that ends up in a brokered convention.
the rich will continue to get richer, the poor more poor, the middle class will continue
to shrink, the war and U.S. imperialism will continue, the deficit and debt will keep going
up, we won't get a nationalized health care system, climate change will continue unabated,
and we still won't live in a democracy. Then the ruling class and it's corporate media will
prepare the sheeple for another election in less than two years.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as
a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the
pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic
politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain
control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political
control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for
it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham.
Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to
destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if
only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of
the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel
industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very
little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis
brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that
has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics,
Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is
ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing
another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political
heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill
corporate fascism with a friendly face.
Bertram
Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that
fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is
embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a
captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies
real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from
fascism's iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States'
form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true
intentions behind its "friendly" face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most
cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.
"Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly
across America," Gross wrote. "Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a
corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to
enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or
unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these
consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the
poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our
constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international
politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion."
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has
replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal
and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions
are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are,
at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality
television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment.
Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman
arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is
called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we
cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from
us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a
day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You
cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in
human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the
state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens
in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens,
mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our
chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist.
Either way we are shackled.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism.
It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power
and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon
Wolin , refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly
fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by
anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the
iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of
power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally.
Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power
structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more
sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no
charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass
fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of
reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the
Establishment."
Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap
the public in what he called "cultural ghettoization" so that "almost every individual would
get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day -- or night." This
is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned
that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we
were enslaved.
Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war
profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to
wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he
grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:
Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly
glorified. It was applied regionally -- by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in
the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional
militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned
standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.
The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope.
It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never
achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the
old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close
integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders
-- such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze -- tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any
top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style
entrepreneurs who tend to operate -- as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul
L. Savage have disclosed -- in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old
buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to
the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to
some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole.
Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly
fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind
such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind
the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through
missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances
between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or
slow death.
We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they
do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic
Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build
progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The
Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to
corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And
this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and
more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there
is no fight in us.
The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look
at the flight roster of the billionaire
Jeffrey Epstein , who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up
spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties
and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," on his jet,
which the press nicknamed "the Lolita Express." Some of the names on his flight
roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips,
Alan
Dershowitz , former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the
Candide -like
Steven Pinker ,
whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain's Prince Andrew. Epstein
was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.
We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the
same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is "that people
and governments never have learned anything from history." We will not arrest the decline if
the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate
engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will
do its dirty work regardless of which face -- the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the
demented visage of the Trump Republicans -- is pushed out front. If you want real change,
change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two
political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.
Not sure the Trump "guns instead of butter" policy is so widely supported. He proved to be a regular neocon marionette and as such
might pay the price during midterm elections, although, of course, domestics issues dominate.
Notable quotes:
"... The Democrats need to pick up 23 seats in the House to gain a majority. Of the 48 seats that are in play only 16 seem likely to change in their favor. In the Senate they need to take gain two seats to become a majority, but at least one of the Democrats' current seats is endangered and polls for the other 9 seats that potentially might change show a tossup. ..."
"... The Democrats have neither a program nor a leadership that incites to vote fro them. They wasted two years with hyping a non-existent Russiagate that no one but Washington insiders and the media cares about. Did they actually oppose anything Trump did? They tried a #metoo stunt around a Supreme Court nomination but how effective was that? On Clinton: the more she squawks the more republicans vote and the less democrats vote. That is my theory. This loser takes the fire out of everyone that counts other than her diminishing blind adherents. I think sometimes that Trump should lock her up for the greatest national security breach of all time but having her come out now blatantly proposing a rerun for president is such good luck for Trump. ..."
What are the chances that the mid-term elections in the United States, one week from now, will change the majority in the House
or Senate?
The Democrats
need to
pick up 23 seats in the House to gain a majority. Of the 48 seats that are in play only 16 seem likely to change in their favor.
In the Senate they need to take gain two seats to become a majority, but at least one of the Democrats' current seats is endangered
and polls for the other 9 seats that potentially might change show a tossup.
My personal hunch is that the Republicans will keep both houses and may even gain a few seats.
The U.S. economy is doing relatively well. The recent drop in share prices points to a more mixed outlook from here on, but
so far everything held up.
The Democrats have neither a program nor a leadership that incites to vote fro them. They wasted two years with
hyping a non-existent Russiagate
that no one but Washington insiders and the media cares about. Did they actually oppose anything Trump did? They tried a #metoo
stunt around a Supreme Court nomination but how effective was that? On Clinton: the more she squawks the more republicans vote
and the less democrats vote. That is my theory. This loser takes the fire out of everyone that counts other than her diminishing
blind adherents. I think sometimes that Trump should lock her up for the greatest national security breach of all time but having
her come out now blatantly proposing a rerun for president is such good luck for Trump.
She should be tried for her email breach of security just the same. And Trump and company tried for being hucksters and shaking
down investors. Bad luck USA you have been mugged for the past 6 decades or whatever. Can't see much chance for change either
with your totally kaput election system. Losers!
"... Today's Blue elite represents the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially divorced from the realities of normal American life -- glittering bubbles of sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion, Blue's protests ring the most false . ..."
Today, two righteous paths are gridlocked in opposition. Both perceive themselves as
champions of national renewal, of cleansing corrupted ideals, and of truly fulfilling America's
promise. Both fervently believe that they alone own virtue. Yet the banners of each course are
absolutist mirrors of one another, pro and contra, all or nothing. Moreover, lightning rod
issues, as in the 1770s and 1850s, make the space between battle lines a no man's land, forcing
majority moderates and compromising fence-sitters to choose or be called out as willing
collaborators with the other.
Today's lightning rods -- a feminist reordering of jurisprudence , a
state-promoted LGBT agenda, closed or open borders, full gun rights guarantees -- should not be
seen as mere hot-button issues that can be manipulated at will by political party elites. These
are way-of-life banners for two warring coalitions. Iconic issues that now represent the future
of two tribal alliances are taking the place of a former, single nation. The time for
compromise is over.
Othering. Here, the barren and
inhospitable new civic space is dominated along looming, fortified lines. Warring
identities have concluded that the only solution is the complete submission of the enemy party,
and both sides are beginning to prepare for an
ultimate showdown . Othering is a transforming process, through which former kin are
reimagined as evil, an American inner-enemy, who once defeated must be punished. The most
familiar metaphor of American othering was the 1770s practice of tarring and feathering .
This less-than-lethal mob punishment corresponds -- in shaming power and severity -- to mob
vengeance pervasive today on social media outlets such as Twitter.
Hence, to work fully as othering, the process must be public, result in the shame of the
transgressor, and show that true virtue is in command. More than anything, othering is a
ceremonial act designed to bring shame not just on the single person being tarred and
feathered, but the entire community to which he belongs. The political object of #MeToo is not
the numerically bounded set of guilty men, but rather the entire population set of
all men . The political object of Black Lives Matter is not racists, but rather all
whitepeople . The
political object of the LGBT movement is not homophobes, but
rather the whole of straight cisgender
society whose reality compass they seek to transform.
The targeted other, equally seized by virtue, operates today from an angry defensive crouch.
Thus do corporate elites support marquee Blue "social justice" agendas on Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube while censoring counterarguments and comment by Red. This is exactly the goal in
this struggle: namely, to condition moderates to widespread acquiescence of a loud and
insistent Blue agenda, while subtly coercing them to choose sides. They do this by arraigning
Red as social losers, the future minority tribe, on their eventual way to the dustbin of
history.
Red and Blue already represent an irreparable religious schism, deeper in doctrinal terms
even than the 16th-century Catholic-Protestant schism. The war here is over which faction
successfully captures the (social media) flag as
true inheritor of American virtue.
The Decision. Othering's most decisive effect is to condition the whole of society to
believe that an existential clash is coming, that all must choose, and that there are no
realistic alternatives to a final test of wills. Remember, in past times, Jacobins on both
sides were small minorities. Yet for either one of these two angry visions to win, there must
be a showdown. This demands, perversely, that they work together to bring on open conflict,
successfully coercing the majority of Americans to buy into its inevitability. At that point,
only a trigger pull is needed.
This was what the Boston Massacre did to push colonials against Britain in 1770, and this is
what
John Brown's Pottawatomie Massacre and Congressman Preston Brooks's
caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor did to push people toward civil war in 1856.
This is what the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the nearly two-year effort to
delegitimize and overthrow President Donald Trump may doing today: getting the two halves of
the former nation to pull that trigger.
The Fight. If the political balance shifts dramatically, then conflict checks -- held
in place by lingering political norms and a longstanding electoral standoff -- disintegrate.
Suddenly, both newly advantaged and disadvantaged parties rush to a test of wills sooner rather
than later. A triggering incident becomes a spark -- yet the spark itself does not ignite.
Rather, it is the readiness for combat in this emerging "community of violence" that makes a
fight the natural way forward. In 1774, the Sons of Liberty were spoiling for a fight. In the
1850s, Jayhawkers and Border Ruffians were equally primed to hit back. That pushed the nation
to civil war.
Evidence from history and our own eyes tells us that we are deep into phase four. Three
takeaways show us how close we are to real battle.
Both sides rush to tear down the constitutional order. Just since the 2016 election,
we have witnessed a rolling thunder of Blue and Red elite rhetoric -- packing
the
SupremeCourt,abolishing
the ElectoralCollege , repealing
the
SecondAmendment
, wholesale state nullification of federal law, shackling of voter rights, and Deep State
invocation of the 25th Amendment. These are all potential extremities of action that would not
only dismantle our constitutional order, but also skew it to one side's juridical construct of
virtue, thus dissolving any semblance of adherence to law by the other. Over time each party
becomes emotionally invested in the lust to dismantle the old and make something new.
Hence, constitutional norms exist only conditionally, until such time as they finally be
dismantled, and only as long as a precariously balanced electoral divide holds firm. A big
historical tilt in favor of one party over the other would very quickly push the nation into
crisis because the party with the new mandate would rush to enact its program. The very threat
of such constitutional dismantling would be sure casus belli . Such tilts in the
early 1770s against Britain, and later in
the 1850s against the slaveholding party, were the real tipping points. Not only was
Dred Scott v. Sandford just such a tipping point in 1857, but subconsciously its legacy
weighs heavily on Americans today, as they contemplate -- often with hysterical passion -- the
dread consequences of a Kavanaugh appointment.
The dead hand of the last civil war grabs us from the grave. It is eerie how today's
angst pulls us back to the 1860s -- and shows us what is likely to happen in our third civil
war. If the poisonous hatreds of the 1860s again inform our civil anger today -- i.e. battles
between the alt-right and antifa -- then this should tell us that we are literally on the cusp
of another time of rage, where the continuity of strife is stronger than any hopes for
reconciliation. What is clear is that two warring parties will accept nothing less from the
other than submission, even though the loser will never submit. Moreover, each factional ethos
is incapable of empathizing with
the other.
Yet we should remember that "unconditional surrender" is like an Old Testament doctrine --
meaning that its invocation hearkens unmistakably to God's judgment. It became the
Federal rallying cry throughout the Civil War, a substrate trope in the Versailles Treaty,
the president's official position for the end of World War II, and even our complacent
conviction during the decomposition of the Soviet Union. It is an apocalyptic vision deeply
embedded in both Blue and Red. Such visions presage existential crisis that puts what is left
of the nation at real risk. If, at war's end, the sacred scrolls, artifacts, and symbols -- the
archaeology of a once-cherished identity -- cannot be restored or repurposed, then our entire
history must be destroyed, and the "we" that once was wiped clean. Civil war -- the battle over
how, or whether, we belong to one another -- thus demands nothing less than transformation.
Disbelieving war makes it inevitable. People will always
disbelieve that we could come to blows, until we do. Delegates at the "Democracy" party
convention in Charleston, in the summer of 1860, were still in denial of
the coming fury . No one dares imagine another civil war playing out like the last, when
two grimly determined American armies fought each other to the death in bloody pitched battles.
It is unlikely that a third American civil war will embrace 18th and 19th century military
dynamics. Antique Anglo-American society -- organized around community "
mustering " -- was culturally equipped to fight civil wars. Today's screen-absorbed
Millennials are not. So what?
But the historical consequences of a non-military American civil war would be just as severe
as any struggle settled by battle and blood. For example, the map of a divided America today
suggests that division into functioning state and local sovereignties -- with autonomy over
kinship, identity, and way of life issues -- might be the result of this non-bloody war. This
could even represent de facto national partition -- without de jure secession, achieved through
a gradual process of accretive state and local
nullification .
So what would a non-military civil war look like? Could it be non-violent? Americans are
certainly not lovers, but they do not seem really to be fighters either. A possible path to
kinship disengagement -- a separation without de jure divorce -- would here likely follow a
crisis, a confrontation, and some shocking, spasmodic violence, horrifyingly amplified on
social media. Passions at this point would pull back, but investment in separation would not.
What might eventuate would be a national sorting out, a de facto kinship separation in which
Blue and Red regions would go -- and govern -- their own ways, while still maintaining the
surface fiction of a titular "United States." This was, after all, the arrangement America came
to after 20 years of civil war (1857-1877). This time, however, there will be no succeeding
conciliation (as was achieved in the 1890s). Culturally, this United States will be, from the
moment of agreement, two entirely separate sensibilities, peoples, and politics.
♦♦♦
The winding path to civil war has yet another wrinkle: the people-elite divide. In the 1770s
and the 1850s, American fissuring was championed by opposing elites. In the 1770s, two elites
had emerged: one was the colonial, homegrown elite -- such as Washington, Hamilton, and Adams
-- and the other was the metropole,
trans-Atlantic
British elite , celebrated by royally endowed landowners such as Lord Fairfax , whose holdings
were in the thousands of square miles. Yet the British aristocracy was less intimately engaged
in the colonies, and the loyalist elite a more sotto voce
voice in colonial politics.
Not so the proto-Confederacy, the celebrated "Slave Power." In the looming struggle between
North and South, the Southern elite was the dominant economic force in the nation, thanks to
its overwhelming capital stored in human flesh. In fact, planter aristocracy capital formation
in 1860
equaled all capital invested in manufacturing, railroads, banks, and all currency in
circulation -- combined. This was the power of chattel slavery as the wealth ecology of the
antebellum South. In
defiant opposition to them were the Northern
anti-slavery elites , nowhere as privileged and rich as their Southern counterparts. The
new Republicans were further thwarted by the indissoluble alliance of planter aristocracy and
the nation's financial hub: New York City. There was an unholy bond between a dominant
slaveholder elite and an equally dominant New York slave-enabling elite. To make the point, in
1859, New York shipbuilders outfitted
85 slave ships for the hungry needs of the Southern planter class.
The dominant cultural position occupied by the overlords of chattel slavery has its analogy
today in the overlords of America's Blue elite. While there is a vocal Red elite, the Blue
elite dominates public life through its hold on the Internet, Hollywood, publishing, social
media, academia, the Washington bureaucracy, and the global grip of corporate giants. Blue
elite's power, in its hold on the cultural pulse and economic lifeblood of American life,
compares granularly to the planter aristocracy of the 1850s.
Ruling elites famously overthrown by history -- like the Ancien Régime in
France, Czarist Russia, and even the Antebellum South -- were fated by their insatiable
selfishness, their impenetrable arrogance, and their sneering aloofness from the despised
people -- "the deplorables" -- upon whom their own
economic status feasted .
Today's
Blue elite represents the
greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is
scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially
divorced from the realities of normal American life
-- glittering bubbles of
sovereign privilege . This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams
so feared . While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people's champion,
Blue's protests ring the
most false .
America is divided today not by customary tussles in party politics, but rather by
passionate, existential, and irreconcilable opposition. Furthermore, the onset of battle is
driven yet more urgently by the "intersection" of a culturally embedded kinship divide moving
-- however haphazardly -- to join up with an elite-people divide.
Tragically, our divide may no longer be an outcome that people of goodwill work to overcome.
Schism -- with our nation in an ideological Iron Maiden -- will soon force us all to submit,
and choose.
Michael Vlahos teaches strategy and war at Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs and
formerly, at the Naval War College. He is the author of the book
Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change .
Likbez
I think that the key for understating the political crisis in the USA is to understand its
connection with the crisis on neoliberalism as an ideology which was encompassed as the USA
national ideology after WWII.
The US neoliberal elite lost the support of the population, and the is what the current
crisis is about. Also, the level of degeneration of the current elite demonstrated by Haley
appointed to the UN and several other disastrous appointments also signify the Us approaching
the situation of " let them eat cakes."
The same time the power of surveillance state is such that outside of random acts of
violence like we observed recently, insurrection is impossible and political ways to change
the situation are blocked.
Neoliberals came to power with Carter, so more than 40 years ago (although formally Reagan
is considered to be the first neoliberal president.) Now they are are losing political power
and popular support.
Trump attempt to reform "classic neoliberalism" into what can be called "national
neoliberalism" or neoliberalism without globalization is probably doomed to be a failure and
not only due to Trump weaknesses as a political leader. He trying increase the level of
neoliberaliztion with the USA failing to understand that the current problems stem from
excessive levels of deregulation (and associated level of corruption), the excessive power of
military industrial complex (supported by Wall Street) which led to waiting for trillion of
arms race and destruction of New Deal Social protection mechanisms.
With the collapse of neoliberalism of global ideology, international standing of the USA
greatly deteriorated, and now in some areas (especially with unilateral Iran sanctions and
behavior in Korea crisis), Trump administration approaches the status of a pariah nation.
My impression is the neoliberalism just can't be reformed the way Trump is trying it to
reform into what can be called "national neoliberalism."
That's probably why intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of the Democratic party,
closely connected to Wall Street launched a color revolution ("Russiagate) against him in
late 2016, trying to depose him and install a more "compliant" leader, who would support
kicking the can down the road.
So the two warring camps now represent "classic neoliberalism" with its idea of the global
neoliberal empire (and related "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine) and "revisionists" of
various flavors (including Trump and Sanders supporters)
BTW neocons, who dominate the USA foreign policy, are also neoliberals, just moonlighting
as lobbyists of the military industrial complex.
I think that globalization as an immanent feature and trump policies this will fail.
As the same, the opposition to neoliberalism on the ground level of the US society demand
reforms and retreat form the globalization, which they connect with outsourcing and
offshoring.
That's why Trump's idea of "national neoliberalism" -- an attempt to retreat from
"globalization" and at the same time to obtain some economic advantages by brute force and
bilateral treaties instead of multilateral organizations like WTO got some initial support.
Along with his fake promises to improve the economic position of the middle class, squeezed
by globalization.
the truth is that the "classic neoliberals" (which are represented by Clinton wing of Dems
and Paul Ryan wing in Republicans ) lost popular support.
Dems, for example, now rely as their major constituency fringe groups and elements of
national security state (that's why so many of their candidates for midterm are associated
with intelligence agencies and military). So they are trying to mobilize elements of national
security state to help them to return to power. That gambit, like Russiagate before it,
probably will fail.
Republicans are also in limbo with Trump clearly betraying his electorate, but still enjoy
some level of ground support.
IMHO his betrayals which is very similar to Obama betrayal(in no way he wants to improve
the condition of the lower middle class and workers, it just hot air) might cost him two
important group of voters who will vote for independent candidates if they vote at all:
1. Anti-war republicans
2. People who want the return of the New Deal.
Factions which are against imperial wars and for more fair redistribution of income in the
society, a distribution which were screwed by 40 years of neoliberalism dominance in the
USA.
So the US electorate have a classic political choice between disastrous and unpalatable
policies once again ;-)
whether that will eventually lead to a military coup in best LA style, we can only
guess.
AP-NORC
Poll national survey with 1,152 adults found 8 in 10 Americans believe the country is
divided regarding essential values, and some expect the division to deepen into 2020.
Only 20% of Americans said they think the country will become less divided over the next
several years, and 39% believe conditions will continue to deteriorate. A substantial majority
of Americans, 77%, said they are dissatisfied with the state of politics in the country , said
AP-NORC.
... ... ...
The nationwide survey was conducted on October 11-14, using the AmeriSpeak
Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Overall, 59% of
Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 40% of Americans
approve.
More specifically, the poll said 83% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the
job, while 92% of Democrats and 61% of Independents strongly disagree.
More than half of Americans said they are not hearing nor seeing topics from midterm
campaigns that are important to them. About 54% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans said vital
issues, such as health care, education, and economic activity, Social Security and crime, were
topics they wanted to hear more.
Looking at their communities, most American (Republicans and Democrats) are satisfied with
their state or local community. However, on a national level, 58% of Americans are dissatisfied
with the direction of the country, compared to 25%, a small majority who are satisfied.
Most Americans are dissatisfied with the massive gap between rich and poor, race relations
and environmental conditions. The poll noticed there are partisan splits, 84% of Democrats are
disappointed with the amount of wealth inequality, compared with 43% of Republicans. On the
environment, 77% of Democrats and 32% Republicans are dissatisfied. Moreover, while 77%
Democrats said they are unhappy with race relations, about 50% of Republicans said the
same.
The poll also showed how Democrats and Republicans view certain issues. About 80% of
Democrats but less than 33% of Republicans call income inequality, environmental issues or
racism very important.
"Healthcare, education and economic growth are the top issues considered especially
important by the public. While there are many issues that Republicans and Democrats give
similar levels of importance to (trade foreign policy and immigration), there are several
concerns where they are far apart. For example, 80% of Democrats say the environment and
climate change is extremely or very important, and only 28% of Republicans agree. And while
68% consider the national debt to be extremely or very important, only 55% of Democrats
regard it with the same level of significance," said AP-NORC.
Although Democrats and Republicans are divided on most values, many Americans
consider the country's diverse population a benefit.
Half said America's melting pot makes the country stronger, while less than 20% said it
hurts the country. About 30% said diversity does not affect their outlook.
"However, differences emerge by party identification, gender, location, education, and
race . Democrats are more likely to say having a population with various backgrounds makes
the country stronger compared to Republicans or Independents. Urbanities and college-educated
adults are more likely to say having a mix of ethnicities makes the country stronger, while
people living in rural areas and less educated people tend to say diversity has no effect or
makes the country weaker," said AP-NORC.
Overall, 60% of Americans said accusations of sexual harassment with some
high-profile men forced to resign or be fired was essential to them. However, 73% of women said
the issue was critical, compared with 51% of men. The data showed that Democrats were much more
likely than Republicans to call sexual misconduct significant.
More than 40% of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of Supreme Court Justice Brett
Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court after allegations of sexual harassment in his
college years. 35% of Americans said they heartily approved of Kavanaugh's confirmation.
The evidence above sheds light on the internal struggles of America. The country is divided,
and this could be a significant problem just ahead.
Why is that? Well, America's future was outlined in a book called "The Fourth Turning: What
Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny."
In the book, which was written in the late 1990s, authors William Strauss and Niel Howe
theorize that the history of civilization moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula."
The idea behind this theory dates back to the Greeks, who believed that at given saeculum's
end, there would come "ekpyrosis," or a cataclysmic event.
This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and it appears we are in the midst of one
right now.
The last few Fourth Turnings that America experienced ushered in the Civil War and the
Reconstruction era, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before all of that, it was
the Revolutionary War.
Each Fourth Turning had similar warning signs: periods of political chaos, division, social
and economic decay in which the American people reverted from extreme division and were forced
to reunite in the rebuild of a new future, but that only came after massive conflict.
Today's divide among many Americans is strong. We are headed for a collision that will rip
this country apart at the seams. The timing of the next Fourth Turning is now, and it could
take at least another decade to complete the cycle.
After the Fourth Turning, America will not be the America you are accustomed to today. So,
let us stop calling today the "greatest economy ever" and start preparing for turbulence.
The Blue Wave seems to be receding. The reason; Democrats rule for the Elite 10%. They are
globalists rich from transnational world trade. They expect to cycle back into power.
However, there is no bull pen. They work against policies that would mitigate the neoliberal
winner takes all society and preserve the middle class. The Cold War restarted. Republican
Corporatists, nationalists or not, are no alternative.
The Western political-economic system, with no feedback corrections from democracy, is
tearing itself into pieces. Even though, corporate media continues to say how great things
are.
"... Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. ..."
"... Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine leftists remaining, plus AOC. ..."
I sure hope the Dems take over the House. After McConnel said out loud on teevee that he
plans to Gut Social Security and Medicare to fix the deficit (created by the Trump taxcuts
for the Rich), Repubs have become a frightening breed. And what else will they attack? The
Trump presidency has turned from awful to Nightmarish. I'm not even a fan of the corporate
Dems but Congressional gridlock is our only hope.
If I'm completely honest with myself, I think it would be better for Rs to keep the house.
The D/R charade just gives hope to leftists while preventing meaningful institutional reform.
IMO things need to get worse before they can get better, and having a split Congress will
delay that. I think it'll take 3-4 terms of solid R rule before the left has a chance to make
meaningful change.
Here's a thought experiment: suppose the Dems had solid control of both houses: what would
they do? If you aren't excited about that outcome, why vote for it?
I have had similar thoughts in wondering what would be best. Maybe a complete humiliation
for the Ds in the House, like the GOP gaining 10 seats, but then a flip of the Senate, which
doesn't seem likely. It would have to be by several seats to counter Manchin, etc. I voted
straight D. It's all just speculation on my part; damned if I even know anymore what would be
best.
Historically, "the worse the better" hasn't worked out, unless you're hoping for
revolutionary conditions.
Otherwise, most people are pretty unprincipled at the end of the show -- they'll run to
join the crowd.
And the "revolutionary solution" is really, really bad historically. Really bad.
What you really want is the Dems to kick-ass, even if they're total sell-outs, to create
space on the left. But if they lose? You get a whole lot of people becoming radical right
wingers to be on the side of the winners.
flora, October 25, 2018 at 12:19 pm
KS-02 Paul Davis (D) vs Steve Watkins (R) (Jenkins is retiring, not running again.) with a libertarian candidate thrown in
as a 3rd party.
Trump was in town to rally with Watkins a short while ago. Lot of moderate Rs won't vote for far-right* Watkins, even
though this is an R district. Should be an interesting election.
Third party candidates appear to have popped up in important KS races where far-right candidates might not get enough
R votes, but where a 3rd party candidate could draw off moderate R votes that might otherwise to go the D candidate. Who
is funding these 3rd party candidates remains a mystery.
*on the same spectrum as Kris Kobach, imo.
Big River Bandido, October 25, 2018 at 12:20 pm
I think your approach of filtering out who the real candidates are from the left is correct. Dana Balter and Kara Eastman
have been particularly disheartening as general-election candidates; Eastman, especially, talked a great game on health care
back in the primary. Since getting the nomination, it seems that they caved to the establishment and diluted their
platforms to tripe - Eastman did it within days of winning her primary. Same is true in solid Democrat districts that were
never part of this series - I can't even view the change in MA-07 as much of a win, since on policy at least, Presley appears
to have defeated Capuano from the right, not the left. I'm not at all surprised that this process leaves only 2 genuine
leftists remaining, plus AOC.
Changing the rules, talks of changing the constitution, and the status of the SC because
Dems can't find a positive message, or a positive candidate, or persuade the candidate to
recognize and reach out to voters the Democratic party abandoned, reeks of defeatism and
worse.
Exactly.
Clinton neoliberals (aka soft neoliberals) still control the Democratic Party but no longer
can attract working-class voters. That's why they try "identity wedge" strategy trying to
compensate their loss with the rag tag minority groups.
Their imperial jingoism only makes the situation worse. Large swaths of the USA population,
including lower middle class are tired of foreign wars and sliding standard of living. They see
exorbitant military expenses as one of the causes of their troubles.
That's why Hillary got a middle finger from several social groups which previously supported
Democrats. And that's why midterm might be interesting to watch as there is no political party
that represents working class and lower middle class in the USA.
"Lesser evil" mantra stops working when people are really angry at the ruling neoliberal
elite.
control of the Senate, a relentlessly undemocratic institution
likbez 10.08.18 at 6:24 am (no link)
I think the US society is entering a deep, sustained political crisis and it is unclear what
can bring us back from it other then the collapse, USSR-style. The USA slide into corporate
socialism (which might be viewed as a flavor of neofascism) can't be disputed.
Looks like all democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America,
the elite do not care about lower 80% of the population, and is over-engaged in cynical
identity politics, race and gender-mongering. Anything to win votes.
MSM is still cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans,
impoverish millions, and cost trillions. Congress looks even worse. Republican House leader
Paul Ryan looks like 100% pure bought-and-paid-for tool of multinational corporations
The scary thing for me is that the USA national problems are somewhat similar to the ones
that the USSR experienced before the collapse. At least the level of degeneration of
political elite of both parties (which in reality is a single party) is.
The only positive things is that there is viable alternative to neoliberalism on the
horizon. But that does not mean that we can't experience 1930th on a new level again. Now
several European countries such as Poland and Ukraine are already ruled by far right
nationalist parties. Brazil is probably the next. So this or military rule in the USA is not
out of question.
Some other factors are also in play: one is that a country with 320 million population
can't be governed by the same methods as a country of 76 million (1900). End of cheap oil is
near and probably will occur within the next 50 years or so. Which means the end of
neoliberalism as we know it.
Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the
country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send
their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security
guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them
eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions.
They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population Above all,
they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm)
Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it.
They just concluded that the options were worse -- and not just Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican
leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate
executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created
the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge. Trump might be vulgar and
ignorant, but he wasn't responsible for the many disasters America's leaders created .
There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in
what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren't. Virtually none of their
core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed .Beginning on election
night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer
action movie: Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters. Trump won because
Russian agents "hacked" the election. Trump won because mouth-breathers in the provinces
were mesmerized by his gold jet and shiny cuff links.
From a reader review:
The New Elite speaks: "The Middle Class are losers and they have made bad choices, they
haven't worked as hard as the New Elite have, they haven't gone to SAT Prep or LSAT prep so
they lose, we win. We are the Elite and we know better than you because we got high SAT
scores.
Do we have experience? Uh .well no, few of us have been in the military, pulled KP, shot
an M-16 . because we are better than that. Like they say only the losers go in the
military. We in the New Elite have little empirical knowledge but we can recognize patterns
very quickly."
Just look at Haley behavior in the UN and Trump trade wars and many things became more
clear. the bet is on destruction of existing international institutions in order to save the
USA elite. A the same time Trump trade wars threaten the neoliberal order so this might well
be a path to the USA self-destruction.
On Capital hill rancor, a lack of civility and derisive descriptions are everywhere.
Respect has gone out the window. Left and right wings of a single neoliberal party (much like
CPSU was in the USSR) behave like drunk schoolchildren. Level of pettiness is simply
amazing.
The fundamental rule of democratic electoral politics is this: tribes don't win elections,
coalitions do. Trump's appeal is strongly tribal, and he has spent two years consolidating
his appeal to that tribe rather than reaching out. But he won in 2016 (or 'won') not on the
strength of that tribal appeal, but because of a coalition between core Trumpists and more
respectable conservatives and evangelicals, including a lot of people who find Trump himself
vulgar and repellent, but who are prepared to hold their noses. The cause
célèbre (or cause de l'infâme) that Kavanaugh's appointment became
ended-up uniting these two groups; the Trumpists on the one hand ('so the Libs are saying we
can't even enjoy a beer now, are they?') and the old-school religious Conservatives,
for whom abortion is a matter of conscience.
Given the weird topographies of US democratic process, the Democrats need to build a
bigger counter-coalition than the coalition they are opposing. Metropolitan liberals are in
the bag, so that means reconnecting with the working class, and galvanising the black and
youth votes, which have a poor record of converting social media anger into actual ballot-box
votes. But it also means reaching out to moderate religious conservatives, and the Dems don't
seem to me to have a strategy for this last approach at all. Which is odd, because it would
surely, at least in some ways, be easier than persuading young people to vote at the levels
old people vote. At the moment abortion (the elephant in the Kavanaugh-confirmation room) is
handled by the Left as a simple matter of structural misogyny, the desire to oppress and
control female bodies. I see why it is treated that way; there are good reasons for that
critique. But it's electorally dumb. Come at it another way instead, accept that many
religious people oppose abortion because they see it as killing children; then lead the
campaign on the fact that the GOP is literally putting thousands upon thousands of
children in concentration camps . Shout about that fact. Determine how many kids
literally die each year because their parents can't access free healthcare and put that stat
front and centre. Confront enough voters with the false consciousness of only caring about
abortion and not these other monstrosities and some will reconsider their position.
And one more thing that I have never understood about the Dems (speaking as an outsider),
given how large a political force Christianity is in your country: make more of Jimmy Carter.
He's a man of extraordinary conscience as well as a man of faith; the contrast with how he
has lived his post-Presidential life and the present occupier of the White House could
hardly, from a Christian perspective, be greater. If the Dems can make a love-thy-neighbour
social justice Christianity part of their brand, leaving Mammon to the GOP, then they'd be in
power for a generation.
"Jessica Morse, a former State Department and AID official in Iraq, running in the Fourth
District of California, blasts the Trump administration for "giving away global leadership to
powers like China and Russia. Our security and our economy will both suffer if those
countries are left to re-write the international rules."
Former FBI agent Christopher Hunter, running in the 12th District of Florida, declares,
"Russia is a clear and present danger to the United States. We emerged victorious over the
Soviet Union in the Cold War. We must resolve anew to secure an uncompromising victory over
Russia and its tyrannical regime."
Elissa Slotkin, the former CIA agent and Pentagon official running in Michigan's Eighth
Congressional District, cites her 14 years of experience "working on some of our country's
most critical national security matters, including U.S.-Russia relations, the counter-ISIS
campaign, and the U.S. relationship with NATO." She argues that "the United States must make
investments in its military, intelligence, and diplomatic power" in order to maintain "a
unique and vital role in the world."
Max Rose, a combat commander in Afghanistan now running in New York's 11th Congressional
District (Staten Island and Brooklyn), calls for "recognizing Russia as a hostile foreign
power and holding the Kremlin accountable for its attempts to undermine the sovereignty and
democratic values of other nations." Rose is still in the military reserves, and took two
weeks off from his campaign in August to participate in small-unit drills.
Joseph Kopser, running in the 21st District of Texas, is another anti-Russian firebrand,
writing on his website, "As a retired Army Ranger, I know first hand the importance of
standing strong with your allies. Given Russia's march toward a totalitarian state showing
aggression around the region, as well as their extensive cyber and information warfare
campaign directed at the U.S., England, and others, our Article 5 [NATO] commitment to our
European allies and partners is more important than ever." He concludes, "Since the
mid-twentieth century, the United States has been a principal world leader -- a standard that
should never be changed."
Four national-security candidates add North Korea and Iran to China and Russia as specific
targets of American military and diplomatic attack.
Josh Welle, a former naval officer who was deployed to Afghanistan, now running in the
Fourth Congressional District of New Jersey, writes, "We have to stand together in the face
of threats from countries like North Korea and Iran. The human rights violations and nuclear
capabilities of these countries pose a direct threat to the stability of this world and
therefore need to be met with strong military presence and a robust defense program to
protect ourselves."
Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for human rights, running in New
Jersey's Seventh District, calls for maintaining economic sanctions on Russia "until it stops
its aggression in Ukraine and interference in our democracy," effusively endorses the state
of Israel (whose government actually interferes in US elections more than any other), and
calls for stepped up sanctions against North Korea.
Mikie Sherill, a former Navy pilot and Russian policy officer, running in New Jersey's
11th District, writes, "I have sat across the table from the Russians, and know that we need
our government to take the threat they pose seriously." She adds to this a warning about
"threats posed by North Korea and Iran," the two most immediate targets of
military-diplomatic blackmail by the Trump administration. She concludes, referring to North
Korea's nuclear program, "For that reason I support a robust military presence in the region
and a comprehensive missile defense program to defend America, our allies, and our troops
abroad."
Dan McCready, an Iraq war unit commander who claims to have been born again when he was
baptized in water from the Euphrates River, calls for war to be waged only "with overwhelming
firepower," not "sporadically, with no strategy or end in sight, while our enemies like Iran,
North Korea, Russia, and the terrorists outsmart and outlast us." He is running in North
Carolina's Ninth Congressional District, adjacent to the huge military complex at Fort
Bragg.
One military-intelligence candidate cites immigration as a national-security issue,
echoing the position of the Trump administration, which constantly peddles scare stories that
terrorists are infiltrating the United States disguised as immigrants and refugees. That is
Richard Ojeda, running in the Third Congressional District of West Virginia, who publicly
boasts of having voted for Trump in 2016, in the same election in which he won a seat in the
West Virginia state senate running as a Democrat.
Ojeda writes on his web site, "We must also ensure that terrorists do not reach American
soil by abusing our immigration process. We must keep an up to date terror watch list but
provide better vetting for those that go onto the watch list."
A career Army Airborne officer, Ojeda voices the full-blown militarism of this social
layer. "If there is one thing I am confident in, it is the ability of our nation's military,"
he declares. "The best way to keep Americans safe is to let our military do their job without
muddying up their responsibilities with our political agendas."
He openly rejects control of the military by civilian policy-makers. "War is not a social
experiment and I refuse to let politics play a role in my decision making when it comes to
keeping you and your family safe," he continues. "I will not take my marching orders from
anyone else concerning national security."
Only one of the 30 candidates, Ken Harbaugh, a retired Air Force pilot running in the
Seventh Congressional District of Ohio, centered on the industrial city of Canton,
acknowledges being part of this larger group. He notes, "In 2018, more vets are running for
office than at any moment in my lifetime. Because of the growing inability of Washington to
deal responsibly with the threats facing our nation, veterans from both sides of the aisle
are stepping into the breach."
Referring to the mounting prospect of war, he writes, "Today, we face our gravest
geopolitical challenge since 9/11. Our country remains at war in Afghanistan, we have troops
engaged in North Africa, Iraq and Syria, and Russia continues to bully our allies. Meanwhile,
North Korea has the ability to directly threaten the American mainland with nuclear
missiles." He concludes, "we need leaders with the moral authority to speak on these issues,
leaders who have themselves been on the front lines of these challenges."
These statements, taken cumulatively, present a picture of unbridled militarism and
aggression as the program of the supposed "opposition" to the Trump administration's own
saber-rattling and threats of "fire and fury like the world has never seen."
Perhaps even more remarkable is that the remaining 17 national-security candidates say
nothing at all about foreign policy (in 11 cases) or limit themselves to anodyne observations
about the necessity to provide adequate health care and other benefits to veterans (two
cases), or vague generalities about the need to combine a strong military with diplomatic
efforts (four cases). They give no specifics whatsoever.
In other words, while these candidates tout their own records as part of the
national-security apparatus as their principal credential for election to Congress, they
decline to tell the voters what they would do if they were in charge of American foreign
policy.
Given that these 17 include intelligence agents (Abigail Spanberger and Gina Ortiz Jones),
a National Security Council Iraq war planner (Andy Kim), and numerous other high-level State
Department and military commanders, the silence can have only the most ominous
interpretation.
These CIA Democrats don't want to tell voters about their plans for foreign policy and
military intervention because they know these measures are deeply unpopular. They aim to gain
office as stealth candidates, unveiling their program of militarism and war only after they
take their seats, when they may very well exercise decisive influence in the next
Congress."
I don't see the republicans being the Nazis. The US war party is composed of both Democraps
and Rethuglicans. The Republican base has values closer in line with paleocons and not the
neocons.
The values of the Democraps are pure imperialist, exceptionalist and totalitarian in the
name of PC. Obummer was neocon tool like W. Bush.
Thus it is the Democraps that are the proper heirs of the Nazis and their 4th Reich global
domination project. Paleocons are isolationist nationalists that actually believe in the
constitutional values that the USA claims to espouse. The Democraps are all about lust for
power and dirty tricks to enable the seizing of power.
Obummer weaponized the FBI and CIA into partisan instruments giving us the Russia meddling
inquisition. Truman was a foaming at the mouth racist cold warrior.
Eisenhower at least warned about the creeping influence of the MIC. Clinton was a
slimeball that continued the Reich agenda in the Balkans. And so on.
"... Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? ..."
"... Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value. ..."
"... Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski), however shrill and enraged that they may be. ..."
"... I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife. In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons. ..."
"... The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left. ..."
"... The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is destined to be. ..."
Mr. Buchanan, you forgot the "treacherous" work of porn lawyer Michael Avenatti who offered
the straw that broke the camel's back by presenting such an abysmal "witness" such as Julie
Swetnick. Ms. Ramirez' alleged allegations also came down to nothing. Even the so-called Me
too movement suffered a big blow. They turned a fundamental democratic principle upside down:
The accused is innocent until proven guilty. They insisted instead that the accuser is right
because she is a woman!
I watched the whole confirmation circus on CNN. When Dr. Ford started talking my first
thought was; this entire testimony is a charade initiated by the Dems. As a journalist, I was
appalled by the CNN "colleagues." During the recesses, they held tribunals that were 95
percent staffed by anti-Trumpets. Fairness looks different.
For me, the Democratic Party and the Me too movement lost much of its credibility. To
regain it, they have to get rid of the demons of the Clinton's and their ilk. Anyone who is
acquainted with the history of the Clinton's knows that they belong to the most politically
corrupt politicians in the US.
@utu
You're thinking of Justice Kennedy, another Republican choice for whom young Mr. Kavanaugh
clerked before helping President Cheney with the Patriot Act to earn his first robe on the
Swampville Circuit. Chief Justice Roberts was the one who nailed down Big Sickness for the
pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
Like the "federal" elections held every November in even-numbered years and the 5-4
decrees of the Court, these nailbiting confirmation hearings are another part of the show
that keeps people gulled into accepting that so many things in life are to be run by people
in Washington. Mr. Buchanan for years has been proclaiming each The Most Important Ever.
I'm still inclined to the notion that the Constitution was intended, at least by some of
its authors and supporters, to create a limited national government. But even by the time of
Marbury, those entrusted with the powers have arrogated the authority to redefine them. In my
lifetime, the Court exists to deal with hot potato social issues in lieu of the invertebrate
Congress, to forebear (along with the invertebrate Congress) the warmongering and other
"foreign policy" waged under auspices of the President, and to dignify the Establishment's
shepherding and fleecing of the people.
Why should a robed, unelected politician be redefining marriage? Entrusted to
enforce the Constitutional limitations on the others? Sure, questions like these are posed
from time to time in a dissenting Justice's opinion, but that ends the discussion other than
in the context of replacing old Justice X with middle-aged Justice Y, as exemplified in this
cliche' column from Mr. Buchanan. Those of us outside the Beltway are told to tune in and
root Red. And there are pom pom shakers and color commentators just like him for Team
Blue.
Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and
is no different than either professional football or wrestling. The public cheer on their
teams and engage in meaningless battle while the controllers pilfer everything of value.
Buchanan knows this but is too afraid to tell "the other half of the story."
It was a costly victory, but not a Pyrrhic one. The Left will no doubt raise the decibel
and octave levels, but if they incur a richly-deserved defeat a month from now, they won't
even make it to the peanut gallery for at least the next two years.
Peter Hitchens has remarked that demonstrations are actually indicators of weakness
rather than power or authority (something that seems to have eluded Flake and Murkowski),
however shrill and enraged that they may be. Should the Left choose to up the ante, to
REALLY take it to the streets well as the English ditty goes: We have the Maxim Gun/And they
have not.
Pat, you are one of the few thinkers with real common sense.
I'm an aging New Deal Democrat. I have not changed but my former party changed with
the tenure of the immoral and ethically challenged rapist, Bill Clinton and his enabler wife.
In their previous lives, both were Goldwater Republicans. They switched to the Democrat Party
to win elections but they never strayed too far from teats of the the Bushes and their
destructive political roots. I"m willing to bet thousands of dollars that if given a fair
chance at a quiz about the Clintons, most of the young SJW's, rabid homo's and the poor
suckers who follow them know very little about the real Clintons.
The Democrat party today is less a party than it is a mob of homosexuals and rabid
social justice warriors duped into believing they are oppressed by the extremist college
courses in Social Justice. Yet, what they have offer the world is not justice. They offer
chaos and anarchy as we saw with the mob of racists black and stupid white kids attacking a
man who looked lost and confused, and as it turns out, rightfully frightened by the crowd of
social justice terrorists from the Alt-Left.
They all slept through the Obama disaster thinking the globalist open borders would make
the world Shang Ri La instead of crime ridden, diseased, and under attack from Muslims and
their twisted ides about God and Sharia Law. Look at the Imam who proclaimed yesterday they
Sharia is the law of Britain and that Muslims are at war with the British government. Yet,
Tommy Robinson gets jailed for pointing out their sated intentions. Messed up. We cannot let
this happen in America.
They ignore the fact that the emasculated Obama failed to fight to pick a Supreme Court
Justice. Even though he was going to choose Neil Gorsuch, not a leftist, the Alt-Left no
doubt would have remained silent if he had. Why? Because Obama was black. But the Alt-Left is
shallow and they could not see that the oreo president was black on the outside but rich and
creamy white on the inside. No doubt, Obama was more like a 1980′s Republican than he
was a Democrat as I understood them to be for decades.
The Democrat Party is gonzo, the same as Hillary and Bill Clinton's speaking tour is
destined to be.
@Ludwig
Watzal Vis-a-vis #PayAttentionToMeToo, it really was a win-win. Rightists successfully
defended the firewall and kept it contained to the left. Perfect. As far as leftists are
concerned, it's still perfectly legitimate – the leftist circular firing squads will
continue.
Many people here still don't get it. This fake left vs right paradigm is just a show and
is no different than either professional football or wrestling.
Well I get it and have been saying so. Trump knows damn well that the people he has
surrounded himself with are Deep Staters Trump is a part of the Deep State. Trump has done
nothing of significance for the 99%. Trump hasn't prosecuted anyone for criminal activity
'against' his campaign or administration. Trump hasn't built a wall (he won't either).
Instead of reducing conflict and war Trump has been belligerent in his actions toward Russia,
China, Syria and Iran .risking all out war. All these things are being done to increase the
wealth and power of the Deep State. For the past ten years Republican House members have been
promising investigations and prosecutions of Democrats for criminal activities .not one god
damn thing changed. Kabuki theater is the name of the game. With such inane bullshit as
Dancing With The Stars on TV and the fake Republicans v Democrats game, it is all meant to
keep the proles from knowing how they are being screwed .a rather easy task at that.
@utu
Same sex marriage is basically irrelevant. Less than 10% of homosexuals co-habitate with a
partner. Perhaps 10% of the general population is openly homosexual (and that's definitely an
over-estimation.).
This means that if all homosexuals that cohabitate with a partner are married, it's less
than 1% of the population we're talking about.
This is a "who really cares?" situation. There's more important things to worry about when
the nation has been at war for 16 years straight, started over a bunch of lies starting with
George W. Bush and continuing with Barak Obama. We have lost the moral high ground because of
those two, identical in any important way, scumbags.
Democrats are enraged and have seen the GOP for the white supremacist evil institution
that it is
This from a group of people that have been endlessly complaining that the Butcher of
Libya, who voted for the Authorization to Use Force in Iraq (what you know as the 2nd Iraq
War) wasn't elected president just because she was running a fraudulent charity, was storing
classified information on an unsecured and compromised server illegally, and is telling you
absolutely morally bankrupt and unprincipled individuals that you have the moral high ground
because she's a woman after all, not just another war criminal like George W. Bush is, and
Obama is.
Caligula's horse would have beaten Hillary Clinton, if the voter base had any sense.
Clinton was the worst possible candidate ever. Anybody, and I mean anybody, that voted for
the Iraq War should be in prison, not in government. They are all traitors.
@Realist
Agree Big money interets have broguht us Trump not only for the tax cuts but to destroy
America's hemegomony. to start the final leg of the shift from west to east. A traitor of the
highest order Pat Buchanan has led the grievence brigade of angry white men for decades
distracted and deluded over the social issues meanwhile the Everyman/woman has lost ground
economically or stayed static no improvement.
@Jon
Baptist You can just about guarantee that the losers in the false 'Right' versus 'Left'
circus will be We The People.
Big Government/Big Insider Corporations/Big Banks feed parasitically off the population.
The role of the lawyers wearing black dresses on the SC, is to help hide the theft. They use
legal mumbo jumbo. The economists at the Fed use economics & mathematical mumbo
jumbo.
Much of current Western society is made up of bullsh*t.
In other words CIA Democrats actually are running on classic Republican foreign policy platform with some neo-McCarthyism
flavor added for appetite. . Such a convergence of two parities.
The Democratic Party is widely favored to win control of the House of Representatives in the
US midterm elections November 6, with projections that it will gain 30 to 50 seats, or even
more, well above the net gain of 23 required for a majority.
The last time the Democratic Party won control of the House from the Republicans was in
2006, when it captured 30 Republican seats on the basis of a limited appeal to the massive
antiwar sentiment among working people after three years of disastrous and bloody warfare in
Iraq, and five years after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
In stark contrast, there is not a hint of an antiwar campaign by the Democratic challengers
seeking Republican seats in the 2018 elections. On the contrary, the pronouncements of leading
Democrats on foreign policy issues have been strongly pro-war, attacking the Trump
administration from the right for its alleged softness on Russia and its hostility to
traditional US-led alliances like NATO.
This is particularly true of the 30 Democratic congressional nominees in competitive races
who come from a national-security background. These challengers, previously identified by the
World Socialist Web Site as the CIA Democrats , constitute the
largest single grouping among Democratic nominees in competitive seats, more than state and
local officials, lawyers or those wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns.
The 30 national-security candidates include six actual CIA, FBI or military intelligence
agents, six State Department or other civilian national security officials, 11 combat veterans
from Iraq and Afghanistan, all but one an officer, and seven other military veterans, including
pilots, naval officers and military prosecutors (JAGs).
The range of views expressed by these 30 candidates is quite limited. With only one
exception, Jared Golden , running in the First District of Maine, the military-intelligence
Democrats do not draw any negative conclusions from their experience in leading, planning or
fighting in the wars of the past 25 years, including two wars against Iraq, the invasion of
Afghanistan, and other military engagements in the Persian Gulf and North and East Africa.
Golden, who is also the only rank-and-file combat veteran -- as opposed to an officer -- and
the only one who admits to having suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, criticizes
congressional rubber-stamping of the wars of the past 20 years. "Over the past decade and a
half, America has spent trillions on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on other conflicts
across the globe," his campaign website declares. "War should be a last resort, and only
undertaken when the security interests of America are clearly present, and the risks and costs
can be appropriately justified to the American people."
These sentiments hardly qualify as antiwar, but they sound positively radical compared to
the materials posted on the websites of many of the other military-intelligence candidates. In
some ways, Golden is the exception that proves the rule. What used to be the standard rhetoric
of Democratic Party candidates when running against the administration of George W. Bush has
been entirely scrapped in the course of the Obama administration, the first in American history
to have been engaged in a major military conflict for every day of its eight years.
All the other national-security candidates accept as a basic premise that the United States
must maintain its dominant world position. The most detailed foreign policy doctrine appears on
the website of Amy McGrath , who is now favored to win her contest against incumbent Republican
incumbent Andy Barr in the Sixth Congressional District of Kentucky.
McGrath follows closely the line of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton
presidential campaign, supporting the Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up, embracing Israel,
warning of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, and declaring it "critical that the US
work with our allies and partners in the region to counter China's advances" in the South China
Sea and elsewhere in Asia.
But Russia is clearly the main target of US national-security efforts, in her view. She
writes, "Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has testified that Russia is the greatest
threat to American security. Russia poses an existential threat to the United States due to its
nuclear weapons and its behavior in the past several years has been disturbing. Russia's
aggression in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria has been alarming. It's becoming more
assertive in the Arctic, likely the most important geostrategic zone of competition in the
coming decades. The US should consider providing defensive arms to Ukraine and exerting more
pressure on Moscow using economic sanctions."
She concludes by calling for an investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission into alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Five other national-security candidates focus on specific warnings about the danger of
Russia and China, thus aligning themselves with the new national security orientation set in
the most recent Pentagon strategy document, which declares that the principal US national
security challenge is no longer the "war on terror," but the prospect of great power conflicts,
above all with Russia and China.
Jessica Morse , a former State Department and AID official in Iraq, running in the Fourth
District of California, blasts the Trump administration for "giving away global leadership to
powers like China and Russia. Our security and our economy will both suffer if those countries
are left to re-write the international rules."
Former FBI agent Christopher Hunter , running in the 12th District of Florida, declares,
"Russia is a clear and present danger to the United States. We emerged victorious over the
Soviet Union in the Cold War. We must resolve anew to secure an uncompromising victory over
Russia and its tyrannical regime."
Elissa Slotkin , the former CIA agent and Pentagon official running in Michigan's Eighth
Congressional District, cites her 14 years of experience "working on some of our country's most
critical national security matters, including U.S.-Russia relations, the counter-ISIS campaign,
and the U.S. relationship with NATO." She argues that "the United States must make investments
in its military, intelligence, and diplomatic power" in order to maintain "a unique and vital
role in the world."
Max Rose , a combat commander in Afghanistan now running in New York's 11th Congressional
District (Staten Island and Brooklyn), calls for "recognizing Russia as a hostile foreign power
and holding the Kremlin accountable for its attempts to undermine the sovereignty and
democratic values of other nations." Rose is still in the military reserves, and took two weeks
off from his campaign in August to participate in small-unit drills.
Joseph Kopser , running in the 21st District of Texas, is another anti-Russian firebrand,
writing on his website, "As a retired Army Ranger, I know first hand the importance of standing
strong with your allies. Given Russia's march toward a totalitarian state showing aggression
around the region, as well as their extensive cyber and information warfare campaign directed
at the U.S., England, and others, our Article 5 [NATO] commitment to our European allies and
partners is more important than ever." He concludes, "Since the mid-twentieth century, the
United States has been a principal world leader -- a standard that should never be
changed."
Four national-security candidates add North Korea and Iran to China and Russia as specific
targets of American military and diplomatic attack.
Josh Welle , a former naval officer who was deployed to Afghanistan, now running in the
Fourth Congressional District of New Jersey, writes, "We have to stand together in the face of
threats from countries like North Korea and Iran. The human rights violations and nuclear
capabilities of these countries pose a direct threat to the stability of this world and
therefore need to be met with strong military presence and a robust defense program to protect
ourselves."
Tom Malinowski , former assistant secretary of state for human rights, running in New
Jersey's Seventh District, calls for maintaining economic sanctions on Russia "until it
stops its aggression in Ukraine and interference in our democracy ,"
effusively endorses the state of Israel (whose government actually interferes in US elections
more than any other), and calls for stepped up sanctions against North Korea.
Mikie Sherill , a former Navy pilot and Russian policy officer, running in New Jersey's 11th
District, writes, "I have sat across the table from the Russians, and know that we need our
government to take the threat they pose seriously." She adds to this a warning about "threats
posed by North Korea and Iran," the two most immediate targets of military-diplomatic blackmail
by the Trump administration. She concludes, referring to North Korea's nuclear program, "For
that reason I support a robust military presence in the region and a comprehensive missile
defense program to defend America, our allies, and our troops abroad."
Dan McCready , an Iraq war unit commander who claims to have been born again when he was
baptized in water from the Euphrates River, calls for war to be waged only "with overwhelming
firepower," not "sporadically, with no strategy or end in sight, while our enemies like Iran,
North Korea, Russia, and the terrorists outsmart and outlast us." He is running in North
Carolina's Ninth Congressional District, adjacent to the huge military complex at Fort
Bragg.
One military-intelligence candidate cites immigration as a national-security issue, echoing
the position of the Trump administration, which constantly peddles scare stories that
terrorists are infiltrating the United States disguised as immigrants and refugees. That is
Richard Ojeda , running in the Third Congressional District of West Virginia, who publicly
boasts of having voted for Trump in 2016, in the same election in which he won a seat in the
West Virginia state senate running as a Democrat.
Ojeda writes on his web site, "We must also ensure that terrorists do not reach American
soil by abusing our immigration process. We must keep an up to date terror watch list but
provide better vetting for those that go onto the watch list."
A career Army Airborne officer, Ojeda voices the full-blown militarism of this social layer.
"If there is one thing I am confident in, it is the ability of our nation's military," he
declares. "The best way to keep Americans safe is to let our military do their job without
muddying up their responsibilities with our political agendas."
He openly rejects control of the military by civilian policy-makers. "War is not a social
experiment and I refuse to let politics play a role in my decision making when it comes to
keeping you and your family safe," he continues. "I will not take my marching orders from
anyone else concerning national security."
Only one of the 30 candidates, Ken Harbaugh , a retired Air Force pilot running in the
Seventh Congressional District of Ohio, centered on the industrial city of Canton, acknowledges
being part of this larger group. He notes, "In 2018, more vets are running for office than at
any moment in my lifetime. Because of the growing inability of Washington to deal responsibly
with the threats facing our nation, veterans from both sides of the aisle are stepping into the
breach."
Referring to the mounting prospect of war, he writes, "Today, we face our gravest
geopolitical challenge since 9/11. Our country remains at war in Afghanistan, we have troops
engaged in North Africa, Iraq and Syria, and Russia continues to bully our allies. Meanwhile,
North Korea has the ability to directly threaten the American mainland with nuclear missiles."
He concludes, "we need leaders with the moral authority to speak on these issues, leaders who
have themselves been on the front lines of these challenges."
These statements, taken cumulatively, present a picture of unbridled militarism and
aggression as the program of the supposed "opposition" to the Trump administration's own
saber-rattling and threats of "fire and fury like the world has never seen."
Perhaps even more remarkable is that the remaining 17 national-security candidates say
nothing at all about foreign policy (in 11 cases) or limit themselves to anodyne observations
about the necessity to provide adequate health care and other benefits to veterans (two cases),
or vague generalities about the need to combine a strong military with diplomatic efforts (four
cases). They give no specifics whatsoever.
In other words, while these candidates tout their own records as part of the
national-security apparatus as their principal credential for election to Congress, they
decline to tell the voters what they would do if they were in charge of American foreign
policy.
Given that these 17 include intelligence agents ( Abigail Spanberger and Gina Ortiz Jones ),
a National Security Council Iraq war planner ( Andy Kim ), and numerous other high-level State
Department and military commanders, the silence can have only the most ominous
interpretation.
These CIA Democrats don't want to tell voters about their plans for foreign policy and
military intervention because they know these measures are deeply unpopular. They aim to gain
office as stealth candidates, unveiling their program of militarism and war only after they
take their seats, when they may very well exercise decisive influence in the next Congress.
"... the last two Democratic presidents were centrists in favor of a big tent Democratic Party (the Clintons were co-founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, and Obama considered Joe Lieberman his mentor in the Senate) and they oversaw the collapse of their party in the states and Congress. Centrists are mainly concerned with keeping Wall Street and Silicon Valley happy, and have been purging "old-fashioned" New Deal liberals from the party for the better part of 30 years. ..."
"... It is not the Sandernistas OR the Democratic Socialists of America who are pushing identity politics or demonizing white or religious people (it's the Hillary bots at Daily Kos who go nuts when anyone on the left wing of the party expresses any interest in winning over working class Trump voters, or dares to view said Trump voters as anything but racist deadenders). ..."
Werd "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5
seconds after gay marriage got passed?"
Because it keeps the Democratic base from focusing on economic issues inimical to the
interests of the Democratic funding elite.
Werd "Why push poor minorities into becoming socialist identitarians instead of being the
calm centrist big tent party?"
First, Pelosi and Clinton have made it very clear that they are capitalists, and it's
their supporters "identitarian" wave (Daily Kos had an "In defense of Nancy Pelosi" article
not that lone ago), not the "socialist" or Sandernista wing of the party. Second, the
last two Democratic presidents were centrists in favor of a big tent Democratic Party (the
Clintons were co-founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, and Obama considered Joe
Lieberman his mentor in the Senate) and they oversaw the collapse of their party in the
states and Congress. Centrists are mainly concerned with keeping Wall Street and Silicon
Valley happy, and have been purging "old-fashioned" New Deal liberals from the party for the
better part of 30 years.
Werd "Why fire up the Republican base literally right before the midterm? Why turn the
dude who would've been the next Anthony Kennedy into a far-right gang rapist? The Dems and
their media apparatus just keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
Stupidity? Arrogance? To keep their base within the Democratic Party, which is more
concerned about cultural issues than economic ones (like a certain part of the GOP
coalition), fired up, while demobilizing voters with mainly economic concerns?
Werd "When Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham are calling you insane, you've become
insane."
Collins and Graham are hacks, and when it comes to foreign affairs, Graham IS insane (I
exaggerate, but only a little). This may be Collins' statesmanship moment (kind of like
Democratic hack John Murtha's in 2004 over the Iraq War), but I have my doubts. As one other
commentator here said, she was always likely to vote for Kavanaugh after putting on a show of
hemming-and-hawing.
Werd "I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, had things stayed the
same I probably never would. Why not just wait 20 years to admit you want socialism, hate
white people and hate religious people?"
It is not the Sandernistas OR the Democratic Socialists of America who are pushing
identity politics or demonizing white or religious people (it's the Hillary bots at Daily Kos
who go nuts when anyone on the left wing of the party expresses any interest in winning over
working class Trump voters, or dares to view said Trump voters as anything but racist
deadenders).
Werd "The Blue Dogs really need to make a come back. At the very least, they might do
some trust busting and wouldn't make Donald Trump look like the sane one."
Since Fritz Hollings backed protectionism and some of the John Murtha-types voted against
NAFTA, when have any Blue Dog Democrats backed trust busting, investigating the banks and
brokerage houses that brought us the Great Recession, or backed any economic policy to the
left of (or less popular than) raising the minimum wage?
Werd, I think you should investigate the Democrats who actually call themselves
socialists. I may not vote for them – too wishy-washy reformist for me – but I
think you may actually find them to be surprisingly on your wavelength. It's the "Hillary is
TOO just as progressive as Bernie is!" types that you want to avoid.
given the years of pointless investigations of the Clintons and all the nonsense about
Obama, aren't we due an investigation or two of our own?
Harve, like all good liberals, wants to grow up to be just like the Republicans. That's
how we get progressive presidents leading us into full participation in the Great Imperialist
War.
Werd "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism
literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed?"
Because it keeps the Democratic base from focusing on economic issues inimical to the
interests of the Democratic funding elite.
There it is folks. The plain truth. I keep telling you, only socialism can save America
from the liberals.
It might not go away, but a lot of Democrats probably will. We may have to build new
prisons to hold them.
Nah. We send Scott Walker to a tropical island for an episode of "Survivor," with that
Democratic state senator who was literally in bed with a PayDay Loan lobbyist. (The lobbyist
was female, or at least identified as such in public.)
I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push Transgenderism literally 5 seconds
after gay marriage got passed? Why push poor minorities into becoming socialist identitarians
instead of being the calm centrist big tent party? Why fire up the Republican base literally
right before the midterm? Why turn the dude who would've been the next Anthony Kennedy into a
far-right gang rapist? The Dems and their media apparatus just keep snatching defeat from the
jaws of victory. When Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham are calling you insane, you've become
insane. I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, had things stayed the same
I probably never would. Why not just wait 20 years to admit you want socialism, hate white
people and hate religious people? The Blue Dogs really need to make a come back. At the very
least, they might do some trust busting and wouldn't make Donald Trump look like the sane
one.
Werd (October 6, 9:27 am) "I can't understand their (progressives) tactics. Why push
Transgenderism literally 5 seconds after gay marriage got passed?"
It's important to remember that gay marriage didn't get "passed." Gay marriage arrived
nationwide as the result of a 2015 5-4 US Supreme Court decision authored by Justice Anthony
Kennedy, who retired from the Court in July.
I write this as a very moderate conservative who didn't vote for Trump and who has never been
fond of the GOP: Next month, and probably in 2020, I'll be voting for the Republicans. For
all their horrible flaws, they don't claim "illegitimacy" every time they lose, they don't
harass people in restaurants or on their front porches–as I see on the news the
"women's march" activists are doing to Senator Collins this afternoon. If Republicans did
this crap, the same people would be weeping about incipient fascism.
The GOP is dreadful. Trump is a buffoon. But I'm tired of 1960s-style activist anarchy,
which I consider worse for our national life than Republican directionlessness. I'm voting
against the "hey hey, ho ho " Democrats. Enough of this crap.
America's two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war,
neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and
profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up
the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality
the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer's arms or legs
are more evil.
Those are signs of political crisis, not the other way around
Notable quotes:
"... The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics. ..."
I am concerned about dysfunction and incivility
in American culture and politics.
The historical parallel is American social and political polarization in the decades
prior to the American Civil War. It is conceivable martial law and military power will resolve
the conflict and contradictions not reconciled by rule of law and politics.
This topic was raised when Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the
confirmation hearings.
See YouTube video: Senator Lindsey Graham Questions Brett Kavanaugh Military Law vs Criminal Law.
@Justsaying
Trump's infamous campaign slogan of MAGA quickly mutated into MIGA which is the originally
intended version anyways. Obedience to Israel has become a norm in presidential election
campaigns. Even the disenfranchised minority caucuses, including and especially the Black one
is firmly in Israel's pockets now. The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced
to making the odd noise after the shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop.
"The Black leadership role has now been essentially reduced to making the odd noise
after the shooting of an unarmed Black by a White cop."
As a brown person in Asia I grew up inculcated with the idea that I must always be in
solidarity with black people in America and they would be with me (it was the 1970s, Malcolm
X was still a fresh memory, Muhammad Ali still strode the scene like a colossus, and Martin
Luther King Jr was still thought of as a hero in most circles).
Today, black Americans are people so wallowing in self abnegation that they mass voted for
the racist war criminal Killary Clinton, owing to whose actions black people in America were
incarcerated in hitherto unknown numbers; due to whose crimes black people in Haiti were
looted to destitution; because of whom black people in Libya are literally being sold as
slaves. Black Americans parade around saying "black lives matter", but are more than happy
voting for war criminals who loot Haitian blacks, enslave Libyan blacks, massacre Somali
blacks, deprive Sudanese blacks of life saving drugs, and plot to imperialistically occupy
Africa, a continent of black people. Forget about us brown people, to American blacks in
2018, black lives do *not* matter.
Only virtue signalling and tribal identity matters. Nothing else.
"... A 75-year old insider that dropped out of the race in 2008, after capturing less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, and who "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party." That just screams excitement, does it not? ..."
Even an inbred domesticated pet can learn simple tricks, but corporate Democrats...Let's just say that they are further down the
evolutionary ladder. Joe Biden
proved that today.
"Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll
back the progress you all have made," he said. "This time they - not you - have an ally in the White House. This time they have
an ally. They're a small percentage of the American people - virulent people, some of them the dregs of society."
At least he didn't say "deplorables." Why do establishment Dems think that insulting a third of the electorate is a good idea?
And why are establishment Dems incapable of learning from 2016? Why do they think Biden is the
"solution"?
Amid discussion of resistance to Trump, he surprised me with talk of 2020, when he'll turn 78. "I'll run," the
vice president deadpanned, "if I can walk." Three days later, he informed the Washington press corps that he wasn't joking.
Biden isn't likely to run, but keeping the door ajar gives him a bigger voice in Democratic Party debates. The one that worries
him most is over repositioning to win back Trump voters. He has little patience with Democrats who want to move either left or
right. " 'We gotta move to the center,' 'We gotta move to those white guys,' 'We gotta move to those working-class
people' or 'We gotta double down on the social agenda.' " It's a false choice, he said: "They are totally compatible. I have never
said anything to the A.C.L.U. that I wouldn't say to the Chamber of Commerce."
A 75-year old insider that dropped out of the race in 2008, after capturing less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, and
who "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic
Party." That just screams excitement, does it not? /s And yet the establishment continues to try to force Joe Biden down
our throats, but their recent effort is
more laughable than most.
Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head match-up, according to a
new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
A plurality of registered voters, 44 percent, said they'd choose Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while 37 percent
of voters said they would vote for Trump.
The percentage of Democrats who would choose Biden - 80 percent - was slightly higher than the 78 percent of Republicans who
would vote for the president's reelection. The former vice president, who ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, has been floated
as a 2020 contender, and Biden himself has said he's not ruling out a third try.
OK. You following this so far? Creepy Joe is the overwhelming favorite, especially amoung Democrats, right?
span y The Voice In th... on Tue, 09/18/2018 - 10:19am
I hope they do run Biden and he falls flat on his face. This will hasten the demise of the Democratic Party and make room in
the political spectrum for a truly progressive Party.
Regarding retreads, I see that Bill Daley has thrown his hat into the ring for Boss of All Bosses Mayor of Chicago.
Another retread but possibly a baby step up from the odious Rahm Emanuel.
Good post gj. Biden is Mr. Establishement, the epitome of what is wrong with the Dem party. Like Clinton, Bush, Trump, Obama,
a master at pretending he is there for you. But not really. He's there for corporate America. You are right they haven't learned
a thing. Look at the Hillary Atlantic piece (have barf bag handy).
They are self-righteous at a level the precludes objective reflection or introspection. They are a psychopathic mix of ego,
greed, power and war monger. They are meeting Einstein's definition of insanity very well, doing the same thing and expecting
a different result. I guess a thousand seat loss is no cause for concern.
Its those low-info dregs, and Russia, and Jill Stein, and promises of ponies. Same people running the ship into the same ground.
The same 30% of blind followers will always follow their leaders, no matter what, be it Trumpsters or DemBots.
"... there is strong support for egalitarian populist redistributive public policy. ..."
"... His positions against illegal immigration and free trade also beat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was a very experienced and savvy politician but she was tied to NAFTA thru her husband. And the Democratic party's defense of allowing ANY foreigner to walk across our borders without ANY sort of background check whatsoever, and remain in the country, was a losing proposition. ..."
"... Labor unions can claw back the "missing 10%" of overall income that a unionless labor market has squeezed out of the bottom 40% of earners; raising the bottom 40% back to 20% income share -- through higher consumer prices at Target, Walgreen's, etc. ..."
"... if fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% (!) labor costs, Target('s consumers) can easily pay $20/hr with 12% labor costs and Walmart('s consumers) can easily pay $25/hr with 7% labor costs. ..."
"... Your description of Republicans is spot on. However, other than their maniacal obsession with divisive identity politics, Democrats are hardly much better given the that they ALSO kowtow to the Wall Street and the wealthy. Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt. ..."
"... In other words Dems lost their legitimacy, identify politics did not work this time as well as in the past. I would say that the whole neoliberal elite lost its legitimacy. That's why Russiagate was launched, and Neo-McCarthyism hysteria was launched by Podesta and friends to cement those cracks that divide the USA. ..."
"... The Dem Party became a grab bag of identity groups. But this election the dominant was anti-globalization discourse, and Dems suffered a humiliating defeat. With Republican Party grabbing the the tool they created. The collies of small town America led to collapse of Dems. ..."
"... People do vote against their economic interest ("What the matter with Kansas" situation). But the level of alienation of working and lower middle class is really extreme. The opioid epidemic is just one sign of this. So Trump election was just a middle finger to the neoliberal elite. ..."
"... We actually do not have left in the USA. Because there is no real discussion about neoliberalism and alternatives. Bernie called himself "democratic socialist'. Which was at least in sense transformational. But that's it. Bernie is not anti-war and anti-American empire. ..."
As should already be clear from existing polls ( click and search for "fair" ), there is strong
support for egalitarian populist redistributive public policy.
At Data For Progress, they chose
to emphasize the positive -- four proposals with overwhelming support, but I think it is just
as striking that opinion is almost equally split on a top marginal income tax rate of 90% (2%
more oppose than support) and universal basic income (2% more oppose than support).
In particular, a (very narrow) plurality of whites without a bachelors degree support a
universal basic income. One way to summarize the results is that pundits' guesses about public
opinion match the opinions of college educated whites (surprise surprise). That is the group
least enthusiastic about universal basic income (by far) (OK I admit I am white and have
university degrees so I should say "we are" but like hell i'm going to be classed with my
fellow White American College educated opponents of UBI).
JimH , August 2, 2018 9:59 am
"The key question for Democrats (and the USA) is why did most of a group of people more of
whom support than oppose UBI vote for Trump ? How can there be such a huge gap between bread
and butter big dollar issue polling (where the median US adult is to the left of the
mainstream of the Democratic Party) and voting ?"
During the Republican primaries, candidate Trump lost in the polls and won on the ballots.
In the run up to the Republican convention, mainstream Republicans were searching for any way
to deny the nomination to candidate Trump. (Without ruining the party.)
So candidate Trump was not a traditional mainstream Republican presidential candidate.
Candidate Trump espoused most of the mainstream Republican party position. But what separated
him from the pack were his positions on illegal immigration and free trade treaties. And
Republican voters chose him.
His positions against illegal immigration and free trade also beat Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton was a very experienced and savvy politician but she was tied to NAFTA thru
her husband. And the Democratic party's defense of allowing ANY foreigner to walk across our
borders without ANY sort of background check whatsoever, and remain in the country, was a
losing proposition.
Candidate Clinton could have beaten any of the other Republican candidates.
Unbridled immigration into European countries has caused enough problems for the native
born citizens that it has become a huge political issue. Angela Merkel successfully oversaw
the uniting of east and west Germany. (A triumph!) But on immigration, her reach exceeded her
grasp, she completely misunderstood the magnitude of the problem. And she is splitting the
European Union.
Politicians in Europe and the United States speak of populism as if it was some sort of
new influence. That voters have never been seen to vote their own interests! European and
American voters have allowed their politicians almost a free rein for decades. They seemed to
assume that the political class knew best. But that period is coming to an end.
Democrats can beat Republican candidates, but first they have to accept that politics is
the art of the possible.
There is a practical, doable way to re-institute American labor unions (to German density
level) tomorrow.
Labor unions can claw back the "missing 10%" of overall income that a unionless labor
market has squeezed out of the bottom 40% of earners; raising the bottom 40% back to 20% income
share -- through higher consumer prices at Target, Walgreen's, etc.
No doubt about this: if
fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% (!) labor costs, Target('s consumers) can easily pay $20/hr
with 12% labor costs and Walmart('s consumers) can easily pay $25/hr with 7% labor costs.
Easy practical way to do this: amend the NLRA to mandate regularly scheduled cert
elections at every private workplace (I would suggest one, three or five year cycles; local
plurality rules).
Practical because no other way to rebuild American unions. Illegal (effective-penalty
free) union busting disease has so permeated our labor market that there is no normal
organizing going back. Even if we made union busting a felony, millions of businesspersons
across the country could just say: "What are you going to do, put us all in jail?"
Tear a page from the Rebublican's union busting playbook -- skip over organizing -- skip
right to elections on a regular basis:
Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?
Andrew Strom -- November 1st, 2017
"Republicans in Congress have already proposed a bill [Repub amend] that would require a new
election in each unionized bargaining unit whenever, through turnover, expansion, or merger,
a unit experiences at least 50 percent turnover. While no union would be happy about
expending limited resources on regular retention elections, I think it would be hard to turn
down a trade that would allow the 93% of workers who are unrepresented to have a chance to
opt for unionization on a regular schedule."
Wheels within wheels of poetic justice: a Democratic proposed labor market-make-over would
corral a lot of blue collar voters (Obama voters, remember?) back into the Democratic win
column – so we could pass said amendment in the first place.
All said, all you have to realize is that there is no other way back -- do this or do
nothing forever.
Stealing a page from Scott Walker's playbook is "the" win-win-win issue.
Karl Kolchak , August 2, 2018 10:35 am
Your description of Republicans is spot on. However, other than their maniacal obsession
with divisive identity politics, Democrats are hardly much better given the that they ALSO
kowtow to the Wall Street and the wealthy. Neither major party represents working
people–it just too bad that working people allow themselves to be forever divided by
two corrupt political parties who view them with little but contempt.
EMichael, August 2, 2018 11:11 am
KK,
"To hold President Trump accountable, the Center for American Progress Action Fund's American Worker Project is
tracking every action the president takes to weaken job protections for Americans.
Our list includes legislation and orders signed by the president; procedural changes and regulations enacted or proposed
by his administration; and official statements of policy, such as the president's proposed budget. The list does not
include political nominations and appointments of individuals with records of enacting anti-worker policies, since these
actions happened outside their role in the administration."
"Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working people
allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view them with
little but contempt."
That's the kind of bullshit that allowed Trump to sneak into office. The Democrats may not
be your idea of pro-worker or anti-Wall Street, but the difference in voting on
bread-and-butter issues between Republicans and Democrats is dramatic. On just one issue,
with a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, there is no doubt we already would
have seen a minimum wage to at least $10 per hour. That's not sufficient, but it's almost 40%
better than what the Republicans are happy with. Tell a family with two minimum wage workers
that an extra $11,000 in their pockets is worthless!
We also would not have seen a Janus decision, because Gorsuch would not be on the
Court.
We probably would have already had a public option added to ACA -- at least for people
aged 50-64 without employer-provided insurance having the right to buy into Medicare.
Consideration of a broader public option for everyone in the exchanges would be on the table,
too, with very strong public support (and, therefore, likely passage).
That's just three issues. This pox-on-both-your houses is truly toxic. It's uninformed.
Yes, it's deplorable.
likbez , August 4, 2018 12:30 am
"Neither major party represents working people–it just too bad that working
people allow themselves to be forever divided by two corrupt political parties who view
them with little but contempt."
That's the kind of bullshit that allowed Trump to sneak into office. The Democrats may
not be your idea of pro-worker or anti-Wall Street, but the difference in voting on
bread-and-butter issues between Republicans and Democrats is dramatic
This line of thinking is well known as "What the matter with Kansas" line. It is true that
"That's allowed Trump to sneak into office."
But you ignored the fact that Democratic Party entered a profound crisis (aka "demexit"
similar to Brexit) from which they still are unable to escape. Clinton ideas that workers do
not have alternative and will vote for peanuts Dems are willing to give them stop working.
In other words Dems lost their legitimacy, identify politics did not work this time as
well as in the past. I would say that the whole neoliberal elite lost its legitimacy. That's
why Russiagate was launched, and Neo-McCarthyism hysteria was launched by Podesta and friends
to cement those cracks that divide the USA.
The Dem Party became a grab bag of identity groups. But this election the dominant was
anti-globalization discourse, and Dems suffered a humiliating defeat. With Republican Party
grabbing the the tool they created. The collies of small town America led to collapse of
Dems.
People do vote against their economic interest ("What the matter with Kansas"
situation). But the level of alienation of working and lower middle class is really extreme.
The opioid epidemic is just one sign of this. So Trump election was just a middle finger to
the neoliberal elite.
We actually do not have left in the USA. Because there is no real discussion about neoliberalism and
alternatives. Bernie called himself "democratic socialist'. Which was at least in sense
transformational. But that's it. Bernie is not anti-war and anti-American empire.
Hillary was a traditional neocon warmonger, defender of the empire in foreign policy and
corrupt to the core, greedy politician in domestic policy (in the pocket of Wall Street and
special interests).
As somebody noted here:
The term Progressive is now so mutilated that it's no longer effective as an identifier
of political affiliation. To be a real Progressive: one must be Anti-War, except in the
most dire of circumstances, which includes being Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Empire; 2nd, one
must be Pro-Justice as in promoting Rule of Law over all else; 3rd, one must be tolerant
and willing to listen to others; and 4th, work for Win-Win outcomes and denounce Zero-sum
as the smoke screen for increasing inequality.
"... "Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties -- chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps ..."
"... And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and predatory. ..."
Thomas Frank's new collection of essays: Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a
Sinking Society (Metropolitan Books 2018) and Listen, Liberal; or,Whatever
Happened to the Party of the People? (ibid. 2016)
To hang out with Thomas Frank for a couple of hours is to be reminded that, going back to
1607, say, or to 1620, for a period of about three hundred and fifty years, the most archetypal
of American characters was, arguably, the hard-working, earnest, self-controlled, dependable
white Protestant guy, last presented without irony a generation or two -- or three -- ago in
the television personas of men like Ward Cleaver and Mister Rogers.
Thomas Frank, who grew up in Kansas and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, who
at age 53 has the vibe of a happy eager college nerd, not only glows with authentic Midwestern
Nice (and sometimes his face turns red when he laughs, which is often), he actually lives in
suburbia, just outside of D.C., in Bethesda, where, he told me, he takes pleasure in mowing the
lawn and doing some auto repair and fixing dinner for his wife and two children. (Until I met
him, I had always assumed it was impossible for a serious intellectual to live in suburbia and
stay sane, but Thomas Frank has proven me quite wrong on this.)
Frank is sincerely worried about the possibility of offending friends and acquaintances by
the topics he chooses to write about. He told me that he was a B oy Scout back in Kansas, but
didn't make Eagle. He told me that he was perhaps a little too harsh on Hillary Clinton in his
brilliantly perspicacious "Liberal Gilt [ sic ]" chapter at the end of Listen,
Liberal . His piercing insight into and fascination with the moral rot and the hypocrisy
that lies in the American soul brings, well, Nathaniel Hawthorne to mind, yet he refuses to say
anything (and I tried so hard to bait him!) mean about anyone, no matter how culpable he or she
is in the ongoing dissolving and crumbling and sinking -- all his
metaphors -- of our society. And with such metaphors Frank describes the "one essential story"
he is telling in Rendezvous with Oblivion : "This is what a society looks like when the
glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when
they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses
through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on
their power to accumulate" ( Thomas Frank in NYC on book tour https://youtu.be/DBNthCKtc1Y ).
And I believe that Frank's self-restraint, his refusal to indulge in bitter satire even as
he parses our every national lie, makes him unique as social critic. "You will notice," he
writes in the introduction to Rendezvous with Oblivion, "that I describe [these
disasters] with a certain amount of levity. I do that because that's the only way to confront
the issues of our time without sinking into debilitating gloom" (p. 8). And so rather than
succumbing to an existential nausea, Frank descends into the abyss with a dependable flashlight
and a ca. 1956 sitcom-dad chuckle.
"Let us linger over the perversity," he writes in "Why Millions of Ordinary Americans
Support Donald Trump," one of the seventeen component essays in Rendezvous with Oblivion
: "Let us linger over the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the
fortunes of working people. But our left party in America -- one of our two monopoly parties --
chose long ago to turn its back on these people's concerns, making itself instead into the
tribune of the enlightened professional class, a 'creative class' that makes innovative things
like derivative securities and smartphone apps " (p. 178).
And it is his analysis of this "Creative Class" -- he usually refers to it as the "Liberal
Class" and sometimes as the "Meritocratic Class" in Listen, Liberal (while Barbara
Ehrenreich uses the term " Professional Managerial Class ,"and Matthew Stewart recently
published an article entitled "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy" in the
Atlantic ) -- that makes it clear that Frank's work is a continuation of the profound
sociological critique that goes back to Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899) and, more recently, to Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites (1994).
Unlike Veblen and Lasch, however, Frank is able to deliver the harshest news without any
hauteur or irascibility, but rather with a deftness and tranquillity of mind, for he is both in
and of the Creative Class; he abides among those afflicted by the epidemic which he diagnoses:
"Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care
providers, all of them out for themselves . Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its
new constituents' technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of
toil but of the 'knowledge economy' and, specifically, of the knowledge economy's winners: the
Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans who gave so
much to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign . They are a 'learning class' that truly gets the power of
education. They are a 'creative class' that naturally rebels against fakeness and conformity.
They are an ' innovation class ' that just can't stop coming up with awesome new stuff" (
Listen, Liberal , pp. 27-29).
And the real bad news is not that this Creative Class, this Expert Class, this
Meritocratic Class, this Professional Class -- this Liberal Class, with all its
techno-ecstasy and virtue-questing and unleashing of innovation -- is so deeply narcissistic
and hypocritical, but rather that it is so self-interestedly parasitical and
predatory.
The class that now runs the so-called Party of the People is impoverishing the people; the
genius value-creators at Amazon and Google and Uber are Robber Barons, although, one must
grant, hipper, cooler, and oh so much more innovative than their historical predecessors. "In
reality," Frank writes in Listen, Liberal ,
.there is little new about this stuff except the software, the convenience, and the
spying. Each of the innovations I have mentioned merely updates or digitizes some business
strategy that Americans learned long ago to be wary of. Amazon updates the practices of
Wal-Mart, for example, while Google has dusted off corporate behavior from the days of the
Robber Barons. What Uber does has been compared to the every-man-for-himself hiring
procedures of the pre-union shipping docks . Together, as Robert Reich has written, all these
developments are 'the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when
corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors,
free-lancers, and consultants.' This is atavism, not innovation . And if we keep going in
this direction, it will one day reduce all of us to day laborers, standing around like the
guys outside the local hardware store, hoping for work. (p. 215).
And who gets this message? The YouTube patriot/comedian Jimmy Dore, Chicago-born,
ex-Catholic, son of a cop, does for one. "If you read this b ook, " Dore said while
interviewing Frank back in January of 2017, "it'll make y ou a radical" (Frank Interview Part 4
https://youtu.be/JONbGkQaq8Q ).
But to what extent, on the other hand, is Frank being actively excluded from our elite media
outlets? He's certainly not on TV or radio or in print as much as he used to be. So is he a
prophet without honor in his own country? Frank, of course, is too self-restrained to speculate
about the motives of these Creative Class decision-makers and influencers. "But it is ironic
and worth mentioning," he told me, "that most of my writing for the last few years has been in
a British publication, The Guardian and (in translation) in Le Monde Diplomatique
. The way to put it, I think, is to describe me as an ex-pundit."
Frank was, nevertheless, happy to tell me in vivid detail about how his most fundamental
observation about America, viz. that the Party of the People has become hostile to the
people , was for years effectively discredited in the Creative Class media -- among the
bien-pensants , that is -- and about what he learned from their denialism.
JS: Going all the way back to your 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas? -- I
just looked at Larry Bartels's attack on it, "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with
Kansas?" -- and I saw that his first objection to your book was, Well, Thomas Frank says the
working class is alienated from the Democrats, but I have the math to show that that's false.
How out of touch does that sound now?
TCF: [laughs merrily] I know.
JS: I remember at the time that was considered a serious objection to your
thesis.
TCF: Yeah. Well, he was a professor at Princeton. And he had numbers. So it looked
real. And I actually wrote a response to
that in which I pointed out that there were other statistical ways of looking at it, and he
had chosen the one that makes his point.
JS: Well, what did Mark Twain say?
TCF: Mark Twain?
JS: There are lies, damned lies --
TCF: [laughs merrily] -- and statistics! Yeah. Well, anyhow, Bartels's take became
the common sense of the highly educated -- there needs to be a term for these people by the
way, in France they're called the bien-pensants -- the "right-thinking," the people who
read The Atlantic, The New York Times op-ed page, The Washington Post op-ed page,
and who all agree with each other on everything -- there's this tight little circle of
unanimity. And they all agreed that Bartels was right about that, and that was a costly
mistake. For example, Paul Krugman, a guy whom I admire in a lot of ways, he referenced this
four or five times.
He agreed with it . No, the Democrats are not losing the white working class outside the
South -- they were not going over to the Republicans. The suggestion was that there is
nothing to worry about. Yes. And there were people saying this right up to the 2016
election. But it was a mistake.
JS: I remember being perplexed at the time. I had thought you had written this brilliant
book, and you weren't being taken seriously -- because somebody at Princeton had run some
software -- as if that had proven you wrong.
TCF: Yeah, that's correct . That was a very widespread take on it. And Bartels was
incorrect, and I am right, and [laughs merrily] that's that.
JS: So do you think Russiagate is a way of saying, Oh no no no no, Hillary didn't really
lose?
TCF: Well, she did win the popular vote -- but there's a whole set of pathologies out
there right now that all stem from Hillary Denialism. And I don't want to say that Russiagate
is one of them, because we don't know the answer to that yet.
JS: Um, ok.
TCF: Well, there are all kinds of questionable reactions to 2016 out there, and what
they all have in common is the faith that Democrats did nothing wrong. For example, this same
circle of the bien-pensants have decided that the only acceptable explanation for
Trump's victory is the racism of his supporters. Racism can be the only explanation for the
behavior of Trump voters. But that just seems odd to me because, while it's true of course that
there's lots of racism in this country, and while Trump is clearly a bigot and clearly won the
bigot vote, racism is just one of several factors that went into what happened in 2016. Those
who focus on this as the only possible answer are implying that all Trump voters are
irredeemable, lost forever.
And it comes back to the same point that was made by all those people who denied what was
happening with the white working class, which is: The Democratic Party needs to do nothing
differently . All the post-election arguments come back to this same point. So a couple
years ago they were saying about the white working class -- we don't have to worry about them
-- they're not leaving the Democratic Party, they're totally loyal, especially in the northern
states, or whatever the hell it was. And now they say, well, Those people are racists, and
therefore they're lost to us forever. What is the common theme of these two arguments? It's
always that there's nothing the Democratic Party needs to do differently. First, you haven't
lost them; now you have lost them and they're irretrievable: Either way -- you see what I'm
getting at? -- you don't have to do anything differently to win them.
JS: Yes, I do.
TCF: The argument in What's the Matter with Kansas? was that this is a
long-term process, the movement of the white working class away from the Democratic Party. This
has been going on for a long time. It begins in the '60s, and the response of the Democrats by
and large has been to mock those people, deride those people, and to move away from organized
labor, to move away from class issues -- working class issues -- and so their response has been
to make this situation worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it
gets worse! And there's really no excuse for them not seeing it. But they say, believe,
rationalize, you know, come up with anything that gets then off the hook for this, that allows
them to ignore this change. Anything. They will say or believe whatever it takes.
JS: Yes.
TCF: By the way, these are the smartest people! These are tenured professors at Ivy
League institutions, these are people with Nobel Prizes, people with foundation grants, people
with, you know, chairs at prestigious universities, people who work at our most prestigious
media outlets -- that's who's wrong about all this stuff.
JS: [quoting the title of David Halberstam's 1972 book, an excerpt from which Frank uses
as an epigraph for Listen, Liberal ] The best and the brightest!
TCF: [laughing merrily] Exactly. Isn't it fascinating?
JS: But this gets to the irony of the thing. [locates highlighted passage in book] I'm
going to ask you one of the questions you ask in Rendezvous with Oblivion: "Why are
worshippers of competence so often incompetent?" (p. 165). That's a huge question.
TCF: That's one of the big mysteries. Look. Take a step back. I had met Barack Obama.
He was a professor at the University of Chicago, and I'd been a student there. And he was super
smart. Anyhow, I met him and was really impressed by him. All the liberals in Hyde Park --
that's the neighborhood we lived in -- loved him, and I was one of them, and I loved him too.
And I was so happy when he got elected.
Anyhow, I knew one thing he would do for sure, and that is he would end the reign of
cronyism and incompetence that marked the Bush administration and before them the Reagan
administration. These were administrations that actively promoted incompetent people. And I
knew Obama wouldn't do that, and I knew Obama would bring in the smartest people, and he'd get
the best economists. Remember, when he got elected we were in the pit of the crisis -- we were
at this terrible moment -- and here comes exactly the right man to solve the problem. He did
exactly what I just described: He brought in [pause] Larry Summers, the former president of
Harvard, considered the greatest economist of his generation -- and, you know, go down the
list: He had Nobel Prize winners, he had people who'd won genius grants, he had The Best and
the Brightest . And they didn't really deal with the problem. They let the Wall Street
perpetrators off the hook -- in a catastrophic way, I would argue. They come up with a health
care system that was half-baked. Anyhow, the question becomes -- after watching the great
disappointments of the Obama years -- the question becomes: Why did government-by-expert
fail?
JS: So how did this happen? Why?
TCF: The answer is understanding experts not as individual geniuses but as members
of a class . This is the great missing link in all of our talk about expertise. Experts
aren't just experts: They are members of a class. And they act like a class. They have loyalty
to one another; they have a disdain for others, people who aren't like them, who they perceive
as being lower than them, and there's this whole hierarchy of status that they are at the
pinnacle of.
And once you understand this, then everything falls into place! So why did they let the Wall
Street bankers off the hook? Because these people were them. These people are their peers. Why
did they refuse to do what obviously needed to be done with the health care system? Because
they didn't want to do that to their friends in Big Pharma. Why didn't Obama get tough with
Google and Facebook? They obviously have this kind of scary monopoly power that we haven't seen
in a long time. Instead, he brought them into the White House, he identified with them. Again,
it's the same thing. Once you understand this, you say: Wait a minute -- so the Democratic
Party is a vehicle of this particular social class! It all makes sense. And all of a sudden all
of these screw-ups make sense. And, you know, all of their rhetoric makes sense. And the way
they treat working class people makes sense. And they way they treat so many other demographic
groups makes sense -- all of the old-time elements of the Democratic Party: unions, minorities,
et cetera. They all get to ride in back. It's the professionals -- you know, the professional
class -- that sits up front and has its hands on the steering wheel.
* * *
It is, given Frank's persona, not surprising that he is able to conclude Listen,
Liberal with a certain hopefulness, and so let me end by quoting some of his final
words:
What I saw in Kansas eleven years ago is now everywhere . It is time to face the obvious:
that the direction the Democrats have chosen to follow for the last few decades has been a
failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health . The Democrats posture as the
'party of the people' even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and
glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege
in a way that Americans find stomach-turning . The Democrats have no interest in reforming
themselves in a more egalitarian way . What we can do is strip away the Democrats' precious
sense of their own moral probity -- to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge
that righteousness is always on their side . Once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal
virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. (pp. 256-257).
"... When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day. ..."
"... The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus they have become imperiled. ..."
"... It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July. ..."
"... In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any, liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political forces have played such a negligible role. ..."
"... s was evident in the Clinton campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down radical dissent. ..."
"... Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level. This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work – pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and districts, is to occupy the (relational) center. ..."
"... That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living. What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days! ..."
When the center does fail to hold, it is usually in periods of political and perhaps
also social upheaval. In those conditions, centrist parties, along with the constituencies they
represent, often radicalize – generally merging into the side that wins the day.
Thus it is mainly in situations in which the regime itself is undergoing fundamental
transformations that the center is depleted of its former occupants. In time, though, a new
mainstream is constituted, and its center again becomes the point on the left/right continuum
where the majority of positions and policies in play at the time cluster.
***
To everyone living through it, it feels as if the Trump presidency has turned the political
scene topsy-turvy. This is what happens when there is an imbecilic president whose governing
style is a low-grade imitation of a mob boss's.
The fact is, though, that the Trump presidency, destructive as it has been, has changed a
good deal less than meets the eye. The foundations of the regime remain the same as before;
fundamental neoliberal economic structures remain intact, and the perpetual war regime that
went into overdrive after 9/11 continues to flourish.
The jury is still out on how effective Trump's verbal assaults on the institutions that
regulate global trade will be. No matter what Trump says, tweets, or thinks, those institutions
were fashioned to work to America's advantage, and still generally do. Evidently, though, they
do not conform well enough to his or his base's understanding of American "greatness"; thus
they have become imperiled.
What is disturbingly clear is that for all but the filthy rich, and especially for anyone
not white as the driven snow, life in Trump's America has taken a turn for the worse.
Trump has been a godsend for "white nationalists," the current euphemism for nativists and
racists. He has legitimated them and their views to an extent that no one would have imagined
just a few years ago.
Also, to the detriment of the health and well being of the vast majority of Americans, Trump
and his minions have done serious harm to America's feeble welfare state institutions.
And even this is not the main reason why there will be hell to pay when the next economic
downturn happens, as it inevitably will, more likely sooner than later. By giving Wall Street
free rein again, and by cutting taxes for the rich, depleting the treasury of financial
resources that could be put to use in a crisis, Trump has all but guaranteed that most
Americans will soon find themselves in straits as bad or worse than ten years ago.
Worst of all, by watering down or setting aside the weak but nevertheless indispensible
environmental regulations in place before their arrival on the scene, Trump has hastened the
day when the world will be hit with, and perhaps be undone by, grave, possibly irreparable,
ecological catastrophes.
There are many other lesser harms for which, directly or indirectly, Trump is responsible.
This is all serious stuff, but while they make life worse for many people and shift the
political spectrum to the right, they do not shake the foundations of the regime in a way that
puts the center in jeopardy -- at least not yet.
In short, what we are living through is not a Trumpian "revolution," not even in the "Reagan
Revolution" sense, but a degeneration of much of what is worth preserving in the old regime.
Trump didn't start the process, but he has come to dominate it, and his mindless and mean
spirited antics accelerate it.
***
If "left," "right," and "center" are understood in relational terms, American politics
plainly does have a left, right, and center. These designations overlay the deeply entrenched,
semi-established duopoly party system that structures the American political scene.
It wasn't always so, but nowadays, almost without exception, Democrats occupy left or
center positions on that spectrum; Republicans line up on its right. In a relational sense, the
center is replete with Democrats; the left not so much. Centrist Republicans, long a vanishing
breed, are, by now, as rare as snowstorms in July.
Understood notionally, where "left," "right," and "center" designate positions on an
historically evolving, widely understood, ideal political spectrum, the situation is much the
same, but with a major difference: there is hardly any left at all.
There have always been plenty of (notional) leftists in the United States, but there has
never been much of an intersection between the left of the political spectrum, understood
relationally, and anything resembling a notional Left.
In this respect, the United States is an exceptional case. There are few, if any,
liberal democratic regimes in modern capitalist states in which notionally leftwing political
forces have played such a negligible role.
This unfortunate state of affairs has become worse in recent decades under the aegis of
(notionally) center-right Democrats like the Clintons and their co-thinkers. Thanks to them,
the Democratic Party today is a (notionally) centrist party through and through.
They succeeded as well as they did partly because our party system stifles progressive
politics more effectively than it is stifled in other ways in other liberal democracies.
The duopoly is still going strong, but, even so, times change. Largely thanks to Trump,
there are now inklings of a notional Left in formation that stands a chance of avoiding
marginalization.
Thus Democrats all along the (relational) spectrum now consider themselves embattled,
challenged from the Left by anti-Trump militants. Many of the challengers come from
under-represented, Democratic-leaning constituencies – the young, women, and "persons of
color" – with traditionally low levels of political participation. In view of the
abundant, well meaning but generally toothless "diversity" blather for which Democrats are
notorious, this is delightfully ironic.
The challengers include African Americans, of course, but also people drawn from sectors of
the population that Trump has targeted and demeaned with particular malice -- Hispanics and
Muslims especially.
The Democratic Party has been actively courting – and colonizing – African
American and other subaltern constituencies for a long time. A s was evident in the Clinton
campaign's efforts to fight back the Sanders insurgency in 2016, it has forged robust political
machines in the process. Their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of mainstream Democratic
candidates has been disappointing however; what they have been mainly good at is tamping down
radical dissent.
But because race and ethnicity intersect with age and gender – and because, in the
final analysis, "it's the politics, stupid" -- many of the African Americans, Hispanics,
Muslims and others now being drawn into the electoral fold will likely not be as amenable to
being coopted by Democratic Party grandees as persons who "look like them" have been in the
past. The danger of cooptation remains formidable, but it is almost certainly surmountable if
the will to resist the pressure is strong.
Thus conditions are now in place for a revival of Left politics at the electoral level.
This frightens the party's leaders. They and the pundits who serve them speak of unity. But is
plain as can be that they are determined to quash whatever they cannot turn to their own
advantage. Corporate media's role in this endeavor is crucial. They are already hard at work
– pushing the all-too-familiar line that the way to win, especially in "red" states and
districts, is to occupy the (relational) center.
In this context, "red," of course, doesn't mean red; it means almost the opposite,
Republican. Only in America!
... ... ...
What passes for a "resistance" in liberal or "democratic socialist" circles nowadays is a
pale approximation of the genuine article. This is not just because the spirit of rebellion has
been bred out of us or because of any failure of imagination; it is because in the
circumstances that currently obtain, resistance, like "revolution," even in the anodyne "Our
Revolution" sense, just isn't on the agenda.
But there is something now that can and should be resisted by any and all appropriate means
– the illusion that the way to defeat Trump and Trumpism and, more generally, to advance
progressive causes, is to tack to the relational center.
That center in today's Democratic Party is a dead center; it is where progressive
impulses go to die. And, like a vampire on a mission, that dead center is gearing up for a
fight – against those who would challenge the Democratic Party from the left. Witness the
weeklong spectacle that accompanied the departure of John McCain from the land of the living.
What a nauseating display of veneration for a man supremely unworthy, and of nostalgia for the
good old (actually bad old) pre-Trump days!
How pathetic! The whole country's, not just the Democratic Party's, left, right, and center
– minus Donald Trump, of course -- heaping praise on a Navy pilot who, heeding McCain
family traditions and the call of Lyndon Johnson, killed a lot of Vietnamese peasants for no
defensible reason, before becoming a "hero" after the Vietnamese shot his plane down, and who,
after repatriation, embarked on a legislative career in which, despite a few "maverick"
exceptions, he promoted every retrograde Republican cause that arose, war mongered vociferously
at every opportunity, and did all he could, even before Hillary Clinton took a notion, to get
the Cold War revved up again.
They were all there, every rotten one of them -- from Barack Obama and Joe Biden and, their
brother-in-arms, George W. Bush, the man who, but for Trump, could now boast of being the worst
president in modern times, all the way to the decrepit Henry Kissinger, the never to be
indicted war criminal whom liberals have learned to stop loathing and to call upon for advice
instead.
Even that malevolent airhead couple Jarvanka showed up, invited, it seems, by Senator
Lindsey Graham, McCain's hapless sidekick. This was no popular front. It was a festival of the
dead Center, a blight on the political landscape, and, with Trump sucking up all the air, a
harbinger of things to come.
Either way its THE SYSTEM that's at fault. EITHER ONE WAS DESTINED TO BE THE WORST
PRESIDENT OF THE USA.
You elect Clinton she will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial
complex. You elect trump he will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial
complex.
Russia is unimportant to the outcome of the election. Mountains of collusion with
Cambridge Analytics, Israel, Oligarchs in the USA like Robert Mercer. Facebook is subservient
to the US military industrial complex now anyway, a few meme's here and there don't swing an
election its utter bulls**t.
Then that empirically pales in comparison to a president (Obama) that did nothing for the
middle class except destroy it with junk economics after the GFC in 2008. Lethargic voters
who voted obama 2 times and got nothing didnt bother to turn up on election day there's the
empirical cause effect of trump winning.
Remember the debates? Hillary was firm in wanting a no-fly zone in Syria. This would have
led to direct conflict between USAF and Russian AF. It could have easily broken out into a
big shooting war. Heck, I get the idea that a lot of people in DC (the unelected government,
so-called deep state) would have greatly desired that. World War II hero and former U.S. Sen.
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) once observed, in a different context: "There
exists a shadowy government with ... its own fundraising mechanism."
[danielkino...titute.org]
Also remember, just before the inauguration, that US armored brigade landed and the jokes
wrote themselves? Obama just sent tanks into Poland, that sort of thing. They then traveled
to the Russian border? That was Hillary's big stick. Plant a bunch of troops near them and
then start shit in Syria. But she wasn't elected, and they just did some training and then
left. Peace broke out instead.
... And there's still a ridiculous amount of derangement. Hilldog was a bad candidate who
few outside the neocons liked. She was caught meddling in her own party's process to boot
Bernie. She tried pretending that destroying evidence on her personal email server was an
innocent mistake. Worst of all, she pretended to be a saint when she is definitely not. That
wolf in sheeps clothing never sat well with me. Look up Hitchens thoughts on her for more
things to be unsettled about. Now 2 years later, uncountable hours have gone into trying to
shift the blame. When will the Dems admit it was a mistake to have her as the candidate?
Was anything released incorrect? Were the emails false, for instance? Was her insulting a
sizable portion of the country Russia's doing? Was Russia behind her corrupting the DNC
primary process?
Is Russia's biggest crime, in fact, that it did the job the media might have done in past
generations? Today's media was all about helping Clinton to the presidency by almost any
means necessary, and let me tell you; ironically that hurt Clinton more than it helped.
Trump just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with the right attitude to
get the job ( loud, amoral and full of shit ).
Either way its THE SYSTEM that's at fault. EITHER ONE WAS DESTINED TO BE THE WORST
PRESIDENT OF THE USA.
You elect Clinton she will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial
complex. You elect trump he will go onto be a pig at the trough of the military industrial
complex.
Russia is unimportant to the outcome of the election. Mountains of collusion with
Cambridge Analytics, Israel, Oligarchs in the USA like Robert Mercer. Facebook is subservient
to the US military industrial complex now anyway, a few meme's here and there don't swing an
election its utter bulls**t.
Then that empirically pales in comparison to a president (Obama) that did nothing for the
middle class except destroy it with junk economics after the GFC in 2008. Lethargic voters
who voted obama 2 times and got nothing didnt bother to turn up on election day there's the
empirical cause effect of trump winning.
Remember the debates? Hillary was firm in wanting a no-fly zone in Syria. This would have
led to direct conflict between USAF and Russian AF. It could have easily broken out into a
big shooting war. Heck, I get the idea that a lot of people in DC (the unelected government,
so-called deep state) would have greatly desired that. World War II hero and former U.S. Sen.
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) once observed, in a different context: "There
exists a shadowy government with ... its own fundraising mechanism."
[danielkino...titute.org]
Also remember, just before the inauguration, that US armored brigade landed and the jokes
wrote themselves? Obama just sent tanks into Poland, that sort of thing. They then traveled
to the Russian border? That was Hillary's big stick. Plant a bunch of troops near them and
then start shit in Syria. But she wasn't elected, and they just did some training and then
left. Peace broke out instead.
... And there's still a ridiculous amount of derangement. Hilldog was a bad candidate who
few outside the neocons liked. She was caught meddling in her own party's process to boot
Bernie. She tried pretending that destroying evidence on her personal email server was an
innocent mistake. Worst of all, she pretended to be a saint when she is definitely not. That
wolf in sheeps clothing never sat well with me. Look up Hitchens thoughts on her for more
things to be unsettled about. Now 2 years later, uncountable hours have gone into trying to
shift the blame. When will the Dems admit it was a mistake to have her as the candidate?
Was anything released incorrect? Were the emails false, for instance? Was her insulting a
sizable portion of the country Russia's doing? Was Russia behind her corrupting the DNC
primary process?
Is Russia's biggest crime, in fact, that it did the job the media might have done in past
generations? Today's media was all about helping Clinton to the presidency by almost any
means necessary, and let me tell you; ironically that hurt Clinton more than it helped.
Trump just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with the right attitude to
get the job ( loud, amoral and full of shit ).
"... "The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign ..."
"... "The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed, particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down our collective throats." ..."
"The Russia Hoax Theme Got Started As a Dirty Trick by Hillary's 2016 Campaign
"The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed,
particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of
the Oval Office. One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down
our collective throats."
No question, the woman fits the description "evil," but that sure doesn't make Trump a saint
by comparison.
America's tragedy – one shared by the entire world – is that this is the kind of
choice American voters get, a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump.
No matter who wins or loses each American presidential election, the people in general lose
and the establishment wins.
And right now, the American establishment likes and embraces the Clinton nonsense about
Russia. It serves its current purposes. Actually, it wasn't truly Clinton's own nonsense. She
was definitely feeding off a pre-existing set of attitudes in her Washington set.
So, it is more threatening than just a residual from an election campaign.
"... Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil war. ..."
"... Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats. ..."
"... These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited Federal funds at their fingertips. ..."
Ron Unz has linked to WSWS.org several times in the past as WSWS was targeted by the Deep
State/Google etc. cabal to make it disappear into the "memory hole."
The only activism I've seen from progressives in the past two years has nothing to do
with economic concerns; their energy is entirely focused on race, gender, and sexuality.
The cultural-Marxist troika.
Just one of many good point you make. The only thing I'd add is in relation to:
Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil
war.
As Reg mentions: conflict among the masses is very much the plan. Divide et
impera.
And my stupid [neo]liberal friends still think the democrats are going to save them, and then
on to super – duper – special stupid, they think their vote for a democrat is
going to have an impact. On to ludicrous stupid – it's all the republicans fault.
Identity politics at its finest.
Unfixable, and circling the drain.
The Alarmist, June 8, 2018 at 11:03 am GMT • 100 Words
"Center-right" and "business oriented?"
Try Oligarch-centric.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, from the fall of
Constantinople: Sultan Mehmed II rounded up the surviving oligarchs of
the Empire and asked them why they had withheld their riches and
resources from supporting the Empire's final defense against his
conquest, to which the oligarchs replied that they were saving their
riches for his most excellent majesty. He had them brutally executed.
Jake, June 8, 2018 at 11:13 am GMT
Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil
machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts
the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats.
At the upper levels there is no difference between the Demonrats and the
Republicons as all are controlled by the Zionists and congress would by
more accurately called the lower house of the Knesset..
prusmc, June 8, 2018 at 1:18 pm GMT • 100 Words
@anon
These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There
previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited
Federal funds at their fingertips.
It is a mistake to think they will be any different than Maxine
Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jerold Nadler or Luis Guitirez. Senator Joe
Manchin of West Virginia is about a unconventional as we can expect the
new congressional majority members to be.
jacques sheete, June 8, 2018 at 1:44 pm GMT
@Anon
The ultra rich use the poor to attack the middle so they can
distract everyone else from uniting
That, in fact, is the practical aim of government in general.
Parties, schmarties it's all one huge extortion racket.
Sorry Mike, what do you mean by saying the goal is to "create a center-right" Democratic
Party? The Clinton's accomplished this in the 1990s -- what we have here is a full scale
enfoldment of the Dems into the National Security State
Not that it matters much -- both Republicans and Democrats have been on the same page for
a few decades now (since the 1940s IMHO). Inter-party politics don't matter much, except
insofar as the voting public can be conned into supporting one or the other, because no
matter which party holds the Congress or Presidency the same Deep State agenda is their top
priority.
Why? It's simple really -- money. Big campaign donors expect "value" in return for their
"political contributions". And if value isn't had for their money, the Deep State's
intelligence community can usually dig up something "useful" in the offender's background to
"persuade" him or her to support the current bipartisan agenda
If it's really true that to find out who has power, just take note of whom is above
criticism, perhaps we ought to consider that Rockefeller and JPMorgan money founded the CFR
in 1921 and it took root and bloomed in government "service" during and after WWII.
If you doubt the CFR's power as the Deep State personified, I suggest reading historian
Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time and sociologist Tom
Dye's Who Is Running America series.
Paraphrasing Quigley, writing when Bill Clinton was his student at Georgetown, the two
parties should be as alike as two sides of a coin so that voters can "throw the rascals out"
in any election without significantly changing governmental priorities and policies because
the policies the US is and ought be pursuing are not subject to significant dispute (or
at the least not by the voting public).
Which begs the question -- who is (and has been since the 1940s) setting US policy? If we,
the voters, cannot alter or change our national policies, then democratic oversight of the
Republic is nothing but a sham. The US is, in this view, just another Banana Republic which
Tom Dye ably documents from Watergate to Shrub's administration.
The two party "uniparty" is alive and well. In fact, while the party's supporters still
may include self- described "leftists" the party itself has gone further right than the
traditionally rightwing GOP. The dual party structure relies on the "Democrats" to gut
"entitlements", that is Social Security or Medicare.
It was the "Democrats" who put in Obamacare, which mandated people to spend an arm and a
leg on crappy medical insurance the cost of which was massively inflated which they could
only use when they had spent way more than average on medical bills. Meanwhile it was the
democrats' harpy candidate who proposed a no-fly zone in Syria on behalf of raghead
mercenaries hired by the yankee imperium.
While Trump has largely caved in to the deep state, in part perhaps because of the
pressure applied by the phony deep state witch hunt taking over the "justice" department of
the yankee regime, we know what the democrats, exponents of the fraudulent "Russia-gate"
stories, now espouse: a new cold war far more dangerous than the old one.
Meanwhile, the commercial media in the US and satellite countries, has degenerated into a
Goebbels-like propaganda apparat. Trump's clumsiness actually may have the accidental
salutary effect of enabling the satellite countries to slip the yankee leash, at least to
some extent.
The situation brought about by this unprecedented two faction version of fascism is
profoundly depressing, in addition to being seriously dangerous.
Why is this article entitled: "Dems Put Finishing Touches on One-Party 'Surveillance
Superstate'"
This website seems to have articles that show their authors are awake and yet, this article
shows quite the opposite. Who today, with the slightest modicum of common sense, who has made
the effort in understanding how the system works, still plays the left-right paradigm,
Hegelian Dialectic, political game nonsense?
I mean, let's get real here; the Democrats and the Republicans, like their UK counterparts of
Labour and Conservative are merely wings on the same bird, ultimately flying to a
destination. Both parties are taking the USA towards a one-party, surveillance, super state.
You do not enter American politics unless you bow to Zionism and International Jewry. Unless
you show 100% support to Israel then forget a career in politics.
Incidentally, to many who may have heard of her; the new luvey of the conservatives is
none other than black, Candace Owens, who is better known as Red Pill Black. She has been
this new voice who has entered into the 'alternative right', itself nothing more than
controlled opposition, speaking out against feminism, white privilege, rape culture,
transgender culture etc etc and has gained a large following. Other than being a complete
fraud, as information has appeared that she tried to launch a 'doxing' website, targeting
youngsters, she has appeared at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem:
Why on earth, would some nobody, who has had an incredibly fast rise on YouTube (most
certainly her subscriber base and video view has been doctored) and more so a black
conservative, be invited to attend the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem? Bottom
line? She's being groomed for a career in politics and I wouldn't be surprised if they wheel
her out, some time in the future, as a presidential hopeful to capture the black vote in the
USA.
Again, this is controlled opposition.
You never vote in a new party in politics. You vote out the old one. 326 million is the
population of the USA and there are only two political parties? Are you serious? It's bad
enough, here in the UK with three (liberal party along with Labour and Conservative), with a
66 million population but only two in the USA?
Both parties are heavily controlled.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been putting presidents into power now for over a
hundred years. The CFR is the sister organization of the Royal Institute for International
Affairs, which has been doing the same, here in the UK for the same time. All politicians are
groomed from an early age, taught how to avoid answering any question directly, how to lie
and of course who their masters are. By implementing their wishes, politicians are then
granted a seat on some board, within some multi conglomerate, a six figure salary, a fat
pension on top of their political one and of course umpteen houses spread across wherever.
Blair and Obama epitomize this.
Both political parties are left wing, hiding under the right wing and classic liberal
monikers.
The Democrats' progressive wing claimed victory on Saturday after 'Superdelegates' lost the
ability to vote on the first ballot of the party's nomination process
Degeneration os social democratic parties into soft neoliberals is a world wide tendency.
That spell troubles for them as they lost their key constituency. The level of corruption within
the party elite is staggering (exemplified by Clintons and Obama). The
"Democratic" Party is completely captured by FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real
Estate)
If this assessment has some connection to reality Dems will be unable to improve their
position during the US mid-term elections.
At the same time idea that "proletariat" is capable organizing
resistance and winning th election enforcing favorable for them changes
proved to be wrong. Most positive changes of the New Deal/fair Deal
were forced concessions in face of the possibility of open armed revolt. Now
with the dissolution of the USSR this possibility is discounted by the
ruling neoliberal elite.
Also we face the end of "cheap oil" and that means that standard of
living of working class will continue to deteriorate.
The future is really grim...
Notable quotes:
"... Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have. The party establishments angle for the ever elusive 'liberal' center. ..."
"... This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. [neo]Liberal globalization, as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and want. [neo]Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to regain a different view. ..."
"... Wages rise when companies have to compete for workers. Immigration increases the available work force. A political program that supports both does not compute. ..."
"... Neither LGBTXYZ identity policies nor other aloof 'liberal values' will increase the income of the poor. To win back the necessary masses the Democrats and social-democrats in Europe will have to shun, or at least de-emphasize such parts of their program. It's a class war. The rich are winning. Fight. ..."
"... your last sentence is right on target. It's been a class war for many decades. Most of the Dems have been playing "good cop, bad cop" for many years now. They talk progressive, but in the end they opt for the rich man's money. ..."
"... At present, the oligarchs own everything in the U$A. Giant corporate interests own the Govt., the Media, & the voting systems. No matter the good intentions of a few, if the people don't hear it or see it, it never happened. ..."
"... "The progressive Democrats...." Uh-oh! No such thing. "Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump." God...German working people also understand this and voted for Hitler or, rather for the Nazis. ..."
"... I think Marx call it "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" ..."
"... The western fiat faction requires perpetually increasing inputs of capital, commodities and labor - labor population must increase or the debt ponzi falls. Thus, as long as we have declining birthrates in the West, immigration will continue regardless of what the peasants want... ..."
"... I agree that it is a class war, but it is one we have already lost. We are at the end of the oil era, yet our financial economic system requires perpetual growth, how do you think this will work out? (It won't) ..."
"... The "Democratic" party is completely captured by its FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) funders on Wall Street and the corporate class. The DNC crowd will stick to their losing guns election after election while not offering any benefits to working people ..."
"... Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party would have fully collapsed long ago. ..."
"... Remember: the donors don't care if the Republicans or Democrats win, as long as their agenda prevails. And most Democrats and most Republican politicians don't care about their party either, as long as they can retire and get put on the boards of big corporations and cash in etc. ..."
"... Big Money and the Political Machines it built within the USA became prominent soon after its Civil War. Those plus the oligarchical controls built into the USA's governmental organization ensured that Commonfolk would have a very difficult time trying to govern themselves and promote their own interests. ..."
"... By WW2's end, the foundation for Keynesian Militarism and its in-built [monies get redistributed upward, not downward, automatically] Class War was laid along with the basis for Big Money's recapture of government. ..."
"... Essentially, tax dollars are spent on weapons and munitions and the manufacturer endowed with excess profits which are then plowed back into the political system through campaign contributions--politico buying--which in turn further corrupts the system. ..."
"... until we get beyond predatory finance, we are all essentially screwed.. ..."
"... US Health care, despised by everyone in the U.S: doctors, nurses, patients and pharmacists, is not the only thing that needs reform. How we select and elect those who allegedly represent us is unacceptable. Private money is more important than humanity and no one can guarantee that those elected actually won. ..."
"... What's happening now in the USA is no longer democracy or capitalism at all. It's military plutocracy. The elections and voting process are a sham and certainly have been since G.W. Bush "won" the election vs Al Gore. Strangely, last year's showdown between Killary and Trump was probably the first live election in a while where the establishment didn't get their (wo)man. Killary seemed to scare a few powerful people - she'd spent too much time in Washington, was too ruthless and had too many of her own people in institutions or available as ANTIFA brownshirts. She failed a few final interviews and some key establishment players switched sides, allowing Trump a last minute real shot at the ring. ..."
"... Only by setting us at each other's throats can the establishment maintain its place for another decade or two. It seems they are prepared to take this risk ..."
"... Marx and then the Soviet Union scared the capitalists at the start of the twentieth century. National Socialism scared them even more. The Western Establishment have built a system and a plan to put off the revolution. How long can they hold us under? This is the fascinating question which The Hunger Games set out to answer. ..."
"... the Democrats, and similar "liberal" movements in Europe, Canada, etc, know exactly what they're doing, which is simply what the donors want. It's not about the strategists, and it's not about winning elections either--at least not in the first place. ..."
"... In case anybody didn't hear it Warren Buffet some time back came out with: "There is a class war and we have won it." ..."
"... Psychohistorian's stress on the importance of private finance is of course correct but it is just part of an imperial equation where finance + military = empire or vice versa. ..."
"... For a century and a half, the primary purpose of the Democratic Party has been to crush leftist/socialist movements. Eugene Debs knew this a century ago. The SDS knew this 1/2 century ago. Bernie Sanders knew this until 2016. ..."
"... Hudson's first magnum opus was SuperImperialism , but please get the updated version as the first is somewhat dated. ..."
"... Clearly, the US military is used by this "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" to enforce their will on those who foolishly believe their governments should serve their own citizens. But it is not the US, or even primarily the 0.01% of the US who are calling the shots. The PTSB have no allegiance to any nation-state (with one glaring exception). But they use nationalism to divide the 99% of the world into bite-sized, easily edible pieces. ..."
"... Yes exactly, a class war. Basically elites vs the rest of us. Maybe 10% of non elites go along for the ride and puck up some crumbs. Another 20% do alright for a time until they get replaced by cheaper and younger and struggle to survive to reach social security without losing their home due to medical bankruptcy. ..."
"... So long as both parties go along with the neoliberal imperialistic agenda there will be rewards, even for the minority party. Best to be a minority party with plenty of funding than one without funding ..."
"... Real median incomes are much lower than the early 70's when adjusted with the pre-1980 CPI. CPI post 1980 has been adjusted to mask the impact of neoliberalism and enhance it by lowering COLA's and keeping money cheap to fuel asset inflation which does not impact the new CPI as much ..."
Staying out of the single-payer debate, party strategists say, could help Democrats in the
general election, when they'll have to appeal to moderates skeptical of government-run health
care. Earlier this year, the DCCC warned candidates about embracing single payer, hoping to
avoid Republican attacks on "socialized" medicine.
Why is "socialized" medicine supposed to be a bad thing? Why not defend it? It is what the
voters want :
The 'strategists' say the voters can not have the nice stuff they want. Their arguments lost
the elections. If the Democrats want to win again their must tell their
voters to demand more nice stuff. Some people get that
:
Progressive insurgents believe Clinton's defeat, on top of losing control of Congress and
most state governments, proved them right. They aspire to overthrow conventional wisdom that
Democrats must stay safely in the middle to compete.
" Democrats have been fixated for 20 years on this elusive, independent, mythical middle
of the road voter that did not exist ," said Crystal Rhoades, head of the Democratic Party in
Nebraska's Douglas County, where a progressive candidate, Kara Eastman, is trying to wrest a
competitive congressional district from a Republican.
"We're going to try bold ideas."
Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have.
The party establishments angle for the ever elusive 'liberal' center. They move the
parties further to the right and lose their natural constituencies, the working class. This
gives rise to (sometimes fascist) 'populists' (see Trump) and to an ever growing share of
people who reject the established system and do not vote at all.
This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. [neo]Liberal globalization,
as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and
want. [neo]Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A
revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to
regain a different view.
Alastair Crooke recently
outlined the larger trend within a global, 'metaphysical' perspective.
The progressive Democrats who are pushing for single payer healthcare still miss out on
other issues. They also support higher wages, but are, at the same time, against restrictions
on immigration. Wages rise when companies have to compete for workers. Immigration
increases the available work force. A political program that supports both does not
compute.
Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump. Neither LGBTXYZ
identity policies nor other aloof 'liberal values' will increase the income of the poor. To win
back the necessary masses the Democrats and social-democrats in Europe will have to shun, or at
least de-emphasize such parts of their program. It's a class war. The rich are winning.
Fight.
Corporations and their lobbyists pay big money to influence both parties to ignore the will
of the proletariat in favor of the one percent. If the candidate does not deliver the goods
to his rich benefactors, he will lose his funding.
Therefore, a candidate can talk a populist game, but if he tries to implement anything of
value to the proles, he will be ousted as quickly as possible.
In this way, For the money, the Democratic Party that championed the working man (to a
degree) helped the Republicans to sabotage Labor Unions.
Now the D party is a champion of LGTBQ.
Could be difficult to win back the blue collar working man.
Thanks b, your last sentence is right on target. It's been a class war for many decades. Most
of the Dems have been playing "good cop, bad cop" for many years now. They talk progressive,
but in the end they opt for the rich man's money.
At present, the oligarchs own everything in the U$A. Giant corporate interests own the
Govt., the Media, & the voting systems. No matter the good intentions of a few, if the
people don't hear it or see it, it never happened.
It'll take torches and pitchforks to make a change, and, I just don't see that happening
until we hit rock bottom.
"The progressive Democrats...."
Uh-oh! No such thing.
"Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump."
God...German working people also understand this and voted for Hitler or, rather for the
Nazis.
Without a true labor party all the narrative that you mentioned is taking place within
capitalist's class, i.e. State Ideological Apparatus.
I think Marx call it "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"
P.S.--Even with massive voter turn-out this Nov., we have no way of knowing what the real
vote is, since our voting systems have never been vetted. The machines are privately owned by
corporations, and they refuse vetting on grounds that their systems are proprietary
information. No problem huh? Except for this..
The western fiat faction requires perpetually increasing inputs of capital, commodities and
labor - labor population must increase or the debt ponzi falls. Thus, as long as we have
declining birthrates in the West, immigration will continue regardless of what the peasants
want...
I agree that it is a class war, but it is one we have already lost. We are at the end of
the oil era, yet our financial economic system requires perpetual growth, how do you think
this will work out? (It won't)
People should be thinking of how they are going to keep their children from starving in a
couple of years, the rest is just noise...
The "Democratic" party is completely captured by its FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate)
funders on Wall Street and the corporate class. The DNC crowd will stick to their losing guns
election after election while not offering any benefits to working people.
Further, they
would rather continue to lose elections than adapting to the will of the people -- hence their
ridiculous focus on Russiagate and other phantoms rather than offering real programs of
substance that would attract voters.
Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where
voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party
would have fully collapsed long ago.
The capitalist migration policy intentions are not just to have.. "Immigration increase
the available work force", but rather to saturate the labour market. That way they keep the
cost of labour down by having more people compete for the jobs than there are available thus
bringing the labour costs down. This leads to the kinds of ethnic ghetto's wherein rampant
unemployment for the vast majority is a way of life, which in turn fosters non integration
into the country's larger society and hence we get what you are referring to as some."living
off of freebies in their own 'no-go' Shari law enclaves"
Solution? STOP bombing other countries back into the stone age, creating millions of
destitute refugees and after that, simply regulate immigration according to the available
jobs and workforce a country can reasonably accommodate and thereby successfully integrate
any newcomers from other lands.
Q: Why did the Democrats lose the Senate, House and presidency as well as more than a
thousand state government positions?
A: They listened to their DONORS, not to their voters.
Remember: the donors don't care if the Republicans or Democrats win, as long as their
agenda prevails. And most Democrats and most Republican politicians don't care about their
party either, as long as they can retire and get put on the boards of big corporations and
cash in etc.
"The progressive Democrats who are pushing for single payer healthcare still miss out on
other issues. They also support higher wages, but are, at the same time, against restrictions
on immigration." Kudos to you for pointing out the obvious. Be careful though, this kind of
talk can easily get you labelled as a racist, a fascist, as "literally Hitler" and Vladimir
Putin's homosexual lover.
Bottom line: the Democrats give lip service to supporting higher
wages, but in reality they support low wages, hence their opposition to moderating the rate
of immigration.
My last reply on the previous thread serves well as a beginning comment here:
"IMO, too many assets that elevate/enhance one's life experiences need to be made into
publicly owned utilities, social media communication platforms being one as I explained
above. If the Outlaw US Empire's people can finally get universal healthcare for all enacted,
then other realms of the for-profit arena can be targeted as a tsunami-sized political wave
is building that will make such changes possible provided the insurrection's sustained for
decades to forestall the forces of Reaction. It's really the only political direction capable
of making America great for the first time in its history--Being a Great Nation contains a
moral aspect the USA has never attained and is nowhere near close to attaining anytime
soon."
The Class War's been raging for centuries--millennia actually. But as Michael Hudson
notes at the end of his autobiographical interview, something deliberate was done to
alter the course of political-economy:
"[Marx] showed that capitalism itself is revolutionary, capitalism itself is driving
forward, and of course he expected it to lead toward socialism, as indeed it seemed to be
doing in the nineteenth century.
But it's not working out that way. Everything changed in World War One."
( I highly suggest reading the rest of that passage .)
Elsewhere Hudson has shown Marx expected the contradictions within Capitalism to spawn its
antithesis--Socialism--in a natural, evolutionary manner; but, clearly, the forces of
Reaction stepped in to arrest that path as Kolko illustrated in his Triumph of
Conservatism .
However, popular ideas within societies forwarding the evolution to
socialism needed to be constrained and harnessed -- the populism of the late 19th Century
couldn't be allowed to resurface as it was the #1 threat to elite control. And so began The
Great Reaction as soon as WW1 ended.
Unfortunately, Capitalism's contradictions arose to temporarily derail the
Counter-Revolution as the Great Depression ushered in a return of dynamic Populism within
Europe and especially the USA. WW2 provided a golden opportunity to finally crush dynamic
Populism once and for all as the forces of Reaction emerged from their closets within FDR's
administration and tools were forged to enable societal control, which included the newly
emerging forms of mass communication and indoctrination.
Big Money and the Political Machines it built within the USA became prominent soon after
its Civil War. Those plus the oligarchical controls built into the USA's governmental
organization ensured that Commonfolk would have a very difficult time trying to govern
themselves and promote their own interests.
The changes made to the system after the very
nearly won success of the Progressive Populists greatly aided the forces of Reaction as did
the imposition of Prohibition and the Red Scare--Populist successes were a mixed bag during
the 1930s as very reactionary laws were also introduced--The House Un-American Activities
Committee in 1938 and The Smith Act in 1940.
By WW2's end, the foundation for Keynesian
Militarism and its in-built [monies get redistributed upward, not downward, automatically]
Class War was laid along with the basis for Big Money's recapture of government.
Essentially,
tax dollars are spent on weapons and munitions and the manufacturer endowed with excess
profits which are then plowed back into the political system through campaign
contributions--politico buying--which in turn further corrupts the system.
It's been ongoing
since 1938--80 years--and must be excised from the body politic if the Outlaw US Empire is
ever to go straight and become a law abiding global citizen amongst the community of
nations.
All the countries with single payer health systems have a small military. I live in Canada
and when military spending is broached the people always want the money to be spent on
health care. I personally doubt that the NATO countries will actually drastically increase
there defense budgets against the voters wishes. No western country outside the USA feels
threatened so why spend more on defense?
It is up to the American people to make similar choices when they vote.
thanks b.. the whole political system as it presently stands in the west is not working.. it
is one step up from the system in places like Saudi Arabia and etc... i go back to
psychohistorians main view that until we get beyond predatory finance, we are all essentially
screwed..
folks talk immigration but in the forest industry here on the westcoast of canada,
machines have replaced workers.. This is just one example.. robots and etc. etc. are working
towards the same end.. a corp that can get a robot or machine to do something will go that
way based on long term costs. None of the political parties i know of are addressing the
impact of technology on job opportunities.. In fact they are all cheer leaders for technology
while talking of growing the economy and etc. etc...
So we just keep ''growing the population'' while skipping over addressing the private
finances elephant in the room.. at some point the world is going to have to change or not
survive.. the political class here in Canada is abysmal.. it seems like it is much the same
everywhere in the land of democracy too, where corporations and private interests with money
are calling the shots.. plutocracy is what i think they call it..
I read
this article then discovered b had written a similar one based on the same polling
results. But is the long-denied desire within the Outlaw US Empire for universal healthcare
an actual revolt against what b describes as "liberal globalization"?
What I see is a global
revolt against the Outlaw US Empire's gross illegalities and immoral hegemony which also
contains an ideological battle with nations embracing Win-Winism while rejecting Zerosumism,
which can also be interpreted as rejection of the Millenia-long Class War.
Globalization
continues on, actually increasing its velocity through the twin Eurasian projects--BRI &
EAEU. IMO, the Eurasian projects have the potential to force Capitalism to finally evolve
into Socialism, which is what Winwinism embodies.
Today's middle is yesterday's right. Party strategists are reflecting the views of their pay
masters. Both parties dial for the same dollars. Those dollars come from billionaires who
what to protect their wealth and power. Both parties parties parties reflect this sad
reality.
US Health care, despised by everyone in the U.S: doctors, nurses, patients and pharmacists,
is not the only thing that needs reform. How we select and elect those who allegedly
represent us is unacceptable. Private money is more important than humanity and no one can
guarantee that those elected actually won.
The assertion that immigration (in the U.S., at least) is keeping wages low needs to be
questioned. The immigrants from south of the border by and large do the work that no one else
wants to do. Unemployment is low, and relatively good paying jobs in less popular
geographical areas are not getting filled.
Wages are low because the forces of regulation
making them higher have been weakened, and unionization has declined. It has to be questioned
whether the individual worker has ever had bargaining power over wages.
It's been the
collective power of governmental action and union action that has worked for the benefit of
higher wages.
Thank you for your comment, Karlof. Deep comments like your and those of Paveway and a few
others are what make the comment section an occasional joy to read.
What's happening now in the USA is no longer democracy or capitalism at all. It's military
plutocracy. The elections and voting process are a sham and certainly have been since G.W.
Bush "won" the election vs Al Gore. Strangely, last year's showdown between Killary and Trump
was probably the first live election in a while where the establishment didn't get their
(wo)man. Killary seemed to scare a few powerful people - she'd spent too much time in
Washington, was too ruthless and had too many of her own people in institutions or available
as ANTIFA brownshirts. She failed a few final interviews and some key establishment players
switched sides, allowing Trump a last minute real shot at the ring.
People all over the Western world have woken up to diminishing incomes, higher bills
(education/medicine/utilities - all of which you can't avoid if you have children) and much
worse employment opportunities even for the very motivated but only modestly capable (if you
have 110 IQ or lower and didn't grow up inside a business household, your chances
going into business for yourself are very low and you are
likely to just dig yourself or your family a deeper hole). This is not what the people were
promised during the last five elections (whether in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia or
France). The game is up.
Only by setting us at each other's throats can the establishment maintain its place for
another decade or two. It seems they are prepared to take this risk. The Hunger Games were a
surprise huge world wide hit (the films are rather boring and not particularly well made,
despite a good performance in the lead role).
The close similarity between that dystopia and
what we live now with NFL football (literally knocks the brains out of your skull, may cause
sane people to
commit suicide or
murder their wife and children ) or even Premier League Football or Tour de France where
the contestants even now are mad roiders, compromising both personal integrity and long term
health in pursuit of yellow vest.
Marx and then the Soviet Union scared the capitalists at the start of the twentieth
century. National Socialism scared them even more. The Western Establishment have built a
system and a plan to put off the revolution. How long can they hold us under? This is the
fascinating question which The Hunger Games set out to answer.
Hey, I worked In Canada For CN on the running trades for 37 years. I'm 65 plus so CCP and Old
Age pension both kick in on top of my CN pension which leaves me able to indulge in all my
bad habits.
I lease a new car every four years and my Buick Regal turbo goes back this January. I live in an upscale apartment with all the amenities I've been sick lately but have been receiving excellent healthcare. You don't get bills.
Nada.
I'm a senior and my meds have been costing $4.11 per prescription. So you'll have to excuse me if up I'm not up for a revolution right now.
How 'bout you james? You ready to take to the streets?
Even as one who opposes single-payer health care (all monopolies cause problems, be they
private or public) I have to agree with b in principle. The rich are doing to us now what
they did to Russia in the 1990's. We of the working class don't deserve to have our interests
protected because we're "deplorables."
Oh please; we've had EIGHT years of earnest-sounding, well-intentioned advice to Obama to do
the right, progressive thing. As if he ever needed it; the Democrats, and similar "liberal"
movements in Europe, Canada, etc, know exactly what they're doing, which is simply
what the donors want. It's not about the strategists, and it's not about winning elections
either--at least not in the first place.
Continuing to pay attention to this zombie party only supports it; when it's burned to the
ground, that's when you may be having an impact.
@12 karlof1... thanks for the link to the autobiography on Michael Hudson. i really enjoyed
reading about him and didn't realize all that he has done over the course of his life. it
motivates me to read one of his books.. thanks.
@13 mdroy... that also looks like a good book.. thanks..
@21 peter.. i think the question is this: when's it all going to come crashing down? i
think uncoy is right.. it is coming down sometime within mine or the younger generations
lifetime.. young folks view things very differently then you... the fall will force many to
alter their present day view and drop with the smug attitude that seems so pervasive with
those who think they have it all..
A fascinating topic tonight and so much to ponder on with so many thoughtful comments.
In case anybody didn't hear it Warren Buffet some time back came out with: "There is a class
war and we have won it."
b. references Crooke's article. The poor folks over at zerohedge were hopelessly lost when
the article was put up there; some of them got very angry when concepts such as the
enlightenment celestially orbited way beyond their limited spheres. Maybe it stank of culture
or gay paintings or something. Who knows. But maybe they had a point.
Rather than the enlightenment I see the creation of empires as the starting point - at which
the English excelled. What the English did was to literally sacrifice their pawns (pawns =
peons = peasants) for the greater game when they kicked their peasantry off the land in the
enclosure movement (they always think up a nice word for a disgusting deed). Scientific
methods began to be employed on the new larger farms sufficient to feed a burgeoning
industrial proletariat. But it was this one revolutionary act that kickstarted the British-US
empire that has ruled us for so long.
Psychohistorian's stress on the importance of private finance is of course correct but it
is just part of an imperial equation where finance + military = empire or vice versa.
I am inclined to agree with Spike @ 18 that immigration by itself does not keep wages low. In
Australia (where I live), unemployment is low in comparison with other countries.
There are
sectors where more workers are needed: more nurses are needed and more primary and secondary
school teachers are needed. English-speaking countries in particular are short of medical and
nursing staff to the extent that they are drawing (poaching?) such people away from Asian and
African countries that need these people.
At the same time young people who might consider careers in nursing and medicine are
dissuaded by the cost of pursuing degrees as universities increasingly rely more on charging
on students for university education as government funding dries up.
Yet registered nurses earn an average annual pay of about A$65,000. Lower level nurses
earn less. Average annual income in Australia (as of 2nd quarter of 2018) is about
$82,000.
In Australia, wages growth has not kept pace with the cost of living since the 1980s when
the unions struck an accord with the then Labor government under Bob Hawke. The result is
that households have turned to credit cards to finance spending. Most households as a result
carry large amounts of debt and have very little savings. At the same time, we have had
steady if not very large levels of immigration.
For a century and a half, the primary purpose of the Democratic Party has been to crush
leftist/socialist movements. Eugene Debs knew this a century ago. The SDS knew this 1/2
century ago. Bernie Sanders knew this until 2016.
Faux Newz's "Fox and Friends" did a survey after the Koch Brothers funded "study" of
Bernie's Medicare For All plan. Going on the misleading figure, they asked "Is Medicare For
All worth the $32 Trillion it will cost?"
73% said YES!
All up and down, policies which we'd label "progressive" or even "socialist" are widely
popular with USAmericans. From ending these wars to cutting military spending to increasing
taxes on the rich and corporations to tuition free public education through college or trade
schools, and on and on.
Right now, Sanders is still the most popular politician in the US by a country mile. Were
he, Tulsi Gabbard, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nina Turner, and other well-respected
politicians with records of electoral success to join together and create a new party, it
would instantly be the most popular party in the country.
Then, all we'd have to do is establish legitimate election systems.
Hudson's first magnum opus was SuperImperialism , but please get
the updated version as the first is somewhat dated.
What I think is his crowning achievement--he seems to
think so too--is his newest, and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and
Redemption -- From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year , the culmination of almost 40
years of research. Funny how its only been reviewed by
Brits .
When you read the entire autobiographical interview, you'll see there're several
other joint books he's produced prior to debts I'd consider getting via a university
library--it's 5 volumes @$150 each new--although he says he's going to rewrite them with
debts being the first volume in the series. That I don't have any of those volumes or
even knew about them is rather embarrassing given my fields of study. Here's Hudson's
introducing the series via a lecture:
"The five colloquia volumes that we've published began in 1994. We decided we have to
re-write the history to free it from the modern ideological preconceptions that have
distorted much popular understanding."
Earlier in the thread, you mentioned immigration, population growth and automation. Are
you aware that China scrapped its family planning policy despite their goal of instituting a
high degree of robotics into their manufacturing system? CCP leaders seem to believe their
system can provide resilient support for 1.3-1.5 Billion people, whereas we see the USA
growing increasingly dysfunctional trying to keep 330 million content.
@30 karlof1.. yes - he talks of those books in the autobio interview, but i don't see them
listed on amazon for example.. nor is his latest book - and forgive them their debts' listed
either.. i suppose the reason for the last title is it is yet to be released.. release date
is in nov 2018.. http://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/and-forgive-them-their-debts/
i was unaware of that change in policy in china.. i wonder how they envision everything -
greater population and continued work opportunities, in the face of automation? for me -
people need greater resources in order to continue to survive.. as i understand it - eating
meat is making a much bigger carbon footprint then not.. the chinese with their new wealth
are very much into eating pork and meat... i can't see how it all works out for the planet,
while i do think china would have thought this thru... i suppose it will remain a mystery to
me how they envision the intersection of these diverse interests and developments.. thanks
again for your comments..
"it seems like it is much the same everywhere in the land of democracy too, where
corporations and private interests with money are calling the shots.. plutocracy is what i
think they call it.."
Exactly! And it is the very same supra-national banking cabal, trans-national corporations
and Zionist racial supremacists in each of these "democracies" that are calling the shots.
They are the loci of power, not the political facades of nation-states.
Clearly, the US military is used by this "loose affiliation of millionaires and
billionaires" to enforce their will on those who foolishly believe their governments should
serve their own citizens. But it is not the US, or even primarily the 0.01% of the US who are
calling the shots. The PTSB have no allegiance to any nation-state (with one glaring
exception). But they use nationalism to divide the 99% of the world into bite-sized, easily
edible pieces.
I provided this link in my above
comment to james, but I had yet to read the entire lecture. It's very important and quite
germane to this discussion as this excerpt shows:
"It's very funny: If you go into Congress – I was the economic advisor to Dennis
Kucinich – you go into Congress and there's a big mural with Moses in the center and
Hammurabi on his right. Well, you know what Moses did? He gave the law. Leviticus, right in
the center of Mosaic law, canceled the debt. What did Hammurabi do? Debt cancellation as
well. You're not going to see Congress canceling the debts like that. If you look at the
Liberty Bell, it is inscribed with a quotation from Leviticus 25: "Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land." Well now we have translation problems again. The word really isn't
liberty: The real word means Clean Slate. It means freeing society from debt, letting
everybody have their own basic housing and means of self-support. And by striking
coincidence, what does the Statue of Liberty do? She's holding aloft a flame. And in the
Babylonian historical records, when Hammurabi would cancel the debts they would say: "The
ruler raised the sacred torch." So here you have a wonderful parallelism. It's been written
out of history today, It's not what you're taught in Bible school, or in ancient studies, or
in economic history. So you have this almost revolution that's been occurring in Assyriology,
in Biblical studies and Hebrew studies, and it's all kept up among us specialists. It hasn't
become popular at all, because almost everything about the Bronze Age and about the origins
of Christianity is abhorrent to the vested interests today."
My reaction: Wow! I'm figuratively kicking myself for not diligently reading
all of Hudson's essays--this was from January 2017. Just imagine what might occur if
the global public decided to demand the genuine Old Time Religion!
Yes exactly, a class war. Basically elites vs the rest of us. Maybe 10% of non elites go
along for the ride and puck up some crumbs. Another 20% do alright for a time until they get
replaced by cheaper and younger and struggle to survive to reach social security without
losing their home due to medical bankruptcy.
The rest its basically a struggle to survive
from day 1 with these people living from paycheck to paycheck or just checking into one of
the Prison Industrial Complex Apartments
Anyways, with the Democratic Party behind even Trump in the latest popularity polls (31%
vs 38%) they stay the course and maintain their pro elitist policies. Both parties are
puppets of the elites, differing on only on social issues that divide and distract from the
major issues of importance to the elite class
So long as both parties go along with the neoliberal imperialistic agenda there will be
rewards, even for the minority party. Best to be a minority party with plenty of funding than
one without funding
Meanwhile life expectancy has been stagnating and now declining in US since 2010 (actually
declined in 2015 and 2016 and most likely 2017) while most developed countries except UK are
rising. Health care costs still the source of most individual bankruptcies although
bankruptcy laws have been changed to ensure most lose their home in going that route (unlike
owners of corporations like Trump)
Real median incomes are much lower than the early 70's when adjusted with the pre-1980
CPI. CPI post 1980 has been adjusted to mask the impact of neoliberalism and enhance it by
lowering COLA's and keeping money cheap to fuel asset inflation which does not impact the new
CPI as much
Its not just in the US, this is going on globally, some places faster than others
"The assertion that immigration (in the U.S., at least) is keeping wages low needs to be
questioned. The immigrants from south of the border by and large do the work that no one else
wants to do. "
There are plenty of countries that do not rely on large scale immigration and yet
"someone" is doing those jobs there.
"Were it not for the purposefully restricted structure of the two party systems where
voters bounce between two awful parties before giving up altogether, the Democratic party
would have fully collapsed long ago."
This is the essence of the problem. Whose problem to solve is it? The average American
citizen.
Anyone can use social media and crowdfunding to start a huge popular campaign for a
specific objective.
True representative democracy. What's not to love about that?
All the nonsense about 'revolution' blah blah then becomes redundant. Once there are
multiple parties representing multiple interests, deals have to be done. Government becomes
far more careful and conservative.
Problems don't disappear, but at least there is an intelligent airing of the issues.
Fiscal prudence becomes front and centre. Individual welfare is also elevated to a central
concern. Everyone then recognises that tax money requires healthy businesses that pay their
fair share.
Try it! In spite of the initial barrage of fear, uncertainty, doubt, you will come to a
much more engaged and civil society.
The psyops against the American people have been nothing short of astounding.
"Trickle down!"
"Multi-culturalism"
"Globalism"
"Efficient Markets"
"War on Drugs! War on Terror! Russian interference!"
Each of these may have been reasonable in moderation but were pushed to the extreme via
the oligarch-fed elite of BOTH political Parties. Starting with Bill Clinton, the Democrats
sold out the people they used to represent. They have done MORE than simply block
change, they have poisoned the well via divisive identity politics.
Obama is the poster child for the Democrats "Third Way" disaster. He proved to be a tool
of neolibs and neocons alike, masking their evil agendas with a big smile, slick slogans
("YES WE CAN!") and clever quips ("If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear") . No bankers went to jail for the 2008 GFC, a trillion dollar fraud estimated
to total a YEAR of global GNP , instead his administration "foamed the runway" for Bank
home foreclosures (mostly of lower income people that couldn't fight back) .
Obama promised to include a public option as part of his 'signature' healthcare initiative
("Obamacare") but instead produced a boondoogle for insurance companies which has proven to
be the epic failure that progressive critics said it would be.
Mis-allocated resources of an oligarch-centered public policy has created a supreme
clusterf*ck, the magnitude of which has grown with every new can-kicking initiative.
IMO USA probably loses 30% of GDP to such things as:
- overpriced healthcare;
- a bloated military which is largely useless (who are we going to invade? who is going
to invade us?);
- a police state that imprisons more people than any other Western democracy largely due
to misguided social policies (why not regulate drugs and prostitution illegal? why not
provide good training/jobs and workplace childcare?) ;
- terribly inefficient transportation system where everyone strives for "the American
dream" of commuting dozens of miles from their suburban home via a big SUV;
- education costs that have skyrocketed due to failed govt educational policies;
- a pampered executive and "investor class" that siphons billions - inequality is at
record levels and CEOs make dozens of times more pay then the average worker;
- while the US govt recognizes that climate change is real, they have decided to address
it gradually and accept the cost of 'mitigation' (defensive measures like sea walls,
when necessary) .
No one trust the government to fix anything. And fixes that are contemplated or in the
works will take decades to effect any meaningful change.
The saddest part may be that most people can't see that they've been played.
Americans used to be free thinkers. Now most of them are in an unhealthy relationship with
one of the two parties. Like the jealous, emotionally abusive partner they are, each party
plays on the fears of their 'base'.
Societal Stockholm Syndrome. Is that a thing? It is now.
Immigration, in the grand scheme of things, don't bring wages down mainly for two reasons:
1) it doesn't actually change the total number of human beings in the face of the Earth,
it just reallocates them to one or another specific corner of it. Since modern capitalism is
already global, even Steven.
2) in capitalism, labor power moves according to a reverse osmosis pattern: it goes from
the corner of the Earth with less capital (in money form, therefore money-capital) to the
corner of the Earth with more money-capital. So, for example, if 1,000,000 Mexicans immigrate
-- legally or illegally, it doesn't matter to capitalism -- to the USA in one year, it is
already presupposed the USA already has a wealth differential vis-à-vis Mexico that
can accomodate 1,000,000 more people than it in one year. This movement is also known as "job
hunt": people go where jobs are.
The only case mass immigration really distorts wages is when movement of labor force is
not induced by capitalism, but by a black swan, natural, catastrophic event, e.g. if the
hotspot in Yellowstone burst tommorow, and the American population somewhat manages to
evacuate to, let's say, Mexico, then Mexico receives, in a matter of months, 400 million
people thanks to a process the capitalist society didn't forsee. Then we have a so-called
"humanitarian crisis", i.e. a crisis not induced from capitalism's inner metabolism.
As for the German case, it was a miscalculation by Merkel. She had just arrived from a
huge victory in Greece (her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, had just put the
socialist government of Syriza on its knees), and she was cocky. She decided to move fast
and, enjoying the favorable wind from the Aegean, called for 1 million Syrians to come to
Germany.
At that time, there was a rumor stating most of the Syrians that were fleeing the war were
middle class, affluent Syrians who could afford the trip to Europe -- those were doctors,
engineers, businessmen, etc. etc. It is a known fact the German bourgeoisie uses mass
immigration from the Middle East as a leverage against the German powerful unions since the
Turks offered themselves. So, if Merkel acted impulsively in the execution, the plan was old
and had their approval with good antecedence.
Problem was Merkel appeared to be badly advised by the BND (or the CIA?).First, immigrants
can only force wages down if they are willing to work. Those "affluent Syrians", if they
existed, either were intercepted and coopted by Turkey and Saudi Arabia (where they had to
stop first, before going to Europe via Greece or Italy), or were a very tiny minority. Most
of the refugees were either already indigents, bandits, housewives with little children or
even some terrorists. They were not capable, nor willing, to "assimilate", i.e. to work for
German capitalists under German Law. So, it backfired.
Is this a joke??
Has anybody read the article from this Crooke that B is referring to in his post? This is
really the worst crap. So enlightenments is just a " totalitarian " ideology made to help the
Europeans rule the world? And Russia is just an old regime nation promoting blood based
brotherhood fighting them ? In a word the eating-babies communists versus the Teutonic aryan
Knights??
And then, I find an approving reference to the old stinking theory of " workers vs immigrants
" to explain low wages ? Btw, where have you seen democrats elites being " against
restrictions on immigrations " ? Didn't know that US under Obama was open door...
I don't recognize this website anymore! Let's hope the CIA is just fooling with me !
quot;Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S.
Democrats have."
It is plain wrong to mention social-democratic parties in connection with the u.s. Dems. They
are a Wall street party very much at the right of even the most rightist, neoliberal social
democrats in Europa.
And no. Immigration is definitely not the cause for the work place competition. Not in the usa
at least. Most of the Latinos coming from the south do jobs u.s. citizen do not want,
especially in agriculture. And; the immigrants are not only workers, they are consumers too and
as such they raise the GDP and indirectly create additional work places. The capitalist system
works best if the population is on a steady, not too pronounced rise. (It is different with
inner-EU immigration though.)
"Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have."
It is plain wrong to mention social-democratic parties in connection with the u.s. Dems. They
are a Wall street party very much at the right of even the most rightist, neoliberal social
democrats in Europa.
And no. Immigration is definitely not the cause for the work place competition. Not in the
usa at least. Most of the Latinos coming from the south do jobs u.s. citizen do not want,
especially in agriculture. And; the immigrants are not only workers, they are consumers too
and as such they raise the GDP and indirectly create additional work places. The capitalist
system works best if the population is on a steady, not too pronounced rise. (It is different
with inner-EU immigration though.)
On the subject of immigration keeping wages low. This has some truth to it of course,
although it does not explain it in its entirety. The main reason of course is the US has
extremely high unemployment/unxerempoyment rates
On the subject of immigration keeping wages low. This has some truth to it of course,
although it does not explain it in its entirety.
One reason of course is the US has extremely high unemployment/underemployment rates, far
greater than official figures.
Then you have the destruction of unions in the private sector. The few remaining unions
are coopted from within by union leadership
A principal cause of the above reasons may be globalization which has led to the
outsourcing of jobs to countries with lower wages
And of course you have minimum wages which are much lower in real dollars than they were
40 years go as both parties became corrupted by the neoliberal elite.
As for immigration. Illegal immigrants
tend to work in jobs not very appealing and are low paying but may suppress technical
innovation to make up for a low labor supply in this area at the cost of some higher paying
jobs
Legal immigration tends bring in professional labor who are willing to work at lower wages
in the hope of getting a shot at the American dream (or European Dream).
I feel both forms of immigration are minor impacts. The main purpose for the elite is to
create divisions within the society. Divide and rule. Which is why neither party has sought
to stamp it out entirely. Its simple really, jail time for anyone hiring an undocumented
worker and enforcement. Go after the corporations who hire them and not the worker.
A: They listened to their 'strategists', not to their voters.
...
Why is "socialized" medicine supposed to be a bad thing? Why not defend it? It is what
the voters want:
B: I haven't agreed with a whole lot of your posts lately, but this one I think you
nailed. Wish you would say a little more about Green Energy and AGW.
I actually think that Obama's first election was for young people in this country at that
time the equivalent of the assassination of President Kennedy in my younger years. A blow
from which there shall have to be allowed the loss of an entire generation - in my time, that
was accomplished by the Vietnam War. And indeed the generation of so-called millenials in the
US has been living through an ongoing psychological nightmare of similar proportions.
All the comments do apply, in spades. Thank you, fellow Americans.
The equivalence of which I speak is the shocking about face Obama presented after his
inauguration. He could have been a new Kennedy inspiring the young - he chose not to be. For
many, that was an assassination of an ideal - some clung on desperately refusing to believe,
but most finally knew they had been betrayed.
All I can hope is that there is some decent, anonymous Putin-like figure out there ready
to grab hold of power and throw it back to the people where it belongs. It happened there;
maybe it will happen here, sometime.
Other than calling the Trump-phenom quasi or crypto fascist in your post and in the same
breath at the end provide justification for the Trump-vote regarding the effect of an illegal
work force, you are right, b. There are many things that hurt the left in the global scene.
Do they not notice this or are they willfully biding their time to reemerge in the same
putrid swamp so us dumbasses can fawn over her like the Lady of the Lake?
I think the libs in this country, at least, are the real cheerleaders of globalism and a
stupifying urbanism that is preaching a false future of free stuff and you don't even have to
work for it!
Why would I Joe-taxpayer want to fund a student- loan debt relief program where morons the
country over are relieved of any responsibility of their idiotic line of thinking where they
believed that an overpriced degree equated to instant playboy lifestyle and on demand oral
sex?
Lower forms of employment to be occupied by natural citizens is absolutely vital to a
country's economic culture.
People have said that these are jobs that only Mexicans will take. That is BS. The market
would natutally adjust to an actual shortage in labor and pay citizens appropriately for
their menial labor. Having an abundance of black market labor prohibits this natural function
of a healthy economy.
General Lee knew that slavery was anaethma and a tragedy to America. A correlation could
be made about alien labor.
"... The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign, and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness). ..."
"... The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn up the temperature with some nuclear fire. ..."
"... This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse them of "aggression." ..."
"... The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between men and women. ..."
"... "We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. " ..."
"... And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the "Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify. ..."
"... The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend, not just nationally, but world wide... ..."
The faction that used to be the Democratic party can be described with some precision these days as a three-headed monster driving
the nation toward danger, darkness, and incoherence.
Anyone interested in defending what remains of the sane center of American politics take heed:
The first head is the one infected with the toxic shock of losing the 2016 election. The illness took hold during the campaign
that year when the bureaucracy under President Obama sent its lymphocytes and microphages in the "intel community" -- especially
the leadership of the FBI -- to attack the perceived disease that the election of Donald Trump represented. The "doctors" of this
Deep State diagnosed the condition as "Russian collusion." An overdue second opinion by doctors outside the Deep State adduced later
that the malady was actually an auto-immune disease.
The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr.
Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign,
and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible.
With the disease now revealed by hard evidence, the chief surgeon called into the case, Robert Mueller, is left looking ridiculous
-- and perhaps subject to malpractice charges -- for trying to remove an appendix-like organ called the Manifort from the body politic
instead of attending to the cancerous mess all around him. Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New
York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded
with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness).
The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support
arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists
in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn
up the temperature with some nuclear fire. They are apparently in deep confab with the first head and its Russia collusion storyline.
Note all the current talk about Russia already meddling in the 2018 midterm election, a full-fledged pathogenic hallucination.
This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse
them of "aggression." We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression.
We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state.We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish
and hazardous endeavor. The sane center never would have stood for this arrant recklessness. The world community is not fooled, though.
More and more, they recognize the USA as a national borderline personality, capable of any monstrous act.
The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human
nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication
of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between
men and women. Those differences must be abolished, and replaced with chimeras that enable a childish game of pretend, men pretending
to be women and vice-versa in one way or another: LBGTQetc. Anything BUT the dreaded "cis-hetero" purgatory of men and women acting
like men and women. The horror .
Its companion is the race hustle and its multicultural operating system. The objective has become transparent over the past year,
with rising calls to punish white people for the supposed "privilege" of being Caucasian and pay "reparations" in one way or another
to underprivileged "people of color." This comes partly from the infantile refusal to understand that life is difficult for everybody,
and that the woes and sorrows of being in this world require fortitude and intelligence to get through -- with the final reward being
absolutely the same for everybody.
"We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust
up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a
foolish and hazardous endeavor. "
And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the
"Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into
a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify.
I was talking to someone, who knows a lot about the 'inner workings' and we were discussing, not only the US, but Europe's
situation as well.
The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend,
not just nationally, but world wide...
Some people are still fighting already lost battle.
Notable quotes:
"... That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help working people, white or otherwise. ..."
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards.
IMHO Trumpism can be viewed as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose
rejection of three dogmas of "classic neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and the "Enemy of the American People"
(a famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proleterianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
I'll try to explain my previous comment from another angle:
I'll take the wage share on total income as the main index of worker's bargaining
power.
The wage share depends on two factors:
1) there is a cyclical factor, when the economy is booming unemployment falls and the wage
share rises, when the economy is depressed the opposite;
2) there are structural factors that depend on how redistributive is taxation, the power of
unions etc.; these structural factors depend on law and policy, not on technology.
A big part of the "neoliberal" policy is the concept of trickle down, that can be
summarized in (1) hope that the economy will go very well and will be in permanent boom by
(2) lowering the wage share structural components, by making workers more flexible etc..
In this kind of policy (that was followed also by center left parties) the fall in the
strucural component of the wage share is supposed to be compensated by the increase of the
cyclical component, so that, in theory, workers should not be worse off.
But in reality, trickle down doesn't really work (we can argue why), so that the overall
wage share fell.
Workers (and voters in general) then expect the economy to be in a situation of permanent
boom, a boom so big that it surpasses the fall in the structural component of the wage share;
but this never happens, and probably cannot happen for a sustained period.
So voters assume that someone is stealing their lunch, and they blame someone. Immigrants
are supposed to lower worker's wage share, but influencing the cyclical component, not the
structural one; instead we have an assumption that immigrants are lowering the structural
component of the wage share, that is a nonsense, because voters have to blame someone.
Contemporaneously, we have policies that try to create a sort of permanent boom by trickle
down, such as lowering the tax rate on high incomes. These policies resemble keynesian policy
but in reality are strongly pro-cyclical, so in some sense are the opposite of the
traditional keynesian policy.
This happens because these policies appease both workers (with the promise of a boom and thus
an increase of the cyclical component of their wage share) and capitalists (because the
government is pumping money in their pockets).
But these policies are also very pro-bubble.
From this point of view, Trump's policy (but also for example many policies of the current
Italian government) are just a beefed up version of the neoliberal policy.
The hate for immigrants, as other nasty developments of international policy, are the
effect of the fact that in reality trickle down cannot really create booms as big as to
justify the weakening of the structural component of the wage share, so someone has to be
blamed somehow; also trickle down is linked, culturally, to the concept of job creators, and
the idea that workers only have an income because of the awesomeness of said job creators,
which leads tho the idea that immigrants are also so to speak eating from the same dish, and
thus robbing workers from their income.
CDT 08.13.18 at 2:41 am (no link)
@likbez --
That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon
themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's
delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help
working people, white or otherwise.
It's why likbez is so sure that Clinton is somehow a bigger crook than Trump. That is
just crazy.
He was just not the neoliberal establishment supported crook, or pretended to be such;-)
That was enough for many people who are fed up with the system to vote for him. Just to show
middle finger to neoliberal establishment personalized by Hillary Clinton.
On a more serious note, while I do assume that voting for Trump was a form of social
protest against the current version of neoliberalism in the USA, I do not automatically
assume that the social system that will eventually replace the current US flavor of
neoliberalism will be an improvement for bottom 90% of population.
We are in a very peculiar ideological and political place in which Democracy (oh sainted
Democracy) is a very good thing, unless the voters reject the technocrat class's leadership.
Then the velvet gloves come off. From the perspective of the elites and their technocrat
apparatchiks, elections have only one purpose: to rubberstamp their leadership.
As a general rule, this is easily managed by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on
advertising and bribes to the cartels and insider fiefdoms who pony up most of the cash.
This is why incumbents win the vast majority of elections. Once in power, they issue the
bribes and payoffs needed to guarantee funding next election cycle.
The occasional incumbent who is voted out of office made one of two mistakes:
1. He/she showed a very troubling bit of independence from the technocrat status quo, so a
more orthodox candidate is selected to eliminate him/her.
2. The incumbent forgot to put on a charade of "listening to my constituency" etc.
If restive voters can't be bamboozled into passively supporting the technocrat status quo
with the usual propaganda, divide and conquer is the preferred strategy. Only voting for the
technocrat class (of any party, it doesn't really matter) will save us from the evil Other :
Deplorables, socialists, commies, fascists, etc.
In extreme cases where the masses confound the status quo by voting against the technocrat
class (i.e. against globalization, financialization, Empire), then the elites/technocrats will
punish them with austerity or a managed recession. The technocrat's core ideology boils down to
this:
1. The masses are dangerously incapable of making wise decisions about anything, so we have
to persuade them to do our bidding. Any dissent will be punished, marginalized, censored or
shut down under some pretext of "protecting the public" or violation of some open-ended
statute.
2. To insure this happy outcome, we must use all the powers of propaganda, up to and
including rigged statistics, bogus "facts" (official fake news can't be fake news, etc.),
divide and conquer, fear-mongering, misdirection and so on.
3. We must relentlessly centralize all power, wealth and authority so the masses have no
escape or independence left to threaten us. We must control everything, for their own good of
course.
4. Globalization must be presented not as a gargantuan fraud that has stripmined the planet
and its inhabitants, but as the sole wellspring of endless, permanent prosperity.
5. If the masses refuse to rubberstamp our leadership, they will be punished and told the
source of their punishment is their rejection of globalization, financialization and
Empire.
Technocrats rule the world, East and West alike. My two favorite charts of the outcome of
technocrats running things to suit their elite masters are:
The state-cartel-crony-capitalist version: the top .1% skim the vast majority of the gains
in income and wealth. Globalization, financialization and Empire sure do rack up impressive
gains. Too bad they're concentrated in the top 1.%.
The state-crony-socialist version: the currency is destroyed, impoverishing everyone but the
top .1% who transferred their wealth to Miami, London and Zurich long ago. Hmm, do you discern
a pattern here in the elite-technocrat regime?
Ideology is just a cover you slip over the machine to mask what's really going on.
Some people are still fighting already lost battle.
Notable quotes:
"... That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help working people, white or otherwise. ..."
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards.
IMHO Trumpism can be viewed as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose
rejection of three dogmas of "classic neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and the "Enemy of the American People"
(a famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proleterianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
I'll try to explain my previous comment from another angle:
I'll take the wage share on total income as the main index of worker's bargaining
power.
The wage share depends on two factors:
1) there is a cyclical factor, when the economy is booming unemployment falls and the wage
share rises, when the economy is depressed the opposite;
2) there are structural factors that depend on how redistributive is taxation, the power of
unions etc.; these structural factors depend on law and policy, not on technology.
A big part of the "neoliberal" policy is the concept of trickle down, that can be
summarized in (1) hope that the economy will go very well and will be in permanent boom by
(2) lowering the wage share structural components, by making workers more flexible etc..
In this kind of policy (that was followed also by center left parties) the fall in the
strucural component of the wage share is supposed to be compensated by the increase of the
cyclical component, so that, in theory, workers should not be worse off.
But in reality, trickle down doesn't really work (we can argue why), so that the overall
wage share fell.
Workers (and voters in general) then expect the economy to be in a situation of permanent
boom, a boom so big that it surpasses the fall in the structural component of the wage share;
but this never happens, and probably cannot happen for a sustained period.
So voters assume that someone is stealing their lunch, and they blame someone. Immigrants
are supposed to lower worker's wage share, but influencing the cyclical component, not the
structural one; instead we have an assumption that immigrants are lowering the structural
component of the wage share, that is a nonsense, because voters have to blame someone.
Contemporaneously, we have policies that try to create a sort of permanent boom by trickle
down, such as lowering the tax rate on high incomes. These policies resemble keynesian policy
but in reality are strongly pro-cyclical, so in some sense are the opposite of the
traditional keynesian policy.
This happens because these policies appease both workers (with the promise of a boom and thus
an increase of the cyclical component of their wage share) and capitalists (because the
government is pumping money in their pockets).
But these policies are also very pro-bubble.
From this point of view, Trump's policy (but also for example many policies of the current
Italian government) are just a beefed up version of the neoliberal policy.
The hate for immigrants, as other nasty developments of international policy, are the
effect of the fact that in reality trickle down cannot really create booms as big as to
justify the weakening of the structural component of the wage share, so someone has to be
blamed somehow; also trickle down is linked, culturally, to the concept of job creators, and
the idea that workers only have an income because of the awesomeness of said job creators,
which leads tho the idea that immigrants are also so to speak eating from the same dish, and
thus robbing workers from their income.
CDT 08.13.18 at 2:41 am (no link)
@likbez --
That's a good critique of the electoral disaster that the Democrats brought upon
themselves by adopting neoliberal economic policies at the dawn of the DLC. But it's
delusional to think that Trump's restoration of gilded age economic policies will help
working people, white or otherwise.
It's why likbez is so sure that Clinton is somehow a bigger crook than Trump. That is
just crazy.
He was just not the neoliberal establishment supported crook, or pretended to be such;-)
That was enough for many people who are fed up with the system to vote for him. Just to show
middle finger to neoliberal establishment personalized by Hillary Clinton.
On a more serious note, while I do assume that voting for Trump was a form of social
protest against the current version of neoliberalism in the USA, I do not automatically
assume that the social system that will eventually replace the current US flavor of
neoliberalism will be an improvement for bottom 90% of population.
The by product of small minds and limited options. The collapse of the Democratic Party
also represented a failure to create a bench. AOC is a person who should have been identified
and pushed to run for local or even state government by a healthy political party.
In many ways, the Democratic elite are small "c"onservatives. New ideas and such are
frightening to them.
Donna Brazille knocked the Clinton Headquarters staff for not having sex, but the pictures
of the Clinton staffers looked like a particularly boring group of College Republicans. Wow,
the President listens to Jay-Z. He's really popular with kids from the suburbs!
This morning I was reminded that Sam Power apologized for calling Hillary a monster in
2013 probably because it seemed inevitable HRC would be President, but now I see it as a lack
of creative thinking where these boring people (they are boring) couldn't envision an
alternative.
As far as the options, the energy of the political left is not with the Democrats
hence why they have to pimp Biden every few months.
HRC use to pay DavidHow much went to MSNBC to be in ads for the choir? What good was an
HRC ad during a network dedicated to "Her"?
As far as her staff, she use to pay Mark Penn. Its reasonable to expect the Clinton
campaign would simply light money on fire, but I was always puzzled by the ads on MSNBC. What
good were they beyond preaching Hillary was running for President?
We know from the DNC emails Podesta said he needed to talk to HRC about promising the VP
to everyone after she had picked Kaine long before the announcement. I'm wondering what kinds
of ad buys she promised. When Obama got to the end, he just randomly ran an infomercial and
gave the field staff a fairly decent bonus. With all her money in a slam dunk election, I
think the story is more than a campaign of would be Mark Penns.
Thank you, Lambert, for going beyond the facile "horserace" and "blue wave" tropes and
assembling enough data for us non-insiders to be able to gain some understanding of the game
the insiders are playing.
These are people who speak of the process as an end in itself, connected only nominally,
and vestigially, to the electorate and its possible concerns "Anything that brings the
process closer to the people is all to the good," George Bush declared in his 1987
autobiography, Looking Forward, accepting as given this relatively recent notion that the
people and the process need not automatically be on convergent tracks.
When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about "the
democratic process," or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in
its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is
correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report
on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who
answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to
the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who
attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of
public life.
I have a simple question: Why vote? Both parties are largely control by the same donors.
It strikes me as a waste of energy. When someone such a Sanders comes around who actually
slightly challenges the status quo, the powers to be actively collude to disenfranchise the
movement.
Simple answer: It's the only thing we have that scares them. Why else would they spend so
much effort trying to suppress the vote, or not fighting voter suppression? And who knows,
some candidates you vote for might win.
I don't think it actually scares them. It's more important for them to keep the showing
going. By voting, we are actively buying into the political theatre. It's a sham. Really
democracy simply can't coexist in a Capitalistic system.
Hard question, but how much is an Obama or Clinton endorsement really worth?
They are not going to be very appealing to swing voters, independents, etc. They have
limited to appeal to getting young people and supporters of Bernie Sanders to vote.
Seems like they are most useful for just motivating Establishment Democratic voters.
Second, the Democrat Party really is split. As you can see, Obama, Clinton, and the
DCCC's endorsements overlap in only a single case (again, CA-50) with "insurgent" backers
like Justice Democrats (JD) and Our Revolution (OR). Negative confirmation: Obama did not
endorse Ocasio-Cortez ("Party Unity is for Rubes"). Her district is a safe Democrat seat
(unless Crowley, running as a straw on the Working Families line, somehow takes it away
from her), so perhaps that doesn't matter: Positive confirmation: Obama and Clinton didn't
endorse Bryce in WI-01, although -- because? -- Sanders did, even though the DCCC did, and
the seat used to be Paul Ryan's![1]
It has been split between those who got rich by neoliberalism (the 10%er base) and the
rest of us.
My sense is the importance of the Oprah endorsement of Obama wasn't the endorsement as
much as the spectacle and crowds. 10,000 people at a campaign event in New Hampshire is huge.
At that point, Obama didn't have to face the usual primary audience much like HRC where
candidates do get fairly difficult questions in comparison to the msm garbage questions
cookie recipes.
Yellow dog types who might vote for AOC over say Crowley on their own might be swayed, but
I suspect "DNC" letter head would have the same effect.
Once the Democratic Party has burned the people who fall under the marketing term
"Millennials" enough times, they'll move on to the new "hope" of Gen Z who won't have
multiple memories of lie after lie.
Some people have told me they could think better when hungry.
After the initial pangs go away, and one can think clearly, one is incentivized to really
find solutions, but thinking as in learning? They have different brains then me, let's just
say.
Marketing and advertising thrive on the same concept.
Exalting youth to exploit it.
When that doesn't work, use fear (of not being wealthy enough, attractive enough, etc,). That
base emotion gets played on throughout people's lives.
That is why those marketing terms found a comfy fit with political narratives and polling
(which is done to fit a narrative).
"... If, on average, just seven Republicans are moderates, and Democrats need 15 additional votes, Democrats will obviously fall short. Where else then could and should Democrats look? The more promising pools of people are actually Democratic voters -- many of whom face greater economic obstacles in finding the time and transportation to get to the polls. ..."
"... In the quest for those necessary 15 votes, the number-one place Democrats should look is among the 19 percent of Democrats who voted in 2016, but are unlikely to cast ballots this year. ..."
"... In fact, the largest pool of people Democrats should be trying to tap is actually nonvoters -- the 200,000 people per district who were eligible but didn't cast ballots in 2016. It is in these sectors of society where Democrats will find the source of success and the path to winning back the House and taking back our country and winning elections for years to come. ..."
Democratic leaders have gone to great lengths, for example, to
encourage
military veterans to run for Congress
this year. Veterans can be great progressive leaders (my father and
uncle served in the military, and I was born on a military base), but if the strategic objective is to appeal to
swing voters drawn to Trump's posture and positions, the math doesn't add up. The painful truth is that there just
aren't that many swing voters.
Doing a deep data dive on the districts reveals that the number of swing voters is
far smaller than many people realize, especially when you factor in the drop-off in voter turnout in midterm
elections. In the most competitive Republican-held congressional districts, Clinton won by an average of 17,000
votes, but the incumbent GOP congressperson beat his or her Democratic foe by an average of 34,000 votes.
This reality is particularly problematic when you factor in the smaller electorate during midterms, when fewer
turn out to vote than in a presidential year. This diagram shows the total voter pool in an average competitive
district, how many people voted, and how many voted for Clinton, Trump, and the Republican member of the House. For
illustration purposes, if 100 people voted in one of these Clinton-Republican representative-won districts in 2016,
the incumbent House Republican received 54 votes, and his or her Democratic opponent received 43 votes. Of those 54
people who voted for the incumbent Republican, seven (out of 100 votes) voted for Clinton. That's seven moderate
Republicans out of 100 voters. Historically, in midterm elections, Republicans are more likely to come back out and
vote than are Democrats, and as a result, that 54-43 Republican advantage from the higher-turnout presidential year
will be about 39-25 this midterm year (based on historical turnout data). This means Democrats need to find 15 votes
in every 100 in order to flip those 23 seats. Looking at the possible sources of an additional 15 percent highlights
how few moderate Republicans there are.
If, on average, just seven Republicans are moderates, and Democrats need 15 additional votes, Democrats will
obviously fall short. Where else then could and should Democrats look? The more promising pools of people are
actually Democratic voters -- many of whom face greater economic obstacles in finding the time and transportation to get
to the polls.
In the quest for those necessary 15 votes, the number-one place Democrats should look is among the 19 percent of
Democrats who voted in 2016, but are unlikely to cast ballots this year.
In races that may well be decided by a few thousand votes (for example, Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb won his
special US House election earlier this year by a mere
627 votes
), it makes sense to also target the 20,000 young people in each congressional district who were not old
enough to vote in 2016, but are now eligible.
In fact, the largest pool of people Democrats should be trying to tap is actually nonvoters -- the 200,000 people per
district who were eligible but didn't cast ballots in 2016. It is in these sectors of society where Democrats will
find the source of success and the path to winning back the House and taking back our country and winning elections
for years to come.
It is hard work to get all of these voters out, but that is the work that will determine success or failure this
fall.
We are in the point when capitalist system (which presented itself as asocial system that created a large middle class)
converted into it opposite: it is social system that could not deliver that it promised and now want to distract people from this
sad fact.
The Trump adopted tax code is a huge excess: we have 40 year when corporation paid less taxes. This is last moment when they
need another gift. To give them tax is crazy excess that reminding
Louis XV of France. Those gains are going in buying of socks. And real growth is happening elsewhere in the world.
After WW2 there were a couple of decades of "golden age" of US capitalism when in the USA middle class increased considerably.
That was result of pressure of working class devastated by Great Depression. Roosevelt decided that risk is too great and he
introduced social security net. But capitalist class was so enraged that they started fighting it almost immediately after the
New Deal was introduced. Business class was enrages with the level of taxes and counterattacked. Tarp act and McCarthyism were
two successful counterattacks. McCarthyism converting communists and socialists into agents of foreign power.
The quality of jobs are going down. That's why Trump was elected... Which is sad. Giving your finger to the
neoliberal elite does not solve their problem
Notable quotes:
"... Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort. But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction. ..."
"... When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety, the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. ..."
"... Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem. It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it to rot, right behind the facade. ..."
"... The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage of this moment, grab it all before it disappears. ..."
In another interesting interview with Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff explains why the Trump presidency is the last resort of a system
that is about to collapse:
Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened
in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort.
But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from
below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction.
So, absent that counter force we are going to see this system spinning out of control and destroying itself in the very way its
critics have for so long foreseen it well might.
When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety,
the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. If we hadn't been a country with two or three decades of
a middle class - working class paid really well - maybe we could have gotten away with this. But in a society that has celebrated
its capacity to do what it now fails to do, you have an explosive situation.
Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem.
It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we
need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist
system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it
to rot, right behind the facade.
The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage
of this moment, grab it all before it disappears.
In France, it was said
'Après moi, le déluge' (after me the
catastrophe). The storm will break.
We have lost some of our democratic habits -- indeed, in many ways we are losing
our very cohesion as a society. But I frame the question very differently.
I know a bunch of Trump supporters. Some of them are intellectuals who write for places like
TAC . But most are not. Neither are any of them raving bigots or knuckle-dragging
neanderthals, and all of them read the news, though with vastly less obsessiveness than people
who work in the business.
None of them "like" things like "unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure" or collusion with foreign governments. Some of them minimize
some of these things at least some of the time -- and I myself have been known to derive a kind
of pleasure from the absurdity of a figure like Mooch. But this isn't what the people who I
know who voted Trump voted for , nor is it why they continue to be happy with their
vote -- which, however unhappy they are with how the administration is conducting itself, most
of them still are.
Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the
election.
"They are, however, people who have lost trust in the individuals and institutions who are
most alarmed about Trump: the political establishment, the press, etc. And so, on a relative
basis, they'd rather continue to put their trust in Trump."
That last line does not follow .We have lost trust in all of the others; so would rather
see what Trump does; not that we have any trust in him to do the right thing
THAT would be ridiculous; especially after the last six months.
Hmmm. Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't help but read
that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites are capable
of governing. As for the American people taking a turn to authoritarianism. This is possible,
after all, our Federal government has spent most of the last century increasing their control
over many of the aspects of our lives and stretching the limits of the Constitution beyond
any recognition. We have been prepared to accept authoritarianism. Increasingly we have had
an authoritarian presidency that surveils its own people and has usurped regulatory and
warmaking authority from the Congress. The Federal government has created, out of whole
cloth, a role for itself in public education. Do not blame the populace for being what the
elite has spent a century shaping them to be.
I am convinced that the saber rattling and fear-mongering concerning Korea, Iran, and Russia
are not happening because we have any reason to be particularly concerned about these
countries or because they threaten our interests. No, this is the way a corrupt and
ineffective regime distracts its citizens from its own failings. Lets be clear, this would be
happening even if She-who-shall-not-be-named had one the Presidency.
Whatever happened to "trust but verify"?
OK, a bunch of people did the political equivalent of a Hail Mary play in voting for Trump.
But now that the ball has not only fallen short but gone way out of bounds and beaned some
spectators in the stands shouldn't they be revoking that trust and casting around for someone
else to represent them? Why stick with a sinking ship?
There is strong evidence to suggest that one factor in Trump's victory was distrust of US
foreign policy. The link above is to an article about exit polls showing Trump won the
veteran's vote 2:1 over Hillary Clinton.
People don't regret their votes for Trump because if they had voted for Clinton, they or
their loved ones would be coming home in body bags–or minus body parts.
As bad as Trump is, his foreign policy instincts are less hawkish than
Clinton's–witness his decision to end the CIA funding of Syrian insurgents.
Trump's behavior is certainly "unpresidential" and chaotic. It is also less horrible than
war by many orders of magnitude.
"The politically relevant, and profoundly disturbing, fact is precisely the opposite of the
conventional wisdom: After six months of unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking
vulgarity, legislative failure, and credible evidence of a desire to collude with a hostile
foreign government to subvert an American election, President Trump's approval rating is
astonishingly high -- with something between one-third and two-fifths of the American people
apparently liking what they see and hear from the White House"
But George W Bush at his nadir averaged 26% approval, and that's seven years in, during an
epic economic collapse, a catastrophic war, and a host of other disasters. Trump is not THAT
far away from that average.
There is simply a line beyond which a president can't decline unless he murders and eats a
puppy in public, and I see no reason to presume that we can judge that Trump hit his bottom
six months in, when the economy is decent and no non-self inflicted crisis looming.
I'd also add that while all your friends have different reasons to stay aboard the Trump
train, all of them sound like high information, fairly ideological voters. This is probably
not the profile of Trump voters set to vote for The Rock in 2020
Well, when a building is rotten to the core, the only thing you can do is raze it to the
ground to start rebuilding. Our government has long passed its sell-by date. Really,
expecting a political solution to arise from a government controlled system such as ours does
not border on insanity – it completely crosses that border in leaves it miles in the
dust. Witness our insane Congress voting by a 98% margin to inflict sanctions based upon
absolute crock. But then the US has never let reality get in the way of statesmenshowmanship.
We get what we deserve, good and hard.
You're OK until the last line. "And populism by its very nature cannot build institutions,
cannot govern "
You're still using the Deepstate definition of populism. In fact populists want only one
thing: We think the government of THIS country should serve the interests of the people of
THIS country.
It's perfectly possible to govern by this rule. FDR did it magnificently.
Why did it work for FDR? Because he was determined to BREAK the monopolies and forces that
acted contrary to the interests of the people, and because governments BELOW the Federal
level were still strong. When he closed the banks for several months, cities and Chambers of
Commerce jumped in immediately to develop scrip systems.
Thanks to an unbroken series of evil judges and presidents after WW2, local governments
and institutions are dead or dying. Even if a competent and determined populist tried to
close down banks or Amazon or the "health" insurance system, there would be no organized way
to replace them.
What exactly did these people think a Clinton administration would do? What nightmarish
dystopia did they see coming around the bend? And what do you think -- were their perceptions
of America's future under a Clinton administration accurate, or at least close to the mark?
And if so, why?
Also, I get that people have lost trust in mainstream institutions. What makes them think
that Trump is trustworthy in comparison? Why do they have more trust in Trump than in the
institutions? And does that seem reasonable?
I didn't vote for Trump: His rhetorical style turns me cold; I don't like his position on
many issues, or his general governing philosophy, to the extent he can be said to have one.
But, BUT, I sure as Hell did not vote for Hilary Clinton(I voted for Johnson and Weld, who
were obvious non-starters from the word Go. I might possibly have voted for Trump if it had
looked like the election might be close in Illinois, but since the Chicago Machine had
already stolen it for HRC, I could salve my conscience and vote for Johnson.
Clinton was the status quo candidate, and since I did not desire "more of the same",
governmentally, Trump and his circus are preferable to Clinton and whatever cabal she would
have assembled to run the country.
You claim that the elite "inevitably" run the machinery of government, but it's worth
noting that once upon a time in America, most of the people in government were political
appointees who could be sent packing(along with their bosses) by the voters. Nowadays, the
'elite' which runs government is dug in pretty much permanently, and the same people will be,
in practice, running the government no matter who wins the next election, or the one after
that
Hilary Clinton was forthrightly the candidate of the permanent, un-elected bureaucracy,
and Trump, well, didn't seem to be. The choice was between Trump, whose actual position on
the size of government was not clear, and Hilary Clinton who was actually promising to make
government bigger, more centralized, more expensive and less responsive. I'm not sorry Trump
won however distasteful he and his henchmen are to me.
I too had a friend who was a huge Ron Paul supporter who not only backed Trump, but became a
major apologist for him ever since. The man ran two back to back campaigns in Georgia for US
Senate, the Ron Paul mold. Now, no on his original team will give him the time of day. Those
who tried to get some sense into him, have been closed off.
As a libertarian, I am no more afraid of the left or the right. In fact, listening to the
right rant about the left yields a lot of ignorance, disinformation and paranoia: stock in
trade for right wing propaganda. But I am disturbed when people spend years fighting for
liberty suddenly joined Cult 45 that has no sense of liberty Ron Paul or his followers would
recognize.
But Trump fit the bankrupt GOP. Lest we forget, those 49 GOP Senators who voted for
"skinny repeal" (even the name is joke!) never gave a moment's consideration to the bill
written by Rand Paul that covers the conservative attributes of free markets and
self-determination. Lest we also forget that Rand is not only one of the few legit
conservatives, but a doctor and the son of doctor or former Congressman. Those credentials
alone would have been enough if GOP was actually interested being conservative. Apparently,
Trumpism is what the GOP is about and 49 of them proved it.
I think that you have identified a problem that transcends Trump and his opponents. Vitriolic
partisanship is one thing. At various points in our history, we have had some nasty spells of
polarization. The deeper problem that the institutions of public life are now losing their
very legitimacy.
Legitimacy is something deeper than mere approval. It relies upon the unspoken acceptance
of political and institutional norms.
We are clearly in the process of publicly reevaluating and even rejecting these norms. The
birthers questioning Obama's background and "not my president" folks do not view their
oppponents as legitimate, if mistaken. In the case of Trump and the radical left, they
contest the legitimacy of the other side even participating in the process, a process by the
way to which they owe no fealty.
Nothing wrong with America that couldn't be fixed, one, by making voting mandatory, and two,
by having top two vote getters in primary face each other in the general.
We'd have a moderate politics with elected officials clustering slightly right and left of
the center.
Speaking as a Commie Pinko Red, I still prefer Trump as President over Clinton, precisely
because he is doing so much to undermine America's "leadership" in world affairs. He's still
a murderous imperialist, maybe even just as much as she would have been, but there's just so
much more damage that she could have done making bi-partisan deals with the GOP for the
benefit of Wall Street and the insurance industry.
The movement against GOPcare – Trumpcare wasn't really a fair name for the wet
dreams of Paul Ryan and Conservative, Inc. – probably couldn't have been so effective
or flew under the radar of the establishment tools running the Democratic Party and its media
mouthpieces if a Democrat was in the White House and the various beltway "movement" honchos
had had their precious seat at the table where they could have rolled over for the Democratic
president of the moment.
The biggest problem is what comes after Trump for the GOP?
He's kicked off a process for the GOP that will be very difficult to manage going forward.
He showed that outright racism, sexism, continuous lying, even treasonous collusion with
Russia to subvert our election is just fine with the Republican Party. How does the GOP sell
family values to their 'base' after they all lined up with Donald j Trump, serial
wife-cheater and money-launderer?
It will be hard for anyone to forget that any of this happened.
Consider this: 8 years of W Bush yielded the first black President – It really could
not have happened if W hadn't burned the house down. What comes after Trump?
I'm a very middle-class worker in the IT sector where most of my coworkers have been
sensible, but my weekend hobby of playing music has put me in contact (largely via Facebook)
with many Trump supporters who do happen to be knuckle-dragging neanderthals. They generally
don't read; their "news" comes from partisan demagogues on the radio or TV. If I give one the
benefit of the doubt and share an article from, say, The American Conservative -- "The
Madness of King Donald" was a favorite -- it's been all too common to receive a
childish/hate-filled meme in response. Bigots are legion: I've unfriended the raving variety,
and unfollowed the milder dog-whistlers. These deplorables have in fact been emboldened by
the current POTUS.
But I get your point. I abhor the current duopoly, but it could be fixed if thinking
citizens wanted to put in some effort. So, it's depressing in a different kind of way that so
many thoughtful and well-read Americans are so cynical about state of US politics that they
are fine with Trump wrecking it.
"Rather, the commonality among those who voted for Trump is their conviction that the
Democratic party's leadership is utterly bankrupt, and, to one degree or another, so is the
Republican leadership. And that assessment hasn't changed one iota since the election."
They are people who were full of it beforehand, and as the evidence rolls in, they just
sink deeper into lies.
Linker's quote "a desire to collude" you reference later as "collusion". The first instance
is an attempt to broaden the charge from collusion, the second instance is a (sloppy?) change
in language.
@Will Harrington, "Populism can not govern or build institutions by its very nature? I can't
help but read that as saying the plebeians are so incompetent and stupid that only the elites
are capable of governing."
I read that statement as "Once you are governing, once you are the one(s) in a position of
power, then by definition you have become 'the elite' and are no longer 'a plebeian'".
Populists, by definition, are the people who call for the tearing down of institutions that
make up the status-quo, and elites, by definition, are the people who build and maintain
status-quo institutions. At least in my eyes, "being a populist" and "governing institutions"
are mutually exclusive.
Since the conservative party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower was invaded by the right
wingers and became the party of Jefferson Davis and John Wilkes Booth, the goal has been to
tarnish all concept of a functioning a democracy and a government is built to work for the
people, of the people, and by the people. The right wing main tactic is lies and just get
people riled up so that they don't realize and oblivious to the fact that America has slipped
from capitalism to corporatism; from a capitalist democracy to a caste based plutocracy run
for the sole benefit of the oligarchs who bought this country.
Don Trump is the embodiment and distillation of the right winger and their economic and
social cultural policies. He is not an alternative or antidote to the Republicans or
Democrats.
" Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government is in chaos and that Trump is not bringing the change he hoped for. But he doesn't
regret his vote, and he prefers the chaos of Trump to business-as-usual under either the
Democrats or the Republicans. And if Trump winds up discrediting the Federal government
generally, that's fine with him."
I didn't vote this election because I didn't like either candidate. I had been promoting
'America First' as a rallying cry for a candidate for years but Trump wasnt exactly the kind
of leader I had in mind for it.
But I'm with the guy above -- if chaos will bust up the musical chair dual monarchies of the
dems and repubs and the corrupt status quo government bring it on.
A somewhat related question, Noah: If you had been a young man living in China on August 1,
1927, do you think you would have joined the People's Liberation Army?
Originally I wanted to sit out this past election but gave in to peer pressure. And I regret
this. Trump? Clinton? Johnson? Stein? All were mediocre. Clinton/Trump were the two worst
candidates that the "major" parties have ever produced in my lifetime. It was with fear and
trepidation that I voted for Trump, notwithstanding that I fundamentally agreed with him on
the issues of immigration and the need for a reduced American role in global affairs. In the
end, I rationalized this (wasted) vote based upon the notion that not only had his opponent
committed a felony (detouring government emails) but also because (as others have pointed
out) she was the candidate of the status quo, the "permanent bureaucracy", Big Finance etc.
etc. The fact that Trump actually won surprised me, but only moderately, because as terrible
a candidate as he was, his opponent was even worse.
What has transpired since his election comes as no surprise. Had Clinton been elected
conditions would have only been mirror imaged, such being the state of things in this
once-great republic. I continue to maintain that the two-party system is archaic and has to
go. Whether a multi-party system would be better, I don't know. Perhaps we have reached a
point where the country is simply ungovernable. Perhaps more responsibility should be
returned to state and local government (Jefferson would have approved). Again, I don't
know.
What I do know is that the current system is dysfunctional.
And that, my friends, is why we have a real estate/TV personality as President.
i am neither an establishment voter, or a member of the media/press. i am deeply worried
where the man (trump) is taking this nation. the gop is complicit in this chaos as they see
trump as a rubber stamp for their plutocratic agenda. i don't know what it will take to right
the ship of state
I don't regret my vote. And I ave had issues with my choice before and after the election.
The sky is not even close to falling as predicted. And the democracy you claim is at threat
may very well be, but it's from the current executive. And nothing thus far suggests that it
will.
I m not going to dismiss the caterwauling liberals have been making since the campaign or
the election as major distraction to governance.
And by the way there remain not a twiddle's evidence that the WH prior to the election
colluded to undermine the US in any manner. It's time to cease throwing that out as sauce for
the goose.
I think I agree with all four of your "freinds". I am very fond of the establishment, they
have their place. What they provide in cohesion, stability and continuity is valuable to the
state. But they appear to be want for any level of substance, depth thereof or moral
consistency (if any at all). The double standards they hold themselves, their donors and
connections on issues and accountability is unsustainable in a democracy as I think you
understand it.
When I was laid out in the ER, I found myself wrestling with my own position on
healthcare. The temptations are great to bend the guide as to my own conditions -- but I
don't think I could so with a clear conscience. I am nor sot sure that what we haven't lost
is a sense of conscience -- that sense that truth overrides immediate gain. I don't think the
US can survive as the US if the leadership is bent on holding themselves to a standard not
available to the country's citizens.
"Is he happy with Trump? No -- he's especially unhappy with the number of Goldman bankers
Trump appointed to senior economic posts, but more generally he acknowledges that the
government . . ."
And the discredited notions that
1. the rich know how to run an economy effectively and
2. that a rise in the market is a sign of economic health.
Pear Conference captures perfectly the 'thinking' i have heard from more than one Trump
voter. This is 'reasoning'?
If there is one system in America that needs blowing up to start over it might be our
education system. I am generally supportive of public ed, and i am impressed by some of the
commitment and inventiveness i see among the proposers of various alternatives to public ed.
So, some folks are trying, even sometimes succeeding, but we have managed to arrive at a
point in our culture where we have elected a President whose election success depended more
than anything else on a public who have lost the ability to think critically. (if they ever
had it, of course)
Yes I know the other one got more votes, by a lot. And i know that this other candidate was
oddly not at all an attractive alternative. I know all that, but still, a huge fraction of
the voting population–a fraction large enough to make themselves now THE base the
government is playing to–is a group who could not/would not see this con-job coming?
There was every opportunity to use actual logic and facts to reach a voting decision, but
these millions of voters chose instead to go with various variations on the theme of 'they
all stink, so i'm using my vote to poke a stick in their eyes." Or, as Pear satirized, "I
hate/mistrust the elites and they like almost anybody else other than my guy, so I'm gonna
turn my country over to the most vulgar non-elite pig the system can come up with."
There is talk now about the damage he can do to American politics and sense of community, but
I think he may be more symptom than cause. We don't value the things we thought were a
standard part of the American process: truthfulness, kindness, authenticity, devotion to the
common good. We value, it turns out, showmanship, machismo, crass shows of wealth and power,
and ..I can't go on.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I know the institutions held in high regard on this site,
such as church, and some factors we all put our faith in such as increasing levels of
education, turn out not to matter so much as we had thought. It is going to take some hard
work and more than a little time to recover from this sickness in the country's soul.
"Trump supporters are just like people who are outraged by something and show it by rioting
and burning down their own neighborhoods." – Greg in PDX
The antifas rioting and destroying in Portland also got very violent when some old folks
held a peaceful rally for Trump there.
Oh, sorry. I forgot that when "progressives" disagree with someone, they consider that
merely disagreeing with them constitutes "violence" against their "safe space" and they are
compelled to go out and punch or shoot people.
No reason why populism couldn't govern. Huey Long was a damn effective governor of Louisiana.
Send the whole Acela Corridor élite to Saddam's woodchipper and the country would
noodle along just fine. I'm not for state violence, and yet the fantasy gives me a
frisson. Forgive me, a sinner.
On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times
correspondent. Among Hedges' best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The
Death of the Liberal Class , Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph
of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt , which he co-wrote with the cartoonist
Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt .
In an article published in Truthdig September 17 , titled "The Silencing
of Dissent," Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google's censorship of left-wing sites and
warned about the growth of "blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign
agents for Russia and purveyors of 'fake news.'"
Hedges wrote that "the Department of Justice called on RT America and its 'associates' --
which may mean people like me -- to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No
doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning
we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent."
North's interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia
campaign in the media.
David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of
the election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is an
absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation --
critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to
influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way
that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So
I'm not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events.
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really
premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the
release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards
Trump. This doesn't make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national
intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the
Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the
outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women
and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that
abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without
benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass
incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and
quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services,
including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure,
including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the
transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the
aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to
the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal
communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with
impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of
color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social
control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face
its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's
assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the
destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why
they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't
actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a
hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party
has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his
followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the
political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times . When was that, exactly?
CH: From 1990 to 2005.
DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We've
stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class.
CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and
affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in
New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its
special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of
maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work,
although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I
read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site.
DN: Well, I hope more than balance it.
CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it
wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial
distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections
that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of
unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out
reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or
Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador.
He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into
the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American
imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the
internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper
revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the
monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of
information they call "objectivity" and "balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful
and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will
go down clinging to its holy grail.
The intellectual gravitas of the paper -- in particular the Book Review and the Week in
Review -- was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a
cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the
paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of
corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times , along with
business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the
corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated
every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of
stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of
Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a
gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated
greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which
exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to
a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich.
Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very
strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the
Times , like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do
not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and
David Brooks might as well write for the Onion .
I worked overseas. I wasn't in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very
anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren't written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they
do not articulate it, the paper's unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those
upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But
if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a
voice to people who don't have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist
exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get
pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their
loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is
why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper's
biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual
independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard.
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the
ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions
by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is
your evaluation of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the
business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the
elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about
Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for
ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate
structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped
create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on
CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with
verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and
conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people
whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the
Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis
Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would
confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the
Times say you can't go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four
supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is
how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but
everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller
or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave
these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive
institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those
who pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn't buying
the "weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be
putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they
want to see you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents
itself as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left
-- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary
theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work,
especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of
personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central
problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the
disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to
this cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical
movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually
destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s.
For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so
that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and
liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in
Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from
scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster
children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of
personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites
we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance
movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to
be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions
with people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical
critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't
win prizes. You won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will
turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last
book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as
Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even
get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really
safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and
is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members
of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today
they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the
intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a
word for these people: traitors.
DN: What about the impact that you've seen of identity politics in America?
CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced
identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than
nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going
around to collect his fees for selling us out.
My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with
others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in
Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly
angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there
was a group of younger activists, one who said, "We're not letting the white guy go first."
Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton.
That's kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for
corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like
Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people
of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.
It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that
have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old
feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed
women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it
is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of
feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman
president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that
prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to
be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics.
DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and
Sanders, and you were shouted down.
CH: Yes, I don't even remember. I've been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places,
including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer
for Ralph Nader. People don't want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their
political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don't
want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it
down.
DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some
time. You know we are quite outside of that framework.
CH: I'm not a Marxist. I'm not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important
issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don't. You care about things that are
important to me -- mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the
crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time.
DN: Much of what claims to be left -- that is, the pseudo-left -- reflects the interests of
the affluent middle class.
CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead
institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university
departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working
poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States.
Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is
devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the
black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the
clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice.
And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they
savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color.
Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It
kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.
DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus
of its coverage.
CH: That's why I read it and like it.
DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see
this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a
legitimate analogy?
CH: Yes, of course it's the new McCarthyism. But let's acknowledge how almost irrelevant our
voices are.
DN: I don't agree with you on that.
CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we're not heard within the mainstream. When I go to
Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS
and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic
of capitalism or imperialism.
If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or
bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health
care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on
the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are
zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global
oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they
can't afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to
use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence.
DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or
marginalization. I'll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more
requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political
breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful
political force.
CH: That's why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the
bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to
intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and
politics, have to be silenced. (Republished from World Socialist Web Site by
permission of author or representative)
I'm a moderate admirer of Chris Hedges, but he is really cooking in this interview. Too much
to praise here, but his thinking that corporations, the mainstream media, and the academy can
and do successfully "game" dissent by suppression, divide and conquer, co-optation, and so
on, is spot on.
Good but not great interview with Chris Hodges: he manages to talk about an amorphous elite
without identifying any of them and not a word about Israel. So pseudo-good roally
I think this was an excellent discussion, and I would like to thank you both for having it,
and sharing it.
Among the crises effecting the United States, the one effecting us most profoundly is the
absence of any accountability for the crimes committed by our oligarchic class.
Addressing this issue is ground zero for any meaningful change.
If there is no accountability for their crimes , there will be no change.
Certainly the greatest among these crimes was(is) defrauding the nation into " a war of
aggression". which, being the supreme international crime, should be met with harsh prison
sentences for all who promoted it.
It is important for everyone to recognize just how much damage these policies have done to
the country, not just in terms of our collective morale or our constitutional mandates,not
just in terms of our international standing on universal principles of legality and justice,
but our long term economic solvency as a nation.
The "exceptionalism" of our "war of aggression" elites has completely devastated our
nation's balance sheet.
Since 9-11, our national debt has grown by a mind numbing "fourteen and a half trillion
dollars".. nearly quadrupling since 1999.
This unconscionable level of "overspending" is unprecedented in human history.
Not one lawmaker, not one primetime pundit, nor one editorialist (of any major newspaper),
has a CLUE how to deal with it.
Aside from the root atrocity in visiting mass murder on millions of innocents who never
attacked us (and never intended to) which is a horrible crime in and of itself,
There is the profound crisis , in situ , of potentially demanding that 320 million
Americans PAY FOR THE WARS OUR ELITES LIED US INTO .
This is where the rubber meets the road for our "war of aggression-ists ", gentlemen.
This is the "unanimous space" of our entire country's population on the issue of "no
taxation without representation".
WHOSE assets should be made forfeit to pay for these wars .The DECEIVERS or the DECEIVED
?
Ask "The People" ..and you will find your answer .very fast.
No wonder our "elites" are terrified to discuss this .
I agree with the general tenor of this article and would further state that in addition to
the Iraq thing which was a war crime and eliminated any shreds of legitimacy retained by the
yankee regime that the Libya overthrow and destruction, a war crime of historic proportions,
and the use of that overthrow to provide major support to the barbaric element in Syria
expose the yankee regime as an enemy of civilization with all that entails, including
questions of whether, absent any legitimacy, the regime's continued existence itself does not
constitute a major threat.
The elements in the article discussing and exposing the New York Times and its role as an
integral part of the power structure should be read and remembered by all.
How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the
election within the framework of Putin's manipulation?
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is
an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation
-- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
With all due respect for Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an
intelligent commentator, I would suggest that what is also and most ridiculous is the thought
that it is only agents of Israel that have suborned the neocon faction within USA's
government and 'Deep State' (controllers of MSM). Or is this OT? I don't think so, because if
we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as
contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid
the question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
Who or what interest is served by anti-Russia propaganda other than, or in addition to,
just the usual MIC suspects, profiteering corporations who want to keep a supposed need for
nuclear weapons front and center in the minds of Congress? Cui bono?
To be clear: I suggest that neocon office-holders within USA's government or within the
Deep State (controllers of MSM) are foreign agents for at least three nations: the People's
Republic of China,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel.
(I would compare USA now with Imperial China in its declining years when it was being sold
piecemeal to all the great powers of Europe.)
Who benefits from this situation and how do they benefit? All three of these countries are
deeply involved in suborning members of Congress and others within the government of the USA,
yet none of the three is mentioned in such a connection by the MSM or by officials of the
Executive. Thus, it is beneficial to them to have suspicion thrown onto Russia and thus
investigative attention deflected from themselves. A few public figures (e.g., Philip
Giraldi) have made such allegations respecting Israel, more public figures have made such
suggestions respecting Saudi Arabia, but very few have made the allegations in the case of
the PRC.
Let's think about this in the context of history, beginning with the Vietnam War. When USA
got involved in Vietnam -- which involvement began during the days of Eisenhower/Dulles --
probably the primary interest groups that swayed USA global/foreign policy were the Vatican
and the China Lobby. The interests of these two lobbies converged in Vietnam. From the RC
side, consider an historical event that is unknown practically to any Americans under the age
of 60 or 70, namely, Operation Passage to Freedom, 1954-55.
"The period was marked by a CIA-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam's
Roman Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign exhorted Catholics to flee
impending religious persecution under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1 million
Catholics obliged." (Wikipedia: Operation Passage to Freedom )
From the side of the China Lobby – avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA
involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – what we saw in the early years of
USA's involvement, 1965-1969, was a period in which the China Lobby could push an agenda that
included widening the Vietnam campaign into southern China, particularly to include the
tungsten mining operations supposedly owned by K.C. Wu. Tungsten at that time was considered
as having tremendous strategic value, centering on, but not limited to, its essential use in
the filaments of incandescent light-bulbs. It became clear after the Tet Offensive that the
entire strategy of reopening the Chinese civil war, capturing the tungsten, etc, could make
sense only if Chang Kai Shek's KMT would commit its troops in huge numbers, virtually all of
its troops, on the ground in Vietnam (which would have brought in huge numbers of PRC troops
on the other side) -- it became, to borrow one of Nixon's favorite phrases, "perfectly clear"
that expansion into southern China and capture of the tungsten operations there were not in
the cards. When Kissinger talked up his 'realpolitik', what he really meant was the politics
of surrendering to Beijing. So, Nixon in July 1969, recognizing that there was nothing to be
gained by the loss of life and expenditure of every form of capital, ordered first of many
troop withdrawals from Vietnam. It was all a done deal as of Kissinger taking over as
National Security Adviser, January 1969 -- everything but the tears.
Now, patience, dear reader, this is all leading up to a certain crucial event that took
place in 1971 -- namely, Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing in July (1971) to arrange for
everything regarding what amounted to a surrender to the PRC, except the end of the Vietnam
War. The documents are still unavailable as classified Top Secret or whatever, but clearly,
China had no interest in seeing an end to the Vietnam War, because both parties –
Vietnam and USA – were adversaries of China. (Let them knock each other out!) Most
likely, Zhou talked Henry into doing what he could to prolong USA's involvement in the
Vietnam War, not to shorten it. See, including between the lines, National Security
Archives:
As noted, this stuff is mostly unavailable to us, the public, but it is clear that USA's
'leaders' (Nixon and Kissinger) wanted to make kissy-kissy with Zhou Enlai, and it was all
arranged including George H. W. Bush's appointment as USA's first 'Ambassador' (in all but
name) to Beijing, and including giving China's permanent seat on the UNSC to Beijing and
otherwise selling out the old China Lobby. I call it the 'old China Lobby' because part of
what was arranged was that the old China Lobby would be taken over by the New China lobby,
complete with all the payola channels into Congress and the Deep State.
Now, I think, we arrive at today, 2017, and the failure of Trump to act on his campaign
promises to oppose China in any way. Maybe he thought about it for a minute, but he was
surrounded by neocons, who were already on the payroll of the PRC -- if not taking direct
orders from the Standing Committee of the CCP, then at least promised to avoid offending the
interests of the PRC -- on pain of losing regular paychecks from Beijing into their secret
Grand Cayman accounts.
What I would like to say to Hedges. and others like him, is just this:
THEY say that you are foreign agents for Russia? Time to use a little judo on them: time
for YOU to speak truth that THEY are foreign agents for the People's Republic of China.
And don't forget this potent phrase: YET NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON!
"The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can't afford to have us
around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they're going to use harsher forms of
control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence."
Precisely! What makes it even worse, they will be pushing this new pretexts for control
sloppy (as in Vegas) and in a hurry. Which will make them look even more ridiculous and due
to the lack of time will force to act even more stupid, resulting in an exponential curve of
censorship, oppression and insanity. And that's there the maniacal dreams of certain forces
to start a really big war in the Middle East (with or without attacking North Korea first)
may come true.
"avoiding the matter of JFK's planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964
election – "
Now that's a lie. This part is a lie. Or it is carefully crafted ex post hoc mythology a
la Camelot, the Kennedy Mystique.
FACT: JFK was a Cold War Hawk and during his administration increased nuclear arms higher
than Ike and until Reagan.
JFK during his administration increased the number of "advisers" to a higher number than
Ike.
William F. Buckley pointedly asked Senator Robert Kennedy in the mid. '60′s "So, was
there any thought of the White House pulling out [of Vietnam]?
RFK: No. There never was.
If anything, had he lived to see a second term, most likely US involvement in Vietnam
would have escalated as much as under LBJ, perhaps with the same disastrous results, perhaps
not. But JFK was no peacenik dove.
Mr. Hedges comes across as a total whackjob, and makes Bill Moyers appear to be a gentle
moderate in comparison. That he thinks so highly of race man BLM supporter Cornell West
speaks volumes of naivety to the nth degree. A total cuck without even knowing it, nay,
totally appreciative of being a cuck and it appears to be his hope that one day his cardinal
sin of being white will be purged by peoples of color, who are his true moral and
intellectual betters in every step of the way.
I agree that the Russia fixation is garbage, but explaining the populist revolt without
touching on the major issue of forced demographic and cultural change through legal and
illegal immigration is dishonest. Almost everyone who isn't an immigrant or the descendant or
relative of a post-65 immigrant is pissed off beyond words about this! How did you miss the
popular response to Trump's promises to "deport them all," end birthright citizenship and
chain migration, build a wall etc.? Without those promises, he wouldn't have made it to the
debates.
I'm also not sure how welfare has been stripped. What programs aren't available?
I'm not sure how to lower black incarceration rates. Having taught in inner-city schools
and worked in the same environment in other jobs, I know that crime and dysfunction are
through the roof. I can only imagine what those communities would be like if the predators
and crooks that are incarcerated were allowed to roam free.
Chris Hedges: It's as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is
an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation
-- critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
Is this the same Chris Hedges that wrote those articles in November 2001 that Saddam and
al Qaeda were in cahoots, which led to the illegal 2003 invasion?
Tell me Chris, did you know about the CIA pollution then or just find out lately? And
correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you also write NYT articles in the Fall of 2002 saying
that Saddam had WMD's?
Again, getting your tips from the CIA? Ever hear of 'Operation Mockingbird?"
It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy.
That's cringe-worthy.
Transformation into an oligarchy? Transformation ??? I like Hedges' work,
but such fundamental errors really taint what he sez.
The country was never transformed into an oligarchy; it began as one.
In fact, it was organized and functioned as a pluto-oligarchy right out of the box. In
case anyone has the dimness to argue with me about it, all that shows is that you don't know
JS about how the cornstitution was foisted on the rest of us by the plutoligarchs.
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for "
-Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782 . ME 2:163
The Elites "Have No Credibility Left"
Guess what, boys and girls Why did they have any to begin with?
Where do people get their faith? WakeTF up, already!! (Yes, I'm losing it. Because even a
duumbshit goy like myself can see it. Where are all you bright bulb know-it-alls with all the
flippin answers???)
Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call "objectivity" and
"balance," formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the
truth.
It's amazing that here we are, self-anointed geniuses and dumbos alike, puttering around
in the 21st century, and someone feels the necessity to point that out. And he's right; it
needs to be pointed out. Drummed into our skulls in fact.
Arrrgggghhhh!!! Jefferson again.:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes
suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of
misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within
their knowledge with the lies of the day.
More deja vu all over again and again. Note the date.:
"This is a story of a powerful and wealthy newspaper having enormous influence And never
a day out of more than ten thousand days that this newspaper has not subtly and
cunningly distort the news of the world in the interest of special privilege.
"
Upton Sinclair, "The crimes of the "Times" : a test of newspaper decency," pamphlet,
1921
"The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical
movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually
destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s.
For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace."
Look what they did to Henry Wallace -- Are you kidding me? Wallace was a Stalinist stooge,
too treasonous even for his boss, FDR, although the bird brain Eleanor loved him. The guy was
so out of touch with reality that after the Potemkin tour of the Gulag that Stalin gave him
during WWII he came back raving about how swell it was for the lunch-bucket gang in Siberia.
He also encouraged FDR to sell out the Poles to Stalin
I find it most fascinating that none of what Hedges says is news, but even UR readers
probably think it is. Here's an antidote to that idea.
The following quote is from Eugene Kelly who's excoriating government press releases but
the criticism applies as well to the resulting press reports. I found the whole article
striking.:
Any boob can deduce, a priori, what type of "news" is contained in this
rubbish.
-Eugene A. Kelly, Distorting the News, The American Mercury, March 1935 , pp.
307-318
Hedges doesn't seem to understand that the "Resistance" is openly and obviously working FOR
Deepstate. They do not resist wars and globalism and monopolistic corporations. They resist
everyone who questions the war. They resist nationalism and localism.
Nothing mysterious or hidden about this, no ulterior motive or bankshot. It's explicitly
stated in every poster and shout and beating.
"... This week, under the headline " It's Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned U.S. War in Yemen ," journalist Adam Johnson reported for the media watchdog group FAIR about the collapse of journalistic decency at MSNBC, under the weight of the network's Russia Russia Russia obsession. Johnson's article asks a big-type question: "Why is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely ignoring his most devastating war?" ..."
"... It would be easy for news watchers to see that the Democratic Party is much more committed to a hard line against Russia than a hard line against the corporate forces imposing extreme economic inequality here at home. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more." That, of course, is the purpose and intent. Just like hobbling the 'left' with absurd identity politics. ..."
"... It is a sham since no evidence of election influence by the Russians was provided and no preventive or corrective measures our government is taking to prevent Emmanuel Goldstein (The Russians) from further attacking and usurping our elections was put forth. ..."
"... I'm surprised that some of those folks, notably Thom Hartmann, choose not to practice what they preach -- you know, the platitudes about studying the facts and coming to your own conclusions rather than following the herd. They rightly condemn acting on prejudice, out of pure self-interest, without verifiable facts (indeed at odds with empirical fact) and using group intimidation, as per McCarthyist tactics, and then they go ahead and embrace those vices to their own ends. ..."
Hammering on Russia is a losing strategy for progressives as most Americans care about
economic issues and it is the Republicans and corporate Democrats who stand to gain, argues
Norman Solomon.
Progressives should figure it out. Amplifying the
anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic fairness, equal
rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more. Echoing the racket of blaming
Russia for the USA's severe shortages of democracy plays into the hands of Republicans and
corporate Democrats eager to block progressive momentum.
When riding on the "Russiagate" bandwagon, progressives unwittingly aid political forces
that are eager to sideline progressive messages. And with the midterm elections now scarcely
100 days away, the torrents of
hyperbolic and
hypocritical claims about Russia keep diverting attention from why it's so important to
defeat Republicans.
As a practical matter, devoting massive amounts of time and resources to focusing on Russia
has reduced capacities to effectively challenge the domestic forces that are assaulting
democratic possibilities at home -- with such tactics as state voter ID laws, purging of voter
rolls, and numerous barriers to suppress turnout by people of color.
Instead of keeping eyes on the prize, some of the Democratic base has been watching and
trusting media outlets like MSNBC. An extreme Russia obsession at the network has left precious
little airtime to expose and challenge the vast quantity of terrible domestic-policy measures
being advanced by the Trump administration every day.
Likewise with the U.S. government's militarism. While some Democrats and Republicans in
Congress have put forward legislation to end the active U.S. role in Saudi Arabia's
mass-murderous war on Yemen, those efforts face a steeper uphill climb because of MSNBC.
This week, under the headline "
It's Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned U.S. War in Yemen ," journalist Adam
Johnson reported for the media watchdog group FAIR about the collapse of journalistic decency
at MSNBC, under the weight of the network's Russia Russia Russia obsession. Johnson's article
asks a big-type question: "Why is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely
ignoring his most devastating war?"
Maddow: Most Americans don't care for her obsession.
The FAIR report says: "What seems most likely is MSNBC has found that attacking Russia from
the right on matters of foreign policy is the most elegant way to preserve its 'progressive'
image while still serving traditional centers of power -- namely, the Democratic Party
establishment, corporate sponsors, and their own revolving door of ex-spook and military
contractor-funded talking heads."
Russia Doesn't Concern Americans
Corporate media have been exerting enormous pressure on Democratic officeholders and
candidates to follow a thin blue party line on Russia. Yet polling shows that few Americans see
Russia as a threat to their well-being; they're far more concerned about such matters as
healthcare, education, housing and overall economic security.
The gap between most Americans and media elites is clear in a
nationwide poll taken after the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, which was fiercely
condemned by the punditocracy. As The Hill newspaper reported this week under the
headline "Most Americans Back Trump's Call for Follow-Up Summit With Putin," 54 percent of
respondents favored plans for a second summit. "The survey also found that 61 percent of
Americans say better relations with Russia are in the best interest of the United States."
Yet most Democratic Party leaders have very different priorities. After investing so much
political capital in portraying Putin's government as an implacable enemy of the United States,
top Democrats on Capitol Hill are hardly inclined to help thaw relations between the world's
two nuclear superpowers.
It would be easy for news watchers to see that the Democratic Party is much more committed to a hard line against Russia
than a hard line against the corporate forces imposing extreme economic inequality here at home.
National polling underscores just how out of whack and out of touch the party's top dogs are. Last month, the Gallup
organization asked: "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" The results were telling. "Situation with Russia" came in at
below one-half of 1 percent.
The day after the Helsinki summit, TheWashington Post reported: "Citing
polls and focus groups that have put Trump and Russia far down the list of voter priorities,
Democratic strategists have counseled candidates and party leaders for months to discuss
'kitchen table' issues. Now, after a remarkable 46-minute news conference on foreign soil where
Trump stood side by side with a former KGB agent to praise his 'strong' denials of election
interference and criticize the FBI, those strategists believe the ground may have shifted."
Prominent corporate Democrats who want to beat back the current progressive groundswell
inside their party are leading the charge. Jim Kessler, a senior vice president at the
"centrist" Third Way organization, was quick to
proclaim after the summit: "It got simple real fast. I've talked to a lot of Democrats that
are running in purple and red states and districts who have said that Russia rarely comes up
back home, and I think that has now changed."
The Democratic National Committee and other official arms of the party keep sending out
Russia-bashing emails to millions of people on a nearly daily basis. At times the goals seem to
involve generating and exploiting manic panic.
At the end of last week, as soon as the White House announced plans (later postponed) for
Vladimir Putin to meet with President Trump in Washington this fall, the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee fired off a mass email -- from "RUSSIA ALERT (via DCCC)" --
declaring that the Russian president "must NOT be allowed to set foot in our country." The
email strained to conflate a summit with Russian interference in U.S. elections. "We cannot
overstate how dangerous this is," the DCCC gravely warned. And: "We need to stop him at all
costs."
For Democrats who move in elite circles, running against Putin might seem like a smart
election move. But for voters worried about economic insecurity and many other social ills, a
political party obsessed with Russia is likely to seem aloof and irrelevant to their lives.
Norman Solomon is the national coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and
the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books
including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."
Nop , July 31, 2018 at 10:38 am
"Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left's core messages for economic
fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more." That, of course, is the purpose and intent. Just like hobbling the 'left' with absurd
identity politics.
Bill Goldman , July 30, 2018 at 6:44 pm
If the Democrats don't turn primaries into housecleaning out establishment Dems, they will
gain no seats in the midterm election and Trump will retain his Republican majority in both
chambers. Putin is an heroic figure to the global electorates. They admire and respect him
and even wish he were running on their tickets. Most Americans want nothing to do with
mainstream media be it the NYT, WSJ, Fox, Financial Times, Guardian, MSNBC, or CNN. They are
mostly viewed as extreme liars and propagandists of the Goebbels variety. The real action is
in the alternative media who realize capitalist wars are military-industrial rackets. The
play is at RT, Sputnik International, Consortium, The Saker, New Eastern Outlook, and
Greenville Post, among others.
Taras77 , July 30, 2018 at 11:42 am
Not sure where this link would fit but here it is:
It was ok when Hillary said we need a "strong" Russia:
"We want very much to have a strong Russia because a strong, competent, prosperous, stable
Russia is , we think, in the interests of the world," Clinton said as Obama's secretary of
state in her 2010 interview with the partially Russian government-owned First Channel
Television.
Russia is not the USSR, although PMSNBC wants the ignorant to "stay ignorant, my
friend.."
Thedems are their own worst enemy.
Lois Gagnon , July 29, 2018 at 11:41 pm
Rachel Maddow is unfortunately a cult hero in my neck of the Western Mass woods as she
makes her permanent home here. It's impossible to penetrate the total brainwashing she has
managed to accomplish among the pink hat wearing crowd. It's very dispiriting.
It's sad when someone like Rachel Maddow uses their social gifts to advance tribalism. In
this case, one could say the Russia bashing amounts to racism.
H Beazley , July 29, 2018 at 9:55 pm
I have a foolproof method for proving which journalists are controlled by the C.I.A. The
agency always advocates for war and always claims that JFK was killed by a "lone nut." Rachel
Maddow always goes along with war propaganda and supports the Warren Commission every
November 22. Therefore, she is a tool for the C.I.A. and cannot be trusted.
Reference for above statement. Jim DiEugenio is a real source for the truth of the JFK
assassination, not Phil Shenon.
glitch , July 31, 2018 at 7:23 am
JFK is their most blatant "tell". Some can't even say his name without spitting it
out.
CitizenOne , July 29, 2018 at 9:26 pm
Today on ABC Martha Raddatz hosted "This Week" which featured James Lankford a Republican
from Oklahoma describing how Russia and Putin were actively trying to ruin our democracy and
also were trying to influence elections at every possible turn. The Russian Bear and Putin
according to Lankford were also trying to rewrite the Constitution, trying to upend every
election and were seeking to disrupt our national electrical grid not to be confused with our
national election grid which they were also trying to destroy as well as to control the most
local elections by a means of electronic control that was beyond any means to control.
Of course no mention was made about possible solutions to thwart the Russians was
mentioned and it is doubtful that there are any serious efforts to counteract the alleged
Russian hacking of US elections since not one single preventive action to stop the Orwellian
monster of Russia, like Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty Four" was put
forth.
Apparently ABC and the other media are trying to convince Americans that there is an
overwhelming force in Russia that is somehow able to infiltrate and control all our national
elections. Apparently the Russians are unstoppable.
It is a sham.
It is a sham since no evidence of election influence by the Russians was provided and no
preventive or corrective measures our government is taking to prevent Emmanuel Goldstein (The
Russians) from further attacking and usurping our elections was put forth.
Instead the publishers of "This Week" on ABC were content to provide evidence-free
incriminations of Russia and attribute all manner of influence in our elections to the
incredibly sneaky and unstoppable Russian-Putin election Influencing machine which is
unstoppable by our intelligence agencies.
What is missing from Martha Radditz's show? There will never be any admission that they
have jobs because of Citizens United, their corporate benefactors (Koch Industries),
Gerrymandering, Dark Money, Media Bias which ensures that the Iron Triangle of corporate
election dark money flows to hand picked political candidates that will support conservative
causes or that these are the real election influencing mechanisms which have the most power
in our country to influence elections.
As long as ABC, NBC, CBS and other cable news shows fail to correctly identify the real
reasons of election corruption which is our very near and dear corporate money funded
political organizations we will continue to be duped by the free press to believe that Russia
has control over our national elections and not believe that US Corporations hold all the
power.
Cassandra , July 29, 2018 at 8:43 pm
Hell hath no fury like a Clinton scorned. The Goldwater Girl just can't over her loss to
El Chumpo. It had to be the Russians, not the thoroughly disgusted American people who voted
with their feet by not going to the polls at all.
Thanks to Norman for reminding us of the continued waste of time and effort on the
'russiagate' stories based on allegations and indictments, NOT evidence or possible reasons
for such behavior. The USA is fully capable of unfair election practices, helped by the
undemocratic system of electoral college, partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, lack of
response to voter desires .plus of course Israel being the very large external factor.
Trump's influence on workers, environment, USA's reputation are negative, but blaming Russia
when this is in nobody's real interest is hardly the way forward for the Democratic
Party.
SteveK9 , July 28, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Incredible as it seems, the re-election of Donald Trump (assuming he is not deposed or
killed before then) is not essential to preserve our democracy. If they bring him down
(whatever you may think of him), then we might just as well have a 'Star Chamber' of the
Military/Industrial/Intelligence complex choose the President, not that it would matter who
that might be.
It really is peculiar what's happened to these dimwit Dems. I used to listen to Thom
Hartmann and Rachel Maddow when they were on Air America, and their main political positions
were for working people. Now, all they do is partisan politics which they don't seem to
understand benefits only the Deep State war party.
Incidentally, State of the Nation website, http://www.sott.net , has an article by Alex Krainer, who wrote
the book about Bill Browder's crooked dealings in Russia. His book, which was suppressed by
Browder first, i think is "Grand Deception", now available from Red Pill Press for $25 (and
must be selling well because it's being reprinted). I wrote this hastily but you'll see it on
sott.net. Russia's resurgence under Putin is nothing short of astounding.
Also, there is a video on Youtube, "The Rise of Putin and the Fall of the Russian Jewish
Oligarchs", 2 parts. I only saw the beginning showing how the Russian people were given state
vouchers that led to the oligarchs buying them up for their own profit and plunging Russians
into shock therapy disaster instigated by IMF and other US led monetary agencies including
Harvard. This is why it is so incredible how Americans receive political "perception control"
when the truth is exactly opposite of what they are being told. At least more people are
realizing the lies being told about Russia and Putin.
Drew Hunkins , July 27, 2018 at 3:51 pm
Maddow, Corn and the rest of them are playing a dangerous game. This weekend there's a guy
over at Counterpunch ("The curious case of pro-Trump leftism") who's essentially saying that
any progressives or liberal minded folks who concede that Trump's on the righteous path in
pursuing a detente of sorts with the Kremlin is a naive fool and isn't to be taken seriously
(Thom Hartmann also had a recent piece saying similar things). He sets up a Manichean world
in which you either see Trump as the sole embodiment of evil or you're a dupe playing into
rightwing hands. I for one, and most others at CN, have been highly critical of 90% of
Trump's platform and policies but we're also not dunderheaded dolts, we know when to give the
man a modicum of credit for going against the military industrial media complex on at least
this one particular issue.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 9:26 pm
All those loons you mentioned are effectively practicing a religion, in which there is a
dogma everyone must believe to be virtuous and a set of commandments every believer must live
by to gain salvation. Don't toe the line on every bit of it and you are rejected as an
apostate.
I'm surprised that some of those folks, notably Thom Hartmann, choose not to practice what
they preach -- you know, the platitudes about studying the facts and coming to your own
conclusions rather than following the herd. They rightly condemn acting on prejudice, out of
pure self-interest, without verifiable facts (indeed at odds with empirical fact) and using
group intimidation, as per McCarthyist tactics, and then they go ahead and embrace those
vices to their own ends.
It is my process on everything in this life to learn as much as I can on my own, without
being brainwashed by any group or movement, and only backing a cause if it is congruent with
my own conclusions. Unfortunately, most people do the opposite: they are joiners first and
analysts only if their biases are not threatened.
I feel entirely justified in agreeing with movements on some things and not others. I
doubt that human beings have arrived at definitive answers about most phenomena in the real
world or that any single organised group of us has it all down accurate and pat on
everything. Listen to any casual debate on the questions big and small in science: the give
and take, back and forth, can go on as long as the participants have the interest and energy.
I never give my interlocutors any respite, because there is always one more thing to be
considered or one more way of looking at a problem. I'm sure I would have been burned at the
stake in many previous lives and so would a lot of the readers here.
Dogmatic party-line Democrats, Republicans, Communists, Islamists, Rastafarians,
Bokononites and all the rest suffer from the same malady of checking their minds at the door
when it comes to movement politics. They will never do the unthinkable and cooperate with the
opposition even if they happen to agree on an issue. This is a manifestation of the Manichean
approach you mentioned, Drew. Admit that the opposition is right about anything and you open
the door to the possibility that they are right about more, AND that you may (heaven forbid!)
be wrong more often than absolutely never. The main exception, at least in America, seems to
be warfare, which both main factions and a lot of the marginal ones agree enthusiastically
upon and engage with relish.
"... The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems, and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and safety lies in abandoning it. ..."
"... Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1 trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). ..."
"... My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these clowns" at the top of the ballot. ..."
"... I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just haven't figured it that out yet. ..."
"... Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect Zeno's paradox to save us. ..."
"... I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care, greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as that. ..."
"... tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point. ..."
"... I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying Russiagate or Democrats. ..."
"... I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped create. ..."
"... The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. ..."
"... As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. ..."
"... And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning talk show earlier this week. He really should know better. ..."
"... Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election." ..."
"... Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China. ..."
"... Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness. ..."
"... It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own way. ..."
"... "One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest subcategory of Democratic candidates." ..."
"... We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention. In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not calling an apple an armadillo. ..."
The whole corrupt, crazy political process is a distraction from our real problems,
and an endless maze of futility. The illusion of democracy is collapsing all around us, and
safety lies in abandoning it. We need a new way of thinking and acting that clearly and
directly sees our problems and deals with them. Politics as now understood is a dead end.
Agreed. Our entire national political debate is a theater of smoke and mirrors. The
facts most obvious and degrading to the national interest are ignored at all costs, e.g., an
out of control military-industrial-intelligence complex that now swallows up an obscene $1
trillion annually (including "defense related expenditures"). Even the fact that we no
longer live in a democracy but an oligarchy, according to objective studies and noted
commentators, including former president Carter, is never commented upon by the miscreant
pundits posing as reporters (Hayes, Maddow, Anderson, Cuomo, et al).
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:33 am
My plans for the upcoming Democratic primary in Florida: I will write "none of these
clowns" at the top of the ballot. Under that I will write "Stop the warmongering and
phony Russia-bashing. Stop the obstructionism just to damage Trump and exonerate Hillary for
losing a poorly-run campaign. I cannot vote for my party this November, and never again until
you stop trying to run to the right of the Republicans." Maybe someone reading the ballot
will pass the message on to the party leadership and adjustments will at least be
considered.
If not, eff 'em. We will be better off sweeping corrupt corporatist cronies of Hillary,
like Wasserman-Schultz, out of congress. Then there will be no doubt that the GOP needs to go
too, after they use their mandate to totally wreck all before them, and maybe, after a few
election cycles, some third party representing the interests of the people rather than Wall
Street and the MIC can emerge. Maybe the Greens and the Libertarians can become at least
equal players with the corporatist Dems and GOPers.
Somebody new is going to have to preside over the coming economic and societal collapse,
and do we want that to be the military, the police and the spooks? That is who will seize
power (not just covertly but overtly) if the usually mercenary politicians cannot effect some
workable changes.
Broompilot , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 pm
Like the Eastern Roman Empire, we could wax and wane for 1000 years with the power we
possess. Or, like the Soviet Union, we could suffer an economic collapse over a decade
throwing a large percentage of us into poverty.
I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the Soviets, but we just
haven't figured it that out yet.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 9:48 pm
"I tend to think that the Cold War bankrupted us as well as the soviets, but we just
haven't figured that out yet."
Because we prefer to blow off science and empirically-supported concepts like the first
law of thermodynamics which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just
transferred or changed in form.
We choose to believe that we can endlessly create money, which is a token representing
access to available stored energy, out of nothing by issuing debt. Even if the tokens are
infinite, on a finite planet the available energy is certainly not.
Most of the human race has been speeding towards the cliff at 100 mph like Thelma and
Louise. Certainly America has been. It's getting ever closer. We will get there. Don't expect
Zeno's paradox to save us.
Ma Laoshi , July 27, 2018 at 5:37 am
We are long past the point that this extreme Russophobia has revealed itself to be plain
old race hatred. These bouts of hysteria have always been part of the American DNA, and it
has been most instructive how fast and seamless the switch has been from Muslims to Russians
as the hated. Other. Progressives have solemnly declared themselves to be the good guys
without much introspection, so one would expect them to be more susceptible to this bigotry,
not less; a more astute observer might have asked "When will the machine turn on me next?",
as is of course already happening to Sanders and others.
Yes RussiaGating is a losing strategy, but most of the evidence is that progressives ARE
losers. So there's no surprise that they're falling for it, and little to indicate that they
deserve any better.
Mike , July 26, 2018 at 11:43 pm
Never voted for Republican congressmen in the past. Never. This time I will. Democrats are
the party of open borders and war. Now they want conflict with Russia over this ginned up
fake investigation. They don't represent working people any more. I don't even think they put
AMERICANS over illegal immigrants. Why is it wrong that people should be forced to obey
immigration law? The laws for citizens are enforced. Never thought I'd vote Republican.
I can't think of any reason to vote for 99.9% of the Democrats. The more everyone
including the media lies about Russia, the more I empathize with them.
I'd guess the business owners that rely on illegals vote for Republicans because they're
business owners. We need to eat and they need to make more money than they deserve so neither
party is going to stand in the way of it as long as they bribe their politicians and anybody
else that feels entitled to free stuff. Democrats won't get rid of ICE soon, if ever.
Nearly all people coming from the South are escaping conditions we've created and are
granted asylum when allowed to make their case in court.
I think treating defenseless people terribly to show how mean we can be is wrong.
I share your setiment about the Democrats but voting for Republicans just because is
equally foolish. Why support banning labor unions, corporate very expensive health care,
greatly reducing and eventually eliminating social security and Medicare, privitzing all
public infrastructure and bailing out wall Street at all cost. I could go on but you get the
idea. Vote for candidates that stand for the American people and have the guts to stand up to
the elites. If no such candidates exist in a particular election don't vote simple as
that.
glitch , July 28, 2018 at 11:28 am
If you can't vote third party write in none of the above on a paper ballot. If those
aren't options spoil your ballot but turn it in. Not voting doesn't register your disdain,
it's easier for them to ignore as apathy. And non votes can be spoofed (stolen). S
tealing a "none of the above" write-in requires the ballot be destroyed, so it can
provide a paper trail and/or a potential theft exposure point.
I am a registered Democrat; I will NOT be voting for them this fall. They no longer
have any credibility with me. Rachel helped them shoot themselves in the foot as far as I'm
concerned. How are they any different from neocons??? I'm grateful WikiLeaks pulled off their
mask. I'm a historian and know a lot of both CIA and Russian history and am not buying
Russiagate or Democrats.
I like that, the "Demented-crats"! They are so completely clueless, in their overpaid
bubbles, nothing to say about the Race-to-the-Bottom, Hunger Games society they have helped
create.
Meanwhile, over in Russia, the government with leadership of Vladimir Putin has increased
the Russians' standard of living, much as was done for Americans under FDR and the New Deal.
(Never a word about the 80+ governments the USA/CIA has destabilized or directly overthrown,
including Russia's -- oh no! We're exceptional, didn't you know?)
Yea, I don't get it. Who the hell do you consider to be the progressives!?! Most people I
know who consider themselves to be progressives aren't all wrapped up in the Russian
narrative. The loyal shrills to Clinton? Those aren't progressives. Clinton herself
pretty much backed away from that stamp during the election cycle. Pelosi has quite obviously
made it clear she can't even see that side of the fence. Or will she allow it the light of
day. In case you missed it, there's a war on progressives going on. And we aren't allowed in
that club over there. I follow a hand full of Green Party sites on face hack, and they aren't
having the Russia did it by any means. Only those loyal to the liberal democrats have the
ignorance to bellow out the talking points and support for Sanders. Yea, those people that
wouldn't give him the light of day during that same election cycle when we thought he was a
progressive. Easy Bob! Just a hic cup. I hope! Rest peacefully!
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 6:46 am
As Jimmy Dore keeps telling us: the Democratic leadership, which is totally
corporatist and neocon, would rather lose to the GOP candidate than to see a progressive or
liberal Democrat win the office. The Dems have no independent policies of their own and are
merely enablers to make sure that the hard right agenda always prevails. They are a sham
party. Enough "blue dogs" and GOP-light types always win as Democrats to ensure that no
progressive legislation will ever be enacted even when "the party" has 60% majorities in both
houses -- as they did in Obama's first term. This is by design. Even the putative Democratic
presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama functioned as center-right Republicans. Obama said
as much. Clinton didn't have to as his policies were all reactionary and brought us to the
impending economic collapse.
Zim , July 26, 2018 at 5:39 pm
Looks like the Inauthentic Opposition Party is gearing up for another ass whooping at the
polls. The hypocrisy, the cluelessness is astounding.
JMG , July 26, 2018 at 5:33 pm
From this excellent Norman Solomon's article:
"As The Hill newspaper reported this week under the headline "Most Americans Back Trump's
Call for Follow-Up Summit With Putin," 54 percent of respondents favored plans for a second
summit. "The survey also found that 61 percent of Americans say better relations with Russia
are in the best interest of the United States.""
And I see Bernie Sanders was spewing this neo-McCarthyite crap on a Sunday morning
talk show earlier this week. He really should know better.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:01 am
He's been co-opted. He's been told that the blame will be his when the Democratic Party
collapses unless he works like hell to keep his sheep in the fold. He's following orders from
the DNC which believes that the party's last best hope for a comeback, indeed to stave off
annihilation, is to keep bashing Putin and Trump because they have no policies, no
credibility and no candidates that the people eagerly want to get behind. They think that
lies and war are the winning combination. How did that work out for LBJ, Bushdaddy, and
Dubya's organisation?
mrtmbrnmn , July 26, 2018 at 5:15 pm
Ever since the Bonnie & Clyde Clinton years, the sclerotic Establishment Dementedcrats
have essentially despised their base. They only speak AT them. Never FOR them. Or else they
SCOLD them or simply IGNORE them. I hope now they are beginning to FEAR them.
jose , July 26, 2018 at 4:22 pm
Personally speaking, I am yet to see any serious evidence against allege Russia meddling
in US elections. And I am not alone in this regard; For instance, according to counterpunch
news, " The decision to blame Russian meddling for Hillary Clinton's electoral loss was made
in the immediate aftermath of the election by her senior campaign staff." According to Mike
Whitney, "So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump
campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency."
Isaac Christiansen observes that "As Democrats seek to shift blame away from the
discontent with our economic system, their party and their chosen Neoliberal candidate, we
are told that Trump came to power almost solely due to Russian interference in the U.S. 2016
election." I reckon that any rational person should believe any Russian interference in
US electoral system only when presented with real iron-clad prove. Otherwise, it would be
foolhardy to accept at face value speculations and innuendo of a foreign interference that
purportedly put Trump in the White House.
DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:28 pm
Well, a couple of issues here. Liberals have not been about economic justice, but about
protecting the advantages of the middle class (with an occasional pat on the head to min.
wage workers). They've forgotten that we're over 20 years into one hell of a war on the poor.
Not everyone can work, and there aren't jobs for all. The US began shipping out jobs in the
'80s, ended actual welfare aid in the '90s -- lost over 6 million manufacturing jobs alone
since 2000. What is" justice" for today's jobless poor?
Remember how the entire anti-Russian theme began? The Clinton team used Russia as
their excuse for losing 2016. It didn't get much attention at first because the
party/candidate that loses inevitably blames someone or something other than the
candidate/party. But the Democrats ran with it from there, using much of the media marketed
to liberals to build the Russian Tale. The most insane thing about the claims that Russia
hacked voting machines for Trump, etc.: In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton
right wing, H. Clinton got the most votes. (Did Russia do that, and if so, why?) Trump is
president because of our antiquated electoral college process. Meanwhile, while Dems ramble
on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has watched as Trump set the stage for our
final war, US vs. Russia and China.
Realist , July 27, 2018 at 7:09 am
"Meanwhile, while Dems ramble on about a Putin/Trump bromance, the sane world has
watched as Trump set the stage for our final war, US vs. Russia and China."
So very right. Everything gets conspicuously twisted by a biased media, yet no one (of
consequence) says anything about that. Even as Trump gets bashed, he gets cheered whenever he
does something dangerous and stupid, such as launching missiles in the aftermath of an
obvious false flag incident. We see the matrix being blatantly and clumsily spun right before
our eyes and nobody says a word about the emperor's nakedness.
Skip Scott , July 26, 2018 at 2:27 pm
It is time for the progressives to flee the Democratic party en masse and go their own
way. If they haven't learned anything from the 2016 election, they are doomed. The DNC
has a stranglehold on the Progressive movement, and sheep dog Bernie will once again herd
them over to the corporate sponsored candidate in the end. For the midterms, this is what the
Democrats have planned:
"One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have
military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest
subcategory of Democratic candidates."
The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and are
our only hope at this point. They just need the right standard bearers to break through the
MSM censorship. If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the
15% threshold for the debates, the American people would finally see that they really do have
a choice for a better future.
DH Fabian , July 26, 2018 at 3:36 pm
We haven't seen any progressives in years. Progressive politics isn't a new invention.
In the US, it goes back at least to the early 1900s. It's about building a better nation from
the bottom up -- legit aid for the poor at one end, firm restraints in the rich at the other
end.We have nothing like that today. This isn't about "political purity," but about not
calling an apple an armadillo.
It's true that the Green Party platform does include legitimatrely addressing poverty, but
perhaps understandably, this fact was swept under the carpet during their 2016 campaign.
will , July 26, 2018 at 8:32 pm
"We haven't seen any progressives in years" Apparently you don't get out much.
hetro , July 26, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Skip, let's hope we don't have the "hold your nose and vote Democrat" arguments again,
with Greens as a vote for Trump (or Putin?). Interestingly, the following poll from FOX news
indicates the strum und feces hysteria of the current Democratic machine may not be working
out all that well, as 7 in 10 respondents here indicate the political atmosphere in the US at
this time is "overheated."
Well, a good deal of that overheat is coming from the "them Russians them Russians" meme
continually pushed -- and way over the top for most American people trying to "have a great
day!" This poll does indicate Dems are ahead at this point, and in the past several election
cycles there has been a regular switch every two years in congressional domination.
"The Green Party has a truly Progressive platform on Domestic and Foreign policy, and
are our only hope at this point."
The Green Party is a Capitalist party, just the kindest and gentlest Capitalism of any of
the Capitalist parties with the most stringent leash on the mad killer dog that is Capitalism
and the best safety net for those chased off the cliff by that mad killer dog.
For those of us who see that Capitalism is the problem, that makes voting Green actually a
lesser evil choice. If we're going to vote lesser evil, we might as well vote for the most
progressive Democrats, or even centrist ones when they're running against fire breathing
Randian Republicans who combine that with a Fundamentalist Christian Theocratic agenda (a
combination that makes no sense, but who said the GOP makes sense?)
There are few viable Socialist parties in the US anymore. The biggest jettisoned Socialism
nearly 50 years ago when it also jettisoned actually being a political party and decided to
just be a lobby group within the Democratic Party. The only political heir of Eugene V. Debs,
the Socialist Party USA, is now a fringe group whose national conventions are more like a
picnic gathering of a few friends. The other organizations that seem more viable are actually
Trotskyite groups, and Trotsky was not non-violent at all, which I am.
I am really at a lost what to do as far as the less important task of voting (which is
less important than ongoing activism.) I just did my primary ballot. We've got this terrible
top two primary, a system that basically kills movement building.
I could have voted for Gigi Ferguson, the independent, who was endorsed by the Green
Party, running for senate against NeoLiberal phony environmentalist Maria Cantwell and not
the poser, who said he was Green, (parties have no say in candidates' statements of which
party they prefer,) but is for privatizing Social Security. But I instead voted for Steve
Hoffman, the only avowed Socialist on the ballot in any race, even though his Freedom
Socialist Party is Troskyite.
I voted for Stoney Bird, a real Green, running against TPP loving and indefinite detention
loving and NeoLiberal anti-Single Payer Rick Larsen for Congress.
My state legislation had two positions. In one I voted for Alex Ramel, an ecological
activist, over the preferred establishment choice of Identity Politics candidate (tribal,)
Debra Lekanoff. In the other the incumbent, Jeff Morris, another establishment Democrat, ran
unopposed. I wrote in "None." (Morris having the same family name as my mother's maiden name
didn't affect me at all.)
But it was all an exercise in futility, voting for my conscience as much as possible. I
have little doubt that none of my choices, except maybe Ramel, will make it to the top two.
Cantwell and Larsen are shoo-ins and they'll surely face the establishment GOP candidate.
Thus cutting out all other options in the Fall.
I'll have to write in my choices then. Oh well.
maryam , July 27, 2018 at 4:54 am
Over here in Europe (not UK) and faced with the similar problem of inapt candidates, we
sometimes need to vote creatively: so we vote, of course, but choose to make the ballot sheet
invalid. this way our voice is noted and we show that we care about the electoral process,
while it also makes clear that we do not care much about the cabdidate(s). "we" will vote,
but "they" are not very trustworthy.
MBeaver , July 27, 2018 at 8:12 am
Yep. We in Germany had that lesson already. The Green party was one of the most corrupt
one when they finally got elected into the government. They also harmed the social systems
massively and supported the first offensive war with German support since WW2. Even as
opposition they show all the time how much they lie about their true intentions.
They are not an option, because they are hypocrites.
ronnie mitchell , July 27, 2018 at 4:09 pm
Interesting comment with some good information that I appreciate.\ I live in Bellingham
and have filled out my vote for Stony Bird over Rick Larsen whom I truly despise. In fact in
previous election cycles I voted for Mike Lapointe instead but he quit running more than a
few years ago so the last time I just left it blank and the same goes for the general
election vote for Congress.
With the TPP issue Rick Larsen had a townhall meeting at City hall building which was packed
and he starts off by saying he hasn't read any of the text of the TPP yet so he was free from
answering most questions however he would be checking it out BUT no there would be no further
meeting before the voting. In other words he was giving us NOTHING.
I had been part of the protesters outside his fundraising gathering (private and by
invitation only) and have been to his local office many times (it's two blocks from where I
live) and when myself and a small group were in opposition to building the largest coal
terminal in north America at Cherry Point. He would never say he was against it or for it but
his fundraisers were backers of the terminal and as each of our group stepped forward to give
a statement to his office workers on the issue (Rick was in DC,aka District of Corruption at
the time) they just politely listened but neither recorded nor wrote down ANYTHING we
said.
The list is long regarding issues on which he is on the opposite side of his constituents
wishes and at one gathering was smugly dismissive of requests to represent the votes of the
people and not use his super delegate status(not Democratic) to endorse Hillary Clinton
because votes in Caucuses were overwhelmingly for Sen. Sanders.
I could go on but it would be too long of a comment but you've given me some good ideas for
other choices on the ballot which I needed in particular with Maria Cantwell whom (like
fellow neoliberal Patty Murray) I have refused to support in the last two elections.For one
of many examples of why, one big one was their stand against importing cheaper medicines from
Canada which was word for word straight out of the Big PHarma handbook of talking points, but
they DID get quite a lot of flak for it.
I'll look into some of your other suggestions as well before I turn in this ballot, thanks
for your comment.
TS , July 27, 2018 at 4:06 am
> Skip Scott
> If they could get a charismatic candidate for President in 2020 and break the 15%
threshold for the debates,
And what makes you think the people who decide wouldn't simply shift the goalposts?
Skip Scott , July 27, 2018 at 2:48 pm
I'm sure that would be attempted, but with a strong candidate hopefully there'd be enough
of a fuss made to get them to back off. I'd also like to dream that some of the more
progressive Democrats in congress would see the writing on the wall, and declare themselves
Greens. That'd give us a toehold in two branches of government. I know I'm being overly
optimistic, but it keeps me away from the whiskey bottle.
Piotr Berman , July 28, 2018 at 3:06 pm
I have some misgivings to "eco politics", I am not sure to what extend they apply to
Greens, and I am sorry to say, liberals have a knack to pick the worst parts of any
progressive idea.
Any goal has to consider trade-off. If we think that emitting carbon to the atmosphere is
a major problem, solutions must follow economic calculus. Instead, there was two much stress
on "aesthetic solutions" and sometimes scientifically unsound solutions. For example,
aesthetic solution is electric vehicles, but hybrid vehicles offer a much smaller cost per
amount of carbon that is saved, only when majority of vehicles already gain from regenerative
braking and having engines work only in fuel optimal conditions (battery absorbing surplus or
augmenting the engine power when the amount of needed power is outside parameters optimal for
the internal combustion engine) you may get better cost from electric engines.
Or excluding nuclear power from the "approved solutions". One of my many objections on
"Republicans on energy" that they promised a few times to be "rational" but they never
delivered.
Philosophically, there should be a fat carbon tax and social policies and subsidies to
avoid poor people to loose.
"Hyperrational" progressive approach would be to make a balance: as a society, where do we
waste, and where do we spent too little.
1. Military/foreign policy. In aggregate, spendings are huge and nobody is overly proud
from the results. An open question if this category of spending should be decreased by 50% or
75%, if we proceed in stages we can reach satisfactory point. Mind you, the largest ticket
items are improving nuclear weapons or conventional weapon systems that are needed against
very few most sophisticated adversaries who also waste resources. USA, Russia, China, the
rest of NATO etc. could agree to some disarmament, Russia and China actually accelerated
weapon development in response to "Let America dominate forever" policies, bad news are they
they do it for less money.
2. Medical robbery complex. Private insurance and lack of costs control leads to spending
on medical care around 18% of GDP rather than 10%. This waste is actually larger than all
spending on defense.
3. Infrastructure (large public role) and other capital investments (small public role but
essential fiscal policies and "thoughtful protectionism"), we spent too little, can be
covered by a part of 1 and 2.
I could continue with "hyperrational progressive manifesto" but I will give one example.
Enforcing labor standards may eliminate 90% of illegal employment without walls,
concentration camps for aliens etc. Some industries cannot make it without cheap illegal
aliens, if they REALLY cannot, workers should work legally in their home countries and
resulting imports should be encouraged. If picking carrots is too expensive in USA, we may
get them from other countries in Western Hemisphere. On that note, lately there are enough
jobs in USA, but native born citizens do not flock to carrot picking, they would rather have
jobs that required large capital investments and there are too few of those.
Hyperrational rhetoric can borrow from libertarians: if our allies do not feel secure when
they spend X times more than their regional adversaries (especially if we add our own
regional expenditures), that says that money alone cannot cure their "secure feeling" deficit
and we and they are already spending too much. We do not need to hate or demean anyone to
reach such conclusions.
Skip Scott , July 29, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Piotr-
I am all in favor of rational solutions to our environmental problems. The problem is the
entrenched power of the existing exploitive industries. An incredible amount of progress
could be made through on-site power generation and energy efficient building design.
I'm am not in favor of current nuclear power plants, but I am not opposed to research, and
I've heard good things about recent designs, especially thorium nukes. I am no engineer, but
if we had safe nukes, we could go with hydrogen fuel cells for automobiles. There are plenty
of other creative ideas as well for things such as localized food production.
If we find common purpose with the Libertarians to stop the war machine, the amount of
energy and resources and creative potential to bring humanity forward would be tremendous.
First we have to stop the war machine, and then we can argue about the extent of the role of
government in a free society.
The fact that Mark Zuckerberg is so rich is annoying, and his separateness from Main Street may not be a great thing socially,
but in an economic sense, his fortune did not "come from" the paychecks of ordinary workers...
It damn sure did. It came straight out of their pension funds. Thousands of pension funds across the world bought faang stocks
and those workers will be getting fucked in the end while while zuck heads back to hawaii with their money. look at elon, his
company hasn't made dime one in profit but he is a billionaire. amzn, with a p/e of 228. they didn't get that p/e without millions
of ordinary folk buying their overpriced stock. it is pure ponzi-nomics with fascist overtones and the maggots are cashing out
big time.
The greatest fortunes in history have been built in the last 10 years with 0% interest rates. You were spot on about pensions,
they were the casualties, almost every private pension in the country bankrupted by 0% rates so that these fucks could amass unimaginable
wealth.
Now the filthy commoner scum have the audacity to suggest that they should pay taxes on it. Where will the madness end?
All my friends Jews knew this was going to happen. They were buying stocks like crazy when I was telling them to buy gold and
get ready for a big reset that never happened. Ten years later they are all multimillionaires and I lost half of my money buying
gold...
institutions bought their shares with real earned money. bezos did not. as far as i'm concerned being a ceo is a license to
steal. bezos damn sure didn't earn that money because he is smarter or works harder than anyone else. look at how he treats his
workers. what an asshole.
It's even worse than that. So much worse. Facebook was stolen by the Satanic Judaic Zionist crowd. Research it. Another gentleman
invented it. The Jews stole it, like they've stolen pretty much everything else. No wonder Napoleon said that "The Jews are the
master robbers of the modern age". And beyond the criminal vile theft, you have what they are using it for. And that is?
Using it for the 911'd cows in America. And that is you. The Satanic Jews are murdering you and robbing you blind. They 911'd
you physically with the Twin Towers. Now they're doing it mentally and financially with Facebook, a control system grid -- a gate
to herd cattle which they view you as. They are herding you. You'll be 911'd again in larger and larger numbers until the Satanic
Judaic is removed from the World Stage.
Zuckerberg is a planted punk Zionist spook. You're going to have to clear the world of all of these Satanic Judaic ladies and
gentlemen. First the idea needs to come in to show how and why. This is underway.
Ever since the housing crisis I been waiting for the world to become a better place. I see now that I been fooling myself into
believing that we live in a civilized and honest world. Nobody gives a shit about anyone nor anything, people only care about
themselves...
Yeah, it's amazing to watch. With Trump in 2016 they went with "Racist, Sexist, Homophobe,
insane person", etc. and now they're going with "Russia" and censorship.
Labor was such a longtime stronghold for the Democrats and they've lost it. Labor doesn't
give a shit about Russia. Everyone though, is sick of the corruption. #Walkaway. The whole
"Russia" hoax is designed to blow a huge smoke screen into the felony crimes committed
principally by Clinton allies and the deep state.
The immolation of both the legacy media and the democratic party is occurring
simultaneously. We have seen Peak Facebook.
We have some real giants out there like Stefan Molyneux. A whole galaxy of them helped
bring Trump into the White House and as legacy platforms censor, new ones arise.
I am afraid that historically we better be prepared for what the left does when it doesn't
get its way and that is violence. Look at how the media is openly inciting violence. They've
made heros out of thugs who rob, out of violent shit-and-piss hurling hooligans, and
democratic local bosses have stood down as law-abiding citizens assembled for peaceful
speech.
So the wholesale insanity is going to be more than screaming at the sky.
"... Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email." ..."
"... In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line. ..."
"... The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party. ..."
"... There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict. ..."
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the CBS interview program "Face the Nation"
Sunday and fully embraced the anti-Russia campaign of the US military-intelligence apparatus,
backed by the Democratic Party and much of the media.
In response to a question from CBS host Margaret Brennan, Sanders unleashed a torrent of
denunciations of Trump's meeting and press conference in Helsinki with Russian President
Vladimir Putin. A preliminary transcript reads:
SANDERS: "I will tell you that I was absolutely outraged by his behavior in Helsinki, where
he really sold the American people out. And it makes me think that either Trump doesn't
understand what Russia has done, not only to our elections, but through cyber attacks against
all parts of our infrastructure, either he doesn't understand it, or perhaps he is being
blackmailed by Russia, because they may have compromising information about him.
"Or perhaps also you have a president who really does have strong authoritarian tendencies.
And maybe he admires the kind of government that Putin is running in Russia. And I think all of
that is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people. And we have got to make sure that
Russia does not interfere, not only in our elections, but in other aspects of our lives."
These comments, which echo remarks he gave at a rally in Kansas late last week, signal
Sanders' full embrace of the right-wing campaign launched by the Democrats and backed by
dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. Their opposition to Trump is centered
on issues of foreign policy, based on the concern that Trump, due to his own "America First"
brand of imperialist strategy, has run afoul of geostrategic imperatives that are considered
inviolable -- in particular, the conflict with Russia.
Sanders did not use his time on a national television program to condemn Trump's persecution
of immigrants and the separation of children from their parents, or to denounce his naming of
ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, or to attack the White House
declaration last week that the "war on poverty" had ended victoriously -- in order to justify
the destruction of social programs for impoverished working people. Nor did he seek to advance
his supposedly left-wing program on domestic issues like health care, jobs and education.
Sanders' embrace of the anti-Russia campaign is not surprising, but it is instructive. This
is, after all, an individual who presented himself as "left-wing," even a "socialist." During
the 2016 election campaign, he won the support of millions of people attracted to his call for
a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class." For Sanders, who has a long history
of opportunist and pro-imperialist politics in the orbit of the Democratic Party, the aim of
the campaign was always to direct social discontent into establishment channels, culminating in
his endorsement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more
telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic
Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published
internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC
to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and
sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the
inexcusable remarks made over email."
In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level
position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the
inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely
tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in
which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies
intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line.
The experience is instructive not only in relation to Sanders, but to an entire social
milieu and the political perspective with which it is associated. This is what it means to work
within the Democratic Party. The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left,
but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer
to a thoroughly right-wing party.
New political figures, many associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are
being brought in for the same purpose. As Sanders gave his anti-Russia rant, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez sat next to him nodding her agreement. The 28-year-old member of the DSA last
month won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District, unseating the
Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in
the House of Representatives.
Since then, Ocasio-Cortez has been given massive and largely uncritical publicity by the
corporate media, summed up in an editorial puff piece by the New York Times that
described her as "a bright light in the Democratic Party who has brought desperately needed
energy back to New York politics "
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were jointly interviewed from Kansas, where the two appeared
Friday at a campaign rally for James Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the
US House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District, based in Wichita, in an
August 7 primary election.
Thompson might appear to be an unusual ally for the "socialist" Sanders and the DSA member
Ocasio-Cortez. His campaign celebrates his role as an Army veteran, and his website opens under
the slogan "Join the Thompson Army," followed by pledges that the candidate will "Fight for
America." In an interview with the Associated Press, Thompson indicated that despite his
support for Sanders' call for "Medicare for all," and his own endorsement by the DSA, he was
wary of any association with socialism. "I don't like the term socialist, because people do
associate that with bad things in history," he said.
Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal
theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web
Site has pointed out for many months, the
real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as
congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat
commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State
Department and White House.
There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into
the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree
on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism
and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and
Moscow are in conflict.
"... The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27 March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you." And, he did keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .) ..."
"... They want another Barack Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest). But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the disaster of 2016? ..."
"... Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt driven to do in 2016). ..."
"... Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
The wing of the Democratic Party that looks for the dollars instead of the votes is
called "The Third Way" and it presents itself as representing the supposedly vast political
center, nothing "extremist" or "marginal." But didn't liberal Republicanism go out when Nelson
Rockefeller did? Conservative Democrats are like liberal Republicans -- they attract flies and
billionaires, but not many votes. And didn't the Rockefeller drug laws fill our prisons with
millions of pathetic drug-users and small drug-dealers but not with the kingpins in either the
narcotics business or the bankster rackets (such as had crashed the economy in 2008 -- and the
Third Way Democrat who had been the exceptional politician and liar that was so slick he
actually did attract many votes, President Barack Obama, told the banksters privately, on 27
March 2009, "I'm not out there to go after you.
I'm protecting you." And, he did
keep his promise to them, though not to his voters .)
They're at it, yet again. On July 22nd, NBC News's Alex Seitz-Wald headlined
"Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here's how they plan to stop it." And
he described what was publicly available from the 3-day private meeting in Columbus Ohio of The
Third Way, July 18-20, the planning conference between the Party's chiefs and its billionaires.
Evidently, they hate Bernie Sanders and are already scheming and spending in order to block
him, now a second time, from obtaining the Party's Presidential nomination. "Anxiety has
largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors, with some of the
major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop the Vermonter if he runs for
the White House again." This passage in Seitz-Wald's article was especially striking to me:
The gathering here was an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising
Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare
opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to
win over Republicans turned off by Trump.
The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, cohosted the event
and addressed attendees twice, underscored that this group is not interested in the class
warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.
"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be
rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday to
laughs.
I would reply to congressman Ryan's remark: If you want to be rich, then get the hell out of
politics! Don't run for President! I don't want you there! And that's no joke!
Anyone who doesn't recognize that an inevitable trade-off exists between serving the public
and serving oneself, is a libertarian -- an Ayn Rander, in fact -- and there aren't many of
those in the Democratic Party, but plenty of them are in the Republican Party.
Just as a clergyman in some faiths is supposed to take a vow of chastity, and in some faiths
also to take a vow of poverty, in order to serve "the calling" instead of oneself, anyone who
enters 'public service' and who aspires to "be rich" is inevitably inviting corruption
-- not prepared to do war against it . That kind of politician is a Manchurian
candidate, like Obama perhaps, but certainly not what this or any country needs, in any case.
Voters like that can be won only by means of deceit, which is the way that politicians like
that do win.
No decent political leader enters or stays in politics in order to "be rich," because no
political leader can be decent who isn't in it as a calling, to public service, and as a
repudiation, of any self-service in politics.
Republican Party voters invite corrupt government, because their Party's ideology is
committed to it ("Freedom [for the rich]!"); but the only Democratic Party voters who at all
tolerate corrupt politicians (such as Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State) are actually
Republican Democrats -- people who are confused enough so as not really to care much about what
they believe; whatever their garbage happens to be, they believe in it and don't want to know
differently than it.
The Third Way is hoping that there are
enough of such 'Democrats' so that they can, yet again, end up with a Third Way Democrat being
offered to that Party's voters in 2020, just like happened in 2016. They want another Barack
Obama. There aren't any more of those (unless, perhaps, Michelle Obama enters the contest).
But, even if there were: How many Democrats would fall for that scam, yet again -- after the
disaster of 2016?
Maybe the Third Way is right, and there's a sucker born every minute. But if that's what the
Democratic Party is going to rely upon, then America's stunningly low voter-participation rate
is set to plunge even lower, because even more voters than before will either be leaving the
Presidential line blank, or even perhaps voting for the Republican candidate (as some felt
driven to do in 2016).
The Third Way is the way to the death of democracy, if it's not already dead . It is no answer
to anything, except to the desires of billionaires -- both Republican and Democratic.
The center of American politics isn't the center of America's aristocracy. The goal
of groups such as The Third Way is to fool the American public to equate the two. The
result of such groups is the contempt that America's
public have for America's Government . But, pushed too far, mass disillusionment becomes
revolution. Is that what America's billionaires are willing to risk? They might get it.
Activist Potato @164, well Obama was on record saying that they stood by and watched ISIS
grown, and take ever more territory and expected it would weaken the Syrian government,
leading to "Mission Accomplished." Even if he did want to prevent Trump from being
(s)elected, that would be a hard hill to fight for.
The US public has been fed up with the corruption and disastrous policies of the US
government for quite a while. I mean, 10 years ago we elected a black(ish) man with a Muslim
name for criizzacks! How desperate were we to do that in the middle of the "Clash of
Civilizations" Global War OF Terror?
By the time they were planning out the 2016 (s)election, it should have been clear to
anyone that the US was going to vote for real change. It turns out that a good number were so
desperate that they said they'd vote for the New York City conman, knowing he was horrible,
simply because they thought they were throwing a monkey wrench into "the system."
So, what did they give us? A woman who was not only the most hated and mistrusted
candidate in history (until The Donald), but also the very symbol of "more of the same."
Then, some how, "leaked" or "hacked" documents came out showing she was even more criminal
and corrupt that most had thought. And they came out at just the right time to make a good
number of those who were willing to hold their noses and vote for her to refuse to.
Meanwhile, the MSM filled the airwaves with everything Trump such that they sucked the
oxygen out of the room for anyone else. And the MSM insisted Trump was "an outsider," and
showed us every way possible that "the Establishment" didn't want to let him "win."
I came to see the whole operation as a brilliant psyop about the time of the Party
Conventions. I was so sucked into the drama of the DNC stealing the nomination from Sanders
that I allowed myself to be sucked right along (as I believe I was meant to be).
But after a year and a half of watching the only changes in US policy have been to escalate
the worst of them, and rape the 99% with even greater fury, it takes a special kind of faith
to still believe that Trump was ever an "outsider" and that the "establishment" is anything
except thrilled with how it's going. Hell, even failed "news" organizations like the NY Times
and MSDNC are in boon times again!
And the brilliant irony of it all is that they're making bank on telling us how much they
hate what's making them rich! LOL!
As for Trump, the same case is true. He represents the part of America which is realizing
it is loosing its sole superpower status. Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016 (which could
have happened -- Trump only won because of American system's technicalities) , the
cauldron that is today's USA social fabric would've only gathered even more pressure,
triggering an even deeper crisis in 2020.
Posted by: vk | Jul 17, 2018 2:09:39 PM | 80
That's the sort of fuzzy logic I was whingeing about in the comment to which this
codswallop is purporting to be a response. Team Trump was fully aware of the 'technicalities'
and ran a campaign designed to capitalise on them. Not only did they figure out how to
maximise the potential advantage of focusing on the Electoral College, Trump campaigned his
arse off 7 days a week.
Hillary the "consummate professional insider", on the other hand ran a lazy lacklustre
campaign. The over-arching feature of Her public gatherings was that they were little more
than an invitation to bask in Hillary's reflected Radiance. So not only did Trump win the
race, his victory was enhanced by Hillary's stupidity and chronic self-absorption.
The problem is everyone is stuck in the "lesser over greater evil" construct and that's
what makes the American Zionist-influenced duopoly so powerful. Trump is part of that failed
system that Americans are so dependent on and that always leads to the same place. People
should fight this lesser vs greater evil construct, even if Americans are too stupid at this
time to get out of it. It means they'd have to choose outside the box, outside the media's
choices example Fox and other Rightist outlets for Trump. CNN, MSNBC - Hillary, but the media
is all Zionist run and specializes in the brainwash on both sides. It's all part of the same
sham. The duopoly.
It starts with primaries for representatives and choosing a candidate that demonstrates
independence and integrity; especially those that the media wants to ignore; that's not
beholden to special interests or financed by Zionists.
Most importantly when America goes wrong and it's royally f...cked up right now, the rest
of the world, the web has to push back against their ignorance and their stupid choices,
because those choices hurt others as much as they hurt them only they're still too
brainwashed to see it. Americans had the right idea to turn on the establishment, but Trump
was the perfect Zionist anti-establishment decoy, a fraud, a pretender just like Obama was
for the Left.
In the past election, the only viable contender was Bernie who got railroaded by
Democratic Zionists like Wasserman and Podesta. I think Bernie was more authentic than the
two evils, Hillary and Trump, and although his Zionist roots are always a concern; he was run
out precisely because he was a rogue Jew and Zionists couldn't trust him. He wasn't in the
pocket of Zionist financiers although he was running with the Democrats, but in the current
status quo he had no choice but to use the Democratic Party as a means to an end and they did
him in. If Hillary were not on the ticket who knows what could have been. He was a start in
the right direction away from the Zionist financed duopoly.
... that is a much harder conversation to have about why the Democrats have lost elections than just blaming a foreign villain
and saying it's because Vladimir Putin ran some fake Facebook ads and did some phishing emails ... the conversation we need
to be having [about lies/corruption from the deep state and powerful actors acting against US citizens interests, and decline
of institutions that support US citizens' freedom], but we're not having, because we're evading it by blaming everything on
Vladimir Putin.
I agree with Mish on all this, including " Nearly every political action that generates this much complete nonsense and hysteria
from the Left and Right is worthy of immense praise" though he doesn't qualify/define "Left and Right" as the Left and Right establishment
aka. the Uniparty. The statement wouldn't have applied to say the Left and Right establishment that existed when our founders
created the country and were united to create a government that defends our lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness with an
extremely limited (by today's standards) government. You don't see the Freedom Caucus getting hysterical about Trump's meeting
Putin.
Mass hysteria is exactly what it is, because it threatens their gravy train that comes from money taken by force from taxpayers.
the citizens voted against the establishment, and the establishment is fighting back along with their MSM cronies.
I've never been enthralled with Neil Cavuto due to considering him inferior as a host on things financial. Today he just crapped
in his mess kit with me. He has to be dirty, the way he was defending the wonderful intelligence "community" of the USA, and was
hinting that treason may not be a strong assessment of Trump with Putin. He is a real POS along with girly-man Shepard Smith.
Not one criticism of any Cabalist about graft and corruption, and especially no mention of the uranium to Russia by Obama's and
Hillary's REAL treason.
I repeat, all of you goofy imbeciles, Trump is sucking you down into the depths of embarrassment once the hammer drops. I expected
the fruity Smith but must admit the Cavuto stupidity is a bit of a surprise. Someone has pics of that dumb fuck in a compromising
situation.
"... Here's a more apt headline: "Petulant elites throwing tantrum at prospect of their votes not being 10,000x more powerful than regular peasant votes." ..."
In the face of fervent
opposition from Democratic elites who " think their vote is more
important " than the will of the party's base , the Democratic National
Committee's (DNC) Rules and Bylaws arm
cleared a major hurdle in the fight to curtail the power of superdelegates on Wednesday by
approving a plan that would end their ability to cast votes for the presidential candidate on
the first ballot at the party's convention.
"The activists that have been concerned that superdelegates will overturn the will of the
voters should feel good about this," DNC member Elaine Kamarck said in a statement
.
While the plan to gut the influence of superdelegates -- who have been free since 1984 to
put their weight behind any candidate no matter how the public voted -- has received broad
support from Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an important first step toward making
the party's process more "
open and transparent ," establishment figures who stand to lose power if the plan is
implemented are staging a last-minute " revolt
" to block the rule change.
As investigative reporter Alex Kotch noted in a Twitter thread on
Wednesday, at least two of the Democratic insiders who are clinging desperately to their undue
influence as superdelegates happen to be corporate lobbyists -- a fact that Politico neglected
to mention in its reporting on the party elites' "longshot bid to block the measure."
"They don't realize it but they're proving the point of Sanders and everyone else who's
opposed to superdelegates," Kotch writes. "Many prioritize corporate interests over those of
everyday people and thus automatically support the less progressive candidate."
Two of the three superdelegates who are opposed to the Sanders plan:
One is a health care lobbyist
Another is a former lobbyist
The U.S. Rep quoted in the article who's opposed to the change, Gerry Connolly (Va.),
accepts a bunch of corporate PAC money from good corporate citizens like Northrup Grummon and
AT&T. https://t.co/s7KWJGWEGq
Responding to Politico's story on the superdelegates' last-ditch attempt to undermine the
push to curtail their power, The Humanist Report offered an alternative headline:
Here's a more apt headline: "Petulant elites throwing tantrum at prospect of their
votes not being 10,000x more powerful than regular peasant votes."https://t.co/oUlaXY9jLt
-- The Humanist Report (@HumanistReport) July 11,
2018
Wednesday's vote in favor of the plan to ensure superdelegates cannot overturn the will of
voters on the first ballot of the presidential nomination process was the final step before the
proposal heads to a vote before the full DNC next month. "Any attempt to derail the rules
changes at the summer convention is thought to be a long-shot," concluded Astead Herndon of the
New York Times.
"... I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right segment) and has been for most of it's history. ..."
"... The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind Invaders". ..."
"... Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women. ..."
"A Democrat Party composed of moderate Republicans and democratic socialists will be
divided against itself and will not stand."
I believe the US is a right of center country (with a growing right and far right
segment) and has been for most of it's history. If some of the right of center move to
left of center that may look good as far as "not Republican" but as Lambert points out does
nothing for the progressive movement. I read an article where Noam Chomsky mentioned that
people in the USA who call themselves liberals are more moderates and are not the same as
liberals in Europe. If I remember my reading of Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal, his expose' of
segments of the liberal class was to show that calling yourself liberal does not mean much if
your actions say otherwise, i.e Obama and Hillary.
The sluggish business investment chart just supports what Yves wrote in 2005 about the
Incredible Shrinking Corporation. One thing that jumps out is the increasing size of the
booms and busts since 1980 i.e. the Neoliberal Era compared to 1950-1980. In the late 1980's
I worked at a large medical device company. In 1990 I was laid off as part of a restructuring
after an Merger/Acquisition . I remember when the layoffs were announced the director of our
group said he feared the US was becoming "a short term quarter to quarter economy". Hence
booms and busts or casino capitalism. As we're finding out booms followed by busts, i.e.
instability, leads to severe social consequences: inequality, job loss, breakdown of the
family and communities etc.
I'm reminded of an old acquaintance that headed a forward M&A team. Once told of an
experience in an elevator where some lady asked if he was the same guy that came around at
her last employer. He responded yes. She then tentatively asked if she should start looking
for new employment. His answer was again yes.
This was in little more space than 6 months for the middle aged lady.
This also coincides with the great Calif M&A episode during the late 80s and early
90s. Huge wave of wage earners selling houses and migrating to states on eastern boarders due
to RE affordability and cost of living. Experienced this in the Denver – Boulder CO.
corridor at the time, storage tech et al. Funny thing, took less than 10 years before
everything reverted to the state of affairs which drove them to leave Calif. Which then
promoted me to move to Oz after marrying native wife.
Years ago I got an email from an acquaintance; " . I am deathly sick in a hospital in East
Africa. .please help by ." His identity had been stolen by con artists.
The identity of the "Democratic Party" has also been stolen. They are not the FDR-JFK
Democratic Party of my childhood. but rather, Neo-Toxoplasma Gondii-ists, the "Mind
Invaders".
Back in the early 1980s, the NZ Labour Party (of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was taken
over by Neo-liberal, Roger Douglas and his henchmen/women.
" the New Zealand dollar was floated, corporate practices were introduced to state
services, state assets were sold off, and a swathe of regulations and subsidies were removed.
Douglas's economic policies were regarded as a betrayal of Labour's left-wing policy
platform, and were deeply unpopular "
I believe that the actual political spectrum is an Axis (coalition) of the Neo-Liberals
with the Neo-Conservatives .
Who are (in a perfect World) opposed by The Alliance of Everybody Else.
The Axis (a puny minority) are able to exist because they sow constant discord among the
The Alliance. (What is the definition of "abortion" or "healthcare" or "security" or "love"
..???? Let's scream at each other! That will help!)
In New Zealand, we have a coalition Government of (1) Labour (Unions), (2) NZ First
(populist) and (3) The Greens.
The out-of-power, NZ National Party (Neo-Con/Lib Axis) spend their time trying to conflate
and invent "disagreements" within our Labour Coalition Government.
But, it is like a healthy, extended family. You agree to disagree and ENJOY the lively
discussions. Parties compromise and life goes on.
I was in NZ after Rogernomics made the Kiwi $ plunge to about 35 cents US in the 1980's,
and everything was so cheap, dinners were like US $4, motel rooms US $15, homes in Auckland
US $25k.
I dread seeing the prices now, when we visit next year
If a Democratic Party composed of Romneyfeller Republicans and Democratic Socialists will
not stand, then eventually the two separated fighting halves will fight to the death over
which half gets to keep the name "Democratic Party".
Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson quote above gives some evidence as to why some people have
long called Wilson "America's most evil President". His bringing official Jim Crow to the
Federal Workforce in Washington DC might be another piece of evidence. His unleashing of a
vicious and bigoted campaign of anti-germanitic cultural and social pogroms all over America
might be another piece of evidence. The fact that he did this as part of his World War I
program, after having worked with Great Britain to lie and manipulate America into World War
I ( some would say on the wrong side . . . ) is another piece of evidence. His political
"extermination" campaign against the American Left ( Debs in prison, etc) thereby reducing
the Left toward its tiny size of today is another such piece of evidence.
The actions of America's most evil President ( Woodrow Wilson) may help explain why
America is a center-right country today.
That's all right and indignation is well deserved, but what is the alternative? Is Sanders
program a real alternative or he just served as a sheepdog for Hillary.
The Iron law of oligarchy is a serious constrain that suggest that the socialist system degenerate to oligarchical system
really quick and as such is not a viable option.
The USSR experience tells us a lot about how the process of degeneration of "revolutionary elite" once started logically leads
to neoliberalism
Notable quotes:
"... The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. ..."
"... Buckley v. Valeo ..."
"... First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti ..."
"... Citizens United v. FEC ..."
"... So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy? ..."
"... The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality. They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of unions ..."
"... America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck Schumer and George Soros. ..."
"... When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like children. ..."
"... This commentary was originally published on ..."
"... The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy. ..."
"... America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of migrants seeking this kind of fortune ..."
"... You can talk all you want about political systems, which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of the world is Independent from the Evil Empire. ..."
"... Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have been Trashed. ..."
"... Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates – represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human development. ..."
"... Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of political economy. ..."
"... The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However, that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great achievement. ..."
"... "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler ..."
"... I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs. ..."
"... The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period. ..."
"... George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious Second Amendment will not grow up and move on. ..."
"... The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering. ..."
"... Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth, ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems. ..."
Americans celebrate their independence 242 years ago today from Britain with little
thought it seems about who rules them now, comments Caitlin Johnstone.
Today America celebrates its liberation from the
shackles of the British Crown and the beginning of its transition into corporatist oligarchy,
which is a lot like celebrating your lateral promotion from housekeeping to laundry staff.
Fireworks will be set off, hot dogs will be consumed, and a strange yellow concoction known as
Mountain Dew will be imbibed by patriotic high-fiving Yankees eager to celebrate their
hard-fought freedom to funnel their taxes into corporate welfare instead of to the King.
Spark up a bottle rocket for me, America! In trouncing King George's red-coated goon squad,
you made it possible for the donor class to slowly buy up more and more control of your shiny
new government, allowing for a system of rule determined not by royal bloodlines, but by wealth
bloodlines. Now instead of your national affairs being determined by some gilded schmuck across
the pond, they are determined by the billionaire owners of multinational corporations and
banks. These oligarchs have shored up their rule to such an extent that congressional
candidates who outspend their opponents are almost
certain to win , and a
2014 Princeton study found that ordinary Americans have no influence whatsoever over the
behavior of their government while the will of the wealthy has a direct influence on US policy
and legislation.
The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind
politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in
ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of
predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the
wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street
practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. The existence of legalized
bribery and corporate lobbying as illustrated in the video above have enabled the plutocrats to
buy up the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government, and with these in their
pockets they were eventually able to get the Judicial branch as well since justices are
appointed and approved by the other two. Now having secured all three branches in a system of
checks and balances theoretically designed to prevent totalitarian rule, the billionaire class
has successfully secured totalitarian rule.
By tilting the elections of congressmen and presidents in such a way as to install a
corporatist Supreme Court bench, the oligarchs successfully got legislation passed which
further secured and expanded their rule with decisions like 1976's Buckley v. Valeo,
1978's First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, and 2010's Citizens United v. FEC .
This has had the effect of creating a nation wherein money equals power, which has in turn had
the effect of creating a system wherein the ruling class is, in a very real way, incentivized
to try and keep everyone else poor in order to maintain its rule.
George III: Like today's rulers of America, he didn't give up without a fight. (National
Portrait Gallery, London.)
Just as King George didn't give up rule of the New World colonies without a knock-down,
drag-out fight, King George 2.0 has no intention of relinquishing its rule either. The
oligarchs have been fighting to keep their power, and, in the money-equals-power system that
they have built for themselves, this necessarily means keeping you from having money. Just as
King George's kingship would have meant nothing if everybody was King, the oligarchs won't be
oligarchs anymore if ordinary Americans are ever able to secure enough money for themselves to
begin influencing their government within its current money-equals-power paradigm.
So if you've ever wondered why seemingly common sense matters like a living wage and
healthcare as a right consistently get shot down by your government, this is why. In order to
rule you as King George ruled you, the oligarchs need to make sure most of America is toiling
just to keep its head above water. Progressives were able to mount an intimidating insurgency
using tiny 27-dollar donations on 2016; imagine what they could do if ordinary working
Americans were being paid their fair share of the U.S. economy?
The oligarchs can keep that from happening by continually escalating income inequality.
They use their massive political power to repress the minimum wage, to undermine the power of
unions , and to continually pull more and more energy away from socialist programs and
toward the corporate deregulation of neoliberalism. If you don't depend on running the rat race
for some corporate boss in order for your family to have health insurance, you're suddenly free
to innovate, create, and become an economically powerful entrepreneur yourself.
America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag doing a bad impression of a
bipartisan democracy. Sometimes it doesn't even keep its wig on; a recent party at the Hamptons
saw Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Charles Koch mixing it up with Chuck
Schumer and George Soros.
When they're not dining on champagne and rare fillet together, these people pretend to
be locked in a vicious partisan battle that is "tearing the nation apart," but at Lally
Weymouth's annual Southampton summer party the act stops and the oligarchs frolic together like
children.
1776 turned out to be nothing other than a transition from one form of exploitative rule to
another, but who knows? Maybe a year in the not-too-distant future will see America celebrating
a real Independence Day.
This
commentary was originally published on Medium.
"Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"
Even if he did, it would not have made a difference; the POTUS does not make laws,
Congress does, at least on paper
Just remember, Bernie did endorse RHC at the DNC. That probably had been the play all
along during the primary. Sanders to woo in all of the "dissenters" and then turn them over
to RHC, under the "unity" umbrella against Trump.
I still "Feel the Burn", the burn of the rigged system, don't you?
rgl , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were NOT inclusive documents. Both of these
papers were written by, and for rich landowners. Slavers, in short. The writers did not
believe that 'the people' were intelligent enough to contribute to government. The 'Founding
Fathers' comprised the original oligarchy.
Money (land and slaves) was the basis of political power in the 17th century. Funny that.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Ergo Sum , July 5, 2018 at 7:32 am
@Jean
Just a reminder; Sanders would have won if not for the hated Hillary"
It would not have made any difference, even if he did. The POTUS does not make laws,
Congress does.
You should not forget that Sanders endorsed RHC at the DNC. His purpose during the primary
has been to channel all of democrats with social, economic and political dissatisfaction to
Hillary at the end. "Feel The Burn", the burn of the rigged system. It is another example of
how the rigged system allows minor uprising to flourish for a while, and then crush it at the
end by the perceived front-runner of the movement. The movement is dead, voters are further
disillusioned that enforces the viewpoint of there's nothing that peaceful action can do to
change the system. This results in even less people showing up at the voting booth to cast
their votes, that the rigged system loves; it does not need to disenfranchise voters and
easier to predetermine the outcome any of the upcoming elections.
Happy Birthday America, the home of the free and the brave You are free to rig the system,
if you are brave enough
Tom , July 5, 2018 at 5:58 am
America was formed/founded by White men seeking fame, fortune and power outside the
existing European political power structure. From its' beginning, it has been a nation of
migrants seeking this kind of fortune – bugger those damn savages that get in the way
of this greed and desire to take land, resources and culture away from America's native
inhabitants. And so it began this way and has continued unabated for more than the life of
the nation which began in 1776 – more than 240 years of expansionism, colonization and
subjugation of those less powerful – too take away the land and resources of not just
the native American Indians, but later the peoples of Cuba, Philippines, Japan, China and on
to the World Wars, late 20th century wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,
Yemen and on and on an on – continuous warfare and expansionism of the American Empire
to take away land, resources and power of the native inhabitants of every nation the US
targets for regime change or conquest.
You can talk all you want about political systems,
which is better or how to corral the oligarchs who rule America, but what I've described is
America and the world will never have peace or prosperity until the American Empire ends and
the whole world can then celebrate American Independence Day – the Day when the rest of
the world is Independent from the Evil Empire.
Hard to have a Fourth of July celebration when your Bill of Rights and Constitution have
been Trashed.
Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 3:43 am
Marxists (and much of the broader. "Left") have always maintained that the capitalist mode
of production – and the bourgeois-democratic political superstructure it necessitates
– represented an immense revolutionary achievement in the course of human
development.
Anonymous , July 5, 2018 at 12:25 pm
Casting aside the last vestiges of the feudal system, particularly hereditary monarchy and
titles of nobility, was critical to the eventual move toward a more equitable system of
political economy.
The reactionary system of corporate rule that we see today is a result of the bourgeoisie
and capitalist system having (long) outlived their historically progressive role. However,
that does not minimize the fact that in relation to the prior system (I.e. feudalism and
monarchy), the US capitalist bourgeois-democratic form of political economy was a great
achievement.
"Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to
operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley
Butler
Good on you Mukadi for posting this link. PCR did a great analogy of our American war
culture. Joe
It's a knee-jerk celebration, anyway, for the most part. The citizens are told to
celebrate, so they celebrate. Just like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, the Fourth
of July is a day to generate money. The firecrackers are popping right now, a worship of the
warship that the US has become.
Much of my time is spent reading commentary that I agree with and articles I agree with.
Something to consider for the website, descriptive articles yes but more prescriptive ones.
For example, articles by people who have ideas for change, addressing important policy
questions like taxation, health insurance, technology stuff like robotics and how to spread
its benefits. and of course, reform of the process of selecting and electing our leaders.
Just a thought.
Kenny , July 4, 2018 at 5:43 pm
I can't disagree with this articles premise that capitalism has it's flaws but I also
contend that socialism has just as sordid a track record with it's own set of oligarchs.
Horrendous global economic conditions require new economic thinking that improves the
health and well-being of the most number of people. Economist and author Henry George
(1839-1897) nailed it decades ago in his multi-million copy, bestselling 1879 book "Progress
and Poverty" – the "single tax" or land value tax.
Consortium News would do humanity a great service by bringing the writings of Henry George
economic philosophy advocates to readers and CN's massive group of supporters around the
world. For example, an excellent guest writer suggestion is Henry George expert, confirmed
enthusiast, and author of many books on the subject, Mr. Fred Harrison.
System-wide implementation of Henry George economic principles addresses the real concerns
raised by Caitlin Johnstone and so many others in this time of unprecedented wealth
inequality, faulty economics, the new royals called corporate oligarchs, seeming endless war,
and the great societal problems manifested as a consequence.
Peace.
Drew Hunkins , July 4, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Jefferson was very old when he first saw the fledgling stages of early corporate power,
they called them "moneyed incorporations" or something like that. Jefferson warned that these
new "moneyed incorporations" had the potential power to undermine everything the revolution
accomplished.
John2o2o , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 pm
Sigh. I know I'm probably wasting my time saying this as Caitlin's groupies will not
tolerate criticism of their anointed one.
The United States did not win independence from George III. Since 1689 the UK/Great
Britain has been a CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. (Now go look that up to see what it means.) That
means that Parliament does not answer to the monarch. Period.
"In the Kingdom of England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 led to a constitutional
monarchy restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701,
although limits on the power of the monarch ('a limited monarchy') are much older than that
(see Magna Carta). At the same time, in Scotland the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim
of Right Act 1689, which placed similar limits on the Scottish monarchy." wikipedia.
George III was America's eighteenth century Putin. Someone they blame for all their
problems, but who is not actually responsible for any of them. Americans, like their precious
Second Amendment will not grow up and move on.
I know it suits some of you to believe that somehow the royals are super powerful, but
they are not. They don't call the shots and haven't done so now for over 300 years.
Joe Lauria , July 4, 2018 at 4:43 pm
"War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1779, *at the king's insistence,* to prevent
copycat protests elsewhere. The British defeat in 1781 prompted North to resign. In 1783,
North and the prominent Whig politician Fox formed a coalition government. Their plans to
reform the East India Company gave George the chance to regain popularity. He *forced the
bill's defeat* in Parliament, and the two resigned. In their place George *appointed* William
Pitt the Younger."
George blocked legislation and he appointed the first minister, i.e. he had power over
parliament.
The Continental Congress was primarily frustrated with Parliament, a resent that had been
brewing since the conclusion of the Seven Years War. But, at the same time, royalist
enthusiasm had been budding, with an increasing obsession within the colonies of being
faithful servants of the crown. Thus, the Congress styled their petitions to the monarch,
hoping he would quash his evil ministers, with George III being the hoped for "patriot king".
When George attacked the colonies, and began efforts to crackdown on political unrest, the
otherwise unpopular and extreme option of independence became feasible. George was not an
absolute monarch or a tyrant, but he did have significant power, and he could, if he played
parliamentary politics well enough, get his way. The Glorious Revolution did not disempower
the monarchy or firmly establish parliamentary power, both of these phenomena began both
before and after the events of 1688.
Brad Owen , July 5, 2018 at 4:20 am
The establishment of the Central Bank in City-of-London in 1694 or thereabouts, when
William of Orange crossed the English Chanel, along with his retinue of immigrant Venetian
banksters from the Netherlands, is the one pertinent fact worth remembering.
THIS is what the
Founders actually declared their independence from, establishing the National Bank in the
process (which was shut down relatively quickly thereafter, by agents loyal to City-of-London
Central Bank). Independence has been a farce from the beginning and we never had our
Republic, let alone keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin had warned us would be the problem.
We've had a phony Republic based on the model supplied by Venice (and established by Venetian
"Dutch Masters" in The Netherlands in the 17th century) throughout the Medieval/Renaissance
eras. It is the same old, ongoing, Citizens' Republic vs Oligarchs' Empire fight that Western
Civilzation inherited from Roman times.
Whether one envisages the traditional concept of royalty with precious stones-studded
crowns and all the "royal" trapping, pomp and circumstance or multi-billionaire corporate
tax-evading mega-moguls, the groups are essentially the same. Wealth inequality on Earth,
ironically and sadly, has grown while so-called "royalty" as a visible phenomenon has slowly
diminished. The problems associated with record concentration of wealth on Earth have grown
in equal proportion, to the point where people are starting to consider newer, potentially
more beneficial economic thought and viable alternative systems.
The ideas of economist and author of "Progress and Poverty" – HENRY GEORGE
(1839-1897) "Single tax" proponent (or "land value tax") – are both disappointingly
under-discussed and under-appreciated, while offering precisely the economic alternative for
effectively dealing with today's orthodox economy-centric global, societal problems. People
might take the time in researching Henry George's ideas when they understand (only one of
many benefits) that implementation of Georgist economic principles means no more income tax
taken out of their paychecks
Consortium News (CN) is the perfect platform for support of Henry George economic thought
and raising awareness of an idea whose time may just have arrived. We might suggest
Consortium News publish the writings of Henry George expert and author of many books on the
subject Mr. Fred Harrison, who would likely happily provide his impressive writings for
free.
We might also suggest the many millions of men and women from all regions of the Earth
reading Consortium News consider finding out more on Henry George economic thought, do the
researching, then understand the economic philosophy's virtually immeasurable, positive and
transforming potential.
Source information search suggestion: Henry George School of Social Science.
The Asians are starting to shift away from the DNC, from what I can see. They built up
some actual wealth, and at this point they no longer receive the same minority protections as
other groups. The minute you are the target of theft, you stop hanging around the
thieves.
Aside from this, I was recently listening to an Asian libertarian who goes by
"Pholosopher" on Youtube, and she explained that as a "normie" she just thought of government
programs as "society helping the little guy." IMO, 80% of Democrats are in this very naive
space. Her mind changed in part because some of her family members were victims of the Khmer
Rouge, and this led to some actual thought about what would possess people to do the things
they did.
IMO, the crazier this gets, the more obvious it is that it is time to re-dedicate our
lives to rebuilding a sound culture, otherwise we will not see any culture rebuilt until we
go through another multi-century Dark Age.
lots of experience....waitree...bartending...."educator"...she is like a bad joke
Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University in 2011, where she majored in economics and
international relations. After college, she moved back to the Bronx and supported her mother
by bartending at Flats Fix taqueria in Union Square, Manhattan, and working
as a waitress. She also got a job as an educator in the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute .
[11][12]
At least she is far cuter than her competition... Democrats need new blood anyway. Its a
party that seems to be going nowhere, has the Clinton mafia running it, and hasn't done
anyone any good since the time Jimmy Carter was president.
Bernie might have done better than Hillary against Trump. Will the kids get out and vote
for a Joe Biden? NO The Dems are going to have to go way way left on a hale mary. But Trump
is much much stronger now than in 2016. They lose. They got nothing and their divisions are
getting worse. We should support and encourage them to move further and further to the left.
We can drive them there.
If you live in an area that is Democrat controlled and your own preference is safe, then
register Democrat and vote for people like her.
If you simply divert all the money from the following socialist programs:
1) ZIRP
2) QE
3) Bank bailouts
4) Farming subsidies
5) Defense contract subsidies
6) Big pharma subsidies
Problem is Americans are too easily fooled that stuff which is to their benefits are
something they should not vote for and vise versa. Like all money channeled to MIC.
"... The democratic machine in NYC does absolutely everything it can to suppress turnout to protect incumbents so I was happy to see it blow up in their face today. But still pretty grim to see only 25,000 people voting. ..."
"... The interesting question is how the Democrats will react to this. They may try to sabotage her in some other way. The other is the top 10%ers and other upper middle class voters. I would not be surprised if many Establishment Democrats vote for the GOP over a Berniecrat. ..."
But here is the bigger implication, again from Vox:
Ocasio-Cortez's victory is a story of the complacent establishment taking voters for
granted. It's the story of how the Democratic Party is getting pulled to the left. It's also
about how it's not just progressive policies that are reshaping the party, but also people of
color.
Ocasio-Cortez ran decidedly to the left of Crowley, but she also shook up how Democrats go
about getting elected. Until now, Democrats have seen big money in politics as simply a deal
with the devil that had to be made. Democrats are so often outspent by Republican mega-donors
that they viewed courting big-dollar donors and corporations as part of creating a level
playing field.
But if one of Democrats' top fundraisers and likely successor to Nancy Pelosi can be
toppled, perhaps Democrats need to rethink that deal.
What was most exciting for progressives is the degree to which Ocasio-Cortez ran to
Crowley's left. As a member of the DSA, her website is a laundry list of every blue-sky
progressive policy: Medicare-for-all, housing and jobs guarantees, gun control, ending
private prisons, abolishing ICE, and investment in post-hurricane Puerto Rico.
Crowley also had the endorsement of Governor Andrew Cuomo. 'Nuff said.
AstoriaBlowin ,
June 26, 2018 at 11:10 pm
The democratic machine in NYC does absolutely everything it can to suppress turnout to
protect incumbents so I was happy to see it blow up in their face today. But still pretty
grim to see only 25,000 people voting.
I voted against Crowley cause he came out against installing protected bike lanes in
Sunnyside which was none of his business anyway as a federal official. I wrote to him
expressing my disappointment and he actually called me to talk about it! We had a nice
conversation but still once you choose parking over people's lives it's over.
Ocasio has some good talking points but she also comes across as a NIMBY which is not a
good look in a city with a serious housing affordability and availability crisis.
It is certainly a major step forward and will hopefully be the first of many victories.
Ultimately, what we desperately need are politicians that will truly fight for the common
citizen to get into office and in enough numbers as to fundamentally alter the direction of
government from an institution that is co-opted by the rich to one that is for the
people.
The interesting question is how the Democrats will react to this. They may try to
sabotage her in some other way. The other is the top 10%ers and other upper middle class
voters. I would not be surprised if many Establishment Democrats vote for the GOP over a
Berniecrat.
Bottom line – this is a step forward, but we are not out of the woods yet. There is
a lot of work to do and while we should celebrate, the Establishment will fight back. There
also remains the question of how this person will actually govern. The fact that the
Establishment was against her though is very encouraging.
"... In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish, young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not live in a mature society. ..."
"... Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman? Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi, Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed. ..."
"... I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate democrats and their Wall St. benefactors. ..."
"... Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it, consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing debtors. ..."
"... Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. ..."
"... Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the membership should follow and vote for. ..."
"... Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support. ..."
"... The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white) race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago. ..."
"... As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless, African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they are. ..."
"... George Phillies didn't say the Republicans had "good" ideas. He just noted that the Republicans have "ideas". A "bad" idea is still an "idea". ..."
"... So Pelosi's final bequest to the public is a corrupt successor? What a world! ..."
"... Pelosi's been quoted a number of times saying, "we lead with our values". You certainly do, Mrs. Speaker! Thanks for making it clear! ..."
"... Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the establishment. ..."
"... As far as I've seen, they trot out identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters actually want. ..."
"... Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power. ..."
"... To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be ..."
"... Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as mendacious. ..."
"... Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom, regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter. ..."
"... I can think of a couple of identity-words to offer to see if anyone identifies with them. Ex-middle class. Nouveau poor. ..."
"... Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal. ..."
"... The West is simply too bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a complete lack of prioritization. ..."
Eric Holder, former attorney general of the USA under President Obama, has publicly
announced that he is considering a run for the White House in 2020. (Thanks to that
WikiLeaked email awhile back, we know that Citigroup directed a newly elected President Obama
to appoint him to the position of A.G.)
I fervently pray that Eric Holder, of Covington & Burling, declares himself a
candidate!
Only then will the opportunity again present itself to expose Eric Holder -- and Covington
& Burling -- in their involvement with the creation and operation of MERS (Mortgage
Electronic Reporting System) and its connection to the global economic meltdown (2007 --
2009), the greatest illegal wealth transfer and insurance swindle in human history!
How we would welcome such transparency of evil, how BlackRock profited from that economic
meltdown, then oversaw the disbursement of those TARP bailout funds.
Exposure of the network of BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street and Fidelity; exposure
of their major investors. Further exposure of the Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group and
other such PE/LBO giants!
How the InterContinental Exchange (ICE) was involved in nefarious commodity price rigging,
etc., manipulated derivatives dealing and how today they oversee LIBOR rates!
The further exposure of the influence and perfidy of the Group of Thirty (www.group30.org)
and the Bretton Woods Committee (www.brettonwoods.org) -- oh how we'd love to see such
exposure!
Holder for President? Oh boy Mr. Peabody! That's great!
If a critical difference-making margin of non-voting Black non-voters in Milwaukee were
willing to non-vote between Clinton and Trump even at the price of letting Trump take
Wisconsin, that could mean that the Race Card is wearing thin. Who exactly would Mr. Holder
be able to fool in Milwaukee? He would do well in Hyde Park though . . . getting the Guilty
White Privilege Expiation vote. Will that be enough? Will the Madison vote be enough to make
up for the Milwaukee non-vote?
You know who would be a perfect pair? Holder and Harris. Or Holder and Booker. Or some
such. Seriously, if the DemParty nominates Holder, I will vote for Trump all over again. And
at the Senate or Representative level, I would vote for an old legacy New Deal Democrat if
there is one. But if they run a Clintonite, some protest Third Party looks very attractive by
comparison.
In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish,
young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of
its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting
the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not
live in a mature society.
If push came to shove you would have to describe both the Republican and Democrat parties
as bastions of neoliberalism and both parties play games with identity politics as it
fractures those who would oppose them and encourages internecine warfare. Like a kaleidoscope
shifting focus, the 2008 crash has started off a shift in how politics is done and the
success of Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK as well as other leaders is this shift in its
first efforts of readjusting.
Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new
order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman?
Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in
a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe
what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi,
Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think
that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the
results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed.
I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the
neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to
use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of
public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate
democrats and their Wall St. benefactors.
Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler
than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it,
consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the
first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing
debtors.
The obvious answer is "very" and this applies pretty much to every major allegedly leftist
party in the western world.
The fact is that if you want to form a political party and take power, or even make good
careers, you have to find supporters and get them to vote for you. Historically, after the
growth of modern political parties, they differentiated themselves by reference to social and
economic groups. In most countries there was a traditionalist party, often rural, with links
to church and aristocracy and the socially conservative, a middle-class professional/small
business party and a mass working class party often under middle-class leadership. Depending
on the country, this could, in practice, be more than three or less than three distinct
parties.
Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal
consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning
to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral
entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. The problem is that
whilst the old political distinctions were objective, the new ones are much more subjective,
overlapping and sometimes in conflict with each other. After all, you are objectively
employed or unemployed, a shareholder or landowner or not, an employee or an employer, you
have debt or savings, you earn enough to live on or you don't. It's therefore easier to
construct political parties on that basis than on the basis of ascriptive, overlapping and
conflicting subjective identities.
Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the
old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the
membership should follow and vote for. This worked well enough when the markers were
economic, much less well when they are identity based. Trying to herd together middle-class
professional socially-liberal voters, and immigrants from a socially conservative background
afraid of losing their jobs backfired disastrously for the Socialist party in the 2017
elections in France, and effectively destroyed the party. People don't like being instructed
who it is their duty to vote for.
The other very clarifying moment of that election was the complete absence, up and down
the western world, of voices supporting Marine Le Pen for President. Not a single voice was
raised in her support, although her victory would have been epoch-making in terms of French
politics, and certainly not Albright's.
That tells you everything you need to know, really.
Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the
Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is
supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western
World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at
putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support.
Note that many Democrats are totally terrified by the idea that the Republican Party would
become an identity-based party, namely the white people's party, because if the white vote
supported the Republicans nationally the way it already does in the south the Democrats
would, in the immortal words of Donald Trump, be schlonged.
Indeed, that support is now
advancing up through the Appalachians into central Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New
York. West Virginia was once heavily Democratic.
And while some Democrats propose that
America is becoming a majority-minority country, others have worked out that, e.g., persons
of Hispanic or Chinese ancestry may over several generations follow the Irish and the
Italians and the Hungarians and the Jews, none of whom were originally viewed* as being
white, by being reclassified in the popular mind as being part of the white majority.
*Some readers will recall that quaint phrase "the colored races of Europe". At the time, a
century and then a fair amount ago, it was meant literally. Anglo-Saxons were a race.
Irishmen were a distinct race.
The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think
tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white)
race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago.
That Republicans will distract, misdirect and dissemble to mask their class and race-based
identity doesn't change the reality of it.
As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless,
African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they
are.
Dyson neatly derailed the whole thing with his 'mean white man' line. Could have just been
Fry vs Goldberg too, Peterson talked past the others yhe whole time.
Whole thing deserves a do-over.
I'm really worried about a repeat of 2016 with a heavy dose of voter purges and
reregistrations. Ocasio-Cortez will need a strong GOTV ground game to pull off the upset.
Cuomo may be part of a political dynasty, but I recall that when Mario Cuomo was sending
out feelers about running for president, there was plenty of "Who's the furriner?" I can't
find the quote, but some Southern politician opined that there weren't many Marios and fewer
Cuomos in the South. (And when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket with Mondale, journalists
and columnists "miraculously" discovered that her husband was a mafioso.) So there's white
and there's white.
Not that I'd vote for Cuomo. And I certainly agree with Glenn Greenwald. But ethnic
politics cut all different ways.
Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a
damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the
establishment.
Here in Pennsylvania, Republican senator Pat Toomey has stayed in office only because the
Dem establishment here has refused to back Joe Sestak, a terrific but rebellious candidate,
for years. Last time around, it endorsed a woman over Sestak and another fantastic male
candidate–but she was as crappy as they come. As far as I've seen, they trot out
identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters
actually want.
If Sestak and his supporters started a little Third Party just for Pennsylvania, how many
votes would he get? If he and his supporters called it the Revenge Against Betrayal Party,
how many votes would he get?
Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious
high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and
immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power.
To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If
you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be because she's a woman, not because
she's, say, a neoliberal, corporatist warmonger -- it deliberately supplants legitimate
policy differences with identity. Not only is it breathtakingly dopey as a psychological
theory -- because it's pretty obvious that someone could oppose a person based on
those policy differences -- it's also obnoxiously presumptuous: "I'm going to substitute my
statements as to motivation for yours." None of that matters, of course, as long as the work
of erasing policy from the discourse is done.
And while it surely matters who is in congress and who sits in the oval office, possibly
we should all become more focused and engaged with system change rather than just individuals
running for office. (although damn am I impressed with Alexandria's keen appreciation of
democracy), To that end I offer ideas from the brain of Gar Alperovitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-Ss5h9F9k
Thank you, Lee. About a quarter of the way through Gar's talk and may need to take a
little rest to let my soul catch up. For me, in my community which is being hard hit by
gentrification and rents are, for many long-time residents, becoming unaffordable, this might
be the exactly the right ideas at the right time. Tomorrow I will be going to the last
meeting of our neighbourhood food co-op as it dissolves, after 10 years, and I can't decide
whether I am more angry or sad. It was well-intentioned, but just couldn't make it work.
Perhaps a bad plan, or maybe no systematic plan at all. Anyway. I never really expected to
see my $1000 again when I bought that bond 10 years ago.
Meantime, I will listen to Gar finish his talk, and pro'ly get his book from the
library.
So here is Gar talking about the Evergreen Co-ops of Cleveland: "That is a
community-building, wealth-democratizing, decentralized, combination of community and worker
ownership, supported by quasi-public procurement, through a planning system using
quasi-public moneys. That is a planning system. {It} begins with a vision of community which
starts by democratizing as far as you can from the ground up, building capacity at the
national level or the regional level, to purchase and thereby stabilize the system in a form
of economic planning. Now think about those things. Those are ideas in a fragmentary
developmental process as the pain of the system grows and there are no other solutions. "
It is strong stuff, but reading it seems dense and dull, but Gar makes it all make sense
on first hearing. So, in anyone interested in community economic action, do check it out.
Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell
their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats
discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it
really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as
mendacious.
I wouldn't mind the slogans and euphemisms if there was some substance behind them. I get
that Americans generally like to think of themselves as "middle class" whether they are
making minimum wage or millions of dollars but at least put some substance behind your
rhetoric.
Both parties are using identity politics to win elections while avoiding the economic
issues that every poll indicates Americans care about the most. The result is an increasingly
disillusioned and depressed population that hates the entire political system. Almost half of
the eligible electorate stays home during election years. Non-voters tend to be poorer while
the political junkies who are increasingly shrill, angry and unreasonable tend to be
wealthier. These are the people who form the base for identity politics because they have the
luxury to worry about such nonsense.
Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom,
regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter.
"It's about the children " Madeline Albright, when asked about 500,000+ dead Iraqi children caused by the sanctions
she promoted said "We think the price was worth it " When will this nauseating hag slink off the public stage?
https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
An average person with their limited lifespan can barely manage a quota of about a dozen
people to truly care about and about 70 to be acquainted with. Chances of any of those
belonging to some of those special category people are low to the point of it being
irrelevant and worthless to get acquainted with the categories themselves and their
cultures/language, unless they live in a few congregation capitals on this planet like San
Francisco, capitals which can be numbered on both my hands.
Unless the average person decides for themselves to care, trying to convince them to care
about special identity is tantamount to attempting to rob them of their precious lifespan,
over what? Superficial identities. There are religions which worship the supernatural. Now
there's a religion which worships the superficial called Identity Politics or Social Justice
Evangelism as i like to call it (as usual it has about as much to do with social justice as
Christianity had to do with world peace, and all to do with identity masturbation), arisen
jointly as a result of inflated and growing narcissism and unwarranted sense of
self-importance personality disorders influenced by spending too much time on social media
such as Facebook and Twitter.
Bah. Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the
economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and
therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom
it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities
is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think
they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even
though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal.
The West is simply too
bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a
complete lack of prioritization.
Following a Monday report that President Obama is
"secretly" meeting
with top Democratic contenders for the 2020 election,
The
Hill
notes that desperate Democrats beset with
Clinton fatigue
are freaking out over the fact that the much "blue wave" appears to be
crashing
on the rocks
, and there's nobody around to salvage the party ahead of midterms and the 2020
election.
"
There's f---ing no one else
," one frustrated Democratic strategist said. "
Bill
Clinton is toxic, [former President] Carter is too old, and there's no one else around for miles
."
-
The
Hill
In the hopes of reinvigorating the DNC (of which up to 40 state chapters stand accused of
funneling up to $84 million
to the Clinton campaign), downtrodden dems are hoping that Obama
will get off the sidelines and help rally support.
"
He's been way too quiet
," said one longtime Obama bundler who rarely
criticizes the former president, according to
The Hill
. "
There are a lot of people who think he's played too little a role
or almost no role
in endorsing or fundraising and
he's done jack shit
in
getting people to donate to the party.
"
After the GOP made sweeping gains in the 2016 election, the DNC was left in disarray - and
anyone who might be able to lead the party, be it Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, may run in 2020.
Bernie Sanders is of course out because he may run
and
he's not a Democrat.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among five possible contenders for the Democratic crown
attending the "We the People" conference in Washington on Wednesday. He received the loudest
applause and heard chants of "Bernie."
But he can't play the elder role for the party, both because he may run for president
and because he's not a Democrat.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), two other possibilities,
have mass followings but also may join the 2020 race.
-
The
Hill
That leaves the spotlight squarely on Barrack Hussein Obama - whose lack of endorsements during
the primary season and general absence has frustrated Democrats.
Bill Clinton, who is more radioactive than ever after making ill-advised comments over "what you
can do to somebody against their will," has endorsed several candidates since leaving office, yet
Obama has declined to do the same thus far.
"You have all these people running for office, some of them against other Democrats, and
his strategy has been to not endorse anyone and that's what's been so f---ing ridiculous because
not only are you not helping them, you're hurting them
," said the bundler.
Former aides and Democratic strategists said Obama has sought to maintain a lower profile not
only for his party to find new life, but also to avoid playing a foil to President Trump and
Republicans.
A source close to Obama said the former president is looking forward to hitting the campaign
trail, fundraising and issuing more endorsements closer to the midterms. But the source added
that
injecting himself into day-to-day politics would do the Democratic Party a
disservice by making it more difficult for other Democratic voices to rise to prominence.
-
The
Hill
Others say that Obama has remained the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party since leaving
office.
"He always wanted to help, without a doubt. He cares tremendously about our country and our
party. But I think he always intended to be a little more on the sidelines than he's been," said
one former Obama aide. "I think he realizes he is needed and needed badly."
Former Obama aides say that the ex-President is unsettled by policies flowing from the Trump
administration, along with the "tone and tenor" of the White House (but not enough to aggressively
help active Democrats fight, apparently).
According to Democratic strategist David Wade: "
It's certainly not the post-presidency
he might've preferred.
"
Maybe Obama is just having a good time hanging out?
The Neo-cons, excuse me Democrats better get moving. (its so hard to
tell them apart these days) The clock is ticking, November is coming
and more reports showing criminal behavior are on the way.
~"Many of you impatient
homos are whining about no arrests
or indictments have been made yet.
When will it happen? I'll tell you:
Early October."~
Bingo.
The dems have another problem and
appear too stupid to focus on it.
They apparently much rather worry
about having a figurehead to lead
them, but their real problem is
much, much larger. Simply put, they
have no message, save "Hate
Trump!!!" What exactly do they
promise voters these days? Trump
impeachment as an economic program?
Also curious is the fact they
want no part of Hillary. Do they
admit she's as tainted as a leper?
The problem with that will be people
will see through it as cheap,
partisan electioneering. The result
will be an EASIER time to motivate
Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.
There's as much chance of an
implosion of Democrats in 2018 as
there were back in 2006 when the GOP
was nearly blasted out of existence
then too. Remember how all the
predictions about the imminent doom
of the GOP were front and centre?
Journalists are so lazy, they're
just using Liquid Paper to
erase "Republican" to "Democrat" and
change the date from stuff they
wrote back in 2006.
Doesn't matter if Republicans or
Democrats win. In the end, everyone
else simply loses. How much you
lose is proportional to the distance
from the party elite you actually
are.
Following a Monday report that President Obama is
"secretly" meeting
with top Democratic contenders for the 2020 election,
The
Hill
notes that desperate Democrats beset with
Clinton fatigue
are freaking out over the fact that the much "blue wave" appears to be
crashing
on the rocks
, and there's nobody around to salvage the party ahead of midterms and the 2020
election.
"
There's f---ing no one else
," one frustrated Democratic strategist said. "
Bill
Clinton is toxic, [former President] Carter is too old, and there's no one else around for miles
."
-
The
Hill
In the hopes of reinvigorating the DNC (of which up to 40 state chapters stand accused of
funneling up to $84 million
to the Clinton campaign), downtrodden dems are hoping that Obama
will get off the sidelines and help rally support.
"
He's been way too quiet
," said one longtime Obama bundler who rarely
criticizes the former president, according to
The Hill
. "
There are a lot of people who think he's played too little a role
or almost no role
in endorsing or fundraising and
he's done jack shit
in
getting people to donate to the party.
"
After the GOP made sweeping gains in the 2016 election, the DNC was left in disarray - and
anyone who might be able to lead the party, be it Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, may run in 2020.
Bernie Sanders is of course out because he may run
and
he's not a Democrat.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among five possible contenders for the Democratic crown
attending the "We the People" conference in Washington on Wednesday. He received the loudest
applause and heard chants of "Bernie."
But he can't play the elder role for the party, both because he may run for president
and because he's not a Democrat.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), two other possibilities,
have mass followings but also may join the 2020 race.
-
The
Hill
That leaves the spotlight squarely on Barrack Hussein Obama - whose lack of endorsements during
the primary season and general absence has frustrated Democrats.
Bill Clinton, who is more radioactive than ever after making ill-advised comments over "what you
can do to somebody against their will," has endorsed several candidates since leaving office, yet
Obama has declined to do the same thus far.
"You have all these people running for office, some of them against other Democrats, and
his strategy has been to not endorse anyone and that's what's been so f---ing ridiculous because
not only are you not helping them, you're hurting them
," said the bundler.
Former aides and Democratic strategists said Obama has sought to maintain a lower profile not
only for his party to find new life, but also to avoid playing a foil to President Trump and
Republicans.
A source close to Obama said the former president is looking forward to hitting the campaign
trail, fundraising and issuing more endorsements closer to the midterms. But the source added
that
injecting himself into day-to-day politics would do the Democratic Party a
disservice by making it more difficult for other Democratic voices to rise to prominence.
-
The
Hill
Others say that Obama has remained the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party since leaving
office.
"He always wanted to help, without a doubt. He cares tremendously about our country and our
party. But I think he always intended to be a little more on the sidelines than he's been," said
one former Obama aide. "I think he realizes he is needed and needed badly."
Former Obama aides say that the ex-President is unsettled by policies flowing from the Trump
administration, along with the "tone and tenor" of the White House (but not enough to aggressively
help active Democrats fight, apparently).
According to Democratic strategist David Wade: "
It's certainly not the post-presidency
he might've preferred.
"
Maybe Obama is just having a good time hanging out?
The Neo-cons, excuse me Democrats better get moving. (its so hard to
tell them apart these days) The clock is ticking, November is coming
and more reports showing criminal behavior are on the way.
~"Many of you impatient
homos are whining about no arrests
or indictments have been made yet.
When will it happen? I'll tell you:
Early October."~
Bingo.
The dems have another problem and
appear too stupid to focus on it.
They apparently much rather worry
about having a figurehead to lead
them, but their real problem is
much, much larger. Simply put, they
have no message, save "Hate
Trump!!!" What exactly do they
promise voters these days? Trump
impeachment as an economic program?
Also curious is the fact they
want no part of Hillary. Do they
admit she's as tainted as a leper?
The problem with that will be people
will see through it as cheap,
partisan electioneering. The result
will be an EASIER time to motivate
Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.
There's as much chance of an
implosion of Democrats in 2018 as
there were back in 2006 when the GOP
was nearly blasted out of existence
then too. Remember how all the
predictions about the imminent doom
of the GOP were front and centre?
Journalists are so lazy, they're
just using Liquid Paper to
erase "Republican" to "Democrat" and
change the date from stuff they
wrote back in 2006.
Doesn't matter if Republicans or
Democrats win. In the end, everyone
else simply loses. How much you
lose is proportional to the distance
from the party elite you actually
are.
Much of what liberals say about Donald Trump and the chilling political moment the Trump
presidency represents is true enough.
Trump really is the arch-authoritarian malignant narcissist that liberals say he is. Trump
thinks he deserves to rule the nation like an absolute monarch or some ridiculous Banana
Republic dictator. He believes he's above all the law, consistent with Louis XIV's dictum
L'etat, C'est Moi ("the state is me"). The notion that Trump can pardon himself from any crime
really is the height of imperial arrogance.
Trump really does value nothing but the advancement of his own wealth and image. There is no
person, no principle, no higher loyalty he is not willing to sacrifice on the altar of
self.
Trump really is the almost perfect embodiment of venal malevolence that liberals say he is.
The idiotic military parade Trump has scheduled for the next Veterans Day is an exercise in
proto-fascistic, Mussolini-like imperial-presidential self-adulation.
This racist and sexist beast befouls the nation and world with his ghastly, eco-cidal
presence. The sooner he draws his last undeserved breath, the better for all living things (or
maybe not: Mike Pence could be worse).
The Authoritarian and Inauthentic Opposition
Fine, but why does this despicable, orange-tinted insult to common human decency
occupy the White House? He holds the most powerful office in the world because the Democratic
Party has long been and remains what the late liberal-left Princeton political scientist
Sheldon Wolin called the Inauthentic Opposition. "Should Democrats somehow be elected,"
Wolin prophesied in
early 2008, they would do nothing to "alter significantly the direction of society" or
"substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by
centrist precepts," Wolin wrote, "points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the
working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf." The
corporatist Democrats would work to "marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of
the Republicans."
Wolin called it. A nominal Democrat was elected president along with Democratic majorities
in both houses of Congress in 2008. What followed under
Barack Obama (as under his Democratic presidential predecessor Bill
Clinton ) – a
different and possibly more dangerous kind of malignant narcissist – was the
standard "elite" neoliberal manipulation of campaign populism and identity politics in
service to the reigning big-money bankrollers and their global empire. Wall Street's control of
Washington and the related imperial agenda of the "Pentagon System" were advanced more
effectively by the nation's first Black president than they could have been by stiff and
wealthy white Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney. The reigning U.S. system of
corporate and imperial "inverted totalitarianism" (Wolin) was given a deadly, fake-democratic
re-branding. The underlying "rightward drift" sharpened, fed by a widespread and easily
Republican-exploited sense of popular abandonment and betrayal, as the Democrats depressed and
demobilized their own purported popular base.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did nothing to correct that problem. Quite the
opposite. With a colossal campaign finance war-chest fed not just by the usual Wall Street and
Silicon Valley suspects but
also by many traditionally Republican big money donors who were repelled by Trump's faux
"populism," the transparently corporate establishmentarian candidate Clinton could barely deign
to pretend to be a progressive. She ran almost completely on the argument that Trump was too
terrible and unqualified to be president. Making candidate character and qualities her sole
selling point was a critical and historic mistake given the angry and anti-establishment mood
of the electorate and her own epic unpopularity. So was calling Trump's flyover county supporters a "basket
of" racist and sexist " deplorables "
in a sneering comment (one that
accurately reflected her aristocratic
"progressive"-neoliberal world view) to rich Manhattan campaign donors.
Authoritarianism? Single-Payer national health insurance had long been supported by most
U.S.-Americans when Obama ascended to the White House. Who cared? Not the
"radical socialist" Barack Obama. Like the Clintons before him, Obama coldly froze Single
Payer advocates out of the health insurance policy debate. He worked with the leading drug and
insurance corporations and their Wall Street backers to craft a richly corporatist "reform"
that preserved those companies' power to write their super-profits into the obscenely
exaggerated cost of American medical care.
As our greatest intellectual Noam Chomsky noted two
years ago, Obama "punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined." The
Obama administration repeatedly defended George W. Bush's position on behalf of indefinite
detention, maintaining that prisoners (US-Americans included) in the US global "war on [of]
terror" were not entitled to habeas corpus or protection from torture or execution.
Obama carried overseas assassination (by drone and Special Forces) – execution (even of
U.S. citizens) without trial or even formal charge – to new levels. Regarding Obama's
drone assassination program, Chomsky wrote acidly about how "the [Obama] Justice Department
explained that the constitutional guarantee of due process, tracing to Magna Carta, is now
satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch alone. The constitutional lawyer in
the White House agreed. King John (1199-1216) might have nodded with satisfaction."
Hillary Clinton's 2016 Vice Presidential ticket partner, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), is
currently a leading sponsor of the " Forever
AUMF 2018" (SJRes 59) (Authority for the Use of Military Force). As the ACLU's
Renee Parsons explains , the measure would " eliminate Congress' sole, inviolate
Constitutional authority 'to declare war.'" It "would remove Congress from its statutory
authority as it transfers 'uninterrupted' authority on 'the use of all necessary and
appropriate force' to one individual." That would garner another thumbs-up from King John.
The Democrats could well have won the 2016 election by running Bernie Sanders. Bernie would
have tapped popular anger from the center-left, advancing a policy agenda and anti-plutocratic
sentiments consistent with longstanding majority-progressive public opinion in the U.S. But so
what? The Democratic nomination process was rigged against Sanders for some very good
ruling-class reasons. As William Kaufman told Barbara Ehrenreich on Facebook last year, "The
Democrats aren't feckless, inept, or stupid, unable to 'learn' what it takes to win. They are
corrupt. They do not want to win with an authentically progressive program because it would
threaten the economic interests of their main corporate donor base The Democrats know exactly
what they're doing. They have a business model: sub-serving the interests of the corporate
elite."
The reigning corporate Democrats would rather lose to the right, even to a proto-fascistic
white nationalist and eco-exterminist right, than lose to the left, even to a mildly
progressive social democratic left within their own party.
Among other things, Russiagate is the Inauthentic Opposition, following its business model,
doing its job, working to cover its tracks by throwing the debacle of its corporatist politics
down Orwell's memory hole and attributing its self-made defeat to Russia's allegedly powerful
interference in our supposed democracy. Russiagate is meant to provide corporate Democrats
cover not only for 2016 but also for 2018 and 2020. It advances a narrative that lets the
Democrats continue nominating business-friendly neoliberal shills and imperialists who pretend
to be progressive while they are owned by the nation's homegrown oligarchs. This year's crop of
Democratic Congressional candidates is loaded with military and intelligence veterans, a
reflection of the Democrats' determination to run as the true party of empire.
"Some Discipline and Pragmatism to the Oval Office"
Under the cover of Russiagate, the pinstripe politicos atop the nation's not-so leftmost
major party seem to have the Sanders wing under control. Clintonite Democratic National
Committee (DNC) chair Tom Perez purged
progressive, Sanders Democrats from leading positions in the DNC last fall. Bernie-endorsed
candidates have flailed in
the Democrats' 2018 Congressional primaries . The not-so "socialist" Sanders' not-so
revolutionary "political [though not social] revolution" seems largely spent, skewered on the
fork of a major party electoral-industrial-complex it falsely promised to transform from
within. In the Iowa Democratic gubernatorial primary last Tuesday, the progressive Democrat
union member and "Our Revolution" candidate Cathy Glasson was trounced by the vapid and
centrist but super-wealthy businessman Fred Hubbell, who self-financed his campaign with
millions of dollars.
I recently watched a "liberal" morning CNN talking head salivate over the prospect of the
Democrats running a billionaire business mogul who "shares the party's world view" –
someone like the just-retired Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. The latte and cappuccino mogul
recently and absurdly ripped the Democratic Party for " going so far to the left ."
Sounding like a once-traditional Republican, Schultz
elaborated :
"I say to myself, 'How are we going to pay for these things,' in terms of things like
single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a
job. I don't think that's realistic. I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and
start talking about the truth and not false promises I think the greatest threat domestically
to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future
generations. The only way we're going to get out of that is we've got to grow the economy, in
my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements."
How to pay for progressive policies long but irrelevantly
supported by most U.S.-Americans ? With (to mention some other measures that have long been
quaintly and trivially preferred by most U.S. citizens) seriously progressive taxation
including a financial transaction tax and with a long-overdue transfer of taxpayer dollars from
the bloated and monumentally
mass-murderous Pentagon budget. There's nothing remotely mysterious about how we could fund
Single Payer and green jobs programs that would
help save the nation and (oh, by the way) the human race from the actual "greatest threat to
the country" (and to the world): environmental catastrophe , fed by
toxic capitalist "growth" (let's hit "4 percent of higher"!) and with the climate
crisi s ("climate change" does not begin to capture to the gravity of the problem) in the
lead.
Here's the accurate translation for "go after entitlements": (1) slash Social Security and
Medicare further; (2) use the fiscal crisis created by arch-plutocratic tax cuts for the
already absurdly rich and by the persistently gargantuan "defense" (empire) budget as an excuse
to decimate further the already weak U.S. social safety net and to (in what promises to be an
epic windfall for Wall Street) privatize the nation's old age insurance system. The real
entitlement that matters most – the inherited oligarchic class rule and despotism of
capital over workers, citizens, and ever more poisoned commons – remains untouched and is
indeed expanded in coffee baron Schultz's glorious "liberal" agenda,
All of which is fairly consistent with the Wall Street- and corporate-friendly
records and agenda of the Democratic Party during and between the ugly "neoliberal" years
when a Georgia peanut farmer (deregulation leader Jimmy Carter) and two silver-tongued Ivy
League law school graduates (NAFTA champion and public assistance-wrecker Bill Clinton and big
bank bailout champion and Trans Pacific Partnership advocate Barack Obama) occupied the White
House. I expect the dismal Democrats to nominate the longtime centrist politician Joe "Regular
Guy" Biden (who claims he would have kicked Trump's ass
in high school ) or the newly hatched faux-progressive Senator and former longtime
prosecutor Kamala "Obama 2.0" Harris (D-CA), but, hey,
why not go full corporate monty and try to put an actual full-on corporate CEO in the White
House in the name of the Democratic Party's "liberal world view"? As the "liberal"
New
York Timesapprovingly explains :
"The election of Mr. Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality,
certainly opened that door of opportunity, making it clear that American voters were willing
to elect a president with no prior government experience .American companies -- including
Starbucks -- have become more political in recent years, wading into issues like immigration,
gun rights and climate policy And at a moment when many voters say they are frustrated with
partisan gridlock and ineffective government programs, some believe that an efficiency-minded
business executive might bring some discipline and pragmatism to the Oval Office."
Besides Schultz, other corporate CEOs I've heard and read self-described liberals discuss as
potentially desirable presidential candidates include Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Disney CEO Bob
Iger, Facebook's spooky cult-leader Mark Zuckerberg, and even the JP Morgan Chase chairman and
CEO Jamie Dimon. What the Hell: why not drop the pretense of independence from the nation's
corporate and financial dictatorship and run an actual corporate or financial chieftain for
president?
That would be an act of oligarchic honesty on the part of the dismal dollar Dems. "I like
the idea of Dimon," one left correspondent writes me: "maybe with him as a candidate people
would finally wake up to the fact that the Democrats are the real problem." Don't hold your
breath. "Because," another comrade tells me, "being a ruthless plutocrat is their world
view."
"Trump is Terrible, So Let's Give Him More Spying and Killing Powers!"
What is the Democrats' leading cry? That the terrible Trump is truly terrible – and a
tool of Russia. And, of course, the "terrible" part is all too terribly true – the Russia
part not so much. But after you've bemoaned the terribleness of Trump for the ten thousandth
time, are you ready to get serious about the systemic and richly bipartisan, oligarchic context
within which Trump has emerged? "The Trump administration ," Chris Hedges reminded us on
Truthdig two weeks ago, "did not rise like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald
Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product
of our failed democracy . The problem is not Trump," writes Hedges. "It is a political system,
dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which
we don't count " (emphasis added).
And if Trump is as much of a dangerous and authoritarian monster as liberal Democrats say he
is (and he is), then why, pray tell, have most Democrats in Congress been willing to grant
him record levels of military funding along with re-authorized and
expanded warrantless surveillance and spying powers ? Why are Tim Kaine and other top
Democrats ready to grant him (and his successors) a freaking "Forever AUMF"? Hello? What does
that say about the not-so leftmost of the two reigning corporate parties? The glaring
schizophrenia ("Trump is a monster, let's give him more war and spying powers!") is yet more
proof that the Democrats are indeed an inauthentic opposition , committed to the same
imperial and police state Trump heads today. They are merely waiting to put one of their
ruling-class own atop the same exact and in fact richly bipartisan structures.
What Goes Around: "Trampling on the Helpless Abroad" Comes Home
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process
– internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices
abroad and justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" – has recurred ever
since. Today, the rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National
Security Agency has cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and
Obama44, not just under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as
beyond the U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
Writing in The Week on Monday, Ryan Cooper argued that
the Democrats have betrayed their New Deal heritage for a mess of neoliberalism. "Up through
about the early 1970s, it had been a fairly straightforward working-class party, but after a
generation of reform, under Bill Clinton it stood for a muddle of capitalism worship leavened
with means-tested welfare programs," Cooper contended. "At bottom, it was a left-inflected
version of the same neoliberalism that comprises Republican Party doctrine."
Cooper's column provoked a lively Twitter
canoe where some of the most prominent voices in left of center journalism weighed in:
Well, it was a working class party in 1936. Then the Southern Dems figured out that the
black people were in the working class too and also wanted to join unions.
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
One of the most complicated and frustrating aspects of operating a global capitalist empire
is maintaining the fiction that it doesn't exist. Virtually every action you take has to be
carefully recontextualized or otherwise spun for public consumption. Every time you want to
bomb or invade some country to further your interests, you have to mount a whole PR campaign.
You can't even appoint a sadistic torture freak to run your own coup-fomenting agency, or shoot
a few thousand unarmed people you've imprisoned in a de facto ghetto, without having to do a
big song and dance about "defending democracy" and "democratic values."
Naked despotism is so much simpler, not to mention more emotionally gratifying. Ruling an
empire as a godlike dictator means never having to say you're sorry. You can torture and kill
anyone you want, and conquer and exploit whichever countries you want, without having to
explain yourself to anyone. Also, you get to have your humongous likeness muraled onto the
walls of buildings, make people swear allegiance to you, and all that other cool dictator
stuff.
Global capitalists do not have this luxury. Generating the simulation of democracy that most
Western consumers desperately need in order to be able to pretend to believe that they are not
just smoothly-functioning cogs in the machinery of a murderous global empire managed by a class
of obscenely wealthy and powerful international elites to whom their lives mean exactly
nothing, although extremely expensive and time-consuming, is essential to maintaining their
monopoly on power. Having conditioned most Westerners into believing they are "free," and not
just glorified peasants with gadgets, the global capitalist ruling classes have no choice but
to keep up this fiction. Without it, their empire would fall apart at the seams.
This is the devil's bargain modern capitalism made back in the 18th Century. In order to
wrest power from the feudal aristocracies that had dominated the West throughout the Middle
Ages, the bourgeoisie needed to sell the concept of "democracy" to the unwashed masses, who
they needed both to staff their factories and, in some cases, to fight revolutionary wars, or
depose and publicly guillotine monarchs. All that gobbledegook about taxes, tariffs, and the
unwieldy structure of the feudal system was not the easiest sell to the peasantry. "Liberty"
and "equality" went over much better. So "democracy" became their rallying cry, and,
eventually, the official narrative of capitalism. The global capitalist ruling classes have
been stuck with "democracy" ever since, or, more accurately, with the simulation of
democracy.
The purpose of this simulation of democracy is not to generate fake democracy and pass it
off as real democracy. Its purpose is to generate the concept of democracy , the only
form in which democracy exists. It does this by casting a magic spell (which I'll do my best to
demystify in a moment) that deceives us into perceiving the capitalist marketplace we
Westerners inhabit, not as a market, but as a society. An essentially democratic society. Not a
fully fledged democratic society, but a society progressing toward "democracy" which it is, and
simultaneously isn't.
Obviously, life under global capitalism is more democratic than under feudal despotism, not
to mention more comfortable and entertaining. Capitalism isn't "evil" or "bad." It's a machine.
Its fundamental function is to eliminate any and all despotic values and replace them with a
single value, i.e., exchange value, determined by the market. This despotic-value-decoding
machine is what freed us from the tyranny of kings and priests, which it did by subjecting us
to the tyranny of capitalists and the meaningless value of the so-called free market, wherein
everything is just another commodity toothpaste, cell phones, healthcare, food, education,
cosmetics, et cetera. Despite that, only an idiot would argue that capitalism is not preferable
to despotism, or that it hasn't increased our measure of freedom. So, yes, we have evolved
toward democracy, if we're comparing modern capitalism to medieval feudalism.
The problem is that capitalism is never going to lead to actual democracy (i.e., government
by and for the people). This is never going to happen. In fact, capitalism has already reached
the limits of the freedom it can safely offer us. This freedom grants us the ability to make an
ever-expanding variety of choices none of which have much to do with democracy. For example,
Western consumers are free to work for whatever corporation they want, and to buy whatever
products they want, and to assume as much debt as the market will allow to purchase a home
wherever they want, and to worship whichever gods they want (as long as they conform their
behavior to the values of capitalism and not their religion), and men can transform themselves
into women, and white people can deem themselves African Americans, or Native Americans, or
whatever they want, and anyone can mock or insult the President or the Queen of England on
Facebook and Twitter, none of which freedoms were even imaginable, much less possible, under
feudal despotism.
But this is as far as our "freedom" goes. The global capitalist ruling classes are never
going to allow us to govern ourselves, not in any meaningful way. In fact, since the mid-1970s,
they've been systematically dismantling the framework of social democracy throughout the West,
and otherwise relentlessly privatizing everything. They've been doing this more slowly in
Europe, where social democracy is more entrenched, but, make no mistake, American "society" is
the model for our dystopian future. The ruling classes and their debt-enslaved servants,
protected from the desperate masses by squads of hyper-militarized police, medicated in their
sanitized enclaves, watching Westworld on Amazon Prime as their shares in private
prisons rise and the forces of democracy defend their freedom by slaughtering men, women, and
children in some faraway country they can't find on a map, and would never visit on vacation
anyway this is where the USA already is, and where the rest of the West is headed.
Which is why it is absolutely crucial to maintain the simulation of democracy, and the
fiction that we're still living in a world where major geopolitical events are determined by
sovereign nations and their leaders, rather than by global corporations and a class of
supranational elites whose primary allegiance is to global capitalism, rather than to any
specific nation, much less to the actual people who live there. The global capitalist ruling
classes need the masses in the West to believe that they live in the United States of America,
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and so on, and not in a global marketplace. Because, if
it's all one global marketplace, with one big global labor force (which global corporations can
exploit with impunity), and if it's one big global financial system (where the economies of
supposed adversaries like China and the United States, or the European Union and Russia, are
almost totally interdependent), then there is no United States of America, no United Kingdom,
no France, no Germany or not as we're conditioned to perceive them. There is only the global
capitalist empire, divided into "national" market territories, each performing slightly
different administrative functions within the empire and those territories that have not yet
surrendered their sovereignty and been absorbed into it. I think you know which those
territories are.
But getting back to the simulation of democracy (the purpose of which is to prevent us from
perceiving the world as I just suggested above), how that works is, we are all conditioned to
believe we are living in these imperfect democracies, which are inexorably evolving toward
"real" democracy but just haven't managed to get there quite yet. "Real" being the key word
here, because there is no such thing as real democracy. There never has been, except among
relatively small and homogenous groups of people. Like Baudrillard's Disneyland, "Western
democracy" is presented to us as "imperfect" or "unfinished" (in other words, as a replica of
"real democracy") in order to convince us that there exists such a thing as "real democracy,"
which we will achieve someday.
This is how simulations work. The replica does not exist to deceive us into believing it is
the "real" thing. It exists to convince us that there is a "real" thing . In essence, it
invokes the "real" thing by pretending to be a copy of it. Just as the images of God in church
invoke the "god" of which they are copies (if only in the minds of the faithful), our imperfect
replica of democracy invokes the concept of "real democracy" (which does not exist, and has
never existed, beyond the level of tribes and bands).
This is, of course, ceremonial magic but then so is everything else, really. Take out a
twenty dollar bill, or a twenty Euro note, or your driver's license. They are utterly
valueless, except as symbols, but no less powerful for being just symbols. Or look at some
supposedly solid object under an electron microscope. Try this with a tablespoon. As that bald
kid in The Matrix put it, you will "realize that there is no spoon" or, rather, that
there is only the spoon we've created by believing that there is a spoon.
Look, I don't mean to get all spooky. What that kid (among various others throughout
history) was trying to get us to understand is that we create reality, collectively, with
symbols or we allow reality to be created for us. Our collective reality is also our religion,
in that we live our lives and raise our children according to its precepts and values,
regardless of whatever other rituals we may or may not engage in on the weekend. Western
consumers, no matter whether nominally Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, or of any other
faith, live their lives and raise their children according to the values and rules of
capitalism. Capitalism is our religion. Like every religion, it has a cosmology.
In the cosmology of global capitalism, "democracy" is capitalist heaven. We hear it preached
about throughout our lives, we're surrounded by graven images of it, but we don't get to see it
until we're dead. Attempting to storm its pearly gates, or to create the Kingdom of Democracy
on Earth, is heresy, and is punishable by death. Denying its existence is blasphemy, for which
the punishment is excommunication, and consignment to the City of Dis, where the lost souls
shout back and forth at each other across the lower depths of the Internet, their infernal
voices unheard by the faithful but, hey, don't take the word of an apostate like me. Go ahead,
try it, and see what happens.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Really good, amusing article.
Our replica of democracy is not to deceive us, but to convince us that there really IS
an(unattainable) democracy. The promised land is always just beyond the horizon
"It does this by casting a magic spell that deceives us into perceiving the capitalist
marketplace we Westerners inhabit, not as a market, but as a society."
Yes. Consumer capitalism requires illusion and MK-ULTRA programs to function.
"We create reality, collectively, with symbols "
And those symbols, often repurposed from earlier iterations like the swastika, stem from
ancient sources. Maybe the structure of our reality was designed years ago.
"This is, of course, ceremonial magic but then so is everything else, really."
Yep. The narrow-focused rationalists who have degraded science into a religion will never
accept that there is a sliver of magic and sorcery, originating from Kabbalistic practices,
that operate as a higher level science, the mechanics of which non-initiates can't
quantify.
I agree with much of what this columnist wrote. However this entire globalist criminal
enterprise is rapidly crumbling. This is shown in the rise of patriotic/loyalist and Marxist
parties in Europe and the Far Right and Far Left in the U.S. The globalist elite 0.001%
empire of the banksters, crapitalists and fingerciers and their lackeys, knaves and varlets,
along with their political prostitute puppets, is built on sand. These worthless cretins have
loaded down every nation on earth, and especially in the West, with massive, crushing debt.
Ditto for individuals and businesses. It is not sustainable. In addition they have off shored
much of Western industry into Third World nations and flooded Western nations with Third
World proles to hold down wages and depress living conditions. Reaction among the native
Whites is building stronger by the day. At some point this volcano is going to blow. When it
does all bets are off as to how much destruction will happen.
At this point the super rich and their banks and trans-national corporations can either
gradually give way to democratic change and re-industrialize the West, discount all these
debts, and stop this Third World invasion and begin swift repatriation of these interlopers
and save much of their wealth and power or they will soon face armed revolution and
civil/class/racial war in the streets. These worthless elites have fouled their own nests
since they have left virtually no Western nation untouched by these triple evils of debt,
immigration and de-industrialization. They either never learned the lessons of the French and
Russian revolutions or believe it could not happen in the 21st Century to them. Either way it
makes no difference. Globalism is crumbling and going the way of other evil isms: Fascism,
Communism, Nazism, Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. Its days are numbered and the writing is on
the wall. Meanwhile those nations not controlled by the Western White Collar Mafia, namely
Russia and China, along with Iran and a few other Asian and Middle Eastern nations, are
building up their economies and militaries and increasingly challenging the Western tyrants.
We are definitely in for troubled times ahead. Always remember: Those who make peaceful
change impossible, make violent change inevitable. Globalism has had its evil day and its
black sun is setting. The only questions now are will it go peacefully and quietly or loudly
and violently and what will replace it. I hope and pray something good and true.A new world
order built that that is God and Christ and not man based with peace, prosperity, and justice
for all in a natural order of things.
Free movement of capital, in Europe since 1997, took away power from politicians.
The German Lafontaine made it clear.
He stated that when in Basel a German spoke to the bankers assembled there, blaming them,
they clapped their hands.
One sees it in the terminology used, what in the good old days was called protectionism, a
word suggesting something positive, now is trade war, definitely something bad.
It for me is the same as with privatisation of universal services, water, electricity, etc.,
neither privatising anything is good, also a state economy is not good, as the USSR made
clear.
In the good old days in W European countries we had mixed exonomies, commercial enterprises
for cars and jeans, state enterprise for electricity and public transport.
In my opinion a mixed world economy also is the best option, this means regulation of capital
movement, to mention one thing.
A little snapshot to illustrate the point. Standing in the passport control line at Newark
Airport -- interminably, because of about 24 stations for checking people back in to the
motherland, maybe five were manned. This was in mid-afternoon on a weekday, a time when many
international flights were arriving. The wait was about an hour and a half.
While waiting, you get a superb view through the window of the Manhattan skyline, and
might have occasion to think about all the swells in the financial sector whose ever-growing
prosperity has sucked money not only out of the real economy of goods and services, but out
of government as well, a point Michael Hudson often makes. E.g., cap those property taxes in
California, but drive housing prices in California and interest rates sky high to transfer
wealth out of the hands of home owners and governments, and into finance capital.
You can work yourself up into a pretty good lather thinking about this while you wait your
turn at an under-funded passport control station.
I would recommend this book to unz readers. I read it years ago and its basic premise becomes
more observably true every year .and pertains to the US as well, something Chu didn't
mention.
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global
Instability
By Amy Chua
Category: World Politics | Economics | Management
"Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated
starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These
"market-dominant minorities" – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former
Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in
West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic
demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge."
So maybe revolutions will be the new way of managing the world,
An ex furniture salesman, now the Prime Minister of Israel would not agree. He thinks
history has ended. Jerusalem is soon to be or already is the capital of the globalist world.
Hate speech laws replace the sanctity of the Monarchs and Churches with the sanctity of
Israel and identity politics. His lackeys have even taken away the freedom to shop via the
criminalisation of BDS. Talpiot program has turned everything into a video game. He is either
a genius or a complete fool. But I hope you are right and he is wrong. Another point.
Democracy real and simulated only became fashionable a hundred years ago.
That's the first I've heard of "progressing towards democracy" as a major feature of the
modern Western worldview (a la USSR progressing towards communism, I suppose). No, I've
encountered such ideas before among pundits, but I don't think most people in America, say,
believe that they currently don't live in a democracy but will later live in a "true"
democracy. That seems like a rather exotic notion outside of very narrow intellectual
circles.
Also, "as long as they conform their behavior to the values of capitalism and not their
religion". But people are free to conform their behaviour to the values of their religion to
a large extent. They're not free to violate the laws of what you'd call capitalist society.
But that is not the same as being forced to conform to its values.
Which is why it is absolutely crucial to maintain the simulation of democracy, and the
fiction that we're still living in a world where major geopolitical events are determined
by sovereign nations and their leaders, rather than by global corporations and a class of
supranational elites whose primary allegiance is to global capitalism, rather than to any
specific nation, much less to the actual people who live there.
But it can go wrong. The simulation was supposed to make Hillary Clinton President –
but, in the event, it veered over to real Democracy and produced Trump.
Equally the Brexit vote was planned to fail – but that also turned in a real
Democratic result with a majority for Brexit.
Simulated Democracy is a difficult process and it's probably due for more failures given
the difficulty of controlling the modern flow of information.
I suppose we are all going to spend the rest of our lives listening to bitter millenials rant
about the evils of capitalism. After all, they could move out of their parent's basement if
the government would force the banks to forgive all their student loans.
It should be obvious by now that all forms of government eventually morph into what we see
all around us today. But let's not confuse free market capitalism (which has never existed)
with the aristocratic fascisms that we call "Communism" or "Democracy."
The only way to really solve the problem of government is make government irrelevant.
Well, CJ, If I were your political science professor, I'd fail your sorry ass for 'communist
jargon' and 'Marxist jingoism' maybe that works fine if you're into looking for strokes when
singing to the choir but it won't build alliances that accomplish anything. But maybe that's
not your point, and the substance of your butt-hurt whining is about "I'm CJ Hopkins!" kinda
like "I'm Rick James!"
Look dude, if you want to get down and dirty with your enemies, hit below the belt, and do
it like this:
The worlds elites have us mind controlled and financially controlled via the Zionist Fed that
creates money out of thin air and then loans this money to our gov and we goyim and charge
interest on this ether created money and there in lies the control for by their control over
the money they control every thing.
In addition the Zionists fastened the IRS on we goyims and this IRS is a off shoot of the
FED and so our money is sent to the Zionist bankers who own the FED to make sure we pay for
the wars that the Zionists have arranged for we Americans and so this is a trap that has been
laid by the central bankers which insures their dominance for ever and ever.
This system of control has been in existence since 1913 when the zionist bankers fastened
the FED and the IRS on to the American people and the author of this article is exactly
right, we are in a financial prison a prison without bars but a prison none the less.
In regards to voting as Stalin said ie it is not who votes that counts but who counts the
votes.
These worthless cretins have loaded down every nation on earth, and especially in the
West, with massive, crushing debt. Ditto for individuals and businesses. It is not
sustainable.
Any given iteration of the capitalism model is unsustainable by its very nature, of
course. Any capitalist instantiation is self-exhausting, as capitalism eventually transfers
all wealth (or some very large fraction) to the wealthy. ALL. At that point, that instance
collapses at some rate determined by its state of monetization.
But not all wealth evaporates. After a financial collapse, a new zero-point establishes at
or near "true value". The capitalism model reasserts, and continues. It may be inherent to
the nature of Man.
'Democracy' is a scam that privatizes power, while socializing responsibility.
Reminds me of Oswald Spengler, though he is better read about than read, IMHO. From
wikipedia: "Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the
media are the means through which money operates a democratic political system."
But one minor quibble: yes, for now, in the West, fake democracy is certainly better than
old-style feudalism. But it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't have to stay that way. In many
nominally capitalist and 'democratic' countries – like India, Bangladesh, etc. –
half the population is chronically malnourished, the physical standard of living well below
that of late medieval europe (!). Now that communism has been vanquished, capitalism has no
need of a bargain of power for a decent standard of living, and the rich are moving towards
dragging the entire world towards the Indian model of cheap-labor serfdom. Yes it can happen
here.
Citizens United isn't helping, brought to you by the corrupt Supreme Court. They're starting
to push putting Ted Cruz in SCOTUS, that would be a huge mistake.
"Democracy" is a sham, the candidates are carefully pre-selected and promoted by the
corrupt media, if that fails, the unelected delegates and super delegates can always void
your vote.
This is why we only get Mitt Romneys, Clintons, Bushes, the same ol dirtbags out of
millions of people.
Americans clearly want the homicidal wars to end, are the wars/occupations ending?
More Americans clearly are turning away from supporting Israel, does it matter?
Most Americans want mass immigration and illegal immigration stopped, is it stopping?
There is a petition to End the Federal Reserve scam, do any of the petitions go anywhere?
Go sign it, lets find out .
The Mexican maid is the answer to our collective misery. What do I mean? Well! The white boys
have given up on rebelling against the Empire (1% + 10% Jews and Whites with a small
sprinkling of non-white goys) and da coloreds (Indians and Chinese) are too wrapped up in
trying to prove their worth to the lost crackas while the niggas (Blacks et al) are simply
too stupid to understand, let alone do anything about improving their lot. Alas, fear not!
The unwelcome army of latinas from Central America, employed as caretakers will prove their
worth by simply poisoning the whole perfidious lot, slowly. So, welcome to America,
Guadalupe!
The suffocating hold that propaganda has on an uncritical public must rank as an historic
coup for the ages. It is the modern version of the allegory of the cave. Simpletons are
willing to die for their puppeteers in wars that serve no other purpose than to enrich their
owners. But die for their masters they will. Yet there is a glaring contradiction in foreign
wars and America's favorite pastime, regime change. The chances of "real" democracy, for
instance, taking root in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, Egypt are virtually non-existent.
Worse still, they are simply not allowed. And any other countries that steer an independent
course from American hegemony will suffer consequences -- regime change, economic sanctions
or direct military action. Yet it is the public sold on its exceptionalism, living in a
"real" democracy (confused with rampant consumerism and hedonism) that has so utterly failed
to see -- and act, on these contradictions. Although the notion of "inching" toward "real"
democracy may serve to pacify the public, with the ever growing militarization of the deep
police state, true democracy will simply not be allowed to flourish. It is the only credible
threat to rampant capitalism. What is significant is that the lumpen proletariat firmly
believe that they live in a democracy. So change is rendered redundant in such a scenario.
Best expression of capitalism, religion, democracy as a Weltanschauung.
To fuse the totalitarian, univeral concept that paires so well to 98% of the world
population we suggest consumerism.
Do not take for granted that our de facto global elites, and the mercenary middle-classes
have a clear understandig where they are heading. There is cognitive dissonance in idea,
method and projection of their in-group opportunism. Ethics being nothing more then superior
opportunism. Smart, but ailing and failing a religion. In fact the theory proves the
cognitive capacity of the authors.
The ongoing debunking of the sacred yet impossible '6M Jews' is what is really driving so
called "hate speech laws". What your told is merely the pretext.
Below is where free speech on the impossible 'holocaust' storyline is illegal, violators
go to prison for Thought Crimes.
An obvious admission that the storyline doesn't stand up to scientific, logical, &
rational scrutiny.
And coming to your neighborhood.
The 'holocaust' storyline is one of the most easily debunked narratives ever contrived.
That is why those who question it are arrested and persecuted. That is why violent, racist,
& privileged Jewish supremacists demand censorship. What sort of truth is it that
denies free speech and the freedom to seek the truth? Truth needs no protection from
scrutiny.
This is an elegant fleshing out of fashionable despair. Yes, self-rule is a myth. What does
Hopkins recommend to replace it with? Is the aspiration of a democratic republic the problem,
or is it money, media, and the subversion of power?
As flawed as our belief in democracy is, I haven't heard the better alternative. Just as
some say we must go to Mars because we are destroying earth, I think we should take care of
this earth as repairing and caring for it might be within our means. Instead of throwing
democracy out, we should try and make it work.
For example, been reading about the rise of antibiotic resistant germs and industrial
farming. The problem was long known, but there was no political will to do anything about it
because the industry could lobby and also control regulators. In theory, the government
worked for the greater good of all the people, but in practice it auctions us all to special
interest.
Capitalists defend the current system by saying it's not really capitalism. Well, whatever
it is, it came about because democracy was not actual but rather an ongoing auction of
national interest to special interest.
It's a good article and makes a good case, but you will have to wait just a bit longer
until us believers die off as you will not pry this democracy, our heritage and our best
chance, from my cold hands.
similar experience coming through Atlanta.
Want to create jobs? Coulda created 50 there. At least. And prevented missed flight
connections. Obama time.
I shall proudly call myself an idiot then, as I believe capitalism and democracy are both
bad.
The only system capable of inspiring passion and loyalty is some form of feudalism –
personal loyalty to a lord is a beautiful thing, noblesse oblige a beautiful thing, sacred
kingship is a beautiful thing, the tradition of beautiful craftsmanship that arises when
economic considerations are not uppermost is a beautiful thing, the standards of excellence
that are natural to a system that recognizes hierarchy and inequality is a beautiful
thing.
I also think personal freedom, and tolerance for eccentricity is far greater when the
social system is firmly grounded. In a democracy where nothing is secure conformity of
opinion and personality become urgent – to maintain even minimum stability.
Japan has retained elements of feudalism to this day yet is economically far more
egalitarian than America – because when economics is the sole standard of value, the
ambitious will gather all wealth into their hands.
Seeing the Japanese bow to each other – such a beautiful gesture.
Yeah, I suppose I could have half tried but the self-righteous indignation (tone) puts me
off. It's like Tom Englehardt, get people all tied up in some hopeless, helpless outrage that
accomplishes precisely nothing, no solutions, no pointing to a direction that might get
something done. In any case CJ is in Berlin but I bet he wouldn't give a New York second's
thought to risking his butt and work to put the German politicians nuts in a vise, but Hey!
you never know, here's his chance, he can promote this:
Of my five years exile in Germany, two of those years were in Berlin and I can assure you
the German political animal is an authentic coward, and Gregor Gysi of Die Linke is no
exception, he'd go after CJ before he'd go after the NATO war criminals is my best bet. Maybe
CJ has the balls to risk it?
Marxist twaddle about "democracy", lol. As if the founders didn't warn us so strenuously
about the tyranny of the majority.
Our government was formed not so that we could vote on what I am allowed to eat, but so
that others would have no say in it.
The centralization of power and conformity across previously sovereign states now
prohibits people from voting with their feet. The globalists are the next extension of the
same tyranny.
We don't have limited governments and free markets. We have big brother government and a
captured regulatory apparatus ensuring only large corporations can survive. Regulatory law is
nowhere in the constitution and they dictate over subjects also not in the constitution.
I knew it was over when the US electorate was swooned over Iraqis having purple fingers
voting "secret ballots". The candidates names were secret. But all you need to tell the
sheeple is that they voted.
This piece is typical Marxist sleight of hand. To have a government of the people, by the
people, and for the people, you limit what the government can do. Then you have liberty.
Self-rule.
Mr. Hopkins' article is an effective, accurate description of why and how things have
declined into a sort of soft fascism during the last 40 years or so in particular.
Democracy can easily be done on the individual level. There are plenty of resources for this.
I am not my brother's keeper anyway. don't tell me there is no democracy – just people
who want others to give it to them. Go all Thoreau on the world. Go off the grid, or Alaska,
or an island somewhere. Democracy is not for pansies.
no solutions, no pointing to a direction that might get something done
Preceding "solution" is description, and descriptive explanation. The article is not
intended as a set of solutions. It is a description and explanation.
Excellent article with much needed humor. We no longer have a word for an economic system
that supports human life. Hunting and gathering was early agriculture. Moving some rocks and
dirt out of the way to get some obsidian was mining. Knocking rocks against the obsidian was
early manufacturing. The excess from farms, mines and factories is what WAS called capital.
We are supposed to believe that a farmer can't plant a seed without a loan! We are in the
last stages of financialism. Since the word capitalism is useless how about "real stuffism"?
I'm a physical scientist and I can guarantee that math and the physical world always ends
financialism.
That line got me to laughing a lot harder than the rest of your bullshit, so I had to stop
reading. Your comments are now relegated to the "Duuuuuuuhhhhhh .MARXISM!!!" bin.
You could open up the scope of this post's valid point and say that it's not just democracy
that's simulated here. Rights and rule of law are simulated too. Democracy, fetishized though
it is, in degenerate ritual form, is a very small part of rights and rule of law
(specifically, ICCPR Article 25, one article of one of nine core human rights instruments or
about 100 total instruments in world-standard customary and conventional international law.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/UniversalHumanRightsInstruments.aspx
)
This exchange is a really good catch. Latching on to the term deep state allows CIA to bat
away a puffball question that avoids the real question. Their scripted answer to the scripted
easy question: employees 'aimed at' the president's objectives and Amerca's objectives. This
is clever first of all because it says objectives and not orders. It's a weaker formulation
that the Pike-Committee era line, CIA works for the president. CIA is trying to evade the US
commitment to command responsibility in the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against
Torture. Secondly, the DCI purports to interpret the president's objectives and proclaim
America's objectives. Used to be State or NSC did that, subject to presidential directives or
decision documents. Pompeo says CIA works for him. We're at the point Frank Zappa told us to
expect: CIA's removing the stage set so we're sitting looking at the brick wall. Pompeo's
telling you that CIA's in charge.
The hard question is: Does CIA have impunity in municipal law? The answer is yes, of
course it does. It's there in black and white in the Central Intelligence Agency Act, the
Houston memo, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the operational files exemption,
and the political questions doctrine. If the DCI had no impunity the new DCI would be in
prison. CIA is obligated to prosecute or extradite its torturers and murderers. Na ga happen.
CIA has the arbitrary life-and-death power of a totalitarian state. CIA is beyond criminal.
Its arbitrary suspension of non-derogable rights and jus cogens says, Law? Fuck law.
I agree that the US is the ultimate expression of materialism.
The original Pilgrim Fathers were looking for religious freedom, but later waves of
immigrants came for economic opportunity, and the US was the first place that "Citizens"
morphed into "Consumers".
Congressmen are bought and sold, and they're probably OK with that, along the lines that
their vote has value, and they'll support whoever bids the highest (which isn't the electors
back home).
Like AaronB says, the US (and West in general) has no spiritual foundation, and is just a
cynical game of exploitation and corruption pretending to be "Democratic" . Real Democracy
does exist, but it's not something that Americans would want to be involved with – it
requires a high level of personal commitment and responsibility (probably obligatory),
regular local public meetings, investment in studying issues, and the primacy of local
decision making and voting over Federal power ( i.e. power residing at the lowest level
possible – which in the US would be the County and State). In other words it's hard and
time consuming work.
To take a parallel, the late Roman Empire was also a sink of absolute corruption and self
interest that couldn't defend its frontiers and finally collapsed, first socially, then
economically.
The spiritual Phoenix that rose out of its ashes was Christianity, with the barbarian
invaders converting and building Christendom in Europe (Rome) and also in the Middle East
(Byzantium). The early Christian communities in the Late Roman Empire were heavily persecuted
but still recognized for their high level of morality, work ethic and "respectability", and
in its last days (too late), the Empire actually adopted to Christianity through the
conversion of Constantine.
It should be obvious by now that all forms of government eventually morph into what we
see all around us today. But let's not confuse free market capitalism (which has never
existed) with the aristocratic fascisms that we call "Communism" or "Democracy."
You are on the right path, good observations.
Thinking people are aware of the fact that Moderns have permission not freedom.
What a surprise another commie writer on economic issues on Unz! These economic pos articles
resemble what you read in the NY times. Sheesh.
"Western consumers are free to buy whatever products they want"
Pure crap. Depending on the state you live in, think for a moment of all the restrictions,
taxes and permission you must go through to own a car, buy gass, freon, herbicide. Pharmacy
products, illegal drugs guns etc. A list a mile long. Anyone who describes the USA as a free
market is plain wrong and has no idea about the problems we face.
Liberty and the free market are not part of the problem. They are part of the
solution.
Switzerland, Singapore, and old Hong Kong to name a few examples are some of the
wealthiest in the world because of low to no taxes and max economic freedom. Two of the three
were crushed by ww2. Came back stronger than ever in 40 yrs or so.
You only discuss democracy as some monolithic idea, with some idealised notion that 'real'
democracy can only be tribal or small scale. This is not true.
Representative democracy = evolutionary autocracy and the right to shout. Laws and
regulations, being made by representatives – and only representatives – remain
purely autocratic in their creation and destruction.
Direct democracy – those tribes. Doesn't work for a society that has a huge
population and needs a 'directing mind' as Aurelius likened the individuals' equivalent.
Semi-direct democracy – a combination of the power to create or strike law by both
representatives (elected or selected), and the electorate. Switzerland has it (to a degree
because of its media, just check the June 10th banking referendum propaganda machine), China
approximates it because it polls its population on every level, decision and preference.
At the very least, the electorate should have power to strike laws made by representatives
and rescind previously struck laws by representatives. This is only fair – people
should have a process for declaring directly what laws they want to abide by. Representatives
may not like it, but society is society, it should be able to make these choices, for good or
bad.
Representative democracy – democracy in the spirit of the law, and autocracy in the
letter of the law – is for the most part an autocracy, with a progressive dumbing down,
frustration, and marginalisation of the electorate due to their practical lack of true power
to change society.
Then there's the question of education and media, as you need a smart and well informed
public with semi-direct much more than with representative. And preferably constitutionally
enforced armed military neutrality, as herd behaviour often tends to violence.
Finally – revolutionary democracy: revolts against systems can often be democratic,
if bloody, so build an effective system that considers the opinions and worries of the
masses.
Three sentences and I was done; and a play wright living in Berlin. Berrrrlin Dude, lets do
some history, Socialism sucks. But I do agree that my vote has been diluted to zero, by
design.
"... As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'" ..."
"... Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it ..."
"Clinton to be honored at Harvard for 'transformative impact'" [
The Hill ]. Irony is not dead.
"From the Jaws of Victory" [ Jacobin ]. Some
highlights from Amy Chozick's Chasing Hillary , which really does sound like a fun
read:
"In the public's mind, Clinton's 'deplorables' quip is remembered as evidence of her
disdain for much of Trump's fan base. But there was one other group Clinton had a similar
dislike of: Bernie Sanders supporters.
As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders
crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'"
UPDATE "Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized
it" [Josh Barro, Business
Insider ].
"... As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'" ..."
"... Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized it ..."
"Clinton to be honored at Harvard for 'transformative impact'" [
The Hill ]. Irony is not dead.
"From the Jaws of Victory" [ Jacobin ]. Some
highlights from Amy Chozick's Chasing Hillary , which really does sound like a fun
read:
"In the public's mind, Clinton's 'deplorables' quip is remembered as evidence of her
disdain for much of Trump's fan base. But there was one other group Clinton had a similar
dislike of: Bernie Sanders supporters.
As one person who had talked to Clinton about the difference between Trump and Sanders
crowds recounted, her feeling was that 'at least white supremacists shaved.'"
UPDATE "Why does Trump get away with corruption? Because Bill and Hillary Clinton normalized
it" [Josh Barro, Business
Insider ].
The dramatic rise fo the number of CIA-democrats as candidates from Democratic Party is not assedental. As regular clintonites
are discredited those guys can still appeal to patriotism to get elected.
Notable quotes:
"... Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests! ..."
"... Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries. ..."
"... After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire. ..."
"... It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote. ..."
"... This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq. ..."
During the 2016 Democratic party primaries we wrote that
what Bernie achieved, is to bring back the real political discussion in America, at least concerning the Democratic camp. Bernie
smartly "drags" his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, into the heart of the politics. Up until a few years ago, you could not observe
too much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, who were just following the pro-establishment "politics as usual",
probably with a few, occasional exceptions. The "politics as usual" so far, was "you can't touch the Wall Street", for example.
Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard
to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear
at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational
argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests!
Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was
forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries.
After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported
mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is
a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire.
It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from
the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate
voters and steal the popular vote.
Eric Draitser gives us valuable information for such a type of candidate. Key points:
One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat" whose campaign website
homepage describes him as a " local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization of former Bernie Sanders
staffers, the Justice Democrats. " And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself as one of the inheritors
of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?
Beals describes himself as a "former U.S. diplomat," touting his expertise on international issues born of his experience overseas.
In an email interview with CounterPunch, Beals describes his campaign as a " movement for diplomacy and peace in foreign affairs
and an end to militarism my experience as a U.S. diplomat is what drives it and gives this movement such force. " OK, sounds
good, a very progressive sounding answer. But what did Beals actually do during his time overseas?
By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency in Arabic and knowledge
of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the Clinton Administration.
Beals shrewdly attempts to portray himself as an opponent of neocon imperialism in Iraq. In his interview with CounterPunch, Beals
argued that " The State Department was sidelined as the Bush administration and a neoconservative cabal plunged America into the
tragic Iraq War. As a U.S. diplomat fluent in Arabic and posted in Jerusalem at the time, I was called over a year into the war to
help our country find a way out. "
This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted
into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration
in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq.
Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials in
Iraq were " looking to help our country find a way out " a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only
just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make billions
off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.
It is self-evident that Beals has a laundry list of things in his past that he must answer for. For those of us, especially Millennials,
who cut our activist teeth demonstrating and organizing against the Iraq War, Beals' distortions about his role in Iraq go down like
hemlock tea. But it is the associations Beals maintains today that really should give any progressive serious pause.
When asked by CounterPunch whether he has any connections to either Bernie Sanders and his surrogates or Hillary Clinton and hers,
Beals responded by stating: " I am endorsed by Justice Democrats, a group of former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pledged to
electing progressives nationwide. I am also endorsed for the Greene County chapter of the New York Progressive Action Network, formerly
the Bernie Sanders network. My first hire was a former Sanders field coordinator who worked here in NY-19. "
However, conveniently missing from that response is the fact that Beals' campaign has been, and continues to be, directly managed
in nearly every respect by Bennett Ratcliff, a longtime friend and ally of Hillary Clinton. Ratcliff is not mentioned in any publicly
available documents as a campaign manager, though the most recent FEC filings show that as of April 1, 2018, Ratcliff was still on
the payroll of the Beals campaign. And in the video of Beals' campaign kickoff rally, Ratcliff introduces Beals, while only being
described as a member of the Onteora School Board in Ulster County . This is sort of like referring to Donald Trump as an avid
golfer.
Beals has studiously, and rather intelligently, avoided mentioning Ratcliff, or the presence of Clinton's inner circle on his
campaign. However, according to internal campaign documents and emails obtained by CounterPunch, Ratcliff manages nearly every aspect
of the campaign, acting as a sort of éminence grise behind the artifice of a progressive campaign fronted by a highly educated and
photogenic political novice.
By his own admission, Ratcliff's role on the campaign is strategy, message, and management. Sounds like a rather textbook description
of a campaign manager. Indeed, Ratcliff has been intimately involved in "guiding" Beals on nearly every important campaign decision,
especially those involving fundraising .
And it is in the realm of fundraising that Ratcliff really shines, but not in the way one would traditionally think. Rather than
focusing on large donations and powerful interests, Ratcliff is using the Beals campaign as a laboratory for his strategy of winning
elections without raising millions of dollars.
In fact, leaked campaign documents show that Ratcliff has explicitly instructed Beals and his staffers not to spend money on
food, decorations, and other standard campaign expenses in hopes of presenting the illusion of a grassroots, people-powered campaign
with no connections to big time donors or financial elites .
It seems that Ratcliff is the wizard behind the curtain, leveraging his decades of contact building and close ties to the Democratic
Party establishment while at the same time manufacturing an astroturfed progressive campaign using a front man in Beals .
One of Ratcliff's most infamous, and indefensible, acts of fealty to the Clinton machine came in 2009 when he and longtime Clinton
attorney and lobbyist, Lanny Davis, stumped around Washington to garner support for the illegal right-wing coup in Honduras, which
ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in favor of the right-wing oligarchs who control the country today. Although
the UN, and even U.S. diplomats on the ground in Honduras, openly stated that the coup was illegal, Clinton was adamant to actively
keep Zelaya out.
Essentially then, Ratcliff is a chief architect of the right-wing government in Honduras – the same government assassinating feminist
and indigenous activists like Berta Cáceres, Margarita Murillo, and others, and forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing Afro-indigenous
communities to make way for Carribbean resorts and golf courses.
And this Washington insider lobbyist and apologist for war criminals and crimes against humanity is the guy who's on a crusade
to reform campaign finance and fix Washington? This is the guy masquerading as a progressive? This is the guy working to elect an
"anti-war progressive"?
In a twisted way it makes sense. Ratcliff has the blood of tens of thousands of Hondurans (among others) on his hands, while Beals
is a creature of Langley, a CIA boy whose exceptional work in the service of Bush and Clinton administration war criminals is touted
as some kind of merit badge on his resume.
What also becomes clear after establishing the Ratcliff-Beals connection is the fact that Ratcliff's purported concern with
campaign financing and "taking back the Republic" is really just a pretext for attempting to provide a "proof of concept," as it
were, that neoliberal Democrats shouldn't fear and subvert the progressive wing of the party, but rather that they should co-opt
it with a phony grassroots facade all while maintaining links to U.S. intelligence, Wall Street, and the power brokers of the Democratic
Party .
An interesting new term is used in this discussion: "CIA democrats". Probably originated in Patrick Martin March 7, 2018
article at WSWS The CIA Democrats Part one - World Socialist Web
Site but I would not draw an equivalence between military and intelligence agencies.
"f the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress."
Notable quotes:
"... @leveymg ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... "I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then." ..."
The left has never been welcome in the Republican party; and since the neoliberal Clinton machine showed up, they have not
been welcome in the Democratic party either. As Clinton debauched the historical, FDR/JFK/LBJ meaning of the word "liberal",
the left started calling itself "progressives". The left had long been the grassroots of the Democratic party; and after being
left in the lurch by John Kerry (no lawsuits against Ohio fraud), lied to by Barack Obama, and browbeaten by the increasingly
neocon Clintonite DNC, they enthusiastically coalesced around Bernie Sanders.
If our political system were honest, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic nominee; and Hillary Clinton and Debbie
W-S (of Aman Brothers infamy) would be on trial for violating national security and corrupting the DNC. But, our political
system isn't honest. Our political system, including the Democratic party, is completely bought and
paid for. And, unfortunately, Bernie Sanders - despite being a victim of that corruption - continues to refuse to make that point.
He refused to join the lawsuit (complete with dead process server and suspicious phone call from DWS's office) against the DNC.
All in the name of working within a party he does not even belong to.
After the 2016 election, the DNC, continuing its corrupt ways, blatantly favored Tom Perez over the "progressive" Keith Ellison,
smearing Ellison as a Moslem lover. Bernie's reaction to this continuing manipulation was muted. On foreign policy, Bernie continues
to be either AWOL or pro-MIC (F-35 plant in VT)/pro-Israel. These are not progressive positiions. AFAIAC, Bernie is half a leftist.
He is left on economics and social policy; but he is rightwing on the MIC, foreign policy, and Israel. There is very little democracy
left in this country, and I am not going to waste my time supporting Bernie, who has shown himself to be a sheepdog. That's my
take on the 2018 version of Bernie. I will always treasure the early 2016 version of Bernie, the only political candidate in my
life that I gave serious money to.
Neither will I waste my time pretending that honest, inside-the-system efforts can take the Democratic party back from the
plutocrats who own it, lock, stock, and checkbook. You might think there is a chance to work inside the system. You might think
the DNC is vulnerable because it learned nothing from the 2016 debacle; but you would be wrong. After the Hillary debacle, they
have learned how to manufacture more credible fake progressives.
------
For it seems that progressive candidates aren't the only ones who learned the lesson of Bernie Sanders in 2016; the neoliberal
Clintonites have too. So, while left-wing campaigns crop up in every corner of the country, so too do astroturf faux-progressive
campaigns. And it is for us on the left to parse through it all and separate the authentic from the frauds.
One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat"
whose campaign website homepage describes him as a "local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization
of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats." And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself
as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?
By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency
in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the
Clinton Administration.
Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an
influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity
in Iraq.
Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials
in Iraq were "looking to help our country find a way out" a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only
just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make
billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out. Another thing he has not called out is the fact that the
party leadership is still blatantly sabotaging even modestly "progressive" candidates in the primaries.
In the latest striking example of how the Democratic Party resorts to cronyism (and perhaps corruption) to ensure that its
favored candidates beat back progressive challengers in local races, a candidate for Colorado's 6th Congressional District
has leaked a recording of a conversation with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer to The Intercept which published it overnight. In
it, Hoyer can be heard essentially lecturing the candidate about why he should step aside and let the Democratic Party
bosses - who of course have a better idea about which candidate will prevail over a popular Republican in the general
election - continue pulling the strings.
The candidate, Levi Tillemann, is hardly a party outsider. Tillemann had grandparents on both sides of his family who were
elected Democratic representatives, and his family is essentially Democratic Party royalty.
Still, the party's campaign arm - the notorious Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (better known as the DCCC, or
D-trip) - refused to provide Tillemann with access to party campaign data or any of the other resources he requested.
Here is yet another thing that Bernie has not called out: The DNC, which is reportedly badly behind in fundraising, is nevertheless
willing to spend obscene amounts of money in primaries just to keep progressives out of races - even Red district races that are
guaranteed losses for Democrats.
Dan Feehan has successfully bought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota's first congressional district (MN-CD1). Dan,
having lived outside the state since the age of 14, has allegedly misled the public on his FEC form, claiming residence at
his cousin's address. Here is Dan's FEC filing form. One can see that it his cousin who lives at this address...
Mr. Feehan has no chance to win in November. While nobody likes a candidate from Washington D.C., people
hate Washington money even more. To be fair to Dan he hasn't taken super PAC money, somehow. But he
has raised 565,000 dollars, an outrageous sum for a congressional race. 94% of this money has come from outside the district,
and 79% from outside the state. Where does this money come from? Well, according to the campaign, from people around
the country who want to keep Minnesota blue. If this was the case, why not wait to give money until Minnesota voted
for a candidate in the primary and then donate? And who on earth has this much money to pour into an obscure race outside of
their state?
Dan Feehan is of the same breed that most post-Trump Democrats are. Clean cut, military experience,
stern, anti-gun, anti-crazy Orange monsters, anti-negativity, and anti-discrimination of rich people who fall under a marginalized
group. What are they for? No one knows. If pushed they want "good" education, health care, jobs, environment,
etc. But they want Big money too for various reasons, but the ones cited are: because that is the only way to win,
because rich people are smart and poor people are dumb, and because money is speech. So they cannot and will not make
any concrete commitments. Hence energy becomes "all inclusive", as if balancing clean and dirty energy was a college admissions
department diversity issue, rather than a question of life or death for the entire planet. Healthcare becomes not a right,
but a requirement with a giant handout to insurance companies. Near full employment (with the near being very important, when
we consider leverage) comes with part-time, short-term, and low paying work.
The Clintonite Democrats and their spawn are postmodern progressives. In their world, there is no way to test if one is progressive.
Within the world of the Democratic party, there is no relativity. It is merely a universe that exists only to clash with (but
mostly submit to) the parallel Republican universe. Whoever proves to be the victor should be united behind without a thought
given to their place within the political spectrum of Democrat voters. They believe, if I were to paraphrase René Descartes:
"I Democrat, therefore I progressive."
Tell me again why I must be a loyal Democrat, why I must support candidates who are corporate/MIC shills, why I must submit
to the constant harassment and sabotage of progressive efforts. Tell me again how Bernie is fighting the party leadership. (That
is, explain away all the non-activity related to the items posted above.)
I'm with Chris Hedges. Formal democracy is dead in the US; all we have left are actions in the streets (and those are being
slowly made illegal). The only people in this country who deserve my support are: 1) the striking teachers, many of them non-unionized,
2) the oil pipeline protestors, who are being crushed by police state tactics, 3) the fighters for $15 minimum wage, again non-unionized.
The Democratic Party used to stand for unions. It doesn't any more. It doesn't stand for anything except getting more money from
the 1% to sell out the 99% with fake progressive CIA candidates. Oh, and it stands for pussy hats.
Anyone who tells me to get in line behind Bernie is either a naive pollyana or a disingenuous purity troll.
leveymg on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 9:44am
We have all been here before. 1948.
That was the year that the clawback of the Democratic Party and the purge of the Left was formalized. It really dates to the engineered
hijacking of the nomination of Henry Wallace at the 1944 Democratic Convention. History does repeat itself for those who didn't
learn or weren't adequately taught it.
however tragic it is. Instead of a true leftwinger, we got Harry Truman, a naive wardheeler from corrupt Kansas City. He was
led by the nose to create the CIA.
I do take your point; but the question is, can anything be done? If democracy has become meaningless kabuki, and the neocon
warmongers are in charge no matter whom we "elect", what is there to do besides build that bomb shelter?
That is why I say that only genuine issues will galvanize the public; and even then, they can run a hybrid war against the
left. They have created this ludicrous Identity Politics boogeyman that energizes the right and makes the postmodern progressives
look stupid. No matter what tactic I think of, TPTB have already covered that base. The problem is that the left has absolutely
no base in the U.S. today.
How will the pseudo-progressives be able to justify being both "progressive" and pro-war?
Talk about cognitive dissonance. But wait. Democraps of any stripe, don't cogitate, hence no dissonance.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 10:12am
Appreciate you posting this essay This
is only one of the many troubling signs which convince me he is being controlled by my enemy.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out.
CS in AZ on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:12am
Thanks for the essay, arendt I came
to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long
ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron. Seriously,
you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not your place."
True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming on
some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am
Countered with Russia, Russia, Russia. God he was such a prick.
I came to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come
a very long ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron.
Seriously, you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not
your place." True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming
on some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
That's how I feel about it. I've been suckered one time too many. The 2016 election was a complete farce. Bernie was sabotaged.
The DNC and Hillary broke their own rules to do it. But Bernie, with a perfect opportunity and lots of support, just walked away
from the fight that he had promised his people.
Sheep dog.
TPTB want the political "fight" to be between slightly different flavors of neoliberal looting/neocon warmongering. They want
unions, teachers, environmentalists, and minorities to, in the words of a UK asshole, "shut up and go away".
The CIA literally paid $600M to the Washington Post, whose purchase price was only $300M. Bezos made 200% of his money back
in a month. The media is completely corporatized; and they are coming for the internet with censorship. Where is Bernie on this?
Haven't heard a word.
Sheep dog.
As TPTB simply buy what is left of the Democratic party, they will enforce this kabuki politics. Any deviation will be labeled
Putin-loving, Assad-loving, China-loving, etc.
You can't have a democracy when free speech is instantly labeled fake news or enemy propaganda.
"I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then."
This is how I see the way some people feel about him. This same thing happened after I voted for Obama. I thought that he would
do what "I heard him say that he would", but he let me down by not even bothering to try doing anything.
What soured me on Bernie was his saying that Her won the election fair and square after everything we saw happen. Even after
learning how the primary was rigged against him. And now he has jumped on the Russian interference propaganda train when he knows
that Russia had no hand with Trump beating Her out the presidency.
Bottom line is that I no longer believe that Bernie is being up front with me. I know that others feel differently, but remember
how people changed their minds on Obama and never accepted Herheinous! People should be free here to say how they feel.
Isn't making it "easier" for them to cheat when they are already doing that. What participating in their corruption does do
is keep the illusion of democracy alive for their benefit. Easier? They're already achieving their end game. Controlling us, electing
their candidates, and collecting our taxes.
Frankly we've been participating in their potemkin village passing as democracy for decades with no effect.
First, a boycott is not "ignoring" voting. It's an organized protest against fake elections. It's actually not that uncommon
for people in other countries to call for election boycotts in protest when a significant portion of people feel the election
is staged or rigged with a predetermined outcome, or where all of the candidates are chosen by the elite so none represent the
will of the people.
In that type of situation, boycotting the election -- and obviously that means saying why, and making a protest out of it --
is really the only recourse people have. It may not be effective at stopping the fake election, but it lets the world know the
vote was fake.
If you line up to go obediently cast your vote anyway, then you are the one who is empowering the enemy, by giving the illusion
of legitimacy to the fake vote.
Now about this big worry about what "they" will say... first, look at what they already say about third party voters.
In the media and political world, third party voters are a joke, useful idiots, who can be simultaneously written off as "fringe"
wackos who can and should be ignored, and also childish spoilers who can be scapegoated and blamed for eternity for election loses.
Witness Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. Of course people should still vote third party if there's someone that truly represents them,
and if they believe the election process is genuine. Because you don't let your voting choices be dictated by what the powers
that be say about it!
For those of us who believe the election process is a sham and a scam, voting is playing into their hands, giving legitimacy
to their show. That is what makes it easier for them to keep the status quo firmly in place, and is literally helping them do
it.
As has been pointed out, if an organized protest/boycott that called the elections fake were to take root and grow, they would
not be able to say we don't care. That's a big if, obviously, but it's better than playing your assigned role in The Voting Show.
Because that show is what everyone points to as proof that the American people want this fucked up warmongering government we
keep voting back into power every two years.
Enough is enough. One of Bernie's slogans, which I still agree with.
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies. ..."
"... the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies. ..."
"... The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule. ..."
"... But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils. ..."
In a three-part series published last week,
the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic
Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican
incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.
... ... ...
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA,
NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts"
for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks
on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs
like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the
military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the
intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen
candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation
with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its
operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that
score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board
of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip
up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers
to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic
Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining
the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence
operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience
invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given
preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration
has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened
its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of
American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose
interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class
is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry
out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx
of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that
the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the
corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
"Brennan/CIA democrats" can't talk about about anything else because they sold themselves under Bill Clinton to Financial oligarchy.
And stay sold since then.
Notable quotes:
"... do they honestly think that people that were just laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don't have a frickin' job? ..."
Democrats in midwestern battleground states want the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to back off the Trump-Russia rhetoric,
as state-level leaders worry it's turning off voters.
"The DNC is doing a good job of winning New York and California," said Mahoning, OH Democratic county party chair David Betras.
"I'm not saying it's not important -- of course it's important -- but do they honestly think that people that were just
laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don't have a frickin' job? "
Betras says that Trump and Russia is the "only piece they've been doing since 2016. [ Trump ] keeps talking about jobs and the
economy, and we talk about Russia. "
The Democratic infighting comes on the heels of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by the DNC against the Trump campaign, Wikileaks
and several other parties including the Russian government, alleging an illegal conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 election in a "brazen
attack on American Democracy."
Many midwestern Democrats, however, are rolling their eyes.
"I'm going to be honest; I don't understand why they're doing it," one Midwestern campaign strategist told BuzzFeed. "My sense
was it was a move meant to gin up the donor base, not our voters. But it was the biggest news they've made in a while."
The strategist added "I wouldn't want to see something like this coming out of the DNC in October."
Another Midwest strategist said that the suit was "politically unhelpful" and that they havent seen "a single piece of data that
says voters want Democrats to relitigate 2016. ... The only ones who want to do this are Democratic activists who are already voting
Democratic."
Perhaps Midwestern Democrats aren't idiots, and realize that a two-year counterintelligence operation against Donald Trump which
appears to have been a coordinated "insurance policy" against a Trump win, might not be so great for optics, considering that criminal
referrals have been submitted to the DOJ for individuals involved in the alleged scheme to rig the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
"The Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party in the way that manslaughter is
slightly better than murder: It might seem like a lesser crime, but the victim can't really
tell the difference." -- Michael Harriot
Vermont Senator says business model of Democratic Party has been a failure for 15
years
Bernie Sanders has triggered a backlash by making comments interpreted as an attack on [Wall
Street/CIA troll] Barack Obama on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther
King. The senator for Vermont appeared to criticise the first black US President as he branded
the Democratic Party a "failure".
Speaking in Jackson, Mississippi, he said Democrats had lost a record number of legislative
seats. "The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so
has been a failure,'' said the Vermont Senator...Mr Sanders's comments were quickly branded
"patronising" and "deplorable".
"... Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China. ..."
"... Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!! ..."
"... I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm ..."
"... the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about anything. ..."
"... The US public are irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose). ..."
"That tells you all you need to know about the difference between modern Britain and
the government of Vladimir Putin. They make Novichok, we make light sabers. One a hideous
weapon that is specifically intended for assassination. The other an implausible theatrical
prop with a mysterious buzz. But which of those two weapons is really more effective in the
world of today?".
(Boris Johnson)
Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.
Question one: does anybody
sincerely believe that "Putin" (the collective name for the Russian Mordor) really attempted to
kill a man which "Putin" himself had released in the past, who presented no interest for Russia
whatsoever who,
like Berezovsky , wanted to
return back to Russia , and that to do the deed "Putin" used a binary nerve agent? Question
two: does anybody sincerely believe that the British have presented their "allies" (I will be
polite here and use that euphemism) with incontrovertible or, at least, very strong evidence
that "Putin" indeed did such a thing? Question three: does anybody sincerely believe that the
mass expulsion of Russian diplomats will somehow make Russia more compliant to western demands
(for our purposes, it does not matter what demands we are talking about)? Question four: does
anybody sincerely believe that after this latest episode, the tensions will somehow abate or
even diminish and that things will get better? Question five: does anybody sincerely believe
that the current sharp rise in tensions between the AngloZionist Empire (aka the "West") does
not place the Empire and Russia on collision course which could result in war,
probably/possibly nuclear war, maybe not deliberately, but as the result of an escalation of
incidents?
If in the zombified world of the ideological
drones who actually remain in the dull trance induced by the corporate media there are most
definitely those who answer "yes" to some or even all of the questions above, I submit that not
a single major western decision maker sincerely believes any of that nonsense. In reality,
everybody who matters knows that the Russians had nothing to do with the Skripal incident, that
the Brits have shown no evidence, that the expulsion of Russian diplomats will only harden the
Russian resolve, that all this anti-Russian hysteria will only get worse and that this all puts
at least Europe and the USA, if not the entire planet, in great danger.
And yet what just happened is absolutely amazing: instead of using fundamental principles of
western law (innocent until proven guilty by at least a preponderance of evidence or even
beyond reasonable doubt), basic rules of civilized behavior (do not attack somebody you know is
innocent), universally accepted ethical norms (the truth of the matter is more important than
political expediency) or even primordial self-preservation instincts (I don't want to die for
your cause), the vast majority of western leaders chose a new decision-making paradigm which
can be summarized in two words:
"highly likely" "solidarity"
This is truly absolutely crucial and marks a fundamental change in the way the AngloZionist
Empire will act from now on. Let's look at the assumptions and implications of these two
concepts.
First, "highly likely". While "highly likely" does sound like a simplified version of
"preponderance of evidence" what it really means is something very different and circular:
"Putin" is bad, poisoning is bad, therefore it is "highly likely" that "Putin" did it. How do
we know that the premise "Putin is bad" is true? Well -- he does poison people, does he
not?
You think I am joking?
Check out this wonderful chart presented to the public by "Her Majesty's government"
entitled "A long pattern of Russian malign activity":
In the 12 events listed as evidence of a "pattern of Russian malign activity" one is
demonstratively false (2008 invasion of Georgia), one conflates two different accusations
(occupation of Crimea and destabilization of the Ukraine), one is circular (assassination of
Skripal) and all others are completely unproven accusations. All that is missing here is the
mass rape of baby penguins by drunken Russian sailors in the south pole or the use of a secret
"weather weapon" to send hurricanes towards the USA. You don't need a law degree to see that,
all you need is an IQ above room temperature and a basic understanding of logic. For all my
contempt for western leaders, even I wouldn't make the claim that they all lack these. So here
is where "solidarity" kicks-in:
"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur 's famous " my
country, right or wrong " applied to the entire Empire. The precedent of Meine Ehre
heißt Treue just slightly rephrased into Meine Ehre heißt
Solidarität also comes to mind.
Solidarity simply means that the comprador ruling elites of the West will say and do
whatever the hell the AngloZionists tell them to. If tomorrow the UK or US leaders proclaim
that Putin eats babies for breakfast or that the West needs to send a strong message to "Putin"
that a Russian invasion of Vanuatu shall not be tolerated, then so be it: the entire
AngloZionist nomenklatura will sing the song in full
unison and to hell with facts, logic or even decency!
Solemnly proclaiming lies is hardly something new in politics, there is nothing new here.
What is new are two far more recent developments: first, now everybody knows that these are
lies and, second, nobody challenges or debunks them. Welcome to the AngloZionist New World
Order indeed!
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a
murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of
it.
(John 8:44)
ORDER IT NOW
Over the past weeks I have observed something which I find quite interesting: both on
Russian TV channels and in the English speaking media there is a specific type of anti-Putin
individual who actually takes a great deal of pride in the fact that the Empire has embarked on
a truly unprecedented campaign of lies against Russia. These people view lies as just another
tool in a type of "political toolkit" which can be used like any other political technique. As
I have mentioned in the past, the western indifference to the truth is something very ancient
coming, as it does, from the Middle-Ages: roughly when the spiritual successors of the Franks
in Rome decided that their own, original brand of "Christianity" had no use for 1000 years of
Consensus Patrum .
Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular, power produced both moral
relativism and colonialism (with the Pope's imprimatur in the form of the Treaty of Tordesillas
). The Reformation (with its very pronounced Judaic influence) produced the bases of modern
capitalism which, as Lenin correctly diagnosed, has imperialism as its highest stage. Now that
the West is losing its grip on the planet (imagine that, some SOB nations dare resist!), all of
the ideological justifications have been tossed away and we are left with the true, honest,
bare-bones impulses of the leaders of the Empire: messianic hubris (essentially self-worship),
violence and, above all, a massive reliance on deception and lies on every single level of
society, from the commercial advertisements targeted at children to Colin Powell shaking some
laundry detergent at the UNSC to justify yet another war of aggression.
Self-worship and a total reliance on brute force and falsehoods -- these are the real
"Western values" today. Not the rule of law, not the scientific method, not critical thought,
not pluralism and most definitely not freedom. We are back, full circle, to the kind of
illiterate thuggery the Franks so perfectly embodied and which made them so infamous in the
(then) civilized world (the south and eastern Mediterranean). The agenda, by the way, is also
the same one as the Franks had 1000 years ago: either submit to us and accept our dominion, or
die, and the way to accept our dominion is to let us plunder all your riches. Again, not much
difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the Second Rome in 1204
and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the best predictor of
future behavior is past behavior.
Interestingly, the Chinese saw straight through this strategic psyop and they are now
sounding the alarm in their very official Global Times : (emphasis added)
The accusations that Western countries have hurled at Russia are based on ulterior
motives, similar to how the Chinese use the expression "perhaps it's true" to seize upon the
desired opportunity. From a third-person perspective, the principles and diplomatic logic
behind such drastic efforts are flawed, not to mention that expelling Russian diplomats
almost simultaneously is a crude form of behavior. Such actions make little impact other than
increasing hostility and hatred between Russia and their Western counterparts ( ) The fact
that major Western powers can gang up and "sentence" a foreign country without following the
same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international
law is chilling. During the Cold War, not one Western nation would have dared to make such a
provocation and yet today it is carried out with unrestrained ease. Such actions are nothing
more than a form of Western bullying that threatens global peace and justice. ( ) It is
beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a
frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows
how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western
nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another. These nations need
to establish a level of independence outside the reach of Western influence while breaking
the chains of monopolization declarations, predetermined adjudications and come to value
their own judgment abilities. ( ) The West is only a small fraction of the world and is
nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was. The silenced minorities within
the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding
is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action.
As the French say " à bon entendeur, salut! ": the Chinese position is crystal
clear, as is the warning. I would summarize it as so: if the West is an AngloZionist doormat,
then the East is most definitely not.
[Sidebar: I know that there are some countries in Europe who have, so far, shown the courage
to resist the AngloZionist Diktat . Good for them. I will wait to see how long they can
resist the pressure before giving them a standing ovation]
The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this
people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battlefield and person by
person, and made to bleed to death
(Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler)
Still, none of that explain why the leaders of the Empire have decided to engage in a
desperate game of "nuclear chicken" to try to, yet again, force Russia to comply with its
demands to "go away and shut up". This is counter-intuitive and I get several emails each week
telling me that there is absolutely no way the leaders of the AngloZionist Empire would want a
war with Russia, especially not a nuclear-armed one. The truth is that while western leaders
are most definitely psychopaths, they are neither stupid nor suicidal, and neither were
Napoleon or Hitler! And, yes, they probably don't really want a full-scale war with Russia. The
problem is that these rulers are also desperate, and for good cause.
Let's look at the situation just a few months ago. The US was defeated in Syria, ridiculed
in the DPRK, Trump was hated in Europe, the Russians and the Germans were working on North
Stream, the British leaders forced to at least pretend to work on Brexit, the entire
"Ukrainian" project had faceplanted, the sanctions against Russia had failed, Putin was more
popular than ever and the hysterical anti-Trump campaign was still in full swing inside the
USA. The next move by the AngloZionist elites was nothing short of brilliant: by organizing a
really crude false flag in the UK the Empire achieved the following results:
The Europeans
have been forced right back into the Anglosphere's fold ("solidarity", remember?) The Brexiting
Brits are now something like the (im-)moral leaders of Europe again. The Russians are now
demonized to such a degree that any accusation, no matter how stupid, will stick. In the
Middle-East, the US and Israel now have free reign to start any war they want because the
(purely theoretical) European capability to object to anything the Anglos want has now
evaporated, especially now that the Russians have become "known chemical-criminals" from Ghouta
to Salisbury At the very least, the World Cup in Russia will be sabotaged by a massive
anti-Russian campaign. If that campaign is really successful, there is still the hope that the
Germans will finally cave in and, if maybe not outright cancel, then at least very much delay
North Stream thereby forcing the Europeans to accept, what else, US gas.
This is an ambitious plan and, barring an unexpected development, it sure looks like it
might work. The problem with this strategy is that it falls short of getting Russia to truly
"go away and shut up". Neocons are particularly fond of humiliating their enemies (look at how
they are still gunning for Trump even though by now the poor man has become their most
subservient servant) and there is a lot of prestige at stake here. Russia, therefore, must be
humiliated, truly humiliated, not just by sabotaging her participation in Olympic games or by
expelling Russian diplomats, but by something far more tangible like, say, an attack on the
very small and vulnerable Russian task force in Syria. Herein lies the biggest risk.
The Russian task force in Syria is tiny, at least compared to the immense capabilities of
CENTCOM+NATO. The Russians have warned that if they are attacked, they will shoot down not only
the attacking missiles but also their launchers. Since the Americans are not dumb enough to
expose their aircraft to Russian air defenses, they will use air power only outside the range
of Russian air defenses and they will use only cruise missiles to strike targets inside the
"protection cone" of the Russians air defenses. The truth is that I doubt that the Russians
will have the opportunity to shoot down many US aircraft, at least not with their long-range
S-300/S-400 SAMs. Their ubiquitous and formidable combined short to medium range surface-to-air
missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapon system, the Pantsir, might have a better chance
simply because it's location is impossible to predict. But the real question is this: will the
Russians shoot back at the USN ships if they launch cruise missiles at Syria?
My strictly personal guess is that they won't unless Khmeimim, Tartus or another large
Russian objective (official Russian compounds in Damascus) are hit. Striking a USN ship would
be tantamount to an act of war and that is just not something the Russians will do if they can
avoid it. The problem with that is this restraint will, yet again, be interpreted as a sign of
weakness, not civilization, by the "modern Franks" (visualize a Neanderthal with a nuclear club
in his fist). Should the Russians decide to act à la American and use violence to
"send a message", the Empire will immediately perceive that as a loss of face and a reason to
immediately escalate further to reestablish the "appropriate" hierarchy between the
"indispensable nation" and the "gas station masquerading as a country". So here is the dynamic
at work
Russia limits herself to words of protests ==>> the Empire sees that as a sign of
weakness and escalates
Russia responds in kind with real actions==>> The Empire feels humiliated and
escalates
Now look at this from a Russian point of view for a second and ask yourself what you would
do in this situation?
The answer, I think, is obvious: you try to win as much time as possible and you prepare for
war. The Russians have been doing exactly that since at least early 2015.
For Russia this is really nothing new: been there, done that, and remember it very, very
well, by the way. The "western project" for Russia has always been the same since the
Middle-Ages, the only difference today is the consequences of war. With each passing century
the human cost of the various western crusades against Russia got worse and worse and now we
are not only looking at the very real possibility of another Borodino or Kursk, and not even at
another Hiroshima, but at something which we can't even really imagine: hundreds of millions of
people die in the course of just a few hours.
How do we stop that?
Is the West even capable of acting in a different way?
There is one actor which might, perhaps, stop the current skid towards Armageddon: China.
Right now, the Chinese have officially declared that they have what they call a "
comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation " later shortened to " strategic
partnership ". This is a very apt expression as it does not speak of an "alliance": two
countries of the size of Russia and China cannot have an alliance in the traditional sense --
they are too big and different for that. They are, however, in a symbiotic relationship, that
both sides understand perfectly (see this
White Paper for details). What this means in very simple terms is this: the Chinese cannot
let Russia be defeated by the Empire because once Russia is gone, they will be left one on one
with a united, triumphal and infinitely arrogant West (likewise I would argue that Russia
cannot afford to have Iran defeated by the Empire for exactly the same reasons, and neither can
Iran let the Israelis destroy Hezbollah). Of course, in terms of military power, China is a
dwarf compared to Russia, but in terms of economic power Russia is the dwarf when compared to
China in this "strategic community of interests". Thus, China cannot assist Russia militarily.
But remember that Russia does not need this if only because military assistance is what you
need to win a war. Russia does not want to win a war, Russia desperately needs to avoid a war!
And here is where China can make a huge difference: psychologically.
Yes, the Empire is currently taking on both Russia and China, but everybody, from its
leaders to its zombified population, seems to think that these are two, different and separate
foes. [We can use this opportunity to most sincerely thank Donald Trump for so "perfectly"
timing his trade war with China.] They are not: not only are Russia and China symbionts who
share the same vision of a prosperous and peaceful Eurasia united by a common future centered
around the OBOR and, crucially, free from the US dollar or, for that matter, from any type of
major US role, but Russia and China also stand for exactly the same notion of a post-hegemonic
world order: a multi-polar world of different and truly sovereign nations living together under
the rules of international law. If the AngloZionists have their way, this will never happen.
Instead, we will have the New World Order promised by Bush, dominated by the Anglosphere
countries (basically the ECHELON members, aka the "Five Eyes") and, on top of that pyramid, the
global Zionist overlord. This is something China cannot, and will not allow. Neither can China
allow a US-Russian war, especially not a nuclear one because China, like Russia, also needs
peace.
I don't see what Russia could do to convince the Empire to change its current course: the US
leaders are delusional and the Europeans are their silent, submissive servants. As shown above,
whatever Russia does it always invites further escalation from the Empire. Of course, Russia
can turn the West into a pile of smoldering radioactive ashes. This is hardly a solution since,
in the inevitable exchange, Russia herself will also be turned into a similar pile of
smoldering radioactive ashes by the Empire. In spite of that, the Russian people have most
clearly indicated by their recent vote that they have absolutely no intention of caving in to
the latest western crusade against them. As for the Empire, it will never accept the fact that
Russia refuses to submit. It therefore seems to me that the only thing which can stop
Armageddon would be for the Chinese to ceaselessly continue to repeat to the rulers of the
Empire and the people of the West what the wrote in the article quoted above: that " The
West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it
once thought it was" and "the silenced minorities within the international
community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a
realization by proving it to the world through action."
History teaches us that the West only strikes against those opponents it sees as defenseless
or, at least, weaker. The fact that the Popes, Napoleon or Hitler were wrong in their
evaluation of the strength of Russia does not change this truism. In fact, the Neocons today
are making exactly the same mistake. So telling them about the fact that Russia is much
stronger than what the western propaganda says and which, apparently, many western rulers
believe (you always end up believing your own propaganda), does not help. Russian "reminders of
reality" will do no good simply because the West is out of touch with reality and lacks the
ability to understand its own limitations and weaknesses. But if China stepped in and conveyed
that crucial message " The West is only a small fraction of the world " and that the
rest of the world will prove this " through action " then other countries will step in
and a war can be averted because even the current delusion-based "solidarity" will collapse in
the face of a united Eurasia.
Russia alone cannot continue to carry the burden of stopping the messianic psychopaths
ruling the Empire.
The rest of the world, led by China, now needs to step in to avert the war.
This plan for global dominance has been over 100 years in the making and has already cost
over 100 million lives so far. How likely is it for them to back off now? The Chinese are far
from stupid so it will be interesting to see how they view the situation and act.
I've stated previously that the people who really can put a halt to it are Americans
themselves but it won't be easy. The ideal situation would be a mass mutiny of US military
personnel and the line, The Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war should probably
read, The Israeli Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war. It would be useful to repeat
this ad nauseam until it truly sinks in for US military personnel that the US is a supplicant
to Israel and to understand who they will be fighting and dying for. A mass mutiny would be
the best way to save their families and future.
Again, not much difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the
Second Rome in 1204 and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the
best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
But all three Romes were empires too filled with lies.
But I think that if stupid westerners won't wake up, -- nobody will help. China is big and
possibly can think that in world where no Russia, no Europe nor US/Canada are exist, some
place will still be for China.
It's "higly posssible" a mistake, but if silly westerners will continue to munch their MSM
grass their shadows will be printed on the walls of history.
Actually they deserve to be.
"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur's
famous "my country, right or wrong" applied to the entire Empire.
Kind of disappointed in the Saker here. Just like liberals, he omits the rest of Decatur's
famous toast: "Our country -- in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be
in the right , and always successful, right or wrong. [ Emphasis mine. ]" Decatur
was not trying to encourage amoral behavior, such as that which we now see with the
AngloZionists running Washington.
By the way, I've heard the Russians are now telling a joke about Boris Johnson: they're
saying he was poisoned with durachok (bonehead)!
China has deep ties to the western empire. Russians would be drinking too deeply from their
own propaganda to miss this fact. Indeed, the latest crippling of Trumpist reform was lead by
heavily Chinese invested men Ryan and McConnell. Israel has a strong grip on US foreign
policy for obvious reasons, but Israel has no reason to see Russia bullied into submission.
China does.
It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is
internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change alone.
China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant position,
one generation hence, is an independent Russia. Far better for the Chinese that Russia is
mortally wounded or harried into Chinese vassal status before the west breaks down into a
third world non-entity.
The real reasons for the expulsions is the revelation of Russia's next generation war
weapons. It was taken up as an invitation to fight, not to make peace, and making it as hard
as possible for Russians to either influence opinion or gather information.
Somebody wanted Skripal dead, and while it may be a useful false flag provocation, with
his involvement with the Steele Dossier a possible trigger, it could be serving more than one
purpose. As usual, we are assigning to the Russkies both more omnipotence and stupidity than
is merited. I supoose it is our own elites who believe their omniscience in surveilling all
of us means they are also smarter than the rest of us. Maybe
Well said and accurate. There is no consensus among the hoipolloi with the neocon push for
war. This will never come about. The west is desperate, no doubt, and will continue to beat
its chest, much to its own detriment. If the west intended on war, it would have come about.
Time is not on their side. The neocons have backed themselves into a corner and, therefore,
must create chaos, camouflage, obfuscation, in order to bamboozle the world until they can
safely go back into their holes. Most likely, they are looking for concessions. Remember the
Wasserman-Schuiltz spy scandal? Remember the many deadly false flags being exposed to the
public for what they are?
Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is
not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet
before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before
winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China.
USA ruling 1% was making a strategic choice year ago.
When Trump got elected he inherited the raging war. He could not stop it, obviously. Then
he turned it overboard. He started demanding so many wars at once that US Army got
overstretched and paralyzed. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Itan, Yemen, Korea, new European
garrisons . Trump send Army to prepare to war everywhere and now Pentagon can not scratch
together enough forces to attack anywhere specifically.
By his "clumsy and incompetent bravado" Trump neutralized the army, made and exposed it as
incapable pretend-force.
Now Trump can switch to his programme -- economic war with China.
And that is why Chinese diplomats and media run crazy. Now it is their war, not Russia's.
Now their tails are on the line. Now Russia mostly can move to backlines to lick wounds while
China would exchange blows and collect bruises.
This turned recent Chinese statements so bald and pushing. This, and not a concern for
Russia.
something the Russians might consider -- immediately cutting off all gas to Europe and
restoring such service for payment only in gold or the new "petrol yuan" . Europe depends
heavily on that Russian Gas, and such a move would re-align some European thinking. Replacing
it with US provided LPG would take far too long and be much more expensive having to be
shipped by sea
In fact, maybe if Russia, China, the other brics and aligned countries suddenly cut off
all ties to the west, it would hasten the coming economic collapse of the EU and US, and that
dreamed of multipolar world would arise from the ashes.
Better that than the ashes of a nuclear exchange I would think.
China is too smart to show its hand yet, they are building their economic & military
strength quietly, they don't want to scare the westerners yet with threats.
Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s
to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no
treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!!
I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country
in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically
throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about
promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm .
A couple centuries ago the phrase "The White Man's Burden" was used to explain why
citizens of Western nations must devote resources to civilize the world. Gore Vidal used "The
Yellow Man's Burden" to explain why citizens of Asian nations were devoting so much wealth to
keep the USA and much of Europe wealthy. If our citizens suddenly lost 30% of their annual
income due to tax increases and spending cuts needed to truly balance our national budgets,
they would be outraged. They might learn that this was the result of "free trade", which
might result in revolution and wars. Those who have profited off "free trade" by selling out
their citizens know its best to let the working class learn this truth slowly.
_____________________
Trump's proclamation to pull out of Syria may be good news, but probably not. He hired
psychopath Bolton, so we can assume the US military is just consolidating forces in Iraq to
hold off attacks whilst they bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. The Iraqis aren't our allies, they just
act to get free stuff, and they will know we are not bombing Iran to save Iranians. It might
be wise to get our troops out of Iraq too!
____________________________
To answer:
Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.
Question one (thru five): does anybody sincerely believe
Yes, this bimbo does, and she's the State Department spokesman. The State Department is
still infected with Clinton-hysteria and uses sexy women to spin lies so the foreign press
doesn't laugh and scorn absurd BS too loudly. The American press are just stenographers and
eagerly copy her lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL9UxED4uuI
The problem is that Russia/USSR submitted once and the West think it can be achieved again.
Hence everything must be made clear. No partners word should be used and the West must be
clearly warned that violence of unimaginable level will be used if they dare and what will
follow if Russian force anywhere attacked and that any use of nukes against Russia means the
end of humanity.
Unfortunately acting adequately and carefully Russia never was able to avoid war. It is in
the books. Right now bets are life on earth hence being too careful and being perceived as
weak is a bad thing. Russia IMHO must act boldly. Respond to USA and UK harassment by cutting
diplomatic relations and giving straight terse warning.
I think what disturbs China about this whole situation regarding the ENTIRE Western world
(US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia) is not simply that it is an overreaction to Russia,
but the whole idea that one particular people -- the Russian people -- have once again been
SINGLED OUT for collective intimidation and eventually for possible dismemberment.
China has very long and very bitter experience of this itself. In the 19th century, the
imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on China.
In other parts of the world, the experience of other backward peoples was with but ONE
particular Empire (ex. only the Americans vs the Amerinds, only the Spanish in South America,
only Great Britain in India and Australia, only Russians in Central Asia and Siberia, and
only Japanese in Korea. The British, French, Germans, Italians and Belgians each had separate
RIVAL spheres in Africa, and ditto for South-East Asia.
But when it came to China, ALL these competing powers set aside their differences. It's as
if they said to each other "Hey, China is so enormous and juicy, we should not fight among
ourselves, there's enough for everyone!" Unbelievably vicious.
And now, we see the same pattern. the whole Western world against Russia. I think in this
instance, the Han don't need anyone to tell them what to think -- it is 100% certain they do
not approve of what the collective West is doing.
But if China stepped in and conveyed that crucial message "The West is only a small
fraction of the world"
They can do better than this, and explicitly state that a nuclear war with Russia is a
nuclear war with China -- just to make it clear -- and let the US do some more realistic
calculations.
"war is a path of deceit. When you are strong -- pretend weak ."
Am familiar with Sun-tzu a well. But what are you saying here? That the UK is stronger
than Russia. I would definitely have to disagree with that proposition!
It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is
internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change
alone. China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant
position, one generation hence, is an independent Russia.
Maybe, but the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it
succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about
anything.
The recent THREATENED tariffs have an INTERESTING TIMING to them. It is being used by
Washington to convince China to stay passive as the West takes down Russia. Conversely, if
China "bends the knee", then the West promises that the threats won't materialize. (The West
loves worthless promises). Washington calculates that the mere threat of tariffs will make
China stand by as a neighbor is destroyed. Any turmoil in your neighbor's house, spills over
into yours whether you want it to or not. A neighbor is a neighbor, period.
And THAT, IMHO, is why the protectionist threats are happening NOW. Don't get me wrong,
the tariffs were going to happen anyway, eventually. China, whatever it does, cannot escape
them.
But to threaten a trade war RIGHT NOW with the one power guaranteed to be Russia's
economic lifeline (we know that China couldn't care less what Russia does in its backyard, in
the Ukraine) while preparing to attack Russia itself? Well, the whole thing is WAY TOO
OBVIOUS.
And if someone like me can see, so can a lot of other people in Moscow and Beijing.
Washington thinks its being "smart", but they are so ridiculously easy to read.
No, not that UK is really stronger than Russia but appears weaker. It's that the West is
actually not capable of defeating Russia but loudly shouts that it CAN defeat them easily,
and tries to look powerful and intimidating to Russia. In this situation, the
weaker-positioned West pretends to Russia that we are stronger, and we want Russia to believe
us. That way, it won't come to actual war, and we think Russia will back down. It's an
extremely risky plan.
That could, perhaps, take minds of US citizens from shopping and social media to,
perhaps, more serious matters.
Won't hold my breath.
Taking everything into account, I think the you're right. The US public are
irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic
collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose).
In fact, it's very possible RUSSIA is NOT, at this time, the target of Western aggression.
Sure, the West shall SURELY try to destroy Russia, but the urgency is not there YET. Maybe
the real target right now is CHINA, shortly to have the world's largest economy in absolute
terms. They must be destroyed NOW! The West is trying to cut a deal with Russia: "Stab China
in the back, and bow down to us. You can live A LITTLE LONGER, before we come for you.
Otherwise we get pissed and kill you TODAY".
An entirely plausible master-plan from Washington, London and Paris. Also a pretty
transparent one, if it's the case. The problem with this "Divide and Conquer" plan, aside
from being easy to read, is that it counts on both Russia and China to be dumb enough to
believe they are not BOTH in the cross-hairs. How stupid does the West think China and Russia
are?
It would have a psychological effect, at most. Russia has 5,000 warheads, China only
admits to having around 500 or 600 strategic city-killers. They may have more, but if you
don't admit something it doesn't count for deterrence. Maybe a decade from now, as China
builds its arsenal, the statement could be much more effective.
No, the Chinese are surely disgusted with this bullying behavior of the West (even many
Europeans are, just read the comments to the news in the different media outlets) but China
cannot seriously confront the West. That would make them lose trillions of dollars in exports
and investments and put an abrupt end to their miraculous but still ongoing economic
development. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
The situation will continue to deteriorate until some sort of modus vivendi is reached
(like at the beginning of the first Cold War). Or perhaps it's just been too long since the
last World War and the time is ripe for the next one.
As for the Skripal murder attempt, it's hard to imagine Putin ordering it at this time and
in that manner but it's not that hard to imagine someone from the Kremlin sewers being behind
it.
In the somewhat less likely scenario of a false flag operation, I would consider an
Israeli asymmetrical response to the recent downing of their jet by the Syrians with obvious
help from the Russians. They have plenty of experience in extraterritorial assassinations and
more than enough knowledge to fabricate a Russian-like nerve agent.
I respect and value Saker as a commentator on Russian and military affairs. Those are his
areas of expertise and professional experience. I do not value him as a historian, because
there enters into his writing a clear bias. I respect the fact of his commitment to his
Orthodox faith, but I don't appreciate being almost hammerlocked into having to take a side
in his prejudices.
He has a way of lumping 1,000 years of exceedingly complex history into what amounts
practically to silly formulas that remind one of adolescent pique. West is characterized by
"thuggery," whereas the "East," is presumably the source -- and is possibly the monopoly --
of the virtues Saker has in mind, while Western-like manifestations of military violence and
conquest are unknown there.
And there is this pearl: "Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular,
power produced both moral relativism and colonialism " This is downright embarrassing in its
silliness. Of course, after deep study of Aquinas or Bonaventure the light comes on: moral
relativism! Clearly, subtlety and essential distinctions are not the Saker's strong points,
to say the least, when it comes to registering his annoyance and bitterness in his 1000 year
view of "the West," whereas sweeping and frankly spectacularly inept generalizations are. One
is really tempted to accuse him of a lack of intellectual integrity when it comes to these
matters.
At root, Saker is a highly emotional and touchy "rooter" for Orthodoxy. Fine, that's his
right, but he is no scholar. One looks in vain either for impartiality, for breadth and depth
of understanding and sympathy, and hence for generosity of spirit. Thankfully, there are many
great scholars of history, East and West.
In the 19th century, the imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on
China.
That's the opposite of reality. If they had ganged up on China, each would have taken
large piece for itself. In reality, they were overawed by China, and tried to preserve it
much as they tried to preserve Ottoman rule against both breakup and dismemberment by Russia.
The Ottomans were too far gone, so they failed in both respects. But they did manage to
prevent China's breakup while failing to keep Russia from annexing a large chunk of Chinese
territory.
Heck, they even helped China defeat the millenarian Taiping rebels who racked up a large
body count during their rebellion. Note that when the Jurchens detected internal rebellion
during the Ming dynasty, they waited until the imperial armies were occupied with rebel
suppression before delivering the coup de grace to the Ming dynasty. The Western powers were
too tied up competing with each other to really cooperate in anything more than avenging the
honor of their envoys and getting trading posts set up on Chinese territory.
By "ganging up" I refer to the way in which China was COLLECTIVELY FORCED to extend any
and all concessions granted any single Imperial Power to ALL Imperial powers. And all the
Imperial powers were on-board with this policy , again as a unified group.
For example, if Russia forced a railroad treaty on China, China by unequal, at-gun-point
"Treaty" with the Eight Powers (at the time Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia,
The United States, Austria-Hungary and Italy) would also have to grant EVERYONE railroad
concessions in their respective zones.
Or say if China was forced to open trade relations by America, China would automatically
be forced to open trade to EVERYONE ELSE , and even the instigators in that case, the United
States, would force China to do it. All in the name of the relevant Treaties, of course.
Also by mutual agreement among the imperial powers, they would not support China in any
efforts to get better terms in any negotiation with any other power . So Russia refused to,
say provide support for Chinese efforts to fend off the Japanese, though normally it might
have done so. This was because, both being part of the Imperial Powers grouping, Russia and
Japan had agreed to co-exist in mutual exploitation of China.
It was all designed so that China would have no ability to shift its favor diplomatically
from one power to another, but had to negotiate from a position of deliberately imposed
weakness. Diplomacy was the only tool available to China in that execrably weak state,
pathetic as that tool was. By collective agreement among the Empires, that tool was taken
away.
In effect, exploitation of China became a COOPERATIVE project between such disparate
rivals as Britain, France and Germany, or United States, Japan and Russia. Such a thing, of a
coordinated desire to apportion one country among many, was not seen anywhere else in the
Colonial Age .
That is my meaning when I referred to the Empires "ganging up" on China.
How absurd. The foremost producer of virtually all modern goods is irrelevant without
Russia? A weakened Russia is a boon to Chinese expansion into their desired role as Eurasian
leader state. The only irrelevant nations are in the West as their post-national suicide
becomes all the more certain.
Ridiculous, China needs Russia as Russia is a perfect complement to Chinas weaknesses. In
fact, neither China nor Russia could have picked a better strategic partner than each other
as neither country could confront the West on it's own but together the West cannot topple
either nation. No other combination between countries would provide near as much
synergies.
China is not looking to expand into Russia. Why would they when they have a shrinking
population. They are expanding into the SCS in order to keep their oil lines free.
The real strategic advantage Russia and China have with each other is the OBOR. This is
key to everything and is the reason why the West is targeting Russia so aggressively.
If Mackinder's Heartland theory is at play, and you want to cut China off from Europe,
taking down Russia would seem to be an enormous effort to accomplish that. There are much
easier ways. Why not just lobby your European "allies" not to trade at all with China?
Mission accomplished, and no war with Russia as a bonus. If the EU won't follow the Empire's
orders, you need to take out not only Russia, but probably Pakistan, and all the Central
Asian nations, plus Iran and Turkey. If not, and you only destroy one or a few of these,
China's One Belt One Road reaches Europe anyway.
Also don't forget the outright blockade of China's maritime trade to be conducted by the
U.S. Navy -- kind of an act of war in itself.
Seems far easier, if you want to slow China down, to just ORDER America's NATO allies to
stop all trade with China. The rest of the world all together won't be able to fill the gap,
not any time soon.
Voila, you lower China's GDP growth by some significant percentage, using just strong-arm
diplomacy in Europe.
Buys America another full decade as number one economy, maybe.
In the fevered dreams of Western strategists, they hope for Russia and China to turn on each
other, sparing the Atlantic powers the trouble. Then, they come in and pick up the pieces.
They hope to replicate the success of Britain in playing off France against Germany pre-World
War One. The problem is they have in fact encouraged the Sino-Russian strategic alignment,
not hindered it.
No matter, after all, there can never be such a thing, thought the British, of a long-term
common interest between France and Germany -- a "European Union" will never come about.
French and Germans naturally hate each other! Right?
And how did Britain make out with that thinking? How will America make out in coming
decades? In geopolitics, not that well. Not as long as we are short-sighted.
Those with the power, and the happily ruled, have always needed synonyms for "obedience."
Solidarity is a choice in line with our social-mediatic times and the related
communication standards.
I mean, like i said above, Johnson and other western politicians are not "boneheads"
(intellectually weak) as you said, no, they are smart (intellectually strong) and pretending,
faking their intellectual weakness (appearance of stupidity)
Answers:-
One and two. Proof beyond reasonable doubt does not mean there is no chance of a
mistake, and the standard necessary for thinking Putin responsible is less than what would be
needed for finding him guilty in a court of law. He cannot hide behind his country and
diplomatic immunity while claiming the protection of British Law for evidence necessary to
convict someone on trial for a capital offence.
Three. We want nothing from Russia , for indeed they have nothing to offer. To go away and
shut up is the most they can do, and that is why are sending the worst of the Russian goons
back were they came from, whether they want to go back or not (they would love to stay in
London*).
Four. Punishment is essential, otherwise they will see weakness.
Five. No chance of nuclear war or any other kind or war. Russia is destined to become the
lonely old man of Europe. It has nothing anyone wants at the price of being treated like an
imbecile, and our diplomats dislike living there*).
Oh, we have a copypaste contest? Okay then, i'd copy here my reply at saker's blog
too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[MORE]
> China will be blackmailed into submission.
Wooop! Then it is not "existential threat" for China.
Clash for power, clash for sovereignty, clash fo prosperity -- but not for survival.
> Russia & China are working closely
Which does not mean China's role is making harsh diplomatic statements in favor of Russia.
At least it was not so before today. So i think it is not today either. Also remember that
Chinese social mindset is build upon idea of "indebting with gifts and aids" and then
requesting payback when they need it. Which means Russia should be very wary about accepting
any help from China unless it wishes to be seen by China as a deeply indebted beggar
incapable of sustaining itself. And since diplomatic situation for Russia is not deadly
critical I do not think Russia needed that newspaper article. If Russia would request China's
support of the kind -- it would be in official diplomatic venues like UN.
> Russia needs to save Syria for its own skin
> Iran needs to save its skin
But is it so for China? Is China in critical need of sovereign and friendly Syria? I doubt
it.
> China has been backing up with big cheque book for last few years, signing hundreds
of billions deal with upfront payments to prop Russia economy for prolong war.
Which is very important, but is not diplomatic statements nor Chinese newspaper
articles.
That is exactly the Chinese role in this fight like i said many times before -- economic
and financial warfare is Chinese responsibility, while military and diplomatic warfare is
Russian's.
> Global times news mostly reflected the China think tank policy that they wish to
propagate to English speaking world.
And here we are getting back to the topic. Why such a harsh, explicitly worded article did
appeared today? Was it because of Russia or of China itself? Was that article reaction to
some new threat to Syria, to russia, or to China itself?
And i believe in the latter option. This article is not linked to any recent events around
Russia, it is caused by Sino-American relations shift.
> China has sensed West is tightened noose around Russia to cut it off from world,
seeing from Olympic & now the Skirpal circus
Skripal affair is much less than Olympics was. Even European states many did not jumped
Skripal wagon. Additionally, if Russia would be "cut off from Western world" -- what the West
did not dared to do even in 2014 on the height of Crimea and MH17 accusations and on the
hopes of "gas station" imminent and fast collapse, so would hardly dare now just because some
Skripal -- but if Russia would somehow gets politically isolated from the West, what bad is
it for China? Russia would become more dependent on China, like many of the trade with West
would had to go through Chinese "laundry". China gets more influence over Russia. Russia gets
much more limited in its options. Good (for China) development, why hurry to cancel it before
Russia even asked for ?
> Trade war will be too bloody for the world
Yes, but the said trade war is not having Russia as primary adversary -- Russian economy i
not that significant to the western world, and for USA in particular it has but zero
significance. The trade war we see igniting -- is the war against China. China can no more be
"wise monkey up the trees", when USA moved their chaingun aim from Russia onto China. Now
China is being shot at, and the article is Chinese response to China being attacked. Not to
anything around Russia.
> You are silly self center viewer
Frankly, it is exactly the opposite here. It is you who claim Russia being behind that
article in Global Time. It is me who claims Russia has no any relation to the timing and
wording of that article.
> China special force is operating in Syria.
Maybe it is, but seems no one ever saw those operations.
> Lot of weapons supply to SAA.
Maybe they are, but can you name those Chinese weapons and show me where SAA is employing
it?
> Lot of money pump in to sustain Syria war,
If they are, then China does it part of the fight, good. Like USA supplied money and
material to fighting European states during WW2. However that has no relation with the Global
Times article being discussed.
> always throwing allies under bus whenever possible,
.because Putin is evil and just enjoys every opportunity to do bad thing. Always. I wish i
would hear somethign remotely creative from you.
> hence Russia deserve to be raped by West like 1990 is natural.
Oh, i see. Yet another russophobic preaching that "Russians should repent and repay,
repay, and repent", then frustrated when Russia shrugs this lecture off.
And, as you said, the west has many ways of neutralizing China.
Don't forget that China has an enormous internal market too, which in time should be
larger than the U.S. and EU combined. European countries that stay out of this vast and
rapidly growing market will be cutting their own throats. Good luck convincing them to do
that.
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted
to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes
by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed
a political agenda.
As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared
by different circles within the American political class and promoted through
programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies,
activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia,
but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining
the nation's political reputation.
... ... ....
Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely
legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the
world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter
in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate
and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday
seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals,
Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the
United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most
precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown
increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated
that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism
in the former Soviet region.
And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with
Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia
tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first
century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation,
and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number
of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans
understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming
support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high
oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent
assertions of Russophobic observers.
Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties
that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative
of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and
Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important
to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching
way.
Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an
anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia --
a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre
Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly
present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies
of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies
tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often
commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's
political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies
by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly
more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.
The Anti-Russian Lobby
When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and
Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the
governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the
publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour-
nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River, 2002)1
....
Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but
a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks
in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was
approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in
ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to
serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future.
(Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2
This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's
influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its
tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence,
and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1
argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring
Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.
1. Goals and Means
Objectives
The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen
America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies.
The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves,
and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective.
Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one
capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were
worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power.
In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military
and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people
and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues
across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device
for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some
the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to
others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international
politics.
According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this
"New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually
to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy
reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American
Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to
the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought
to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great
threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a
threat from arising in the first place."4
Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving
its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S.
interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system
sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared
by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival
in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned,
no other choice was available.
This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within
the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For
example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the
Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy
ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's
"grand failure."6
In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's
decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's
"practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism
would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7
Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values.
In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history"
thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®
... ... ...
Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle
of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated,
the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet
system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it
was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were
free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried
to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to
proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which
only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the
world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11
In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected
Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may
still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12
Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although
not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States.
Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social
and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside
Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as
the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population
on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power
but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status
of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was
largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state
officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely
wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they
influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development
of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions,
the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the
rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any
partnership with the United States.14
The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's
ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths
of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist,
autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new
conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's
unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15
... ... ...
The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced
by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack
of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their
personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence
of firm policy commitments.
Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that
the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for
the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of
2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan
group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with
the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not
tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide
US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91
Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy
on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found
its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004,
Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and
more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.
President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable
to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the
Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually
acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration
in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about
the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising
post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American
Sense of History
It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the
United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2006)
If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real
risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.
(John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International
Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)
On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin,
Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its
allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the
Cold War the first time around.
("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In
order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive
the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups
have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions,
presenting those differences as incompatible.
1. Contested History
Two versions of history
The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American
ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian
communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding
to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about
history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in
the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the
Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on
there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis
Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted
in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance
of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4
In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty
and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it
is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important
attributes of sovereign statehood.
In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces,
the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal
and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy.
Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully
withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi
regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue
with the tradition of freedom as independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing
myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold
War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods
but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.
This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western
interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S.
narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist
ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a
necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that
even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation,
emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral
responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7
They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe,
but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians
also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution
of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid
dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle
to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian
wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9
If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two
historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the
difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea
of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal,
but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local
circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed
the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under
the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated
a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the
Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated
with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge
the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted
in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides
were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions
of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future
attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent
in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust
of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more
difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders
had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception
of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to
the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II
world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to
address these deep-seated suspicions.
In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles
Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in
its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security
system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it
would have to be transformed.
Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to
accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second
Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains
that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another
expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at
a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners
within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines
of a scaled-down Cold War?"113
Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was
given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest
nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost
perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel
between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO
onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with
our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France
treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114
"... The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other "issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude. ..."
"... The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus, in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. ..."
"... The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature." It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or Muslims. ..."
"... Cheesepopes be gaslighting ..."
"... Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true. ..."
by Srdja Trifkovic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
There is a paranoid, hysterical quality to the public discourse on Russia and all things Russian
in today's America. The corporate media machine and its Deep State handlers have abdicated reason
and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering. We have not seen anything like it before,
even in the darkest days of the Cold War.
The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental
relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and
even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and
European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and
morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien
multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other
"issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude.
The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter
hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus,
in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. The result is a surreal narrative
that mixes supposedly unprovoked "Russian aggression" in Ukraine, hostile intent in the Baltics,
serial war crimes in Syria, political destabilization in Western Europe, and gross interference in
America's "democratic process". The result is an altogether fictitious "existential threat," which
has made President Trump's intended détente with Moscow impossible. He may have been serious about
turning over a new leaf, but the Deep State counterpressure proved just too great. A solid rejection
front emerged, left and right, conservative and liberal, which extends even into his own team and
finally inhibited him from making moves that could have appeared too friendly to Putin.
The Russophobes' narrative is unrelated to Russia's actual policies. It reflects a deep odium
of the elite class toward Russia-as-such. That animosity has been developing in its current form
since roughly the time of the Crimean War, when in his Letters From Russia the Marquis de Custine
said that the country's "veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible."
"No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant-in
short, as untrustworthy in every way-as the Russians," President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1905.
John Maynard Keynes, after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1925, wondered whether the "mood of oppression"
might be "the fruit of some beastliness in the Russian nature." J. Robert Oppenheimer opined in 1951
that, in Russia, "We are coping with a barbarous, backward people." More recently, Sen. John McCain
declared that "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." "Russia is an anti-Western power
with a different, darker vision of global politics," Slate wrote in early 2014, even before the Ukrainian
crisis reached its climax.
This narrative has two key pillars. In terms of geopolitics, we see the striving of maritime empires-Britain
before World War II, and the United States after - to "contain" and if possible control the Eurasian
heartland, the core of which is of course Russia. Equally important is the already noted cultural
antipathy, the desire not merely to influence Russian policies and behavior but to effect an irreversible
transformation of Russia's identity. Some of the most viscerally Russophobic stereotypes come from
Russia herself, from those members of Moscow's "intelligentsia" who feel more at home in New York
or London than anywhere in their own country. The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles
Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature."
It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or
Muslims.
The Russophobic frenzy comes at a cost. It further devalues the quality of public discourse on
world affairs in the United States, which is already dismally low. It has already undermined the
prospects for a mutually beneficial new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations, based on a realist assessment
that those two powers have no "existential" differences - and share many actual and potential commonalities.
It perpetrates the arrogant delusion that there is a superior, "Western" model of social and cultural
thought and action that can and should be imposed everywhere, but especially in Russia.
Saddest of all, Russophobic mania prolongs the European civil war that exploded in July 1914,
continued in 1939, and has never properly ended - not even with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would
be in the American interest, as well as Russia's and Europe's, for that conflict to end, so that
the existential challenge common to all- that of resurgent jihad and Europe's demographic crisis
- can be properly addressed.
Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between
the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true.
..it seems like our foreign policy is like an angry poor, innocent "motorist", whacked out
on amphetamines, speeding over 100 mph and destined to drown in his liberal negro lottery swimming
pool.
The United States is closely watching a recent increase in piracy off the coast of Somalia,
a senior U.S. military official said on Sunday as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited an important
military base in Djibouti.
If I ignore your bullshit "but at the maximum..." implication:
So what do you conclude from that. Is it a bad thing to have rivals? Should we strive to turn
every remaining rival into a vassal? Is there a limit on methods allowed toward a rival?
I'll give you a green arrow to make up for the narrow-mindedness of the simpletons who all
gave you red arrows.
We don't need a war with Russia, and the US won't instigate one, either. The juice wouldn't
be worth the squeeze.
With all of that being said, Russia is a rival to the US in other parts of the world. The US
isn't the only country with a desire for influence around the world.
As much as there is a "Russo-phobia" being perpetuated in the US, you can bet a buck that there
is an "Ameri-phobia" being perpetuated out there.
The big difference is that in Russia, they don't have message boards full of people sh*tting
on their own country.
Well, that is kind of how major powers compete for influence. It takes two to tango. We can't
exactly engage in war by proxy if the Russians aren't involved in it, too.
I hate to say it but the so called "elites", in charge of our beloved deep state controlling
everything, are quite stupid -- This continuous news hysteria, against whatever subject du jour
our intelligentsia decides to float publicly, proves beyond any reasonable doubt that said "elites"
suffer from a combination of low IQ, partial education (at best !), and high self-delusion...
We might get to witness nuclear war, just because our "elites" are too idiotic to realize what
a nuclear war really is...
They stick their hook nose into everything because they want to own the whole 4th rock from
the sun. These people are ill, very ill and as I read these comments it's obvious that some just
don't get it yet.
All of this B.S. Russophobia evolved from a convenient distraction from the CONTENT of the
leaked DNC emails, and has been amplified because of the symbiosis with Neoconservative/Globalist
strategies.
What amazes me is how well the propaganda seems to be working. There's a bunch of old farts
(not that I'm really young!) at the gym every morning talking about how awesome it is that we
bombed Syria and it'll show that bastard Putin we're tough and mean business. "America, Fuck yeh!"
I wanted to ask them if they were mentally defective or just fucking retards...
Pretty much. Society has opted to run on emotion rather than fact, emotional manipulation being
the key part of the most popular forms of entertainment. Sadly this bleeds into our dealings with
each other which are increasingly emotional or insulting. Most of human behaviour and attitudes
are due to fear, particularly the egoic fear of inadequacy. As a control mechanism, fear is a
formidable tool. But fear is also a choice.
The Strategic Culture Foundation who published this piece has an evil agenda, and they are
not even friends of Putin. They are very subtle warmongers. You will see when the time comes.
Putin was duped by Iran in Syria, Iran got Syria, not Putin. Trump and Saudi can give Russia
what it needs to survive, if Putin stops being duped by deceptive hegemonial Iran.
This reminds me of when the ZerroHedge owners mentioned that Bloomberg article several months
back that involved an interview of a former Zero Hedge writer blowing the lid off this place.
He mentioned how pro-Russia the ZH owners were. This article suggests that he may have been right
after all!
Yea, we shouldn't be afraid of a country with nukes, that invades it's neigbours, has an uber
crony economy the size of Italy's, dominated by oligarchs in mining and the obligation to keep
friendly with the Kremlin or risk being put in jail and have your assets taken away on trumped
up charges. The country that murders it's opponents and critics with nasty stuff like Polonium,
even abroad, that interferes in others elections with misinformation campaigns and troll factories,
that is on the side of the ayatolla's of Iran and the mass murderer in Syria, helping him by bombing
hospitals and refugees, only to be "recognized as a player again on the world stage" A coutry
of alcoholics with one of the lowest life expectancy in the developed world. Really, a model state.
As Paul Graig Roberts, the inhouse idiot here noted, Putin for the Nobel peace price!
Wikileaks has disclosed the tactic to blame Russia for the election results, Trump's collusion,
etc. back to spring of 2016 --- I remember when they started making those "Russia" comments. They
wanted to start the thoughts about him/his staff being in collusion with the Russians. That was
to hopefully make more decide not to vote for him and in case he won, use it to prove election
fraud, treason and somehow impeach him.
Those who know about the Globalists NWO agenda, Deep State, Neocons, etc. realize we've all
been lied to about Russia (among all the other lies) since the end of the Cold War. for "their"
agenda purposes - need for continuous wars for MIC, etc. also. Putin is not as portrayed at all.
Russia is not the "big bad Commie" beast that wants to take over the world as they want us to
believe to "justify" another war.
Putin is an Eastern Orthodox Chrsitian who protects Christians, hates and fights terrorists
and Globalism. He is not a Globalist. We have those goals in common and Pres. Trump and Putin
would be a fantastic duo that when united, terrorism and Globalism would finally be dealt death
blows,
Our enemies within know that and therefore they're trying to do everything they can to hurt
that relationship and not let it happen because it would mean finally - the end of their evil
world order plan.
Amount of pressure applied commensurate to strength of a country in question. For some of them
all it takes is a stern talk from the ambassador, Russia right now is safely beyond the US ability
to apply the required pressure, including the threat of Nuclear War. What is happening instead
is that world being interconnected the way it is, applying pressure at hardened point that is
Russia is also increasing pressure at other weaker points as well, pretty much all over the world.
EU and NATO are posturing against Russia in display of lunacy that is symptomatic for the West,
it seems that God is taking away humans ability to reason. Day 1, Russia announces indefinite
cuts of gas supplies to Europe, stocks crater, world economy craters, Russia and China who were
hoarding gold watch the West collapse like a house of cards while passing the popcorn. The End.
Afghanistan is about to go full retard again, as taliban cuts ussa out of heroin billions---
as our afghan troops turn their weapons on their masters[1]
The Jewish media has been obsessed with this business about Russia allegedly influencing the
recent 2016 U.S. election. This obsession has concealed the real problem with foreign influence
over the American electoral system. It isn't Russian influence that's the problem, it is Israeli
influence that's the problem.
Below is a list of stories showing how Israelis or Jews substantively connected to Israel have
been subverting the American electoral process.
You know we will have turned the corner when Donald Trump gives the American people a "Fireside
Chat" and tells the public the real reasons the media spearheads a constant barrage of hate filled
anti-Russian LYING PROPAGANDA filled rhetoric... BECAUSE
A) THEY ARE THE WORLDS LEADER IN OIL PRODUCTION B) HAVE NO DEBT C) HAVE THERE OWN BALANCE OF
PAYMENT CREDIT SYSTEM MIR THAT WILL REPLACE THE WESTERN CENTRAL BANK(S) SYSTEM "SWIFT"
And after he delivers that truthful message he will NEVER BE ALLOWED TO EVER AGAIN... He will
probably be shot like HOWARD BEALE in the movie NETWORK... Or WWWIII will be LAUNCHED!!!
"... Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China. ..."
"... Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!! ..."
"... I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm ..."
"... the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about anything. ..."
"... The US public are irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose). ..."
"That tells you all you need to know about the difference between modern Britain and
the government of Vladimir Putin. They make Novichok, we make light sabers. One a hideous
weapon that is specifically intended for assassination. The other an implausible theatrical
prop with a mysterious buzz. But which of those two weapons is really more effective in the
world of today?".
(Boris Johnson)
Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.
Question one: does anybody
sincerely believe that "Putin" (the collective name for the Russian Mordor) really attempted to
kill a man which "Putin" himself had released in the past, who presented no interest for Russia
whatsoever who,
like Berezovsky , wanted to
return back to Russia , and that to do the deed "Putin" used a binary nerve agent? Question
two: does anybody sincerely believe that the British have presented their "allies" (I will be
polite here and use that euphemism) with incontrovertible or, at least, very strong evidence
that "Putin" indeed did such a thing? Question three: does anybody sincerely believe that the
mass expulsion of Russian diplomats will somehow make Russia more compliant to western demands
(for our purposes, it does not matter what demands we are talking about)? Question four: does
anybody sincerely believe that after this latest episode, the tensions will somehow abate or
even diminish and that things will get better? Question five: does anybody sincerely believe
that the current sharp rise in tensions between the AngloZionist Empire (aka the "West") does
not place the Empire and Russia on collision course which could result in war,
probably/possibly nuclear war, maybe not deliberately, but as the result of an escalation of
incidents?
If in the zombified world of the ideological
drones who actually remain in the dull trance induced by the corporate media there are most
definitely those who answer "yes" to some or even all of the questions above, I submit that not
a single major western decision maker sincerely believes any of that nonsense. In reality,
everybody who matters knows that the Russians had nothing to do with the Skripal incident, that
the Brits have shown no evidence, that the expulsion of Russian diplomats will only harden the
Russian resolve, that all this anti-Russian hysteria will only get worse and that this all puts
at least Europe and the USA, if not the entire planet, in great danger.
And yet what just happened is absolutely amazing: instead of using fundamental principles of
western law (innocent until proven guilty by at least a preponderance of evidence or even
beyond reasonable doubt), basic rules of civilized behavior (do not attack somebody you know is
innocent), universally accepted ethical norms (the truth of the matter is more important than
political expediency) or even primordial self-preservation instincts (I don't want to die for
your cause), the vast majority of western leaders chose a new decision-making paradigm which
can be summarized in two words:
"highly likely" "solidarity"
This is truly absolutely crucial and marks a fundamental change in the way the AngloZionist
Empire will act from now on. Let's look at the assumptions and implications of these two
concepts.
First, "highly likely". While "highly likely" does sound like a simplified version of
"preponderance of evidence" what it really means is something very different and circular:
"Putin" is bad, poisoning is bad, therefore it is "highly likely" that "Putin" did it. How do
we know that the premise "Putin is bad" is true? Well -- he does poison people, does he
not?
You think I am joking?
Check out this wonderful chart presented to the public by "Her Majesty's government"
entitled "A long pattern of Russian malign activity":
In the 12 events listed as evidence of a "pattern of Russian malign activity" one is
demonstratively false (2008 invasion of Georgia), one conflates two different accusations
(occupation of Crimea and destabilization of the Ukraine), one is circular (assassination of
Skripal) and all others are completely unproven accusations. All that is missing here is the
mass rape of baby penguins by drunken Russian sailors in the south pole or the use of a secret
"weather weapon" to send hurricanes towards the USA. You don't need a law degree to see that,
all you need is an IQ above room temperature and a basic understanding of logic. For all my
contempt for western leaders, even I wouldn't make the claim that they all lack these. So here
is where "solidarity" kicks-in:
"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur 's famous " my
country, right or wrong " applied to the entire Empire. The precedent of Meine Ehre
heißt Treue just slightly rephrased into Meine Ehre heißt
Solidarität also comes to mind.
Solidarity simply means that the comprador ruling elites of the West will say and do
whatever the hell the AngloZionists tell them to. If tomorrow the UK or US leaders proclaim
that Putin eats babies for breakfast or that the West needs to send a strong message to "Putin"
that a Russian invasion of Vanuatu shall not be tolerated, then so be it: the entire
AngloZionist nomenklatura will sing the song in full
unison and to hell with facts, logic or even decency!
Solemnly proclaiming lies is hardly something new in politics, there is nothing new here.
What is new are two far more recent developments: first, now everybody knows that these are
lies and, second, nobody challenges or debunks them. Welcome to the AngloZionist New World
Order indeed!
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a
murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of
it.
(John 8:44)
ORDER IT NOW
Over the past weeks I have observed something which I find quite interesting: both on
Russian TV channels and in the English speaking media there is a specific type of anti-Putin
individual who actually takes a great deal of pride in the fact that the Empire has embarked on
a truly unprecedented campaign of lies against Russia. These people view lies as just another
tool in a type of "political toolkit" which can be used like any other political technique. As
I have mentioned in the past, the western indifference to the truth is something very ancient
coming, as it does, from the Middle-Ages: roughly when the spiritual successors of the Franks
in Rome decided that their own, original brand of "Christianity" had no use for 1000 years of
Consensus Patrum .
Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular, power produced both moral
relativism and colonialism (with the Pope's imprimatur in the form of the Treaty of Tordesillas
). The Reformation (with its very pronounced Judaic influence) produced the bases of modern
capitalism which, as Lenin correctly diagnosed, has imperialism as its highest stage. Now that
the West is losing its grip on the planet (imagine that, some SOB nations dare resist!), all of
the ideological justifications have been tossed away and we are left with the true, honest,
bare-bones impulses of the leaders of the Empire: messianic hubris (essentially self-worship),
violence and, above all, a massive reliance on deception and lies on every single level of
society, from the commercial advertisements targeted at children to Colin Powell shaking some
laundry detergent at the UNSC to justify yet another war of aggression.
Self-worship and a total reliance on brute force and falsehoods -- these are the real
"Western values" today. Not the rule of law, not the scientific method, not critical thought,
not pluralism and most definitely not freedom. We are back, full circle, to the kind of
illiterate thuggery the Franks so perfectly embodied and which made them so infamous in the
(then) civilized world (the south and eastern Mediterranean). The agenda, by the way, is also
the same one as the Franks had 1000 years ago: either submit to us and accept our dominion, or
die, and the way to accept our dominion is to let us plunder all your riches. Again, not much
difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the Second Rome in 1204
and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the best predictor of
future behavior is past behavior.
Interestingly, the Chinese saw straight through this strategic psyop and they are now
sounding the alarm in their very official Global Times : (emphasis added)
The accusations that Western countries have hurled at Russia are based on ulterior
motives, similar to how the Chinese use the expression "perhaps it's true" to seize upon the
desired opportunity. From a third-person perspective, the principles and diplomatic logic
behind such drastic efforts are flawed, not to mention that expelling Russian diplomats
almost simultaneously is a crude form of behavior. Such actions make little impact other than
increasing hostility and hatred between Russia and their Western counterparts ( ) The fact
that major Western powers can gang up and "sentence" a foreign country without following the
same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international
law is chilling. During the Cold War, not one Western nation would have dared to make such a
provocation and yet today it is carried out with unrestrained ease. Such actions are nothing
more than a form of Western bullying that threatens global peace and justice. ( ) It is
beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a
frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows
how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western
nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another. These nations need
to establish a level of independence outside the reach of Western influence while breaking
the chains of monopolization declarations, predetermined adjudications and come to value
their own judgment abilities. ( ) The West is only a small fraction of the world and is
nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was. The silenced minorities within
the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding
is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action.
As the French say " à bon entendeur, salut! ": the Chinese position is crystal
clear, as is the warning. I would summarize it as so: if the West is an AngloZionist doormat,
then the East is most definitely not.
[Sidebar: I know that there are some countries in Europe who have, so far, shown the courage
to resist the AngloZionist Diktat . Good for them. I will wait to see how long they can
resist the pressure before giving them a standing ovation]
The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this
people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battlefield and person by
person, and made to bleed to death
(Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler)
Still, none of that explain why the leaders of the Empire have decided to engage in a
desperate game of "nuclear chicken" to try to, yet again, force Russia to comply with its
demands to "go away and shut up". This is counter-intuitive and I get several emails each week
telling me that there is absolutely no way the leaders of the AngloZionist Empire would want a
war with Russia, especially not a nuclear-armed one. The truth is that while western leaders
are most definitely psychopaths, they are neither stupid nor suicidal, and neither were
Napoleon or Hitler! And, yes, they probably don't really want a full-scale war with Russia. The
problem is that these rulers are also desperate, and for good cause.
Let's look at the situation just a few months ago. The US was defeated in Syria, ridiculed
in the DPRK, Trump was hated in Europe, the Russians and the Germans were working on North
Stream, the British leaders forced to at least pretend to work on Brexit, the entire
"Ukrainian" project had faceplanted, the sanctions against Russia had failed, Putin was more
popular than ever and the hysterical anti-Trump campaign was still in full swing inside the
USA. The next move by the AngloZionist elites was nothing short of brilliant: by organizing a
really crude false flag in the UK the Empire achieved the following results:
The Europeans
have been forced right back into the Anglosphere's fold ("solidarity", remember?) The Brexiting
Brits are now something like the (im-)moral leaders of Europe again. The Russians are now
demonized to such a degree that any accusation, no matter how stupid, will stick. In the
Middle-East, the US and Israel now have free reign to start any war they want because the
(purely theoretical) European capability to object to anything the Anglos want has now
evaporated, especially now that the Russians have become "known chemical-criminals" from Ghouta
to Salisbury At the very least, the World Cup in Russia will be sabotaged by a massive
anti-Russian campaign. If that campaign is really successful, there is still the hope that the
Germans will finally cave in and, if maybe not outright cancel, then at least very much delay
North Stream thereby forcing the Europeans to accept, what else, US gas.
This is an ambitious plan and, barring an unexpected development, it sure looks like it
might work. The problem with this strategy is that it falls short of getting Russia to truly
"go away and shut up". Neocons are particularly fond of humiliating their enemies (look at how
they are still gunning for Trump even though by now the poor man has become their most
subservient servant) and there is a lot of prestige at stake here. Russia, therefore, must be
humiliated, truly humiliated, not just by sabotaging her participation in Olympic games or by
expelling Russian diplomats, but by something far more tangible like, say, an attack on the
very small and vulnerable Russian task force in Syria. Herein lies the biggest risk.
The Russian task force in Syria is tiny, at least compared to the immense capabilities of
CENTCOM+NATO. The Russians have warned that if they are attacked, they will shoot down not only
the attacking missiles but also their launchers. Since the Americans are not dumb enough to
expose their aircraft to Russian air defenses, they will use air power only outside the range
of Russian air defenses and they will use only cruise missiles to strike targets inside the
"protection cone" of the Russians air defenses. The truth is that I doubt that the Russians
will have the opportunity to shoot down many US aircraft, at least not with their long-range
S-300/S-400 SAMs. Their ubiquitous and formidable combined short to medium range surface-to-air
missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapon system, the Pantsir, might have a better chance
simply because it's location is impossible to predict. But the real question is this: will the
Russians shoot back at the USN ships if they launch cruise missiles at Syria?
My strictly personal guess is that they won't unless Khmeimim, Tartus or another large
Russian objective (official Russian compounds in Damascus) are hit. Striking a USN ship would
be tantamount to an act of war and that is just not something the Russians will do if they can
avoid it. The problem with that is this restraint will, yet again, be interpreted as a sign of
weakness, not civilization, by the "modern Franks" (visualize a Neanderthal with a nuclear club
in his fist). Should the Russians decide to act à la American and use violence to
"send a message", the Empire will immediately perceive that as a loss of face and a reason to
immediately escalate further to reestablish the "appropriate" hierarchy between the
"indispensable nation" and the "gas station masquerading as a country". So here is the dynamic
at work
Russia limits herself to words of protests ==>> the Empire sees that as a sign of
weakness and escalates
Russia responds in kind with real actions==>> The Empire feels humiliated and
escalates
Now look at this from a Russian point of view for a second and ask yourself what you would
do in this situation?
The answer, I think, is obvious: you try to win as much time as possible and you prepare for
war. The Russians have been doing exactly that since at least early 2015.
For Russia this is really nothing new: been there, done that, and remember it very, very
well, by the way. The "western project" for Russia has always been the same since the
Middle-Ages, the only difference today is the consequences of war. With each passing century
the human cost of the various western crusades against Russia got worse and worse and now we
are not only looking at the very real possibility of another Borodino or Kursk, and not even at
another Hiroshima, but at something which we can't even really imagine: hundreds of millions of
people die in the course of just a few hours.
How do we stop that?
Is the West even capable of acting in a different way?
There is one actor which might, perhaps, stop the current skid towards Armageddon: China.
Right now, the Chinese have officially declared that they have what they call a "
comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation " later shortened to " strategic
partnership ". This is a very apt expression as it does not speak of an "alliance": two
countries of the size of Russia and China cannot have an alliance in the traditional sense --
they are too big and different for that. They are, however, in a symbiotic relationship, that
both sides understand perfectly (see this
White Paper for details). What this means in very simple terms is this: the Chinese cannot
let Russia be defeated by the Empire because once Russia is gone, they will be left one on one
with a united, triumphal and infinitely arrogant West (likewise I would argue that Russia
cannot afford to have Iran defeated by the Empire for exactly the same reasons, and neither can
Iran let the Israelis destroy Hezbollah). Of course, in terms of military power, China is a
dwarf compared to Russia, but in terms of economic power Russia is the dwarf when compared to
China in this "strategic community of interests". Thus, China cannot assist Russia militarily.
But remember that Russia does not need this if only because military assistance is what you
need to win a war. Russia does not want to win a war, Russia desperately needs to avoid a war!
And here is where China can make a huge difference: psychologically.
Yes, the Empire is currently taking on both Russia and China, but everybody, from its
leaders to its zombified population, seems to think that these are two, different and separate
foes. [We can use this opportunity to most sincerely thank Donald Trump for so "perfectly"
timing his trade war with China.] They are not: not only are Russia and China symbionts who
share the same vision of a prosperous and peaceful Eurasia united by a common future centered
around the OBOR and, crucially, free from the US dollar or, for that matter, from any type of
major US role, but Russia and China also stand for exactly the same notion of a post-hegemonic
world order: a multi-polar world of different and truly sovereign nations living together under
the rules of international law. If the AngloZionists have their way, this will never happen.
Instead, we will have the New World Order promised by Bush, dominated by the Anglosphere
countries (basically the ECHELON members, aka the "Five Eyes") and, on top of that pyramid, the
global Zionist overlord. This is something China cannot, and will not allow. Neither can China
allow a US-Russian war, especially not a nuclear one because China, like Russia, also needs
peace.
I don't see what Russia could do to convince the Empire to change its current course: the US
leaders are delusional and the Europeans are their silent, submissive servants. As shown above,
whatever Russia does it always invites further escalation from the Empire. Of course, Russia
can turn the West into a pile of smoldering radioactive ashes. This is hardly a solution since,
in the inevitable exchange, Russia herself will also be turned into a similar pile of
smoldering radioactive ashes by the Empire. In spite of that, the Russian people have most
clearly indicated by their recent vote that they have absolutely no intention of caving in to
the latest western crusade against them. As for the Empire, it will never accept the fact that
Russia refuses to submit. It therefore seems to me that the only thing which can stop
Armageddon would be for the Chinese to ceaselessly continue to repeat to the rulers of the
Empire and the people of the West what the wrote in the article quoted above: that " The
West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it
once thought it was" and "the silenced minorities within the international
community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a
realization by proving it to the world through action."
History teaches us that the West only strikes against those opponents it sees as defenseless
or, at least, weaker. The fact that the Popes, Napoleon or Hitler were wrong in their
evaluation of the strength of Russia does not change this truism. In fact, the Neocons today
are making exactly the same mistake. So telling them about the fact that Russia is much
stronger than what the western propaganda says and which, apparently, many western rulers
believe (you always end up believing your own propaganda), does not help. Russian "reminders of
reality" will do no good simply because the West is out of touch with reality and lacks the
ability to understand its own limitations and weaknesses. But if China stepped in and conveyed
that crucial message " The West is only a small fraction of the world " and that the
rest of the world will prove this " through action " then other countries will step in
and a war can be averted because even the current delusion-based "solidarity" will collapse in
the face of a united Eurasia.
Russia alone cannot continue to carry the burden of stopping the messianic psychopaths
ruling the Empire.
The rest of the world, led by China, now needs to step in to avert the war.
This plan for global dominance has been over 100 years in the making and has already cost
over 100 million lives so far. How likely is it for them to back off now? The Chinese are far
from stupid so it will be interesting to see how they view the situation and act.
I've stated previously that the people who really can put a halt to it are Americans
themselves but it won't be easy. The ideal situation would be a mass mutiny of US military
personnel and the line, The Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war should probably
read, The Israeli Empire: by way of deception thou shalt do war. It would be useful to repeat
this ad nauseam until it truly sinks in for US military personnel that the US is a supplicant
to Israel and to understand who they will be fighting and dying for. A mass mutiny would be
the best way to save their families and future.
Again, not much difference here between the sack of the First Rome in 410, the sack of the
Second Rome in 1204 and the sack of the Third Rome in 1991. As psychologists well know, the
best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
But all three Romes were empires too filled with lies.
But I think that if stupid westerners won't wake up, -- nobody will help. China is big and
possibly can think that in world where no Russia, no Europe nor US/Canada are exist, some
place will still be for China.
It's "higly posssible" a mistake, but if silly westerners will continue to munch their MSM
grass their shadows will be printed on the walls of history.
Actually they deserve to be.
"Solidarity" in this context is simply a "conceptual placeholder" for Stephen Decatur's
famous "my country, right or wrong" applied to the entire Empire.
Kind of disappointed in the Saker here. Just like liberals, he omits the rest of Decatur's
famous toast: "Our country -- in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be
in the right , and always successful, right or wrong. [ Emphasis mine. ]" Decatur
was not trying to encourage amoral behavior, such as that which we now see with the
AngloZionists running Washington.
By the way, I've heard the Russians are now telling a joke about Boris Johnson: they're
saying he was poisoned with durachok (bonehead)!
China has deep ties to the western empire. Russians would be drinking too deeply from their
own propaganda to miss this fact. Indeed, the latest crippling of Trumpist reform was lead by
heavily Chinese invested men Ryan and McConnell. Israel has a strong grip on US foreign
policy for obvious reasons, but Israel has no reason to see Russia bullied into submission.
China does.
It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is
internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change alone.
China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant position,
one generation hence, is an independent Russia. Far better for the Chinese that Russia is
mortally wounded or harried into Chinese vassal status before the west breaks down into a
third world non-entity.
The real reasons for the expulsions is the revelation of Russia's next generation war
weapons. It was taken up as an invitation to fight, not to make peace, and making it as hard
as possible for Russians to either influence opinion or gather information.
Somebody wanted Skripal dead, and while it may be a useful false flag provocation, with
his involvement with the Steele Dossier a possible trigger, it could be serving more than one
purpose. As usual, we are assigning to the Russkies both more omnipotence and stupidity than
is merited. I supoose it is our own elites who believe their omniscience in surveilling all
of us means they are also smarter than the rest of us. Maybe
Well said and accurate. There is no consensus among the hoipolloi with the neocon push for
war. This will never come about. The west is desperate, no doubt, and will continue to beat
its chest, much to its own detriment. If the west intended on war, it would have come about.
Time is not on their side. The neocons have backed themselves into a corner and, therefore,
must create chaos, camouflage, obfuscation, in order to bamboozle the world until they can
safely go back into their holes. Most likely, they are looking for concessions. Remember the
Wasserman-Schuiltz spy scandal? Remember the many deadly false flags being exposed to the
public for what they are?
Frankly, Saker reads too much into this Chinese article. It is not about Russia. It is
not because Skrypal hoax dialed ritual Russophobia over eleven. It just is a coincidence. Yet
before loosing the elections Hillary was promising military war with Russia. Yet before
winning the elections Trump was promising economic war with China.
USA ruling 1% was making a strategic choice year ago.
When Trump got elected he inherited the raging war. He could not stop it, obviously. Then
he turned it overboard. He started demanding so many wars at once that US Army got
overstretched and paralyzed. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Itan, Yemen, Korea, new European
garrisons . Trump send Army to prepare to war everywhere and now Pentagon can not scratch
together enough forces to attack anywhere specifically.
By his "clumsy and incompetent bravado" Trump neutralized the army, made and exposed it as
incapable pretend-force.
Now Trump can switch to his programme -- economic war with China.
And that is why Chinese diplomats and media run crazy. Now it is their war, not Russia's.
Now their tails are on the line. Now Russia mostly can move to backlines to lick wounds while
China would exchange blows and collect bruises.
This turned recent Chinese statements so bald and pushing. This, and not a concern for
Russia.
something the Russians might consider -- immediately cutting off all gas to Europe and
restoring such service for payment only in gold or the new "petrol yuan" . Europe depends
heavily on that Russian Gas, and such a move would re-align some European thinking. Replacing
it with US provided LPG would take far too long and be much more expensive having to be
shipped by sea
In fact, maybe if Russia, China, the other brics and aligned countries suddenly cut off
all ties to the west, it would hasten the coming economic collapse of the EU and US, and that
dreamed of multipolar world would arise from the ashes.
Better that than the ashes of a nuclear exchange I would think.
China is too smart to show its hand yet, they are building their economic & military
strength quietly, they don't want to scare the westerners yet with threats.
Russia`s biggest weakness is the incompetent, useless leaders they had from the 80`s
to Yeltsin. The mess that the USSR left behind with unstable states on its borders with no
treaty to prevent NATO expansion was a huge gift to the US that just keeps giving!!
I`ll go as far as saying this gift to the US might lead to Russia`s end as a country
in its present form. You can hardly blame the US I mean in 1990 Russia agreed to basically
throw the towel in and live in a US dominated world in practice. Whatever they say about
promises at the time that lasted for as long as their breath was warm .
A couple centuries ago the phrase "The White Man's Burden" was used to explain why
citizens of Western nations must devote resources to civilize the world. Gore Vidal used "The
Yellow Man's Burden" to explain why citizens of Asian nations were devoting so much wealth to
keep the USA and much of Europe wealthy. If our citizens suddenly lost 30% of their annual
income due to tax increases and spending cuts needed to truly balance our national budgets,
they would be outraged. They might learn that this was the result of "free trade", which
might result in revolution and wars. Those who have profited off "free trade" by selling out
their citizens know its best to let the working class learn this truth slowly.
_____________________
Trump's proclamation to pull out of Syria may be good news, but probably not. He hired
psychopath Bolton, so we can assume the US military is just consolidating forces in Iraq to
hold off attacks whilst they bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. The Iraqis aren't our allies, they just
act to get free stuff, and they will know we are not bombing Iran to save Iranians. It might
be wise to get our troops out of Iraq too!
____________________________
To answer:
Let's begin this discussion with a few, basic questions.
Question one (thru five): does anybody sincerely believe
Yes, this bimbo does, and she's the State Department spokesman. The State Department is
still infected with Clinton-hysteria and uses sexy women to spin lies so the foreign press
doesn't laugh and scorn absurd BS too loudly. The American press are just stenographers and
eagerly copy her lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL9UxED4uuI
The problem is that Russia/USSR submitted once and the West think it can be achieved again.
Hence everything must be made clear. No partners word should be used and the West must be
clearly warned that violence of unimaginable level will be used if they dare and what will
follow if Russian force anywhere attacked and that any use of nukes against Russia means the
end of humanity.
Unfortunately acting adequately and carefully Russia never was able to avoid war. It is in
the books. Right now bets are life on earth hence being too careful and being perceived as
weak is a bad thing. Russia IMHO must act boldly. Respond to USA and UK harassment by cutting
diplomatic relations and giving straight terse warning.
I think what disturbs China about this whole situation regarding the ENTIRE Western world
(US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia) is not simply that it is an overreaction to Russia,
but the whole idea that one particular people -- the Russian people -- have once again been
SINGLED OUT for collective intimidation and eventually for possible dismemberment.
China has very long and very bitter experience of this itself. In the 19th century, the
imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on China.
In other parts of the world, the experience of other backward peoples was with but ONE
particular Empire (ex. only the Americans vs the Amerinds, only the Spanish in South America,
only Great Britain in India and Australia, only Russians in Central Asia and Siberia, and
only Japanese in Korea. The British, French, Germans, Italians and Belgians each had separate
RIVAL spheres in Africa, and ditto for South-East Asia.
But when it came to China, ALL these competing powers set aside their differences. It's as
if they said to each other "Hey, China is so enormous and juicy, we should not fight among
ourselves, there's enough for everyone!" Unbelievably vicious.
And now, we see the same pattern. the whole Western world against Russia. I think in this
instance, the Han don't need anyone to tell them what to think -- it is 100% certain they do
not approve of what the collective West is doing.
But if China stepped in and conveyed that crucial message "The West is only a small
fraction of the world"
They can do better than this, and explicitly state that a nuclear war with Russia is a
nuclear war with China -- just to make it clear -- and let the US do some more realistic
calculations.
"war is a path of deceit. When you are strong -- pretend weak ."
Am familiar with Sun-tzu a well. But what are you saying here? That the UK is stronger
than Russia. I would definitely have to disagree with that proposition!
It should be plain to any objective observer of global politics that the west is
internally incoherent and will wane in power by the crush weight of demographic change
alone. China observes this and realizes the only long-term competitor to their ascendant
position, one generation hence, is an independent Russia.
Maybe, but the problem right now is the Imperial US (ruled from Israel). If it
succeeds in destroying Russia, then the Chinese are irrelevant, and have nothing to say about
anything.
The recent THREATENED tariffs have an INTERESTING TIMING to them. It is being used by
Washington to convince China to stay passive as the West takes down Russia. Conversely, if
China "bends the knee", then the West promises that the threats won't materialize. (The West
loves worthless promises). Washington calculates that the mere threat of tariffs will make
China stand by as a neighbor is destroyed. Any turmoil in your neighbor's house, spills over
into yours whether you want it to or not. A neighbor is a neighbor, period.
And THAT, IMHO, is why the protectionist threats are happening NOW. Don't get me wrong,
the tariffs were going to happen anyway, eventually. China, whatever it does, cannot escape
them.
But to threaten a trade war RIGHT NOW with the one power guaranteed to be Russia's
economic lifeline (we know that China couldn't care less what Russia does in its backyard, in
the Ukraine) while preparing to attack Russia itself? Well, the whole thing is WAY TOO
OBVIOUS.
And if someone like me can see, so can a lot of other people in Moscow and Beijing.
Washington thinks its being "smart", but they are so ridiculously easy to read.
No, not that UK is really stronger than Russia but appears weaker. It's that the West is
actually not capable of defeating Russia but loudly shouts that it CAN defeat them easily,
and tries to look powerful and intimidating to Russia. In this situation, the
weaker-positioned West pretends to Russia that we are stronger, and we want Russia to believe
us. That way, it won't come to actual war, and we think Russia will back down. It's an
extremely risky plan.
That could, perhaps, take minds of US citizens from shopping and social media to,
perhaps, more serious matters.
Won't hold my breath.
Taking everything into account, I think the you're right. The US public are
irretrievably useless and are going to have to go the whole way, with WW3 and/or an economic
collapse, with the best bet being on WW3 (which they may well lose).
In fact, it's very possible RUSSIA is NOT, at this time, the target of Western aggression.
Sure, the West shall SURELY try to destroy Russia, but the urgency is not there YET. Maybe
the real target right now is CHINA, shortly to have the world's largest economy in absolute
terms. They must be destroyed NOW! The West is trying to cut a deal with Russia: "Stab China
in the back, and bow down to us. You can live A LITTLE LONGER, before we come for you.
Otherwise we get pissed and kill you TODAY".
An entirely plausible master-plan from Washington, London and Paris. Also a pretty
transparent one, if it's the case. The problem with this "Divide and Conquer" plan, aside
from being easy to read, is that it counts on both Russia and China to be dumb enough to
believe they are not BOTH in the cross-hairs. How stupid does the West think China and Russia
are?
It would have a psychological effect, at most. Russia has 5,000 warheads, China only
admits to having around 500 or 600 strategic city-killers. They may have more, but if you
don't admit something it doesn't count for deterrence. Maybe a decade from now, as China
builds its arsenal, the statement could be much more effective.
No, the Chinese are surely disgusted with this bullying behavior of the West (even many
Europeans are, just read the comments to the news in the different media outlets) but China
cannot seriously confront the West. That would make them lose trillions of dollars in exports
and investments and put an abrupt end to their miraculous but still ongoing economic
development. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
The situation will continue to deteriorate until some sort of modus vivendi is reached
(like at the beginning of the first Cold War). Or perhaps it's just been too long since the
last World War and the time is ripe for the next one.
As for the Skripal murder attempt, it's hard to imagine Putin ordering it at this time and
in that manner but it's not that hard to imagine someone from the Kremlin sewers being behind
it.
In the somewhat less likely scenario of a false flag operation, I would consider an
Israeli asymmetrical response to the recent downing of their jet by the Syrians with obvious
help from the Russians. They have plenty of experience in extraterritorial assassinations and
more than enough knowledge to fabricate a Russian-like nerve agent.
I respect and value Saker as a commentator on Russian and military affairs. Those are his
areas of expertise and professional experience. I do not value him as a historian, because
there enters into his writing a clear bias. I respect the fact of his commitment to his
Orthodox faith, but I don't appreciate being almost hammerlocked into having to take a side
in his prejudices.
He has a way of lumping 1,000 years of exceedingly complex history into what amounts
practically to silly formulas that remind one of adolescent pique. West is characterized by
"thuggery," whereas the "East," is presumably the source -- and is possibly the monopoly --
of the virtues Saker has in mind, while Western-like manifestations of military violence and
conquest are unknown there.
And there is this pearl: "Scholasticism and an insatiable thrust for worldly, secular,
power produced both moral relativism and colonialism " This is downright embarrassing in its
silliness. Of course, after deep study of Aquinas or Bonaventure the light comes on: moral
relativism! Clearly, subtlety and essential distinctions are not the Saker's strong points,
to say the least, when it comes to registering his annoyance and bitterness in his 1000 year
view of "the West," whereas sweeping and frankly spectacularly inept generalizations are. One
is really tempted to accuse him of a lack of intellectual integrity when it comes to these
matters.
At root, Saker is a highly emotional and touchy "rooter" for Orthodoxy. Fine, that's his
right, but he is no scholar. One looks in vain either for impartiality, for breadth and depth
of understanding and sympathy, and hence for generosity of spirit. Thankfully, there are many
great scholars of history, East and West.
In the 19th century, the imperial powers, for some reason, ganged up on
China.
That's the opposite of reality. If they had ganged up on China, each would have taken
large piece for itself. In reality, they were overawed by China, and tried to preserve it
much as they tried to preserve Ottoman rule against both breakup and dismemberment by Russia.
The Ottomans were too far gone, so they failed in both respects. But they did manage to
prevent China's breakup while failing to keep Russia from annexing a large chunk of Chinese
territory.
Heck, they even helped China defeat the millenarian Taiping rebels who racked up a large
body count during their rebellion. Note that when the Jurchens detected internal rebellion
during the Ming dynasty, they waited until the imperial armies were occupied with rebel
suppression before delivering the coup de grace to the Ming dynasty. The Western powers were
too tied up competing with each other to really cooperate in anything more than avenging the
honor of their envoys and getting trading posts set up on Chinese territory.
By "ganging up" I refer to the way in which China was COLLECTIVELY FORCED to extend any
and all concessions granted any single Imperial Power to ALL Imperial powers. And all the
Imperial powers were on-board with this policy , again as a unified group.
For example, if Russia forced a railroad treaty on China, China by unequal, at-gun-point
"Treaty" with the Eight Powers (at the time Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia,
The United States, Austria-Hungary and Italy) would also have to grant EVERYONE railroad
concessions in their respective zones.
Or say if China was forced to open trade relations by America, China would automatically
be forced to open trade to EVERYONE ELSE , and even the instigators in that case, the United
States, would force China to do it. All in the name of the relevant Treaties, of course.
Also by mutual agreement among the imperial powers, they would not support China in any
efforts to get better terms in any negotiation with any other power . So Russia refused to,
say provide support for Chinese efforts to fend off the Japanese, though normally it might
have done so. This was because, both being part of the Imperial Powers grouping, Russia and
Japan had agreed to co-exist in mutual exploitation of China.
It was all designed so that China would have no ability to shift its favor diplomatically
from one power to another, but had to negotiate from a position of deliberately imposed
weakness. Diplomacy was the only tool available to China in that execrably weak state,
pathetic as that tool was. By collective agreement among the Empires, that tool was taken
away.
In effect, exploitation of China became a COOPERATIVE project between such disparate
rivals as Britain, France and Germany, or United States, Japan and Russia. Such a thing, of a
coordinated desire to apportion one country among many, was not seen anywhere else in the
Colonial Age .
That is my meaning when I referred to the Empires "ganging up" on China.
How absurd. The foremost producer of virtually all modern goods is irrelevant without
Russia? A weakened Russia is a boon to Chinese expansion into their desired role as Eurasian
leader state. The only irrelevant nations are in the West as their post-national suicide
becomes all the more certain.
Ridiculous, China needs Russia as Russia is a perfect complement to Chinas weaknesses. In
fact, neither China nor Russia could have picked a better strategic partner than each other
as neither country could confront the West on it's own but together the West cannot topple
either nation. No other combination between countries would provide near as much
synergies.
China is not looking to expand into Russia. Why would they when they have a shrinking
population. They are expanding into the SCS in order to keep their oil lines free.
The real strategic advantage Russia and China have with each other is the OBOR. This is
key to everything and is the reason why the West is targeting Russia so aggressively.
If Mackinder's Heartland theory is at play, and you want to cut China off from Europe,
taking down Russia would seem to be an enormous effort to accomplish that. There are much
easier ways. Why not just lobby your European "allies" not to trade at all with China?
Mission accomplished, and no war with Russia as a bonus. If the EU won't follow the Empire's
orders, you need to take out not only Russia, but probably Pakistan, and all the Central
Asian nations, plus Iran and Turkey. If not, and you only destroy one or a few of these,
China's One Belt One Road reaches Europe anyway.
Also don't forget the outright blockade of China's maritime trade to be conducted by the
U.S. Navy -- kind of an act of war in itself.
Seems far easier, if you want to slow China down, to just ORDER America's NATO allies to
stop all trade with China. The rest of the world all together won't be able to fill the gap,
not any time soon.
Voila, you lower China's GDP growth by some significant percentage, using just strong-arm
diplomacy in Europe.
Buys America another full decade as number one economy, maybe.
In the fevered dreams of Western strategists, they hope for Russia and China to turn on each
other, sparing the Atlantic powers the trouble. Then, they come in and pick up the pieces.
They hope to replicate the success of Britain in playing off France against Germany pre-World
War One. The problem is they have in fact encouraged the Sino-Russian strategic alignment,
not hindered it.
No matter, after all, there can never be such a thing, thought the British, of a long-term
common interest between France and Germany -- a "European Union" will never come about.
French and Germans naturally hate each other! Right?
And how did Britain make out with that thinking? How will America make out in coming
decades? In geopolitics, not that well. Not as long as we are short-sighted.
Those with the power, and the happily ruled, have always needed synonyms for "obedience."
Solidarity is a choice in line with our social-mediatic times and the related
communication standards.
I mean, like i said above, Johnson and other western politicians are not "boneheads"
(intellectually weak) as you said, no, they are smart (intellectually strong) and pretending,
faking their intellectual weakness (appearance of stupidity)
Answers:-
One and two. Proof beyond reasonable doubt does not mean there is no chance of a
mistake, and the standard necessary for thinking Putin responsible is less than what would be
needed for finding him guilty in a court of law. He cannot hide behind his country and
diplomatic immunity while claiming the protection of British Law for evidence necessary to
convict someone on trial for a capital offence.
Three. We want nothing from Russia , for indeed they have nothing to offer. To go away and
shut up is the most they can do, and that is why are sending the worst of the Russian goons
back were they came from, whether they want to go back or not (they would love to stay in
London*).
Four. Punishment is essential, otherwise they will see weakness.
Five. No chance of nuclear war or any other kind or war. Russia is destined to become the
lonely old man of Europe. It has nothing anyone wants at the price of being treated like an
imbecile, and our diplomats dislike living there*).
Oh, we have a copypaste contest? Okay then, i'd copy here my reply at saker's blog
too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[MORE]
> China will be blackmailed into submission.
Wooop! Then it is not "existential threat" for China.
Clash for power, clash for sovereignty, clash fo prosperity -- but not for survival.
> Russia & China are working closely
Which does not mean China's role is making harsh diplomatic statements in favor of Russia.
At least it was not so before today. So i think it is not today either. Also remember that
Chinese social mindset is build upon idea of "indebting with gifts and aids" and then
requesting payback when they need it. Which means Russia should be very wary about accepting
any help from China unless it wishes to be seen by China as a deeply indebted beggar
incapable of sustaining itself. And since diplomatic situation for Russia is not deadly
critical I do not think Russia needed that newspaper article. If Russia would request China's
support of the kind -- it would be in official diplomatic venues like UN.
> Russia needs to save Syria for its own skin
> Iran needs to save its skin
But is it so for China? Is China in critical need of sovereign and friendly Syria? I doubt
it.
> China has been backing up with big cheque book for last few years, signing hundreds
of billions deal with upfront payments to prop Russia economy for prolong war.
Which is very important, but is not diplomatic statements nor Chinese newspaper
articles.
That is exactly the Chinese role in this fight like i said many times before -- economic
and financial warfare is Chinese responsibility, while military and diplomatic warfare is
Russian's.
> Global times news mostly reflected the China think tank policy that they wish to
propagate to English speaking world.
And here we are getting back to the topic. Why such a harsh, explicitly worded article did
appeared today? Was it because of Russia or of China itself? Was that article reaction to
some new threat to Syria, to russia, or to China itself?
And i believe in the latter option. This article is not linked to any recent events around
Russia, it is caused by Sino-American relations shift.
> China has sensed West is tightened noose around Russia to cut it off from world,
seeing from Olympic & now the Skirpal circus
Skripal affair is much less than Olympics was. Even European states many did not jumped
Skripal wagon. Additionally, if Russia would be "cut off from Western world" -- what the West
did not dared to do even in 2014 on the height of Crimea and MH17 accusations and on the
hopes of "gas station" imminent and fast collapse, so would hardly dare now just because some
Skripal -- but if Russia would somehow gets politically isolated from the West, what bad is
it for China? Russia would become more dependent on China, like many of the trade with West
would had to go through Chinese "laundry". China gets more influence over Russia. Russia gets
much more limited in its options. Good (for China) development, why hurry to cancel it before
Russia even asked for ?
> Trade war will be too bloody for the world
Yes, but the said trade war is not having Russia as primary adversary -- Russian economy i
not that significant to the western world, and for USA in particular it has but zero
significance. The trade war we see igniting -- is the war against China. China can no more be
"wise monkey up the trees", when USA moved their chaingun aim from Russia onto China. Now
China is being shot at, and the article is Chinese response to China being attacked. Not to
anything around Russia.
> You are silly self center viewer
Frankly, it is exactly the opposite here. It is you who claim Russia being behind that
article in Global Time. It is me who claims Russia has no any relation to the timing and
wording of that article.
> China special force is operating in Syria.
Maybe it is, but seems no one ever saw those operations.
> Lot of weapons supply to SAA.
Maybe they are, but can you name those Chinese weapons and show me where SAA is employing
it?
> Lot of money pump in to sustain Syria war,
If they are, then China does it part of the fight, good. Like USA supplied money and
material to fighting European states during WW2. However that has no relation with the Global
Times article being discussed.
> always throwing allies under bus whenever possible,
.because Putin is evil and just enjoys every opportunity to do bad thing. Always. I wish i
would hear somethign remotely creative from you.
> hence Russia deserve to be raped by West like 1990 is natural.
Oh, i see. Yet another russophobic preaching that "Russians should repent and repay,
repay, and repent", then frustrated when Russia shrugs this lecture off.
And, as you said, the west has many ways of neutralizing China.
Don't forget that China has an enormous internal market too, which in time should be
larger than the U.S. and EU combined. European countries that stay out of this vast and
rapidly growing market will be cutting their own throats. Good luck convincing them to do
that.
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted
to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes
by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed
a political agenda.
As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared
by different circles within the American political class and promoted through
programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies,
activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia,
but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining
the nation's political reputation.
... ... ....
Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely
legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the
world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter
in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate
and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday
seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals,
Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the
United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most
precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown
increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated
that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism
in the former Soviet region.
And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with
Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia
tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first
century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation,
and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number
of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans
understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming
support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high
oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent
assertions of Russophobic observers.
Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties
that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative
of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and
Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important
to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching
way.
Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an
anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia --
a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre
Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly
present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies
of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies
tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often
commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's
political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies
by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly
more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.
The Anti-Russian Lobby
When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and
Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the
governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the
publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour-
nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River, 2002)1
....
Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but
a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks
in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was
approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in
ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to
serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future.
(Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2
This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's
influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its
tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence,
and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1
argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring
Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.
1. Goals and Means
Objectives
The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen
America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies.
The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves,
and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective.
Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one
capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were
worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power.
In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military
and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people
and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues
across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device
for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some
the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to
others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international
politics.
According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this
"New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually
to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy
reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American
Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to
the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought
to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great
threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a
threat from arising in the first place."4
Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving
its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S.
interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system
sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared
by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival
in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned,
no other choice was available.
This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within
the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For
example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the
Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy
ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's
"grand failure."6
In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's
decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's
"practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism
would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7
Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values.
In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history"
thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®
... ... ...
Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle
of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated,
the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet
system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it
was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were
free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried
to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to
proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which
only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the
world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11
In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected
Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may
still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12
Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although
not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States.
Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social
and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside
Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as
the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population
on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power
but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status
of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was
largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state
officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely
wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they
influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development
of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions,
the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the
rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any
partnership with the United States.14
The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's
ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths
of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist,
autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new
conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's
unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15
... ... ...
The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced
by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack
of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their
personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence
of firm policy commitments.
Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that
the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for
the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of
2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan
group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with
the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not
tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide
US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91
Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy
on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found
its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004,
Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and
more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.
President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable
to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the
Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually
acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration
in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about
the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising
post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American
Sense of History
It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the
United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2006)
If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real
risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.
(John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International
Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)
On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin,
Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its
allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the
Cold War the first time around.
("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In
order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive
the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups
have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions,
presenting those differences as incompatible.
1. Contested History
Two versions of history
The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American
ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian
communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding
to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about
history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in
the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the
Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on
there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis
Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted
in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance
of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4
In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty
and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it
is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important
attributes of sovereign statehood.
In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces,
the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal
and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy.
Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully
withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi
regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue
with the tradition of freedom as independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing
myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold
War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods
but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.
This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western
interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S.
narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist
ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a
necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that
even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation,
emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral
responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7
They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe,
but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians
also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution
of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid
dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle
to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian
wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9
If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two
historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the
difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea
of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal,
but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local
circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed
the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under
the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated
a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the
Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated
with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge
the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted
in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides
were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions
of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future
attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent
in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust
of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more
difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders
had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception
of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to
the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II
world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to
address these deep-seated suspicions.
In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles
Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in
its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security
system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it
would have to be transformed.
Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to
accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second
Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains
that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another
expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at
a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners
within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines
of a scaled-down Cold War?"113
Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was
given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest
nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost
perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel
between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO
onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with
our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France
treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114
"... The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other "issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude. ..."
"... The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus, in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. ..."
"... The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature." It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or Muslims. ..."
"... Cheesepopes be gaslighting ..."
"... Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true. ..."
by Srdja Trifkovic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
There is a paranoid, hysterical quality to the public discourse on Russia and all things Russian
in today's America. The corporate media machine and its Deep State handlers have abdicated reason
and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering. We have not seen anything like it before,
even in the darkest days of the Cold War.
The roots of Russophobia's emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental
relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and
even to appear virtuous in the process . Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and
European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and
morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien
multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other
"issues" indicative of a society's moral and intellectual decrepitude.
The liberals' ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter
hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus,
in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. The result is a surreal narrative
that mixes supposedly unprovoked "Russian aggression" in Ukraine, hostile intent in the Baltics,
serial war crimes in Syria, political destabilization in Western Europe, and gross interference in
America's "democratic process". The result is an altogether fictitious "existential threat," which
has made President Trump's intended détente with Moscow impossible. He may have been serious about
turning over a new leaf, but the Deep State counterpressure proved just too great. A solid rejection
front emerged, left and right, conservative and liberal, which extends even into his own team and
finally inhibited him from making moves that could have appeared too friendly to Putin.
The Russophobes' narrative is unrelated to Russia's actual policies. It reflects a deep odium
of the elite class toward Russia-as-such. That animosity has been developing in its current form
since roughly the time of the Crimean War, when in his Letters From Russia the Marquis de Custine
said that the country's "veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible."
"No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant-in
short, as untrustworthy in every way-as the Russians," President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1905.
John Maynard Keynes, after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1925, wondered whether the "mood of oppression"
might be "the fruit of some beastliness in the Russian nature." J. Robert Oppenheimer opined in 1951
that, in Russia, "We are coping with a barbarous, backward people." More recently, Sen. John McCain
declared that "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." "Russia is an anti-Western power
with a different, darker vision of global politics," Slate wrote in early 2014, even before the Ukrainian
crisis reached its climax.
This narrative has two key pillars. In terms of geopolitics, we see the striving of maritime empires-Britain
before World War II, and the United States after - to "contain" and if possible control the Eurasian
heartland, the core of which is of course Russia. Equally important is the already noted cultural
antipathy, the desire not merely to influence Russian policies and behavior but to effect an irreversible
transformation of Russia's identity. Some of the most viscerally Russophobic stereotypes come from
Russia herself, from those members of Moscow's "intelligentsia" who feel more at home in New York
or London than anywhere in their own country. The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles
Times 12 years ago that "it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature."
It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or
Muslims.
The Russophobic frenzy comes at a cost. It further devalues the quality of public discourse on
world affairs in the United States, which is already dismally low. It has already undermined the
prospects for a mutually beneficial new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations, based on a realist assessment
that those two powers have no "existential" differences - and share many actual and potential commonalities.
It perpetrates the arrogant delusion that there is a superior, "Western" model of social and cultural
thought and action that can and should be imposed everywhere, but especially in Russia.
Saddest of all, Russophobic mania prolongs the European civil war that exploded in July 1914,
continued in 1939, and has never properly ended - not even with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would
be in the American interest, as well as Russia's and Europe's, for that conflict to end, so that
the existential challenge common to all- that of resurgent jihad and Europe's demographic crisis
- can be properly addressed.
Nothing give a NYC Wall Street banker more of a wet dream than the possibility of war between
the goy. Oil, white slaves, truly a banker's dream come true.
..it seems like our foreign policy is like an angry poor, innocent "motorist", whacked out
on amphetamines, speeding over 100 mph and destined to drown in his liberal negro lottery swimming
pool.
The United States is closely watching a recent increase in piracy off the coast of Somalia,
a senior U.S. military official said on Sunday as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited an important
military base in Djibouti.
If I ignore your bullshit "but at the maximum..." implication:
So what do you conclude from that. Is it a bad thing to have rivals? Should we strive to turn
every remaining rival into a vassal? Is there a limit on methods allowed toward a rival?
I'll give you a green arrow to make up for the narrow-mindedness of the simpletons who all
gave you red arrows.
We don't need a war with Russia, and the US won't instigate one, either. The juice wouldn't
be worth the squeeze.
With all of that being said, Russia is a rival to the US in other parts of the world. The US
isn't the only country with a desire for influence around the world.
As much as there is a "Russo-phobia" being perpetuated in the US, you can bet a buck that there
is an "Ameri-phobia" being perpetuated out there.
The big difference is that in Russia, they don't have message boards full of people sh*tting
on their own country.
Well, that is kind of how major powers compete for influence. It takes two to tango. We can't
exactly engage in war by proxy if the Russians aren't involved in it, too.
I hate to say it but the so called "elites", in charge of our beloved deep state controlling
everything, are quite stupid -- This continuous news hysteria, against whatever subject du jour
our intelligentsia decides to float publicly, proves beyond any reasonable doubt that said "elites"
suffer from a combination of low IQ, partial education (at best !), and high self-delusion...
We might get to witness nuclear war, just because our "elites" are too idiotic to realize what
a nuclear war really is...
They stick their hook nose into everything because they want to own the whole 4th rock from
the sun. These people are ill, very ill and as I read these comments it's obvious that some just
don't get it yet.
All of this B.S. Russophobia evolved from a convenient distraction from the CONTENT of the
leaked DNC emails, and has been amplified because of the symbiosis with Neoconservative/Globalist
strategies.
What amazes me is how well the propaganda seems to be working. There's a bunch of old farts
(not that I'm really young!) at the gym every morning talking about how awesome it is that we
bombed Syria and it'll show that bastard Putin we're tough and mean business. "America, Fuck yeh!"
I wanted to ask them if they were mentally defective or just fucking retards...
Pretty much. Society has opted to run on emotion rather than fact, emotional manipulation being
the key part of the most popular forms of entertainment. Sadly this bleeds into our dealings with
each other which are increasingly emotional or insulting. Most of human behaviour and attitudes
are due to fear, particularly the egoic fear of inadequacy. As a control mechanism, fear is a
formidable tool. But fear is also a choice.
The Strategic Culture Foundation who published this piece has an evil agenda, and they are
not even friends of Putin. They are very subtle warmongers. You will see when the time comes.
Putin was duped by Iran in Syria, Iran got Syria, not Putin. Trump and Saudi can give Russia
what it needs to survive, if Putin stops being duped by deceptive hegemonial Iran.
This reminds me of when the ZerroHedge owners mentioned that Bloomberg article several months
back that involved an interview of a former Zero Hedge writer blowing the lid off this place.
He mentioned how pro-Russia the ZH owners were. This article suggests that he may have been right
after all!
Yea, we shouldn't be afraid of a country with nukes, that invades it's neigbours, has an uber
crony economy the size of Italy's, dominated by oligarchs in mining and the obligation to keep
friendly with the Kremlin or risk being put in jail and have your assets taken away on trumped
up charges. The country that murders it's opponents and critics with nasty stuff like Polonium,
even abroad, that interferes in others elections with misinformation campaigns and troll factories,
that is on the side of the ayatolla's of Iran and the mass murderer in Syria, helping him by bombing
hospitals and refugees, only to be "recognized as a player again on the world stage" A coutry
of alcoholics with one of the lowest life expectancy in the developed world. Really, a model state.
As Paul Graig Roberts, the inhouse idiot here noted, Putin for the Nobel peace price!
Wikileaks has disclosed the tactic to blame Russia for the election results, Trump's collusion,
etc. back to spring of 2016 --- I remember when they started making those "Russia" comments. They
wanted to start the thoughts about him/his staff being in collusion with the Russians. That was
to hopefully make more decide not to vote for him and in case he won, use it to prove election
fraud, treason and somehow impeach him.
Those who know about the Globalists NWO agenda, Deep State, Neocons, etc. realize we've all
been lied to about Russia (among all the other lies) since the end of the Cold War. for "their"
agenda purposes - need for continuous wars for MIC, etc. also. Putin is not as portrayed at all.
Russia is not the "big bad Commie" beast that wants to take over the world as they want us to
believe to "justify" another war.
Putin is an Eastern Orthodox Chrsitian who protects Christians, hates and fights terrorists
and Globalism. He is not a Globalist. We have those goals in common and Pres. Trump and Putin
would be a fantastic duo that when united, terrorism and Globalism would finally be dealt death
blows,
Our enemies within know that and therefore they're trying to do everything they can to hurt
that relationship and not let it happen because it would mean finally - the end of their evil
world order plan.
Amount of pressure applied commensurate to strength of a country in question. For some of them
all it takes is a stern talk from the ambassador, Russia right now is safely beyond the US ability
to apply the required pressure, including the threat of Nuclear War. What is happening instead
is that world being interconnected the way it is, applying pressure at hardened point that is
Russia is also increasing pressure at other weaker points as well, pretty much all over the world.
EU and NATO are posturing against Russia in display of lunacy that is symptomatic for the West,
it seems that God is taking away humans ability to reason. Day 1, Russia announces indefinite
cuts of gas supplies to Europe, stocks crater, world economy craters, Russia and China who were
hoarding gold watch the West collapse like a house of cards while passing the popcorn. The End.
Afghanistan is about to go full retard again, as taliban cuts ussa out of heroin billions---
as our afghan troops turn their weapons on their masters[1]
The Jewish media has been obsessed with this business about Russia allegedly influencing the
recent 2016 U.S. election. This obsession has concealed the real problem with foreign influence
over the American electoral system. It isn't Russian influence that's the problem, it is Israeli
influence that's the problem.
Below is a list of stories showing how Israelis or Jews substantively connected to Israel have
been subverting the American electoral process.
You know we will have turned the corner when Donald Trump gives the American people a "Fireside
Chat" and tells the public the real reasons the media spearheads a constant barrage of hate filled
anti-Russian LYING PROPAGANDA filled rhetoric... BECAUSE
A) THEY ARE THE WORLDS LEADER IN OIL PRODUCTION B) HAVE NO DEBT C) HAVE THERE OWN BALANCE OF
PAYMENT CREDIT SYSTEM MIR THAT WILL REPLACE THE WESTERN CENTRAL BANK(S) SYSTEM "SWIFT"
And after he delivers that truthful message he will NEVER BE ALLOWED TO EVER AGAIN... He will
probably be shot like HOWARD BEALE in the movie NETWORK... Or WWWIII will be LAUNCHED!!!
"... Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. ..."
"... Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. ..."
"... Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. ..."
"... one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary ..."
"... Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate ..."
"... Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. ..."
"... My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency ..."
"... Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ..."
"... The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America ..."
"... Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. ..."
"... Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache ..."
"... "In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added). ..."
"... "What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large." ..."
"... "In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million. ..."
"... Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. ..."
"... Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent " ..."
"... The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote ..."
"... Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." ..."
"... An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: ..."
"... By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. ..."
"... Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ." ..."
"... no support from Big Business ..."
"... Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ." ..."
"... American Oligarchy ..."
"... teleSur English ..."
"... we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 ..."
"... Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements." ..."
"... Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like ..."
"... Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. ..."
"... Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos." ..."
"... His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging. ..."
On the Friday after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and prior to the Tuesday on which
the vicious racist and sexist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Bernie
Sanders spoke to a surprisingly small crowd in Iowa City on behalf of Hillary Clinton. As I
learned months later, Sanders told one of his Iowa City friends that day that Mrs. Clinton was
in trouble. The reason, Sanders reported, was that Hillary wasn't discussing issues or
advancing real solutions. "She doesn't have any policy positions," Sanders said.
The first time I heard this, I found it hard to believe. How, I wondered, could anyone run
seriously for the presidency without putting issues and policy front and center? Wouldn't any
serious campaign want a strong set of issue and policy positions to attract voters and fall
back on in case and times of adversity?
Sanders wasn't lying. As the esteemed political scientist and money-politics expert Thomas
Ferguson and his colleagues Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen note in an important study released by
the Institute for New Economic Thinking two months ago, the Clinton campaign "emphasized
candidate and personal issues and avoided policy discussions to a degree without precedent in
any previous election for which measurements exist .it stressed candidate qualifications [and]
deliberately deemphasized issues in favor of concentrating on what the campaign regarded as
[Donald] Trump's obvious personal weaknesses as a candidate."
Strange as it might have seemed, the reality television star and presidential pre-apprentice
Donald Trump had a lot more to say about policy than the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a wonkish Yale Law graduate.
"Courting the Undecideds in Business, not in the Electorate"
What was that about? My first suspicion was that Hillary's policy silence was about the
money. It must have reflected her success in building a Wall Street-filled campaign funding
war-chest so daunting that she saw little reason to raise capitalist election investor concerns
by giving voice to the standard fake-progressive "hope" and "change" campaign and policy
rhetoric Democratic presidential contenders typically deploy against their One Percent
Republican opponents. Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election
prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of
Wall
Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading
Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the
"lying
neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes
to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. She would cruise into the White
House with no hurt plutocrat feelings simply by playing up the ill-prepared awfulness of her
Republican opponent.
If Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen (hereafter "JFC") are right, I was on to something but not
the whole money and politics story. Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers
have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism
in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise
to win elections. Sophisticated funders get it that the Democratic candidates' need to
manipulate the electorate with phony pledges of democratic transformation. The big
money backers know it's "just politics" on the part of candidates who can be trusted to
serve elite interests (like Bill
Clinton 1993-2001 and Barack
Obama 2009-2017 ) after they gain office.
What stopped Hillary from playing the usual game – the "manipulation of populism by
elitism" that Christopher
Hitchens once called "the essence of American politics" – in 2016, a year when the
electorate was in a particularly angry and populist mood? FJC's study is titled "
Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games : Donald Trump and the
2016 Presidential Election." It performs heroic empirical work with difficult campaign finance
data to show that Hillary's campaign funding success went beyond her party's usual corporate
and financial backers to include normally Republican-affiliated capitalist sectors less
disposed than their more liberal counterparts to abide the standard progressive-sounding policy
rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates. FJC hypothesize that (along with the determination
that Trump was too weak to be taken all that seriously) Hillary's desire get and keep on board
normally Republican election investors led her to keep quiet on issues and policy concerns that
mattered to everyday people. As FJC note:
"Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a
lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. For
Clinton's campaign the temptation was irresistible: Over time it slipped into a variant of
the strategy [Democrat] Lyndon Johnson pursued in 1964 in the face of another [Republican]
candidate [Barry Goldwater] who seemed too far out of the mainstream to win: Go for a grand
coalition with most of big business . one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so
many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of
public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to
rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary . Misgivings of
major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for
ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within
business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate
" (emphasis added). Hillary
Happened
FJC may well be right that a wish not to antagonize off right-wing campaign funders is what
led Hillary to muzzle herself on important policy matters, but who really knows? An alternative
theory I would not rule out is that Mrs. Clinton's own deep inner conservatism was sufficient
to spark her to gladly dispense with the usual progressive-sounding campaign boilerplate. Since
FJC bring up the Johnson-Goldwater election, it is perhaps worth mentioning that 18-year old
Hillary was a "Goldwater Girl" who worked for the arch-reactionary Republican presidential
candidate in 1964. Asked about that episode on National
Public Radio (NPR) in 1996 , then First Lady Hillary said "That's right. And I feel like my
political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don't recognize this
new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not
conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."
It was a revealing reflection. The right-wing Democrat Hillary acknowledged that her
ideological world view was still rooted in the conservatism of her family of origin. Her
problem with the reactionary Republicanism afoot in the U.S. during the middle 1990s was that
it was "not conservative in many respects." Her problem with the far-right Republican
Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay was that they were betraying true
conservatism – "the conservatism [Hillary] was raised with." This was worse even than the
language of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – the right-wing Eisenhower
Republican (at leftmost) tendency that worked to push the Democratic Party further to the Big
Business-friendly right and away from its working-class and progressive base.
What happened? Horrid corporate Hillary happened. And she's still happening. The "lying
neoliberal warmonger" recently went to India to double down on her
"progressive neoliberal" contempt for the "basket of deplorables" (more on that phrase
below) that considers poor stupid and backwards middle America to be by
saying this : "If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the
middle where Trump won. I win the coasts. But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the
places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product (GDP). So I won the places
that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward" (emphasis added).
That was Hillary Goldman Sachs-Council on Foreign Relations-Clinton saying "go to Hell" to
working- and middle-class people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri,
Indiana, and West Virginia. It was a raised middle and oligarchic finger from a super-wealthy
arch-global-corporatist to all the supposedly pessimistic, slow-witted, and retrograde losers
stuck between those glorious enclaves (led by Wall Street, Yale, and Harvard on the East coast
and Silicon Valley and Hollywood on the West coast) of human progress and variety (and GDP!) on
the imperial shorelines. Senate Minority Leader Dick
Durbin had to go on television to say that Hillary was "wrong" to write off most of the
nation as a festering cesspool of pathetic, ass-backwards, lottery-playing, and opioid-addicted
white-trash has-beens. It's hard for the Inauthentic Opposition Party (as the late Sheldon Wolin reasonably called
the Democrats ) to pose as an authentic opposition party when its' last big-money
presidential candidate goes off-fake-progressive script with an openly elitist rant like
that.
Historic Mistakes
Whatever the source of her strange policy silence in the 2016 campaign, that hush was "a
miscalculation of historic proportion" (FJC). It was a critical mistake given what Ferguson and
his colleagues call the "Hunger Games" misery and insecurity imposed on tens of millions of
ordinary working- and middle-class middle-Americans by decades of neoliberal capitalist
austerity , deeply exacerbated by the Wall Street-instigated Great Recession and the weak
Obama recovery. The electorate was in a populist, anti-establishment mood – hardly a
state of mind favorable to a wooden, richly globalist, Goldman-gilded candidate, a long-time
Washington-Wall Street establishment ("swamp") creature like Hillary Clinton.
In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump's ironic, fake-populist "outreach to blue collar
workers" would help him win "more than half of all voters with a high school education or less
(including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life
for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of
voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago."
Trump's popularity with "heartland" rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary
into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election
investors that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket
of deplorables." There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary's
"deplorables" blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney's
infamous 2012 gaffe : telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population
were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a
campaign finance profile closer to Romney's than Obama's in 2012 – and not the Republican
making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas .
"A Frontal Assault on the American Establishment"
Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate
Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic
nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of
Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq,
rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten"
American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. As FJC
explain:
"In 2016 the Republicans nominated yet another super-rich candidate – indeed,
someone on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Like legions of conservative
Republicans before him, he trash-talked Hispanics, immigrants, and women virtually non-stop,
though with a verve uniquely his own. He laced his campaign with barely coded racial appeals
and in the final days, ran an ad widely denounced as subtly anti-Semitic. But in striking
contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs. '
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it
has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache . When
subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the
politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our
communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.'"
"In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer
proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass
destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP
orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized
the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added).
Big Dark Money and Trump: His Own and Others'
This cost Trump much of the corporate and Wall Street financial support that Republican
presidential candidates usually get. The thing was, however, that much of Trump's "populist"
rhetoric was popular with a big part of the Republican electorate, thanks to the "Hunger Games"
insecurity of the transparently bipartisan New Gilded Age. And Trump's personal fortune
permitted him to tap that popular anger while leaping insultingly over the heads of his less
wealthy if corporate and Wall Street-backed competitors ("low energy" Jeb Bush and "little
Marco" Rubio most notably) in the crowded Republican primary race.
A Republican candidate
dependent on the usual elite bankrollers would never have been able to get away with Trump's
crowd-pleasing (and CNN and FOX News rating-boosting) antics. Thanks to his own wealth, the
faux-populist anti-establishment Trump was ironically inoculated against pre-emption in the
Republican primaries by the American campaign finance "wealth
primary," which renders electorally unviable candidates who lack vast financial resources
or access to them.
Things were different after Trump won the Republican nomination, however. He could no longer
go it alone after the primaries. During the Republican National Convention and "then again in
the late summer of 2016," FJC show, Trump's "solo campaign had to be rescued by major
industries plainly hoping for tariff relief, waves of other billionaires from the far, far
right of the already far right Republican Party, and the most disruption-exalting corners of
Wall Street." By FJC's account:
"What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave
of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016
or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian
Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business
interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races,
but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the
party at large."
"The run up to the Convention brought in substantial new money, including, for the first
time, significant contributions from big business. Mining, especially coal mining; Big Pharma
(which was certainly worried by tough talk from the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton,
about regulating drug prices); tobacco, chemical companies, and oil (including substantial
sums from executives at Chevron, Exxon, and many medium sized firms); and telecommunications
(notably AT&T, which had a major merge merger pending) all weighed in. Money from
executives at the big banks also began streaming in, including Bank of America, J. P. Morgan
Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Parts of Silicon Valley also started coming in from
the cold."
"In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that
appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies
making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from
some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many
others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now
delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his
Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million.
Peter Theil contributed more than a million
dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost
two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at
Cisco Systems. A wave of new money swept in from large private equity firms, the part of Wall
Street which had long championed hostile takeovers as a way of disciplining what they mocked
as bloated and inefficient 'big business.' Virtual pariahs to main-line firms in the Business
Roundtable and the rest of Wall Street, some of these figures had actually gotten their start
working with Drexel Burnham Lambert and that firm's dominant partner, Michael Milkin.
Among
those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now
made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a
handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments
of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump
was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began
with the Convention but turned into a torrent "
The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its
direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist
"populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning,
Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated
working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and
professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency
and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the
Democratic "base" vote. Along with the racist voter suppression carried out by Republican
state governments (JFC rightly chide Russia-obsessed political reporters and commentators for
absurdly ignoring this important factor) and (JFC intriguingly suggest) major anti-union
offensives conducted by employers in some battleground states, this major late-season influx of
big right-wing political money tilted the election Trump's way.
The Myth of Potent Russian Cyber-Subversion
As FJC show, there is little empirical evidence to support the Clinton and corporate
Democrats' self-interested and diversionary efforts to explain Mrs. Clinton's epic fail and
Trump's jaw-dropping upset victory as the result of (i) Russian interference, (ii), then FBI
Director James Comey's October Surprise revelation that his agency was not done investigating
Hillary's emails, and/or (iii) some imagined big wave of white working-class racism, nativism,
and sexism brought to the surface by the noxious Orange Hulk. The impacts of both (i) and (ii)
were infinitesimal in comparison to the role that big campaign money played both in silencing
Hillary and funding Trump.
The blame-the-deplorable-racist-white-working-class narrative is
belied by basic underlying continuities in white working class voting patterns. As FJC note: "
Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different
from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the
pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." It was about the money – the big
establishment money that the Clinton campaign took (as FJC at least plausibly argue) to
recommend policy silence and the different, right-wing big money that approved Trump's
comparative right-populist policy boisterousness.
An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the
pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media
allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that
Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S.
corporate and right-wing cyber forces:
"The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete
directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel.
They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers,
not Russia . American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters
and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major
political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and
preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and
quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card
purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots,
I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate "
" stories hyping 'the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and
infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups
already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.' By 2016, the Republican right had
developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale
quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated
or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans,
Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up
'tensions between groups already wary of one another.' Breitbart and other organizations were
in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded
groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value
to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or
the Drudge Report ."
" the evidence revealed thus far does not support strong claims about the likely success
of Russian efforts, though of course the public outrage at outside meddling is easy to
understand. The speculative character of many accounts even in the mainstream media is
obvious. Several, such as widely circulated declaration by the Department of Homeland
Security that 21 state election systems had been hacked during the election, have collapsed
within days of being put forward when state electoral officials strongly disputed them,
though some mainstream press accounts continue to repeat them. Other tales about Macedonian
troll factories churning out stories at the instigation of the Kremlin, are clearly
exaggerated."
The Sanders Tease: "He Couldn't Have Done a Thing"
Perhaps the most remarkable finding in FJC's study is that Sanders came tantalizingly close
to winning the Democratic presidential nomination against the corporately super-funded Clinton
campaign with no support from Big Business . Running explicitly against the "Hunger
Games" economy and the corporate-financial plutocracy that created it, Sanders pushed Hillary
the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing
her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor
"socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as
"without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the
whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly
competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ."
Sanders pulled this off, FJC might have added, by running in (imagine) accord with
majority-progressive left-of-center U.S. public opinion. But for the Clintons' corrupt advance-
control of the Democratic National Committee and convention delegates, Ferguson et al might
further have noted, Sanders might well have been the Democratic presidential nominee, curiously
enough in the arch-state-capitalist and oligarchic United States
Could Sanders have defeated the billionaire and right-wing billionaire-backed Trump in the
general election? There's no way to know, of course. Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary
Clinton in one-on-one match -up polls vis a vis Donald Trump during the primary season, but
much of the big money (and, perhaps much of the corporate media) that backed Hillary would have
gone over to Trump had the supposedly
"radical" Sanders been the Democratic nominee.
Even if Sanders has been elected president, moreover, Noam Chomsky is certainly correct in
his recent judgement that Sanders would have been able to achieve very little in the White
House. As Chomsky told Lynn Parramore two weeks ago, in
an interview conducted for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the same think-tank
that published FJC's remarkable study:
"His campaign [was] a break with over a century of American political history. No
corporate support, no financial wealth, he was unknown, no media support. The media simply
either ignored or denigrated him. And he came pretty close -- he probably could have won the
nomination, maybe the election. But suppose he'd been elected? He couldn't have done a thing.
Nobody in Congress, no governors, no legislatures, none of the big economic powers, which
have an enormous effect on policy. All opposed to him. In order for him to do anything, he
would have to have a substantial, functioning party apparatus, which would have to grow from
the grass roots. It would have to be locally organized, it would have to operate at local
levels, state levels, Congress, the bureaucracy -- you have to build the whole system from
the bottom."
As Chomsky might have added, Sanders oligarchy-imposed "failures" would have been great
fodder for the disparagement and smearing of "socialism" and progressive, majority-backed
policy change. "See? We tried all that and it was a disaster!"
I would note further that the Sanders phenomenon's policy promise was plagued by its
standard bearer's persistent loyalty to the giant and absurdly expensive U.S.-imperial Pentagon
System, which each year eats up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars required to implement
the progressive, majority-supported policy agenda that Bernie F-35 Sanders ran
on.
"A Very Destructive Ideology"
The Sanders challenge was equally afflicted by its candidate-centered electoralism. This
diverted energy away from the real and more urgent politics of building people's movements
– grassroots power to shake the society to its foundations and change policy from the
bottom up (Dr. Martin Luther King's preferred strategy at the end of his life just barely short
of 50 years ago, on April 4 th , 1968) – and into the narrow, rigidly
time-staggered grooves of a party and spectacle-elections crafted by and for the wealthy Few
and the American
Oligarchy 's "permanent political class" (historian Ron Formisano). As Chomsky explained on the eve of the 2004
elections:
"Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the
political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge
propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial
extravaganzas and to think, 'That's politics.' But it isn't. It's only a small part of
politics The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so
that centers of power can't ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass
roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights
movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady,
dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years sensible [electoral]
choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action."
"The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change," Chomsky told Abby Martin on teleSur
English in the fall of 2015, "is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay
attention to the election cycle." Under the American religion of voting,
Chomsky told Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson in the spring of 2016, "Citizenship means every
four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It's a
very destructive ideology basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects [we]
ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics."
For all his talk of standing atop a great "movement" for "revolution," Sanders was and
remains all about this stunted and crippling definition of citizenship and politics as making
some marks on ballots and then returning to our domiciles while rich people and their
agents (not just any "other guys") "run [ruin?-P.S.] the world [into the ground-P.S.]."
It will take much more in the way of Dr. King's politics of "who' sitting in the streets,"
not "who's sitting in the White House" (to use Howard Zinn's
excellent dichotomy ), to get us an elections and party system worthy of passionate citizen
engagement. We don't have such a system in the U.S. today, which is why the number of eligible
voters who passively boycotted the 2016 presidential election is larger than both the number
who voted for big money Hillary and the number who voted for big money Trump.
(If U.S. progressives really want to consider undertaking the epic lift involved in passing
a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, they might want to focus on this instead of calling for a
repeal of the Second Amendment. I'd recommend starting with a positive Democracy Amendment that
fundamentally overhauls the nation's political and elections set-up in accord with elementary
principles and practices of popular sovereignty. Clauses would include but not be limited to
full public financing of elections and the introduction of proportional representation for
legislative races – not to mention the abolition of the Electoral College, Senate
apportionment on the basis of total state population, and the outlawing of gerrymandering.)
Ecocide Trumped by Russia
Meanwhile, back in real history, we have the remarkable continuation of a bizarre
right-wing, pre-fascist presidency not in normal ruling-class hands, subject to the weird whims
and tweets of a malignant narcissist who doesn't read memorandums or intelligence briefings.
Wild policy zig-zags and record-setting White House personnel turnover are par for the course
under the dodgy reign of the orange-tinted beast's latest brain spasms. Orange Caligula spends
his mornings getting his information from FOX News and his evenings complaining to and seeking
advice from a small club of right-wing American oligarchs.
Trump poses grave environmental and nuclear risks to human survival. A consistent Trump
belief is that climate change is not a problem and that it's perfectly fine – "great" and
"amazing," in fact – for the White House to do everything it can to escalate the
Greenhouse Gassing-to-Death of Life on Earth. The nuclear threat is rising now that he has
appointed a frothing right-wing uber-warmonger – a longtime advocate of bombing Iran and
North Korea who led the charge for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq – as his top
"National Security" adviser and as he been convinced to expel dozens of Russian diplomats.
Thanks, liberal and other Democratic Party RussiaGaters!
The Clinton-Obama neoliberal Democrats have spent more than a year running with the
preposterous narrative that Trump is a Kremlin puppet who owes his presence in the White House
to Russia's subversion of our democratic elections. The climate crisis holds little
for the Trump and Russia-obsessed corporate media. The fact that the world stands at the eve of
the ecological self-destruction, with the Trump White House in the lead, elicits barely a
whisper in the reigning commercial news media. Unlike Stormy Daniels, for example, that little
story – the biggest issue of our or any time – is not good for television ratings
and newspaper sales.
Sanders, by the way, is curiously invisible in the dominant commercial media, despite his
quiet survey status as the nation's "most popular politician." That is precisely what you would
expect in a corporate and financial oligarchy buttressed by a powerful corporate, so-called
"mainstream" media oligopoly.
Political Parties as "Bank Accounts"
One of the many problems with the obsessive Blame-Russia narrative that a fair portion of
the dominant U.S. media is running with is that we had no great electoral democracy to
subvert in 2016 . Saying that Russia has "undermined [U.S.-] American democracy" is like
me – middle-aged, five-foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that
the Brooklyn Nets' Russian-born center Timofy Mozgof subverted my career as a starting player
in the National Basketball Association. In state-capitalist societies marked by the toxic and
interrelated combination of weak popular organization, expensive politics, and highly
concentrated wealth – all highly evident in the New Gilded Age United States –
electoral contests and outcomes boil down above all and in the end to big investor class cash.
As Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues explain:
"Where investment and organization by average citizens is weak, however, power passes by
default to major investor groups, which can far more easily bear the costs of contending for
control of the state. In most modern market-dominated societies (those celebrated recently as
enjoying the 'end of History'), levels of effective popular organization are generally low,
while the costs of political action, in terms of both information and transactional
obstacles, are high. The result is that conflicts within the business community normally
dominate contests within and between political parties – the exact opposite of what
many earlier social theorists expected, who imagined 'business' and 'labor' confronting each
other in separate parties Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented
to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one
must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of
the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial
analysis of their constituent elements."
Here Ferguson might have said "corporate-dominated" instead of "market-dominated" for the
modern managerial corporations emerged as the "visible hand" master of the "free market" more
than a century ago.
We get to vote? Big deal.
People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless
other autocratic states as well. Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S.
policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the
assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't
like, which includes any country that dares to "question the basic principle that the United
States effectively owns the world by right and is by definition a force for good" ( Chomsky,
2016 ).
Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. The
list of interrelated and mutually reinforcing culprits behind this oligarchic defeat of popular
sentiment in the U.S. is extensive. It includes but is not limited to: the campaign finance,
candidate-selection, lobbying, and policy agenda-setting power of wealthy individuals,
corporations, and interest groups; the special primary election influence of full-time party
activists; the disproportionately affluent, white, and older composition of the active (voting)
electorate; the manipulation of voter turnout; the widespread dissemination of false,
confusing, distracting, and misleading information; absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative
political institutions like the Electoral College, the unelected Supreme Court, the
over-representation of the predominantly white rural population in the U.S. Senate; one-party
rule in the House of "Representatives"; the fragmentation of authority in government; and
corporate ownership of the reigning media, which frames current events in accord with the
wishes and world view of the nation's real owners.
Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where,
as the leading liberal
political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens find , "government policy reflects the
wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out
every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office."
Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an
empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. "
deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been
trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself
(though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos."
He is a
homegrown capitalist oligarch nonetheless, a real estate mogul of vast and parasitic wealth who
is no more likely to fulfill his populist-sounding campaign pledges than any previous POTUS of
the neoliberal era.
His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and
(last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial
oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and
homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy
would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion
that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to
oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is
recklessly encouraging.
"... Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. ..."
"... Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. ..."
"... Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. ..."
"... one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary ..."
"... Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate ..."
"... Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. ..."
"... My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency ..."
"... Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ..."
"... The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America ..."
"... Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. ..."
"... Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache ..."
"... "In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added). ..."
"... "What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large." ..."
"... "In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million. ..."
"... Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. ..."
"... Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent " ..."
"... The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote ..."
"... Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." ..."
"... An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: ..."
"... By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. ..."
"... Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ." ..."
"... no support from Big Business ..."
"... Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ." ..."
"... American Oligarchy ..."
"... teleSur English ..."
"... we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 ..."
"... Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements." ..."
"... Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like ..."
"... Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. ..."
"... Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos." ..."
"... His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging. ..."
On the Friday after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and prior to the Tuesday on which
the vicious racist and sexist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Bernie
Sanders spoke to a surprisingly small crowd in Iowa City on behalf of Hillary Clinton. As I
learned months later, Sanders told one of his Iowa City friends that day that Mrs. Clinton was
in trouble. The reason, Sanders reported, was that Hillary wasn't discussing issues or
advancing real solutions. "She doesn't have any policy positions," Sanders said.
The first time I heard this, I found it hard to believe. How, I wondered, could anyone run
seriously for the presidency without putting issues and policy front and center? Wouldn't any
serious campaign want a strong set of issue and policy positions to attract voters and fall
back on in case and times of adversity?
Sanders wasn't lying. As the esteemed political scientist and money-politics expert Thomas
Ferguson and his colleagues Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen note in an important study released by
the Institute for New Economic Thinking two months ago, the Clinton campaign "emphasized
candidate and personal issues and avoided policy discussions to a degree without precedent in
any previous election for which measurements exist .it stressed candidate qualifications [and]
deliberately deemphasized issues in favor of concentrating on what the campaign regarded as
[Donald] Trump's obvious personal weaknesses as a candidate."
Strange as it might have seemed, the reality television star and presidential pre-apprentice
Donald Trump had a lot more to say about policy than the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a wonkish Yale Law graduate.
"Courting the Undecideds in Business, not in the Electorate"
What was that about? My first suspicion was that Hillary's policy silence was about the
money. It must have reflected her success in building a Wall Street-filled campaign funding
war-chest so daunting that she saw little reason to raise capitalist election investor concerns
by giving voice to the standard fake-progressive "hope" and "change" campaign and policy
rhetoric Democratic presidential contenders typically deploy against their One Percent
Republican opponents. Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election
prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of
Wall
Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading
Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the
"lying
neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes
to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. She would cruise into the White
House with no hurt plutocrat feelings simply by playing up the ill-prepared awfulness of her
Republican opponent.
If Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen (hereafter "JFC") are right, I was on to something but not
the whole money and politics story. Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers
have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism
in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise
to win elections. Sophisticated funders get it that the Democratic candidates' need to
manipulate the electorate with phony pledges of democratic transformation. The big
money backers know it's "just politics" on the part of candidates who can be trusted to
serve elite interests (like Bill
Clinton 1993-2001 and Barack
Obama 2009-2017 ) after they gain office.
What stopped Hillary from playing the usual game – the "manipulation of populism by
elitism" that Christopher
Hitchens once called "the essence of American politics" – in 2016, a year when the
electorate was in a particularly angry and populist mood? FJC's study is titled "
Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games : Donald Trump and the
2016 Presidential Election." It performs heroic empirical work with difficult campaign finance
data to show that Hillary's campaign funding success went beyond her party's usual corporate
and financial backers to include normally Republican-affiliated capitalist sectors less
disposed than their more liberal counterparts to abide the standard progressive-sounding policy
rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates. FJC hypothesize that (along with the determination
that Trump was too weak to be taken all that seriously) Hillary's desire get and keep on board
normally Republican election investors led her to keep quiet on issues and policy concerns that
mattered to everyday people. As FJC note:
"Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a
lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. For
Clinton's campaign the temptation was irresistible: Over time it slipped into a variant of
the strategy [Democrat] Lyndon Johnson pursued in 1964 in the face of another [Republican]
candidate [Barry Goldwater] who seemed too far out of the mainstream to win: Go for a grand
coalition with most of big business . one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so
many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of
public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to
rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary . Misgivings of
major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for
ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within
business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate
" (emphasis added). Hillary
Happened
FJC may well be right that a wish not to antagonize off right-wing campaign funders is what
led Hillary to muzzle herself on important policy matters, but who really knows? An alternative
theory I would not rule out is that Mrs. Clinton's own deep inner conservatism was sufficient
to spark her to gladly dispense with the usual progressive-sounding campaign boilerplate. Since
FJC bring up the Johnson-Goldwater election, it is perhaps worth mentioning that 18-year old
Hillary was a "Goldwater Girl" who worked for the arch-reactionary Republican presidential
candidate in 1964. Asked about that episode on National
Public Radio (NPR) in 1996 , then First Lady Hillary said "That's right. And I feel like my
political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don't recognize this
new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not
conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."
It was a revealing reflection. The right-wing Democrat Hillary acknowledged that her
ideological world view was still rooted in the conservatism of her family of origin. Her
problem with the reactionary Republicanism afoot in the U.S. during the middle 1990s was that
it was "not conservative in many respects." Her problem with the far-right Republican
Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay was that they were betraying true
conservatism – "the conservatism [Hillary] was raised with." This was worse even than the
language of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – the right-wing Eisenhower
Republican (at leftmost) tendency that worked to push the Democratic Party further to the Big
Business-friendly right and away from its working-class and progressive base.
What happened? Horrid corporate Hillary happened. And she's still happening. The "lying
neoliberal warmonger" recently went to India to double down on her
"progressive neoliberal" contempt for the "basket of deplorables" (more on that phrase
below) that considers poor stupid and backwards middle America to be by
saying this : "If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the
middle where Trump won. I win the coasts. But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the
places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product (GDP). So I won the places
that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward" (emphasis added).
That was Hillary Goldman Sachs-Council on Foreign Relations-Clinton saying "go to Hell" to
working- and middle-class people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri,
Indiana, and West Virginia. It was a raised middle and oligarchic finger from a super-wealthy
arch-global-corporatist to all the supposedly pessimistic, slow-witted, and retrograde losers
stuck between those glorious enclaves (led by Wall Street, Yale, and Harvard on the East coast
and Silicon Valley and Hollywood on the West coast) of human progress and variety (and GDP!) on
the imperial shorelines. Senate Minority Leader Dick
Durbin had to go on television to say that Hillary was "wrong" to write off most of the
nation as a festering cesspool of pathetic, ass-backwards, lottery-playing, and opioid-addicted
white-trash has-beens. It's hard for the Inauthentic Opposition Party (as the late Sheldon Wolin reasonably called
the Democrats ) to pose as an authentic opposition party when its' last big-money
presidential candidate goes off-fake-progressive script with an openly elitist rant like
that.
Historic Mistakes
Whatever the source of her strange policy silence in the 2016 campaign, that hush was "a
miscalculation of historic proportion" (FJC). It was a critical mistake given what Ferguson and
his colleagues call the "Hunger Games" misery and insecurity imposed on tens of millions of
ordinary working- and middle-class middle-Americans by decades of neoliberal capitalist
austerity , deeply exacerbated by the Wall Street-instigated Great Recession and the weak
Obama recovery. The electorate was in a populist, anti-establishment mood – hardly a
state of mind favorable to a wooden, richly globalist, Goldman-gilded candidate, a long-time
Washington-Wall Street establishment ("swamp") creature like Hillary Clinton.
In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump's ironic, fake-populist "outreach to blue collar
workers" would help him win "more than half of all voters with a high school education or less
(including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life
for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of
voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago."
Trump's popularity with "heartland" rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary
into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election
investors that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket
of deplorables." There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary's
"deplorables" blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney's
infamous 2012 gaffe : telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population
were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a
campaign finance profile closer to Romney's than Obama's in 2012 – and not the Republican
making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas .
"A Frontal Assault on the American Establishment"
Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate
Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic
nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of
Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq,
rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten"
American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. As FJC
explain:
"In 2016 the Republicans nominated yet another super-rich candidate – indeed,
someone on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Like legions of conservative
Republicans before him, he trash-talked Hispanics, immigrants, and women virtually non-stop,
though with a verve uniquely his own. He laced his campaign with barely coded racial appeals
and in the final days, ran an ad widely denounced as subtly anti-Semitic. But in striking
contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs. '
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it
has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache . When
subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the
politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our
communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.'"
"In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer
proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass
destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP
orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized
the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added).
Big Dark Money and Trump: His Own and Others'
This cost Trump much of the corporate and Wall Street financial support that Republican
presidential candidates usually get. The thing was, however, that much of Trump's "populist"
rhetoric was popular with a big part of the Republican electorate, thanks to the "Hunger Games"
insecurity of the transparently bipartisan New Gilded Age. And Trump's personal fortune
permitted him to tap that popular anger while leaping insultingly over the heads of his less
wealthy if corporate and Wall Street-backed competitors ("low energy" Jeb Bush and "little
Marco" Rubio most notably) in the crowded Republican primary race.
A Republican candidate
dependent on the usual elite bankrollers would never have been able to get away with Trump's
crowd-pleasing (and CNN and FOX News rating-boosting) antics. Thanks to his own wealth, the
faux-populist anti-establishment Trump was ironically inoculated against pre-emption in the
Republican primaries by the American campaign finance "wealth
primary," which renders electorally unviable candidates who lack vast financial resources
or access to them.
Things were different after Trump won the Republican nomination, however. He could no longer
go it alone after the primaries. During the Republican National Convention and "then again in
the late summer of 2016," FJC show, Trump's "solo campaign had to be rescued by major
industries plainly hoping for tariff relief, waves of other billionaires from the far, far
right of the already far right Republican Party, and the most disruption-exalting corners of
Wall Street." By FJC's account:
"What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave
of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016
or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian
Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business
interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races,
but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the
party at large."
"The run up to the Convention brought in substantial new money, including, for the first
time, significant contributions from big business. Mining, especially coal mining; Big Pharma
(which was certainly worried by tough talk from the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton,
about regulating drug prices); tobacco, chemical companies, and oil (including substantial
sums from executives at Chevron, Exxon, and many medium sized firms); and telecommunications
(notably AT&T, which had a major merge merger pending) all weighed in. Money from
executives at the big banks also began streaming in, including Bank of America, J. P. Morgan
Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Parts of Silicon Valley also started coming in from
the cold."
"In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that
appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies
making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from
some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many
others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now
delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his
Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million.
Peter Theil contributed more than a million
dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost
two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at
Cisco Systems. A wave of new money swept in from large private equity firms, the part of Wall
Street which had long championed hostile takeovers as a way of disciplining what they mocked
as bloated and inefficient 'big business.' Virtual pariahs to main-line firms in the Business
Roundtable and the rest of Wall Street, some of these figures had actually gotten their start
working with Drexel Burnham Lambert and that firm's dominant partner, Michael Milkin.
Among
those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now
made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a
handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments
of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump
was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began
with the Convention but turned into a torrent "
The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its
direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist
"populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning,
Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated
working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and
professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency
and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the
Democratic "base" vote. Along with the racist voter suppression carried out by Republican
state governments (JFC rightly chide Russia-obsessed political reporters and commentators for
absurdly ignoring this important factor) and (JFC intriguingly suggest) major anti-union
offensives conducted by employers in some battleground states, this major late-season influx of
big right-wing political money tilted the election Trump's way.
The Myth of Potent Russian Cyber-Subversion
As FJC show, there is little empirical evidence to support the Clinton and corporate
Democrats' self-interested and diversionary efforts to explain Mrs. Clinton's epic fail and
Trump's jaw-dropping upset victory as the result of (i) Russian interference, (ii), then FBI
Director James Comey's October Surprise revelation that his agency was not done investigating
Hillary's emails, and/or (iii) some imagined big wave of white working-class racism, nativism,
and sexism brought to the surface by the noxious Orange Hulk. The impacts of both (i) and (ii)
were infinitesimal in comparison to the role that big campaign money played both in silencing
Hillary and funding Trump.
The blame-the-deplorable-racist-white-working-class narrative is
belied by basic underlying continuities in white working class voting patterns. As FJC note: "
Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different
from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the
pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." It was about the money – the big
establishment money that the Clinton campaign took (as FJC at least plausibly argue) to
recommend policy silence and the different, right-wing big money that approved Trump's
comparative right-populist policy boisterousness.
An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the
pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media
allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that
Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S.
corporate and right-wing cyber forces:
"The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete
directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel.
They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers,
not Russia . American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters
and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major
political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and
preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and
quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card
purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots,
I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate "
" stories hyping 'the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and
infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups
already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.' By 2016, the Republican right had
developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale
quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated
or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans,
Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up
'tensions between groups already wary of one another.' Breitbart and other organizations were
in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded
groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value
to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or
the Drudge Report ."
" the evidence revealed thus far does not support strong claims about the likely success
of Russian efforts, though of course the public outrage at outside meddling is easy to
understand. The speculative character of many accounts even in the mainstream media is
obvious. Several, such as widely circulated declaration by the Department of Homeland
Security that 21 state election systems had been hacked during the election, have collapsed
within days of being put forward when state electoral officials strongly disputed them,
though some mainstream press accounts continue to repeat them. Other tales about Macedonian
troll factories churning out stories at the instigation of the Kremlin, are clearly
exaggerated."
The Sanders Tease: "He Couldn't Have Done a Thing"
Perhaps the most remarkable finding in FJC's study is that Sanders came tantalizingly close
to winning the Democratic presidential nomination against the corporately super-funded Clinton
campaign with no support from Big Business . Running explicitly against the "Hunger
Games" economy and the corporate-financial plutocracy that created it, Sanders pushed Hillary
the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing
her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor
"socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as
"without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the
whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly
competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ."
Sanders pulled this off, FJC might have added, by running in (imagine) accord with
majority-progressive left-of-center U.S. public opinion. But for the Clintons' corrupt advance-
control of the Democratic National Committee and convention delegates, Ferguson et al might
further have noted, Sanders might well have been the Democratic presidential nominee, curiously
enough in the arch-state-capitalist and oligarchic United States
Could Sanders have defeated the billionaire and right-wing billionaire-backed Trump in the
general election? There's no way to know, of course. Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary
Clinton in one-on-one match -up polls vis a vis Donald Trump during the primary season, but
much of the big money (and, perhaps much of the corporate media) that backed Hillary would have
gone over to Trump had the supposedly
"radical" Sanders been the Democratic nominee.
Even if Sanders has been elected president, moreover, Noam Chomsky is certainly correct in
his recent judgement that Sanders would have been able to achieve very little in the White
House. As Chomsky told Lynn Parramore two weeks ago, in
an interview conducted for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the same think-tank
that published FJC's remarkable study:
"His campaign [was] a break with over a century of American political history. No
corporate support, no financial wealth, he was unknown, no media support. The media simply
either ignored or denigrated him. And he came pretty close -- he probably could have won the
nomination, maybe the election. But suppose he'd been elected? He couldn't have done a thing.
Nobody in Congress, no governors, no legislatures, none of the big economic powers, which
have an enormous effect on policy. All opposed to him. In order for him to do anything, he
would have to have a substantial, functioning party apparatus, which would have to grow from
the grass roots. It would have to be locally organized, it would have to operate at local
levels, state levels, Congress, the bureaucracy -- you have to build the whole system from
the bottom."
As Chomsky might have added, Sanders oligarchy-imposed "failures" would have been great
fodder for the disparagement and smearing of "socialism" and progressive, majority-backed
policy change. "See? We tried all that and it was a disaster!"
I would note further that the Sanders phenomenon's policy promise was plagued by its
standard bearer's persistent loyalty to the giant and absurdly expensive U.S.-imperial Pentagon
System, which each year eats up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars required to implement
the progressive, majority-supported policy agenda that Bernie F-35 Sanders ran
on.
"A Very Destructive Ideology"
The Sanders challenge was equally afflicted by its candidate-centered electoralism. This
diverted energy away from the real and more urgent politics of building people's movements
– grassroots power to shake the society to its foundations and change policy from the
bottom up (Dr. Martin Luther King's preferred strategy at the end of his life just barely short
of 50 years ago, on April 4 th , 1968) – and into the narrow, rigidly
time-staggered grooves of a party and spectacle-elections crafted by and for the wealthy Few
and the American
Oligarchy 's "permanent political class" (historian Ron Formisano). As Chomsky explained on the eve of the 2004
elections:
"Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the
political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge
propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial
extravaganzas and to think, 'That's politics.' But it isn't. It's only a small part of
politics The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so
that centers of power can't ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass
roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights
movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady,
dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years sensible [electoral]
choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action."
"The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change," Chomsky told Abby Martin on teleSur
English in the fall of 2015, "is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay
attention to the election cycle." Under the American religion of voting,
Chomsky told Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson in the spring of 2016, "Citizenship means every
four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It's a
very destructive ideology basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects [we]
ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics."
For all his talk of standing atop a great "movement" for "revolution," Sanders was and
remains all about this stunted and crippling definition of citizenship and politics as making
some marks on ballots and then returning to our domiciles while rich people and their
agents (not just any "other guys") "run [ruin?-P.S.] the world [into the ground-P.S.]."
It will take much more in the way of Dr. King's politics of "who' sitting in the streets,"
not "who's sitting in the White House" (to use Howard Zinn's
excellent dichotomy ), to get us an elections and party system worthy of passionate citizen
engagement. We don't have such a system in the U.S. today, which is why the number of eligible
voters who passively boycotted the 2016 presidential election is larger than both the number
who voted for big money Hillary and the number who voted for big money Trump.
(If U.S. progressives really want to consider undertaking the epic lift involved in passing
a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, they might want to focus on this instead of calling for a
repeal of the Second Amendment. I'd recommend starting with a positive Democracy Amendment that
fundamentally overhauls the nation's political and elections set-up in accord with elementary
principles and practices of popular sovereignty. Clauses would include but not be limited to
full public financing of elections and the introduction of proportional representation for
legislative races – not to mention the abolition of the Electoral College, Senate
apportionment on the basis of total state population, and the outlawing of gerrymandering.)
Ecocide Trumped by Russia
Meanwhile, back in real history, we have the remarkable continuation of a bizarre
right-wing, pre-fascist presidency not in normal ruling-class hands, subject to the weird whims
and tweets of a malignant narcissist who doesn't read memorandums or intelligence briefings.
Wild policy zig-zags and record-setting White House personnel turnover are par for the course
under the dodgy reign of the orange-tinted beast's latest brain spasms. Orange Caligula spends
his mornings getting his information from FOX News and his evenings complaining to and seeking
advice from a small club of right-wing American oligarchs.
Trump poses grave environmental and nuclear risks to human survival. A consistent Trump
belief is that climate change is not a problem and that it's perfectly fine – "great" and
"amazing," in fact – for the White House to do everything it can to escalate the
Greenhouse Gassing-to-Death of Life on Earth. The nuclear threat is rising now that he has
appointed a frothing right-wing uber-warmonger – a longtime advocate of bombing Iran and
North Korea who led the charge for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq – as his top
"National Security" adviser and as he been convinced to expel dozens of Russian diplomats.
Thanks, liberal and other Democratic Party RussiaGaters!
The Clinton-Obama neoliberal Democrats have spent more than a year running with the
preposterous narrative that Trump is a Kremlin puppet who owes his presence in the White House
to Russia's subversion of our democratic elections. The climate crisis holds little
for the Trump and Russia-obsessed corporate media. The fact that the world stands at the eve of
the ecological self-destruction, with the Trump White House in the lead, elicits barely a
whisper in the reigning commercial news media. Unlike Stormy Daniels, for example, that little
story – the biggest issue of our or any time – is not good for television ratings
and newspaper sales.
Sanders, by the way, is curiously invisible in the dominant commercial media, despite his
quiet survey status as the nation's "most popular politician." That is precisely what you would
expect in a corporate and financial oligarchy buttressed by a powerful corporate, so-called
"mainstream" media oligopoly.
Political Parties as "Bank Accounts"
One of the many problems with the obsessive Blame-Russia narrative that a fair portion of
the dominant U.S. media is running with is that we had no great electoral democracy to
subvert in 2016 . Saying that Russia has "undermined [U.S.-] American democracy" is like
me – middle-aged, five-foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that
the Brooklyn Nets' Russian-born center Timofy Mozgof subverted my career as a starting player
in the National Basketball Association. In state-capitalist societies marked by the toxic and
interrelated combination of weak popular organization, expensive politics, and highly
concentrated wealth – all highly evident in the New Gilded Age United States –
electoral contests and outcomes boil down above all and in the end to big investor class cash.
As Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues explain:
"Where investment and organization by average citizens is weak, however, power passes by
default to major investor groups, which can far more easily bear the costs of contending for
control of the state. In most modern market-dominated societies (those celebrated recently as
enjoying the 'end of History'), levels of effective popular organization are generally low,
while the costs of political action, in terms of both information and transactional
obstacles, are high. The result is that conflicts within the business community normally
dominate contests within and between political parties – the exact opposite of what
many earlier social theorists expected, who imagined 'business' and 'labor' confronting each
other in separate parties Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented
to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one
must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of
the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial
analysis of their constituent elements."
Here Ferguson might have said "corporate-dominated" instead of "market-dominated" for the
modern managerial corporations emerged as the "visible hand" master of the "free market" more
than a century ago.
We get to vote? Big deal.
People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless
other autocratic states as well. Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S.
policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the
assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't
like, which includes any country that dares to "question the basic principle that the United
States effectively owns the world by right and is by definition a force for good" ( Chomsky,
2016 ).
Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. The
list of interrelated and mutually reinforcing culprits behind this oligarchic defeat of popular
sentiment in the U.S. is extensive. It includes but is not limited to: the campaign finance,
candidate-selection, lobbying, and policy agenda-setting power of wealthy individuals,
corporations, and interest groups; the special primary election influence of full-time party
activists; the disproportionately affluent, white, and older composition of the active (voting)
electorate; the manipulation of voter turnout; the widespread dissemination of false,
confusing, distracting, and misleading information; absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative
political institutions like the Electoral College, the unelected Supreme Court, the
over-representation of the predominantly white rural population in the U.S. Senate; one-party
rule in the House of "Representatives"; the fragmentation of authority in government; and
corporate ownership of the reigning media, which frames current events in accord with the
wishes and world view of the nation's real owners.
Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where,
as the leading liberal
political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens find , "government policy reflects the
wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out
every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office."
Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an
empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. "
deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been
trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself
(though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos."
He is a
homegrown capitalist oligarch nonetheless, a real estate mogul of vast and parasitic wealth who
is no more likely to fulfill his populist-sounding campaign pledges than any previous POTUS of
the neoliberal era.
His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and
(last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial
oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and
homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy
would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion
that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to
oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is
recklessly encouraging.
"... Still, George McGovern was a humble man who carried the burden, and honor, of his military service with grace. Though proud of his service, he was never constrained by it. When he saw a foolish war, an immoral war -- like Vietnam -- he stood ready to dissent. He was an unapologetic liberal and unwavering in his antiwar stance. These days, his kind is an endangered species on Capitol Hill and in the Democratic National Committee. McGovern died in 2012. His party, and the United States, are lesser for his absence. ..."
"... Today's Democrats are mostly avid hawks, probably to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy. ..."
"... Heck, even Gen. David "Generational War" Petraeus , once found himself in some hot water when -- in a rare moment of candor -- he admitted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel." Translation: US policy toward Israel (and, no doubt, the foolhardy 2003 invasion of Iraq) make American soldiers less safe. ..."
"... So does the basic post-9/11 American policy of sovereignty violation and expansive military intervention whenever and wherever Washington feels like it -- so long as it's in the name of fighting (you guessed it) "terrorism." ..."
"... George McGovern -- a true patriot, a man who knew war but loved peace -- wouldn't recognize the likes of Klobuchar, Clinton, Schumer and company. He'd be rightfully embarrassed by their supplication to the national warfare state. ..."
"... In 1972, McGovern's presidential campaign (as, to some extent, Bernie's did) reached out to impassioned youth in the "New Left," and formed a rainbow coalition with African-Americans and other minority groups. His Democrats were no longer the party of Cold War consensus, no longer the party of LBJ and Vietnam. No, McGovern's signature issue was peace, and opposition to that disastrous war. ..."
"... His campaign distributed pins and T-shirts bearing white doves . Could you even imagine a mainstream Democrat getting within 1,000 meters of such a symbol today? Of course not. ..."
He knew war well -- well enough to know he hated it.
George McGovern was a senator from South Dakota, and he was a Democrat true liberals could admire. Though remembered as a staunch
liberal and foreign policy dove, McGovern was no stranger to combat. He
flew 35 missions
as a B-24 pilot in Italy during World War II. He even earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for executing a heroic emergency crash
landing after his bomber was damaged by German anti-aircraft fire.
Still, George McGovern was a humble man who carried the burden, and honor, of his military service with grace. Though proud
of his service, he was never constrained by it. When he saw a foolish war, an immoral war -- like Vietnam -- he stood ready to dissent.
He was an unapologetic liberal and unwavering in his antiwar stance. These days, his kind is an endangered species on Capitol Hill
and in the Democratic National Committee. McGovern died in 2012. His party, and the United States, are lesser for his absence.
Today's Democrats are mostly avid hawks, probably to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy. They dutifully
voted for Bush's Iraq war . Then, they won back
the White House and promptly expanded an unwinnable Afghan
war . Soon, they again lost the presidency -- to a reality TV star -- and raised hardly a peep as Donald Trump expanded
America's aimless wars
into the realm of the absurd.
I've long known this, but most liberals -- deeply ensconced (or distracted) by hyper-identity politics -- hardly notice. Still,
every once in a while something reminds me of how lost the Democrats truly are.
I nearly spit up my food the other day. Watching on C-SPAN as Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., gleefully
attended a panel at the
American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, I couldn't help but wonder what has happened to the Democratic Party.
The worst part is I like her, mostly. Look, I agree with Sen. Klobuchar on most domestic issues: health care, taxes and
more. But she -- a supposed liberal -- and her mainstream Democratic colleagues are complicit in the perpetuation of America's warfare
state and neo-imperial interventionism. Sen. Klobuchar and other Democrats' reflexive support for Israel is but a symptom of a larger
disease in the party -- tacit militarism.
AIPAC is a lobbying clique almost as savvy and definitely as effective as the NRA. Its meetings -- well attended by mainstream
Democrats and Republicans alike -- serve as little more than an opportunity for Washington pols to kiss Benjamin Netanyahu's ring
and swear fealty to Israel. Most of the time, participants don't dare utter the word "Palestinian." That'd be untoward -- Palestinians
are the unacknowledged
elephants in the room .
The far right-wing Israeli government of Netanyahu, who is little more than a co-conspirator and enabler for America's failed
project in the Middle East, should be the last group "liberals" pander to. That said, the state of Israel is a fact. Its people --
just like the Palestinians -- deserve security and liberty. Love it or hate it, Israel will continue to exist. The question is: Can
Israel remain both exclusively Jewish and democratic? I'm less certain about that. For 50 years now, the Israeli military has divided,
occupied and enabled the illegal settlement of sovereign
Palestinian territory , keeping Arabs in limbo without citizenship or meaningful civil rights.
This is, so far as international law is concerned, a war crime. As such, unflinching American support for Israeli policy irreversibly
damages the U.S. military's reputation on the "Arab street." I've seen it firsthand. In Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds and thousands
of miles away from Jerusalem, captured prisoners and hospitable families alike constantly pointed to unfettered US support for Israel
and the plight of Palestinians when answering that naive and ubiquitous American question: "Why do they hate us?"
Heck, even
Gen. David
"Generational War" Petraeus , once found himself in
some hot water when
-- in a rare moment of candor -- he admitted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception
of US favoritism for Israel." Translation: US policy toward Israel (and, no doubt, the foolhardy 2003 invasion of Iraq) make American
soldiers less safe.
So does the basic post-9/11 American policy of sovereignty violation and expansive military intervention whenever and wherever
Washington feels like it -- so long as it's in the name of fighting (you guessed it) "terrorism." So, which "liberals" are raising
hell and ringing the alarm bells for their constituents about Israeli occupation and America's strategic overreach? Sen. Klobuchar?
Hardly. She, and all but four Democrats, voted for
the latest bloated Pentagon budget with few questions asked. Almost as many Republicans voted against the bill. So, which is
the antiwar party these days? It's hard to know.
Besides, the Dems mustered fewer than 30 votes in support of the
Rand Paul amendment and
his modest call to repeal and replace America's outdated, vague Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). All Sen. Paul,
a libertarian Republican, wanted to do was force a vote -- in six months -- to revisit the AUMF. This wasn't radical stuff by any
means. The failure of Paul's amendment, when paired with the absolute dearth of Democratic dissent on contemporary foreign policy,
proves one thing conclusively: There is no longer an antiwar constituency in a major American political party. The two-party system
has failed what's left of the antiwar movement.
By no means is Amy Klobuchar alone in her forever-war complicity. Long before she graced the halls of the Senate, her prominent
precursors -- Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer (to name just a few) --
rubber-stamped a war of aggression in Iraq and
mostly acquiesced as one president after another (including Barack Obama) gradually expanded America's post-9/11 wars. When will
it end? No one knows, really, but so far, the US military has deployed advisers or commandos to
70 percent
of the world's countries and is actively
bombing at least seven . That's the problem with waging clandestine wars with professional soldiers while asking nothing of an
apathetic public: These conflicts tend to grow and grow, until, one day -- which passed long ago -- hardly anyone realizes we're
now at war with most everyone.
So where are the doves now? On the fringe, that's where. Screaming from the distant corners of the libertarian right and extreme
left. No one cares, no one is listening, and they can hardly get a hearing on either MSNBC or Fox. It's the one thing both networks
agree on: endless, unquestioned war. Hooray for 21st century bipartisanship.
Still, Americans deserve more from the Democrats, once (however briefly) the party of McGovern. These days, the Dems hate Trump
more than they like anything. To be a principled national party, they've got to be more than just anti-Trump. They need to provide
a substantive alternative and present a better foreign policy offer. How about a do-less strategy: For starters, some modesty and
prudent caution would go a long way.
George McGovern -- a true patriot, a man who knew war but loved peace -- wouldn't recognize the likes of Klobuchar, Clinton,
Schumer and company. He'd be rightfully embarrassed by their supplication to the national warfare state.
In 1972, McGovern's presidential campaign (as, to some extent, Bernie's did) reached out to impassioned youth in the "New
Left," and formed a rainbow coalition with African-Americans and other minority groups. His Democrats were no longer the party of
Cold War consensus, no longer the party of LBJ and Vietnam. No, McGovern's signature issue was peace, and opposition to that disastrous
war.
His campaign distributed pins and T-shirts bearing
white doves . Could you even imagine a mainstream Democrat getting within 1,000 meters of such a symbol today? Of course not.
Today's Dems are too frightened, fearful of being labeled "soft" (note the sexual innuendo) on "terror," and have thus ceded foreign
policy preeminence to the unhinged, uber-hawk Republicans. We live, today, with the results of that cowardly concession.
The thing about McGovern is that he lost the 1972 election, by a landslide. And maybe that's the point. Today's Democrats would
rather win than be right. Somewhere along the way, they lost their souls. Worse still, they aren't any good at winning, either.
Sure, they and everybody else "support the troops." Essentially, that means the Dems will at least fight for veterans' health
care and immigration rights when vets return from battle. That's admirable enough. What they won't countenance, or even consider,
is a more comprehensive, and ethical, solution: to end these aimless wars and stop making new veterans that need "saving."
Major Danny Sjursen, anAntiwar.comregular, is a U.S. Army
officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written
a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians,
and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at@SkepticalVetand check out his new podcast"Fortress on a Hill,"co-hosted with fellow vet Chris 'Henri' Henrikson.
[ Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect
the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]
The US has been cracking down on protected First Amendment rights for years now. Just heard
that someone was kicked off the post office lawn last week for protesting, so FIrday's peace
vigil may be at risk again.We haven't had any problems with the police harassing us for
probably 12 years, but that may be raising its head again.
The US government has a lot to answer for in terms of press freedom and its reaction to
organized protest. One only need remember the clusterfuck at Standing Rock during the final
months of Obama's presidency to see that this country has major problems with racism,
violence, liberty, equality, fraternity. The US is by no means a "functioning democracy with
proper rule of law". More like a corrupt plutocracy riding full-speed into overt fascism,
where who you know and who you blow makes the most difference if you wind up in trouble with
the law.
I never take First Amendment rights for granted. I am totally aware that if you don't use
your rights, and often, you lose them. I have never had an account on Facebook, but sometimes
I cruise other people's pages to the extent that Zuckerburg will allow without gathering my
information(or maybe they can get it if you just look at a page). Always thought it was a
supremely wrong idea to allow your identity to be taken away by some fat cat with a clever
idea.
"... It's impossible to overstate the significance of the survey. The data suggest that representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication of how corrupt the system really is. ..."
"... So, along with the fact, that most Americans think democracy is a pipe-dream, a clear majority also believe that the country has changed into a frightening, lock-down police state in which government agents gather all-manner of electronic communications on everyone without the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing. ..."
"... There's no doubt in my mind that the relentless attacks on Donald Trump have reinforced the public's belief that the country is controlled by an invisible group of elites whose agents in the bureaucracy follow their diktats ..."
"... Brennan says "America will triumph over you." But whose America is he talking about? The American people elected Trump, he is the legitimate president of the United States. Many people may not like his policies, but they respect the system that put him in office. ..."
"... Brennan and his cadres of rogue agents have been at war with Trump since Day 1. Brennan does not accept the results of the election because it did not produce the outcome that he and his powerful constituents wanted. Brennan wants to destroy Trump. He even admits as much in his statement. ..."
"... And why do Brennan and his fatcat allies hate Trump so much? They don't. Because it's not really about Trump. It's about the presidency, the highest office in the land. The US Plutocrat Class honestly believe that they are entitled to govern the country that they physically own. It's theirs, they own it and they are taking it back. That's what this is all about ..."
On Monday, the Monmouth University Polling Institute released the results of a survey that
found that "a large bipartisan majority feel that national policy is being manipulated or
directed by a 'Deep State' of unelected government officials ..
[1] Public Troubled By Deep State, Monmouth University Polling Institute
The Monmouth University Poll was conducted by telephone from March 2 to 5, 2018
with 803 adults in the United States. The results in this release have a margin of error of +/-
3.5 percent. The poll was conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long
Branch, NJ.
According to the survey:" 6-in-10 Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed
government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26% say the
right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy.
Democrats (59%), Republicans (59%) and independents (62%) agree that appointed officials hold
too much sway in the federal government. ("Public Troubled by 'Deep State", Monmouth.edu)
The survey appears to confirm that democracy in the United States is largely a sham. Our
elected representatives are not the agents of political change, but cogs in a vast bureaucratic
machine that operates mainly in the interests of the behemoth corporations and banks.
Surprisingly, most Americans have not been taken in by the media's promotional hoopla about
elections and democracy. They have a fairly-decent grasp of how the system works and who
ultimately benefits from it. Check it out:
" Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term "Deep State ;" another 24%
are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when
the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly
manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of
apparatus exists in Washington. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist." Belief in the
probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan
group "
So while the cable news channels dismiss anyone who believes in the "Deep State" as a
conspiracy theorist, it's clear that the majority of people think that's how the system really
works, that is, "a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate or
direct national policy."
It's impossible to overstate the significance of the survey. The data suggest that
representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly
sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is
impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication
of how corrupt the system really is.
The Monmouth survey also found that "A majority of the American public believe that the U.S.
government engages in widespread monitoring of its own citizens and worry that the U.S.
government could be invading their own privacy." .
"Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the
activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%)who say this activity is
widespread Few Americans (18%) say government monitoring or spying on U.S. citizens is
usually justified, with most (53%) saying it is only sometimes justified. Another 28% say
this activity is rarely or never justified ." ("Public Troubled by 'Deep State",
Monmouth.edu)
So, along with the fact, that most Americans think democracy is a pipe-dream, a clear
majority also believe that the country has changed into a frightening, lock-down police state
in which government agents gather all-manner of electronic communications on everyone without
the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing. Once again, the data suggests that the American people
know what is going on, know that the US has gone from a reasonably free country where civil
liberties were protected under the law, to a state-of-the-art surveillance state ruled by
invisible elites who see the American people as an obstacle to their global ambitions–but
their awareness has not evolved into an organized movement for change. In any event, the public
seems to understand that the USG is not as committed to human rights and civil liberties as the
media would have one believe. That's a start.
There's no doubt in my mind that the relentless attacks on Donald Trump have reinforced the
public's belief that the country is controlled by an invisible group of elites whose agents in
the bureaucracy follow their diktats. From the time Trump became the GOP presidential nominee
more than 18 months ago, a powerful faction of the Intelligence Community, law enforcement
(FBI) and even elements form the Obama DOJ, have vigorously tried to sabotage his presidency,
his credibility and his agenda. Without a scintilla of hard evidence to make their case, this
same group and their dissembling allies in the media, have cast Trump as a disloyal
collaborator who conspired to win the election by colluding with a foreign government. The
magnitude of this fabrication is beyond anything we've seen before in American political
history, and the absence of any verifiable proof makes it all the more alarming. As it happens,
the Deep State is so powerful it can wage a full-blown assault on the highest elected office in
the country without even showing probable cause. In other words, the president of the United
States is not even accorded the same rights as a common crook. How does that happen?
Over the weekend, former CIA Director and "Russia-gate" ringleader John Brennan fired off an
angry salvo at Trump on his Twitter account. Here's what he said:
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes
known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.
You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America America will triumph over
you."
Doesn't Brennan's statement help to reinforce the public's belief in the Deep State? How
does a career bureaucrat who has never been elected to public office decide that it is
appropriate to use the credibility of his former office to conduct a pitch-battle with the
President of the United States?
Brennan says "America will triumph over you." But whose America is he talking about? The
American people elected Trump, he is the legitimate president of the United States. Many people
may not like his policies, but they respect the system that put him in office.
Not so, Brennan. Brennan and his cadres of rogue agents have been at war with Trump since
Day 1. Brennan does not accept the results of the election because it did not produce the
outcome that he and his powerful constituents wanted. Brennan wants to destroy Trump. He even
admits as much in his statement.
And Brennan has been given a platform on the cable news channels so he can continue his
assault on the presidency, not because he can prove that Trump is guilty of collusion or
obstruction or whatever, but because the people who own the media have mobilized their deep
state agents to carry out their vendetta to remove Trump from office by any means possible.
This is the "America" of which Brennan speaks. Not my America, but deep state America.
And why do Brennan and his fatcat allies hate Trump so much? They don't. Because it's not really about Trump. It's about the presidency, the highest office in the land. The US Plutocrat
Class honestly believe that they are entitled to govern the country that they physically own. It's theirs, they own it and they
are taking it back. That's what this is all about
1
5 0 On Monday, a number of European countries, as well as the United States and Canada,
announced they were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal case. Radio Sputnik discussed
the significance of the diplomatic response by the Western powers with Srdja Trifkovic, a US
journalist and writer on international affairs. Sputnik: What is your overall assessment about
what has happened with this diplomatic response by so many countries? How significant is it?
Srdja Trifkovic: The overall impression is that
rational discourse has given way to collective hysteria and that it is indeed remarkable.
The extent to which the bandwagon has successfully started rolling while we don't even have
elementary answers to the questions concerning the case itself.
The second important and discouraging aspect is that continental European countries have
followed the Anglo-American lead in Russophobia and this represents a further trial of the
Atlanticist domination over Europe. It is indeed remarkable when both Germany and France, the
putative leaders of independent European foreign policy, have been reduced to the status of
automatic followers of the lead supported by Washington especially when we bear in mind that
the initial round of sanctions in 2014 against Russia was dictated by the United States which
had nothing to lose in the proceedings and to the detriments of Europeans' interests.
So overall I think that, one we have the hysterical phase of Russophobic
discourse in the West which is not amenable to any rational arguments and two, we have a
successful degradation of European diplomacy to the status of pliant satellites comparable to
East Germany and Bulgaria vis-à-vis Brezhnev.
Sputnik: Do you think there was some classified evidence that was presented that proves
beyond a shadow of doubt that Russia was involved or do you think that the fact that there are
11 countries who have not joined in the protest perhaps hints at the fact that this was not the
case?
Srdja Trifkovic: Well, first of all, I would say that President Putin, Foreign Minister
Lavrov and others would not have made such categorical denials of Russian involvement if there
was any possibility of a smoking gun which could effectively show to the world that they were
not telling the truth.
And secondly, it is always possible to present some equivocal
evidence in the form that even if that indicates the modus operandi of intelligence
agencies nevertheless does not disclose outright state secrets. In fact, we've seen that in the
past and I don't think that it would be possible for such confidential information to be
disclosed to the diplomats and foreign ministers of EU countries as divergent as the 27 are,
without risking these very sources.
So I really believe that if you look at the countries which have taken measures against
Russia, they almost read like who is who of those who are prepared to follow the US lead and if
you look at those reluctant to do so, including Austria, Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, we are
looking at those who actually have a more independent foreign policy. So I don't think it's a
reflection of the quality of possible intelligence, it is simply a reflection of the
determination of decision-makers of those countries to preserve a modicum of independence.
Sputnik: What would you say about the level to which the actions that were actually taken by
individual countries? What can you say about the numbers game that's being played? What do you
think determined the number of diplomats?
Srdja Trifkovic: Some of these countries are absolutely insignificant countries like the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which also expelled one Russian and it's just a pathetic
non country. On the other hand in the United States obviously it is a matter of regret that
President Trump's initially stated intention to have detente with Russia has been subverted by
the deep state, it is a long story but now we have really reached the end of the road with the
appointment of Pompeo to State Department and Bolton as the national security adviser.
So we can really look at Trump as the would-be drainer of the swamp who has been swallowed
by the swamp. And I think that we are in for a long haul. I was in Moscow two weeks ago and
coming again next week and sometimes I am surprised that some of my Russian interlocutors are
insufficiently aware of the animosity or end of the rule Russophobic sentiment that currently
prevails among the Western elites, both political and academic and media. It's almost pathetic
when some Russians still use the term "our Western partners," because for partnership you need
to have a modicum of mutual respect and trust and these people really seriously want to destroy
Russia.
They want to delegitimize the Russian political system and process as we have seen with the
public commentary on President Putin's re-election and they want nothing short of regime
change, which would then lead to a permanent and irreversible change of Russia's national
character and possibly the country's partition along the lines allocated by Zbigniew
Brzezinski. With these people partnership is impossible and Russia needs to be prepared for a
long and sustained
period of confrontation .
The views and opinions expressed by Srdja Trifkovic are those of the speaker and do not
necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
"... "[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance," ..."
"... "America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," ..."
"... "If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia," ..."
"... "getting tough on Russia." ..."
"... "The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's not acceptable," ..."
"... "Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas there is definitely not something we can accept.'" ..."
"... "We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," ..."
Once again, the West has tossed out the democratic baby with the bath water, scapegoating
Russia for a mysterious crime on UK territory without a shred of evidence. To understand why,
just follow the money. Any hope that Western capitals would come to their democratic senses and
demand that PM Theresa May provide some proof that Russia was behind an alleged assassination
attempt on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British spy, were
dashed on Monday. Sixteen EU states fell in lockstep behind the US
and UK, taking the dramatic measure of banishing Russian diplomats.
Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian
mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover.
pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6
Meanwhile, back in the land of the free, Trump enthusiastically joined the inquisition,
saying he would expel 60 Russian diplomats 'personae non grata,' and shut down the Seattle
consulate. Good to see that the American leader practices cool-headed moderation in times of
uncertainty.
Short of an actual military conflict with Russia, it would be hard to imagine the situation
getting any worse. Most worrisome is the peddling of pulp-fiction conspiracy theories against
Russia, which compels Western officials to compensate for their wild imaginations with
hysterical, inflammatory outbursts that border on sheer madness.
How else to explain the comment by UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, who spoke like a
kid at the playground when he said Russia "should go away
and shut up;" or that of Boris Johnson, the British foreign minister, who had the audacity
and historical ignorance to compare Russia's hosting
of this year's World Cup to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.
So, what is motivating self-satisfied Western countries, like the US and Britain, to forward
such slanderous claims against Russia without a hint of legal due process? After all, it cannot
be denied that Russia would have stood to gain nothing from targeting Skripal.
"[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should
Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If
he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance,"
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an exclusive
interview with RT.
When we ask the question, 'Cui bono' – who stands to benefit the most from an
assassination attempt on a man of absolutely no consequence to Moscow – the most credible
answer always comes back to 'Russia's accusers.'
Follow the money
Since Washington has taken by far the severest steps against Russia over the Skripal
fallout, it would be fair to ask if the US stands to gain anything from the wave of Russophobia
now sweeping the West, which got its start, incidentally, as a direct result of
'Russiagate.'
Against the backdrop of the Skripal scandal are extremely lucrative gas contracts with EU
countries that Russia has dutifully fulfilled since the Soviet heydays. Today, Russia supplies
about 40 percent of Europe's gas. The US, however, with its fracking-backed liquefied natural
gas (LNG) program, is anxious to get a piece of the pie.
In July, Donald Trump paid a visit to Poland, where he pledged to boost exports of LNG to
Central Europe, as well as challenge Russia's market on energy supplies.
"America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy
supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," Trump told
reporters after talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
The comment was odd since, even at the height of the Cold War, Europe never froze due to its
gas being turned off in the middle of the night by Moscow.
Marek Matraszek, founder of the lobby firm CEC Government Relations, offered a very
disturbing comment about Washington's push to supply LNG to Europe.
"If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to
see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on
Russia," Matraszek said
.
I am very curious to know exactly what Matraszek had in mind when he spoke about
"getting tough on Russia." Would he approve of the current bilateral breakdown between
the nuclear powers? I certainly hope not.
In light of the massive prospects for gross profit on the European continent, would Western
capitals not be tempted – tempted, at the very least – to deny Moscow the benefit
of the doubt whenever highly suspicious criminal cases arise, like the present one regarding
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?
In an effort to slander Russia and push it out of lucrative markets, they may be tempted to
milk the situation for all its worth – which is exactly what is happening now. To doubt
that possibility would require a deep misunderstanding of the geopolitical realities as they
have played out over the course of the last decade, complete with a massive propaganda campaign
aimed at everything related to Russia – from the Olympic Games to anti-terrorist
operations in Syria to criminal cases in
foreign lands.
Meanwhile, as the showdown between the US and Russia over EU gas supplies festers,
especially in light of Nord Stream 2, the German-Russia venture that would double direct Russia
gas supplies, the ongoing US sanction regime against Russia is beginning to look suspect.
Commenting on Trump's passage in August of brand new sanctions against Russia, then German
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel was brave enough to mention the elephant in the room.
"The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's
not acceptable," he
said .
"Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and
saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas
there is definitely not something we can accept.'"
Meanwhile, it is not only in the energy sector where the United States - and to a lesser
degree the UK - stands to gain from wrecked relations with Russia, but in the defense sector as
well.
The UK regularly
ranks as Europe's leading weapons exporter, behind the United States globally, which
remains the world's leading arms exporter. Much of the expenditure comes from NATO member
states, which were just put on notice by Trump to keep their military spending at 2 percent of
GDP, at the very same time Washington was going out of its way to portray
Russia as a belligerent nation, when it has been the West that has been hell-bent on fomenting
regime change around the world. Now that's certainly an interesting sales strategy.
Romanian Prime Minister @VioricaDancila said that the
government decisions to purchase #HIMARS missile
systems and multirole corvettes were important steps in improving the capability of the
Romanian armed forces as a @NATO and EU member #defencepic.twitter.com/EEYk4Sk5MR
Can this propaganda campaign against Russia work? I believe the answer is no, for many
reasons. First, it is not just the Russians who understand that they are being played by major
powers in a conspicuous attempt to gain geopolitical and economic advantage.
Thus far, nearly half of the EU's member states have refrained from
committing a gesture of "solidarity" with London, deciding not to expel Russian diplomats.
Those 'conscientious objectors' are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Luxembourg,
Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia.
"We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," Austrian
government spokesperson Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal told RIA Novosti.
In many ways, this represents a victory for Russia – albeit a bittersweet one –
that London failed to get so many countries on board its anti-Russia juggernaut.
This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass
expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to
keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W
Second, Russia is actively diversifying its economy away from Western markets in preparation
for a worse-case scenario. For example, the "$55bn Power of Siberia pipeline will start
carrying gas 3,000km to China next year. The company is also spending $13bn on a pipeline to
Turkey," the Financial Times reported.
Finally, as Russia understands that they are up against some very dishonest players, the
country has made tremendous inroads to producing many of the things it once depended upon
imports to have, and we are not just talking about cheese. The Russian authorities have even
prepared a backup plan in the
event that Russia is terminated from the SWIFT international payment system. Although, of
course, Russia would prefer not to have to take such drastic steps, the unfortunate situation
in many Western capitals, where otherwise intelligent people are pointing fingers and hurling
unfounded accusations at Russia, without critical evidence or due process – once
hallmarks of the Western judicial system – make such steps absolutely vital.
All things considered, Russia will survive this storm, as it has done so many other times in
the past against far graver enemies, and stronger than ever.
1
5 0 On Monday, a number of European countries, as well as the United States and Canada,
announced they were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal case. Radio Sputnik discussed
the significance of the diplomatic response by the Western powers with Srdja Trifkovic, a US
journalist and writer on international affairs. Sputnik: What is your overall assessment about
what has happened with this diplomatic response by so many countries? How significant is it?
Srdja Trifkovic: The overall impression is that
rational discourse has given way to collective hysteria and that it is indeed remarkable.
The extent to which the bandwagon has successfully started rolling while we don't even have
elementary answers to the questions concerning the case itself.
The second important and discouraging aspect is that continental European countries have
followed the Anglo-American lead in Russophobia and this represents a further trial of the
Atlanticist domination over Europe. It is indeed remarkable when both Germany and France, the
putative leaders of independent European foreign policy, have been reduced to the status of
automatic followers of the lead supported by Washington especially when we bear in mind that
the initial round of sanctions in 2014 against Russia was dictated by the United States which
had nothing to lose in the proceedings and to the detriments of Europeans' interests.
So overall I think that, one we have the hysterical phase of Russophobic
discourse in the West which is not amenable to any rational arguments and two, we have a
successful degradation of European diplomacy to the status of pliant satellites comparable to
East Germany and Bulgaria vis-à-vis Brezhnev.
Sputnik: Do you think there was some classified evidence that was presented that proves
beyond a shadow of doubt that Russia was involved or do you think that the fact that there are
11 countries who have not joined in the protest perhaps hints at the fact that this was not the
case?
Srdja Trifkovic: Well, first of all, I would say that President Putin, Foreign Minister
Lavrov and others would not have made such categorical denials of Russian involvement if there
was any possibility of a smoking gun which could effectively show to the world that they were
not telling the truth.
And secondly, it is always possible to present some equivocal
evidence in the form that even if that indicates the modus operandi of intelligence
agencies nevertheless does not disclose outright state secrets. In fact, we've seen that in the
past and I don't think that it would be possible for such confidential information to be
disclosed to the diplomats and foreign ministers of EU countries as divergent as the 27 are,
without risking these very sources.
So I really believe that if you look at the countries which have taken measures against
Russia, they almost read like who is who of those who are prepared to follow the US lead and if
you look at those reluctant to do so, including Austria, Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, we are
looking at those who actually have a more independent foreign policy. So I don't think it's a
reflection of the quality of possible intelligence, it is simply a reflection of the
determination of decision-makers of those countries to preserve a modicum of independence.
Sputnik: What would you say about the level to which the actions that were actually taken by
individual countries? What can you say about the numbers game that's being played? What do you
think determined the number of diplomats?
Srdja Trifkovic: Some of these countries are absolutely insignificant countries like the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which also expelled one Russian and it's just a pathetic
non country. On the other hand in the United States obviously it is a matter of regret that
President Trump's initially stated intention to have detente with Russia has been subverted by
the deep state, it is a long story but now we have really reached the end of the road with the
appointment of Pompeo to State Department and Bolton as the national security adviser.
So we can really look at Trump as the would-be drainer of the swamp who has been swallowed
by the swamp. And I think that we are in for a long haul. I was in Moscow two weeks ago and
coming again next week and sometimes I am surprised that some of my Russian interlocutors are
insufficiently aware of the animosity or end of the rule Russophobic sentiment that currently
prevails among the Western elites, both political and academic and media. It's almost pathetic
when some Russians still use the term "our Western partners," because for partnership you need
to have a modicum of mutual respect and trust and these people really seriously want to destroy
Russia.
They want to delegitimize the Russian political system and process as we have seen with the
public commentary on President Putin's re-election and they want nothing short of regime
change, which would then lead to a permanent and irreversible change of Russia's national
character and possibly the country's partition along the lines allocated by Zbigniew
Brzezinski. With these people partnership is impossible and Russia needs to be prepared for a
long and sustained
period of confrontation .
The views and opinions expressed by Srdja Trifkovic are those of the speaker and do not
necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
"... "[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance," ..."
"... "America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," ..."
"... "If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia," ..."
"... "getting tough on Russia." ..."
"... "The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's not acceptable," ..."
"... "Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas there is definitely not something we can accept.'" ..."
"... "We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," ..."
Once again, the West has tossed out the democratic baby with the bath water, scapegoating
Russia for a mysterious crime on UK territory without a shred of evidence. To understand why,
just follow the money. Any hope that Western capitals would come to their democratic senses and
demand that PM Theresa May provide some proof that Russia was behind an alleged assassination
attempt on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British spy, were
dashed on Monday. Sixteen EU states fell in lockstep behind the US
and UK, taking the dramatic measure of banishing Russian diplomats.
Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian
mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover.
pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6
Meanwhile, back in the land of the free, Trump enthusiastically joined the inquisition,
saying he would expel 60 Russian diplomats 'personae non grata,' and shut down the Seattle
consulate. Good to see that the American leader practices cool-headed moderation in times of
uncertainty.
Short of an actual military conflict with Russia, it would be hard to imagine the situation
getting any worse. Most worrisome is the peddling of pulp-fiction conspiracy theories against
Russia, which compels Western officials to compensate for their wild imaginations with
hysterical, inflammatory outbursts that border on sheer madness.
How else to explain the comment by UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, who spoke like a
kid at the playground when he said Russia "should go away
and shut up;" or that of Boris Johnson, the British foreign minister, who had the audacity
and historical ignorance to compare Russia's hosting
of this year's World Cup to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.
So, what is motivating self-satisfied Western countries, like the US and Britain, to forward
such slanderous claims against Russia without a hint of legal due process? After all, it cannot
be denied that Russia would have stood to gain nothing from targeting Skripal.
"[Sergei Skripal] was handed in to Britain as a result of an exchange. So, why should
Russia hand in a man that is of any importance or that is of any value? It's unimaginable. If
he's handed in – so Russia quits with him. He's of zero value or zero importance,"
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an exclusive
interview with RT.
When we ask the question, 'Cui bono' – who stands to benefit the most from an
assassination attempt on a man of absolutely no consequence to Moscow – the most credible
answer always comes back to 'Russia's accusers.'
Follow the money
Since Washington has taken by far the severest steps against Russia over the Skripal
fallout, it would be fair to ask if the US stands to gain anything from the wave of Russophobia
now sweeping the West, which got its start, incidentally, as a direct result of
'Russiagate.'
Against the backdrop of the Skripal scandal are extremely lucrative gas contracts with EU
countries that Russia has dutifully fulfilled since the Soviet heydays. Today, Russia supplies
about 40 percent of Europe's gas. The US, however, with its fracking-backed liquefied natural
gas (LNG) program, is anxious to get a piece of the pie.
In July, Donald Trump paid a visit to Poland, where he pledged to boost exports of LNG to
Central Europe, as well as challenge Russia's market on energy supplies.
"America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy
supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier," Trump told
reporters after talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
The comment was odd since, even at the height of the Cold War, Europe never froze due to its
gas being turned off in the middle of the night by Moscow.
Marek Matraszek, founder of the lobby firm CEC Government Relations, offered a very
disturbing comment about Washington's push to supply LNG to Europe.
"If we want to have the United States' LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to
see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on
Russia," Matraszek said
.
I am very curious to know exactly what Matraszek had in mind when he spoke about
"getting tough on Russia." Would he approve of the current bilateral breakdown between
the nuclear powers? I certainly hope not.
In light of the massive prospects for gross profit on the European continent, would Western
capitals not be tempted – tempted, at the very least – to deny Moscow the benefit
of the doubt whenever highly suspicious criminal cases arise, like the present one regarding
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?
In an effort to slander Russia and push it out of lucrative markets, they may be tempted to
milk the situation for all its worth – which is exactly what is happening now. To doubt
that possibility would require a deep misunderstanding of the geopolitical realities as they
have played out over the course of the last decade, complete with a massive propaganda campaign
aimed at everything related to Russia – from the Olympic Games to anti-terrorist
operations in Syria to criminal cases in
foreign lands.
Meanwhile, as the showdown between the US and Russia over EU gas supplies festers,
especially in light of Nord Stream 2, the German-Russia venture that would double direct Russia
gas supplies, the ongoing US sanction regime against Russia is beginning to look suspect.
Commenting on Trump's passage in August of brand new sanctions against Russia, then German
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel was brave enough to mention the elephant in the room.
"The draft law makes clear that they're pursuing economic interests and we think that's
not acceptable," he
said .
"Aggressively combining foreign policy issues with American economic interests and
saying: 'We want to drive Russian gas out of the European market so we can sell American gas
there is definitely not something we can accept.'"
Meanwhile, it is not only in the energy sector where the United States - and to a lesser
degree the UK - stands to gain from wrecked relations with Russia, but in the defense sector as
well.
The UK regularly
ranks as Europe's leading weapons exporter, behind the United States globally, which
remains the world's leading arms exporter. Much of the expenditure comes from NATO member
states, which were just put on notice by Trump to keep their military spending at 2 percent of
GDP, at the very same time Washington was going out of its way to portray
Russia as a belligerent nation, when it has been the West that has been hell-bent on fomenting
regime change around the world. Now that's certainly an interesting sales strategy.
Romanian Prime Minister @VioricaDancila said that the
government decisions to purchase #HIMARS missile
systems and multirole corvettes were important steps in improving the capability of the
Romanian armed forces as a @NATO and EU member #defencepic.twitter.com/EEYk4Sk5MR
Can this propaganda campaign against Russia work? I believe the answer is no, for many
reasons. First, it is not just the Russians who understand that they are being played by major
powers in a conspicuous attempt to gain geopolitical and economic advantage.
Thus far, nearly half of the EU's member states have refrained from
committing a gesture of "solidarity" with London, deciding not to expel Russian diplomats.
Those 'conscientious objectors' are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Luxembourg,
Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia.
"We are determined to maintain open channels of dialogue with Russia," Austrian
government spokesperson Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal told RIA Novosti.
In many ways, this represents a victory for Russia – albeit a bittersweet one –
that London failed to get so many countries on board its anti-Russia juggernaut.
This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass
expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to
keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W
Second, Russia is actively diversifying its economy away from Western markets in preparation
for a worse-case scenario. For example, the "$55bn Power of Siberia pipeline will start
carrying gas 3,000km to China next year. The company is also spending $13bn on a pipeline to
Turkey," the Financial Times reported.
Finally, as Russia understands that they are up against some very dishonest players, the
country has made tremendous inroads to producing many of the things it once depended upon
imports to have, and we are not just talking about cheese. The Russian authorities have even
prepared a backup plan in the
event that Russia is terminated from the SWIFT international payment system. Although, of
course, Russia would prefer not to have to take such drastic steps, the unfortunate situation
in many Western capitals, where otherwise intelligent people are pointing fingers and hurling
unfounded accusations at Russia, without critical evidence or due process – once
hallmarks of the Western judicial system – make such steps absolutely vital.
All things considered, Russia will survive this storm, as it has done so many other times in
the past against far graver enemies, and stronger than ever.
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a
campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President
Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. "
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they
believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military
leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible
to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the
strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the
anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
Notable quotes:
"... For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. ..."
"... First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state. ..."
"... Secondly, Western elites pillaged the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. ..."
"... Thirdly, the US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent "election" of Yeltsin. ..."
"... With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US. ..."
"... As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war. ..."
"... Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to return to vassalage. ..."
"... The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals. ..."
"... Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other Western allies. ..."
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a
campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President
Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear
war.
The most recent western propaganda campaign and one of the most virulent is the charge
launched by the UK regime of Prime Minister Theresa May . The Brits have claimed that Russian
secret agents conspired to poison a former Russian double-agent and his daughter in England ,
threatening the sovereignty and safety of the British people. No evidence has ever been
presented. Instead the UK expelled Russian diplomats and demands harsher sanctions, to increase
tensions. The UK and its US and EU patrons are moving toward a break in relations and a
military build-up.
A number of fundamental questions arise regarding the origins and growing intensity of this
anti-Russian animus.
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they
believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military
leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible
to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the
strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the
anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions.
The Historical Context for Western Aggression
Several fundamental historical factors dating back to the 1990's account for the current
surge in Western hostility to Russia.
First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal
state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state.Secondly, Western elites pillaged
the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. Wall Street
and City of London banks and overseas tax havens were the main beneficiaries Thirdly, the
US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent
"election" of Yeltsin. Fourthly, the West degraded Russia's military and scientific
institutions and advanced their armed forces to Russia's borders. Fifthly, the West insured
that Russia was unable to support its allies and independent governments throughout Europe,
Asia, Africa and Latin America. Russia was unable to aid its allies in the Ukraine, Cuba,
North Korea, Libya etc.
With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia
regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes
were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster
capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US.
Russia's historic recovery under President Putin and its gradual international influence
shattered US pretense to rule over unipolar world. Russia's recovery and control of its
economic resources lessened US dominance, especially of its oil and gas fields.
As Russia consolidated its sovereignty and advanced economically, socially, politically and
militarily, the West increased its hostility in an effort to roll-back Russia to the Dark Ages
of the 1990's. The US launched numerous coups and military intervention and fraudulent
elections to surround and isolate Russia . The Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Russian
allies in Central Asia were targeted. NATO military bases proliferated.
Russia's economy was targeted : sanctions were directed at its imports and exports.
President Putin was subject to a virulent Western media propaganda campaign. US NGO's funded
opposition parties and politicians.
As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a
systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal
for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and
defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war.
The UK poison plot was concocted to heighten economic tensions and prepare the western
public for heightened military confrontations.
Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further
a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to
return to vassalage.
President Putin is immensely popular in Russia and hated by the US precisely because he is
the opposition of Yeltsin -- he has created a flourishing economy; he resists sanctions and
defends Russia's borders and allies.
Conclusion
In a summary response to the opening questions.
The Western regimes recognize that
Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the
EU, North America or their vassals.Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via
economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has
diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other
Western allies.
The Western propaganda campaign has failed to turn Russian voters against Putin. In the
March 19, 2018 Presidential election voter participation increased to 67% . .Vladimir Putin
secured a record 77% majority. President Putin is politically stronger than ever.
Russia's display of advanced nuclear and other advanced weaponry has had a major deterrent
effect especially among US military leaders, making it clear that Russia is not vulnerable to
attack.
The UK has attempted to unify and gain importance with the EU and the US via the launch of
its anti-Russia toxic conspiracy. Prime Minister May has failed. Brexit will force the UK to
break with the EU.
President Trump will not replace the EU as a substitute trading partner. While the EU and
Washington may back the UK crusade against Russia they will pursue their own trade agenda;
which do not include the UK.
In a word, the UK, the EU and the US are ganging-up on Russia, for diverse historic and
contemporary reasons. The UK exploitation of the anti-Russian conspiracy is a temporary ploy to
join the gang but will not change its inevitable global decline and the break-up of the UK.
Russia will remain a global power. It will continue under the leadership of President Putin.
The Western powers will divide and bugger their neighbors -- and decide it is their better
judgment to accept and work within a multi-polar world.
*
Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the CRG.
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a
campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President
Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. "
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they
believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military
leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible
to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the
strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the
anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
Notable quotes:
"... For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war. ..."
"... First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state. ..."
"... Secondly, Western elites pillaged the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. ..."
"... Thirdly, the US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent "election" of Yeltsin. ..."
"... With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US. ..."
"... As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war. ..."
"... Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to return to vassalage. ..."
"... The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals. ..."
"... Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other Western allies. ..."
For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a
campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President
Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear
war.
The most recent western propaganda campaign and one of the most virulent is the charge
launched by the UK regime of Prime Minister Theresa May . The Brits have claimed that Russian
secret agents conspired to poison a former Russian double-agent and his daughter in England ,
threatening the sovereignty and safety of the British people. No evidence has ever been
presented. Instead the UK expelled Russian diplomats and demands harsher sanctions, to increase
tensions. The UK and its US and EU patrons are moving toward a break in relations and a
military build-up.
A number of fundamental questions arise regarding the origins and growing intensity of this
anti-Russian animus.
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they
believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military
leaders seek to undermine Russia's defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible
to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin's government? What is the
strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the
anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions.
The Historical Context for Western Aggression
Several fundamental historical factors dating back to the 1990's account for the current
surge in Western hostility to Russia.
First and foremost, during the 1990's the US degraded Russia, reducing it to a vassal
state, and imposing itself as a unipolar state.Secondly, Western elites pillaged
the Russian economy, seizing and laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. Wall Street
and City of London banks and overseas tax havens were the main beneficiaries Thirdly, the
US seized and took control of the Russian electoral process, and secured the fraudulent
"election" of Yeltsin. Fourthly, the West degraded Russia's military and scientific
institutions and advanced their armed forces to Russia's borders. Fifthly, the West insured
that Russia was unable to support its allies and independent governments throughout Europe,
Asia, Africa and Latin America. Russia was unable to aid its allies in the Ukraine, Cuba,
North Korea, Libya etc.
With the collapse of the Yeltsin regime and the election of President Putin, Russia
regained its sovereignty, its economy recovered, its armed forces and scientific institutes
were rebuilt and strengthened. Poverty was sharply reduced and Western backed gangster
capitalists were constrained, jailed or fled mostly to the UK and the US.
Russia's historic recovery under President Putin and its gradual international influence
shattered US pretense to rule over unipolar world. Russia's recovery and control of its
economic resources lessened US dominance, especially of its oil and gas fields.
As Russia consolidated its sovereignty and advanced economically, socially, politically and
militarily, the West increased its hostility in an effort to roll-back Russia to the Dark Ages
of the 1990's. The US launched numerous coups and military intervention and fraudulent
elections to surround and isolate Russia . The Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Russian
allies in Central Asia were targeted. NATO military bases proliferated.
Russia's economy was targeted : sanctions were directed at its imports and exports.
President Putin was subject to a virulent Western media propaganda campaign. US NGO's funded
opposition parties and politicians.
As the entire US unipolar fantasy dissolved it provoked deep resentment, animosity and a
systematic counter-attack. The US's costly and failed war on terror became a dress rehearsal
for the economic and ideological war against the Kremlin ..Russia's historical recovery and
defeat of Western rollback intensified the ideological and economic war.
The UK poison plot was concocted to heighten economic tensions and prepare the western
public for heightened military confrontations.
Russia is not a threat to the West: it is recovering its sovereignty in order to further
a multi-polar world. President Putin is not an "aggressor" but he refuses to allow Russia to
return to vassalage.
President Putin is immensely popular in Russia and hated by the US precisely because he is
the opposition of Yeltsin -- he has created a flourishing economy; he resists sanctions and
defends Russia's borders and allies.
Conclusion
In a summary response to the opening questions.
The Western regimes recognize that
Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the
EU, North America or their vassals.Western regimes believe they can topple Russia via
economic warfare including sanctions. In fact Russia has become more self-reliant and has
diversified its trading partners, especially China, and even includes Saudi Arabia and other
Western allies.
The Western propaganda campaign has failed to turn Russian voters against Putin. In the
March 19, 2018 Presidential election voter participation increased to 67% . .Vladimir Putin
secured a record 77% majority. President Putin is politically stronger than ever.
Russia's display of advanced nuclear and other advanced weaponry has had a major deterrent
effect especially among US military leaders, making it clear that Russia is not vulnerable to
attack.
The UK has attempted to unify and gain importance with the EU and the US via the launch of
its anti-Russia toxic conspiracy. Prime Minister May has failed. Brexit will force the UK to
break with the EU.
President Trump will not replace the EU as a substitute trading partner. While the EU and
Washington may back the UK crusade against Russia they will pursue their own trade agenda;
which do not include the UK.
In a word, the UK, the EU and the US are ganging-up on Russia, for diverse historic and
contemporary reasons. The UK exploitation of the anti-Russian conspiracy is a temporary ploy to
join the gang but will not change its inevitable global decline and the break-up of the UK.
Russia will remain a global power. It will continue under the leadership of President Putin.
The Western powers will divide and bugger their neighbors -- and decide it is their better
judgment to accept and work within a multi-polar world.
*
Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the CRG.
"... I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the 1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet. ..."
"... Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the Olympics. ..."
"... I just thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0 ..."
I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I
knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the
1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence
agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet.
Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the
Olympics. I already have my tickets for England v Panama in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as
a second round match in Moscow.
I don't care much for the Olympics, although I do like the Winter Olympics. I just
thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just
seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the
event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is
probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0
"... I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the 1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet. ..."
"... Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the Olympics. ..."
"... I just thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0 ..."
I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I
knew some athletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the
1980 Olympics (after years and years of hard work). I'm surprised western intelligence
agencies have not done more to undermine Russia's world cup. They may yet.
Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the
Olympics. I already have my tickets for England v Panama in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as
a second round match in Moscow.
I don't care much for the Olympics, although I do like the Winter Olympics. I just
thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just
seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the
event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is
probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0
" As far as we all know now are quite hard times to Russia and to the world as a whole.
"
Why do we have these hard times ?
Could it be globalisation, western greed, and western aggression ?
Well, probably it can be more clear for those who are attacking and humiliating Russia in
all directions? The West-ZUS-UK
But I think it's just an agony of Empire seeing the world order is about to change. And
yes it's "western greed" which have a "western aggression" as a consequence.
The "globalisation" actually IS that world order which the West trying to
establish. Russia in all times in all its internal structure was a subject of annexation and
submission. But we never agreed and never will do it, until alive. The West is too stupid to
get that simple thing to know and leave us to live as we are about to.
"... Well, the party lime is pretty different: "Treat Russia Like the Terrorist It Is. Whether the Skripal poisoning can be conclusively pinned on Moscow is beside the point." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-09/u-k-spy-poisoning-treat-russia-like-the-terrorist-it-is ..."
"... The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person. ..."
"... In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be manufactured it any relatively developed country. ..."
"... It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the KGB successor of the successor of the VChK. ..."
"... Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union. ..."
I'm a socialist. I don't understand how a conservative is getting this so right! There is a mad
rush to judgment and anyone who wants to ask questions is getting accused of being unpatriotic.
Quite a sensible article. The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from
the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person.
In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a
known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a
minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas
has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be
manufactured it any relatively developed country.
It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by
the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the
KGB successor of the successor of the VChK.
At the end of 1980s there was a project started by KGB supposed (1) to detect possible channels
of security leakage, and (2) to begin spreading misinformation to potential adversaries.
Different names were used to test different security leaks. The name "NOVICHOK" used to
identify misinformation given to one of suspects, Vil Mirzayanov who was not chemist but rather
a clerk. Very soon this security leakage was detected, and tons of other misinformation
supplied to Mirzayanov, who was immediately secretly discharged from access to any real
project. Mirzayanov was allowed to publish this fake info in NYT (around 1992-95?), and then to
escape from Russia in 1995.
Since that time NATO has spent about $10 billions to develop protection tools against this
fake "NOVICHOK"
P.S. The Russian word NOVICHOK stands for "a newbie"; from Russian grammar point of view,
there is no chance such word to be assigned to any chemical weapon. It was assigned to
Mirzayanov who was "a newbie" to this sort of projects at that time.
Cui bono: every murder of a Russian dissident/defector/oligarch/critical journalist, cannot
possibly have happened on Putin's orders or with his tacit approval, because it reflects badly
on Russia.
So, we have two possible explanations: some Western intelligence agency is murdering those
people, probably without the knowledge of their own government (you'd have think that someone
in elected office would have stopped such a programme by now); or the Russian Putin opposition
is killing its own people, both in Russia and abroad. If the goal of such an operation is the
destabilization of the Putin regime through Western sanctions, it is obviously not working.
You say cui bono, I say Occam's razor. Putin takes out those who might threaten him, raises
his popularity, the sanctions are used to cover up his own disastrous economical policies, and
in the end nothing changes.
We *knew* Iraq had no nukes, and we knew that the Bush administration lied, and we knew that
"WMD" is the kind of BS we make up when there are no nukes.
Buchanan is not arguing in good faith. What Maine, Tonkin and WMD are about is *lies*, lies
in service of criminal acts of aggression, lies to facilitate a premeditated violation of the
Constitution as well as international law.
That is frankly a more important issue than the – justified and necessary –
doubts regarding the attempted Skripal assassination and the motives behind it.
This is also true of an ongoing campaign employing drones – some controlled by CIA
illegal combatants – and kill teams to implement collective punishment and ideological
cleansing by means of sustained assassination – based on "signatures" provided by the
likes of Google or Booz Allen. The US has no standing to judge the assassination attempts of
others, just as our government can no longer meaningfully speak out on aggressive acts of war,
collective punishment, and torture. A house divided cannot stand for anything.
You say that the burden of proof is on the accused? That works in many parts of the world,
but I hope that we here in the US have had a better standard of Justice. The burden of proof
falls upon the accuser, in this case Britain. There is no ther standard that America should
accept if we are to remain true to American principals. Not that I expect that our current
oligarchy will care about principals.
Exactly. Putin's long term strategy is an integrated Pan-Eurasian economic architecture in
which Europe would be a major customer segment. That is why the EAEU was stood up by Russia and
the BRI stood up by China. With supporting investment platforms like the AIIB to enable the
initiatives.
Given that objective, why would Russia/Putin seek to totally wreck its relationship with
Europe? More importantly what would be the motive and objectives for Russia to attack Poland
and the Baltic Republics – the fear-monger threats du jour? When an overrun of Poland
would create 30+ million subversive malcontents that Russia would have to govern, and when
there are only minority ethnic Russian populations in the Baltics?
The driving force behind the illogical and incoherent demonization of Russia is the
Washington War Party that froths up the political environment with the militarized
fear-mongering. Because as Fran Macadam notes, there's Big Money in it. And the Neocon
war-monger mouthpieces need some Big Enemies to keep themselves relevant, busy and living very
large on the $200K – $600K salaries they collect at the bought off Think
Pimp Tanks.
A crazed U.S. foreign policy that has been completely militarized is a train wreck waiting
to happen. And us taxpayers will yet again be stuck with the bills to clean up the
wreckage.
Sovietologists? Now this, more than anything else, explains the reflexive anti-Russia
hysteria. Who cares what historians dealing with the twentieth century Soviet Union think about
current events? Historians provide useful insight, yes, but that does not mean they are
conversant with current events. What you are doing is throwing in a fear laden buzzword.
Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from
what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union.
Our leaders are enthusiastic about being aggressive with the Russians, but the America Empire
has a problem attracting enough volunteers to join the military.
For example, the Air Force has a shortage of 2,000 pilots and the Navy has a shortage of
mechanics that they need to work on their on their aircraft.
The U.S. and Britain showed more respect to Joseph Stalin, the Butcher, than it has shown to
Putin. The demonization of Putin in all the mainstream media outlets is the tip-off to me that
Putin must be a pretty good guy doing some good things for Russia.
"If the world hates you know that it has hated me first. If the world loves you it is
because you belong to the world." -- Jesus Christ
>>Given the poison used it means one to two things -- either it was Russian secret
services or the Russians have lost control over their poisons. Either one is a nasty thought.
Why? It was presumably created 40 years ago. Pretty much to time for information to spread
around.
E.g., Kim's brother was presumably (again) poisoned by VX. Does it mean that it was MI-6? It's
a British invention after all.
In any case, this story stinks, pardon for a word pun. A 'military grade agent' and no
casualties. How could it be?
>>Why do it? To prove they can. To prove that no matter where you go they can get
you -- that there is no safety.
Safety from what? This guy was non-entity, nobody knew him. More importantly, he has been
already punished and pardoned, so double no sense.
>>I am sure Gary Kasparov is feeling a bit worried right now and Bill Browder is
thinking of moving somewhere new.
Well, I'd suspect that Rodchenko and Khodorkovskiy are more evident sacrificial targets.
Pat asks important questions. Unless we ever see the "evidence" to which Boris Johnson refers,
or other direct evidence that this hit (and others) in Britain was directed by the Kremlin,
it's worth continuing to ask them.
"Who benefits?" Indeed, it could be rogue Russian agents or Western agents attempting to
further drive a wedge between the West and Russia.
But it could also be Putin signalling that the Russia which held onto traitorous spies
between 2006 and 2010 is over.
It could be him simply trying to show that he can reach people inside the West, a pure flexing
of muscle, a warning to future would-be traitors and Western governments. It could be to
make America's allies nervous about Putin's relationship with his American puppet, Trumpolini.
It could be just Putin sowing chaos and attempting to create discord among Western
governments.
Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still applies. If it
growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear
Who could be so phillistine as to suggest, on the eve of the World Cup, that Premier Andropov's
KGB protege', Major Putin, would one day stoop to whacking a traitorous defector from the Party
Line ?
>>Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still
applies. If it growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear
Occam's Razor, my backside. Some guys from MI-5 tried to kill him like they killed David
Kelly and Gareth Williams before. It's as credible as it gets, exactly the same amount of
evidence.
" As far as we all know now are quite hard times to Russia and to the world as a whole.
"
Why do we have these hard times ?
Could it be globalisation, western greed, and western aggression ?
Well, probably it can be more clear for those who are attacking and humiliating Russia in
all directions? The West-ZUS-UK
But I think it's just an agony of Empire seeing the world order is about to change. And
yes it's "western greed" which have a "western aggression" as a consequence.
The "globalisation" actually IS that world order which the West trying to
establish. Russia in all times in all its internal structure was a subject of annexation and
submission. But we never agreed and never will do it, until alive. The West is too stupid to
get that simple thing to know and leave us to live as we are about to.
"... Well, the party lime is pretty different: "Treat Russia Like the Terrorist It Is. Whether the Skripal poisoning can be conclusively pinned on Moscow is beside the point." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-09/u-k-spy-poisoning-treat-russia-like-the-terrorist-it-is ..."
"... The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person. ..."
"... In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be manufactured it any relatively developed country. ..."
"... It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the KGB successor of the successor of the VChK. ..."
"... Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union. ..."
I'm a socialist. I don't understand how a conservative is getting this so right! There is a mad
rush to judgment and anyone who wants to ask questions is getting accused of being unpatriotic.
Quite a sensible article. The fact that neither Putin personally nor Russia benefits from
the death of Skripal is obvious to any sane person.
In addition, statements that gas called "Novichok could be made only in Russia is a
known lie. This poison was created forty years ago in the USSR, so to have this gas can, at a
minimum, all countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The inventor of the gas
has fled to the US, and the chemical composition of the gas is known and now it can be
manufactured it any relatively developed country.
It would be possible not to poison Skripal by gas, but simply to strike on the head by
the bust of Dzerzhinsky. It would be the same level of evidence, of the guilt of the FSB, the
KGB successor of the successor of the VChK.
At the end of 1980s there was a project started by KGB supposed (1) to detect possible channels
of security leakage, and (2) to begin spreading misinformation to potential adversaries.
Different names were used to test different security leaks. The name "NOVICHOK" used to
identify misinformation given to one of suspects, Vil Mirzayanov who was not chemist but rather
a clerk. Very soon this security leakage was detected, and tons of other misinformation
supplied to Mirzayanov, who was immediately secretly discharged from access to any real
project. Mirzayanov was allowed to publish this fake info in NYT (around 1992-95?), and then to
escape from Russia in 1995.
Since that time NATO has spent about $10 billions to develop protection tools against this
fake "NOVICHOK"
P.S. The Russian word NOVICHOK stands for "a newbie"; from Russian grammar point of view,
there is no chance such word to be assigned to any chemical weapon. It was assigned to
Mirzayanov who was "a newbie" to this sort of projects at that time.
Cui bono: every murder of a Russian dissident/defector/oligarch/critical journalist, cannot
possibly have happened on Putin's orders or with his tacit approval, because it reflects badly
on Russia.
So, we have two possible explanations: some Western intelligence agency is murdering those
people, probably without the knowledge of their own government (you'd have think that someone
in elected office would have stopped such a programme by now); or the Russian Putin opposition
is killing its own people, both in Russia and abroad. If the goal of such an operation is the
destabilization of the Putin regime through Western sanctions, it is obviously not working.
You say cui bono, I say Occam's razor. Putin takes out those who might threaten him, raises
his popularity, the sanctions are used to cover up his own disastrous economical policies, and
in the end nothing changes.
We *knew* Iraq had no nukes, and we knew that the Bush administration lied, and we knew that
"WMD" is the kind of BS we make up when there are no nukes.
Buchanan is not arguing in good faith. What Maine, Tonkin and WMD are about is *lies*, lies
in service of criminal acts of aggression, lies to facilitate a premeditated violation of the
Constitution as well as international law.
That is frankly a more important issue than the – justified and necessary –
doubts regarding the attempted Skripal assassination and the motives behind it.
This is also true of an ongoing campaign employing drones – some controlled by CIA
illegal combatants – and kill teams to implement collective punishment and ideological
cleansing by means of sustained assassination – based on "signatures" provided by the
likes of Google or Booz Allen. The US has no standing to judge the assassination attempts of
others, just as our government can no longer meaningfully speak out on aggressive acts of war,
collective punishment, and torture. A house divided cannot stand for anything.
You say that the burden of proof is on the accused? That works in many parts of the world,
but I hope that we here in the US have had a better standard of Justice. The burden of proof
falls upon the accuser, in this case Britain. There is no ther standard that America should
accept if we are to remain true to American principals. Not that I expect that our current
oligarchy will care about principals.
Exactly. Putin's long term strategy is an integrated Pan-Eurasian economic architecture in
which Europe would be a major customer segment. That is why the EAEU was stood up by Russia and
the BRI stood up by China. With supporting investment platforms like the AIIB to enable the
initiatives.
Given that objective, why would Russia/Putin seek to totally wreck its relationship with
Europe? More importantly what would be the motive and objectives for Russia to attack Poland
and the Baltic Republics – the fear-monger threats du jour? When an overrun of Poland
would create 30+ million subversive malcontents that Russia would have to govern, and when
there are only minority ethnic Russian populations in the Baltics?
The driving force behind the illogical and incoherent demonization of Russia is the
Washington War Party that froths up the political environment with the militarized
fear-mongering. Because as Fran Macadam notes, there's Big Money in it. And the Neocon
war-monger mouthpieces need some Big Enemies to keep themselves relevant, busy and living very
large on the $200K – $600K salaries they collect at the bought off Think
Pimp Tanks.
A crazed U.S. foreign policy that has been completely militarized is a train wreck waiting
to happen. And us taxpayers will yet again be stuck with the bills to clean up the
wreckage.
Sovietologists? Now this, more than anything else, explains the reflexive anti-Russia
hysteria. Who cares what historians dealing with the twentieth century Soviet Union think about
current events? Historians provide useful insight, yes, but that does not mean they are
conversant with current events. What you are doing is throwing in a fear laden buzzword.
Basically, we have a political elite who needs an enemy to distract their own people from
what they are doing and oh, do they miss the Soviet Union.
Our leaders are enthusiastic about being aggressive with the Russians, but the America Empire
has a problem attracting enough volunteers to join the military.
For example, the Air Force has a shortage of 2,000 pilots and the Navy has a shortage of
mechanics that they need to work on their on their aircraft.
The U.S. and Britain showed more respect to Joseph Stalin, the Butcher, than it has shown to
Putin. The demonization of Putin in all the mainstream media outlets is the tip-off to me that
Putin must be a pretty good guy doing some good things for Russia.
"If the world hates you know that it has hated me first. If the world loves you it is
because you belong to the world." -- Jesus Christ
>>Given the poison used it means one to two things -- either it was Russian secret
services or the Russians have lost control over their poisons. Either one is a nasty thought.
Why? It was presumably created 40 years ago. Pretty much to time for information to spread
around.
E.g., Kim's brother was presumably (again) poisoned by VX. Does it mean that it was MI-6? It's
a British invention after all.
In any case, this story stinks, pardon for a word pun. A 'military grade agent' and no
casualties. How could it be?
>>Why do it? To prove they can. To prove that no matter where you go they can get
you -- that there is no safety.
Safety from what? This guy was non-entity, nobody knew him. More importantly, he has been
already punished and pardoned, so double no sense.
>>I am sure Gary Kasparov is feeling a bit worried right now and Bill Browder is
thinking of moving somewhere new.
Well, I'd suspect that Rodchenko and Khodorkovskiy are more evident sacrificial targets.
Pat asks important questions. Unless we ever see the "evidence" to which Boris Johnson refers,
or other direct evidence that this hit (and others) in Britain was directed by the Kremlin,
it's worth continuing to ask them.
"Who benefits?" Indeed, it could be rogue Russian agents or Western agents attempting to
further drive a wedge between the West and Russia.
But it could also be Putin signalling that the Russia which held onto traitorous spies
between 2006 and 2010 is over.
It could be him simply trying to show that he can reach people inside the West, a pure flexing
of muscle, a warning to future would-be traitors and Western governments. It could be to
make America's allies nervous about Putin's relationship with his American puppet, Trumpolini.
It could be just Putin sowing chaos and attempting to create discord among Western
governments.
Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still applies. If it
growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear
Who could be so phillistine as to suggest, on the eve of the World Cup, that Premier Andropov's
KGB protege', Major Putin, would one day stoop to whacking a traitorous defector from the Party
Line ?
>>Skepticism about the latest pronouncements is valid, but Occam's Razor still
applies. If it growls like a Russian bear and kills like a Russian bear
Occam's Razor, my backside. Some guys from MI-5 tried to kill him like they killed David
Kelly and Gareth Williams before. It's as credible as it gets, exactly the same amount of
evidence.
Seriously...I think these 'conspiracy theorists' have been watching too many Hollywood movies.
This is what I want to SCREAM every time I hear this shit...Why the HELL would Russia, or anyone else, bother to use such a
messy, traceable and complicated method to kill this guy? Especially when there are SO MANY WAYS it could have been done that
wouldn't have garnered all the attention, and that would have left no traces? They could have sent someone to shove him in front
of a train or something, or staged a 'botched robbery'.
Reminds me of the stupid assassination methods the CIA wanted to use on Castro...poisoning his beard? Really? Well, aside from
the fact that it is just too 'Wile E. Coyote' to be taken seriously, did anyone ask, if such an assassin could get close enough
to poison his beard, why he wouldn't go with a more dependable method?
I blame the wildly dumbed down and complicit media here in the US and in our "allies" abroad. They spit out whatever the government
feeds to them without a single ounce of effort to validate the stories they frantically preach to the ignorant public. Damn, I
can't believe how many times people will be duped into trillion dollar wars and they still are die hard believers in the ethics
and truthfulness of the US gov't. Morons---
It makes little sense that Russia would assassinate someone using a technique that would immediately implicate them. I'm surprised
they didn't happen to "find" the assassin's Russian passport lying on the ground next to the victims! <
I disagree. If a government is going to terminate a spy they don't botch the job by letting him get to a hospital. In Putin's
Russia they know how to terminate most efficiently. I may be wrong but this is a pretext for something more aggressive/dangerous.
Seriously...I think these 'conspiracy theorists' have been watching too many Hollywood movies.
This is what I want to SCREAM every time I hear this shit...Why the HELL would Russia, or anyone else, bother to use such a
messy, traceable and complicated method to kill this guy? Especially when there are SO MANY WAYS it could have been done that
wouldn't have garnered all the attention, and that would have left no traces? They could have sent someone to shove him in front
of a train or something, or staged a 'botched robbery'.
Reminds me of the stupid assassination methods the CIA wanted to use on Castro...poisoning his beard? Really? Well, aside from
the fact that it is just too 'Wile E. Coyote' to be taken seriously, did anyone ask, if such an assassin could get close enough
to poison his beard, why he wouldn't go with a more dependable method?
I blame the wildly dumbed down and complicit media here in the US and in our "allies" abroad. They spit out whatever the government
feeds to them without a single ounce of effort to validate the stories they frantically preach to the ignorant public. Damn, I
can't believe how many times people will be duped into trillion dollar wars and they still are die hard believers in the ethics
and truthfulness of the US gov't. Morons---
It makes little sense that Russia would assassinate someone using a technique that would immediately implicate them. I'm surprised
they didn't happen to "find" the assassin's Russian passport lying on the ground next to the victims! <
I disagree. If a government is going to terminate a spy they don't botch the job by letting him get to a hospital. In Putin's
Russia they know how to terminate most efficiently. I may be wrong but this is a pretext for something more aggressive/dangerous.
Neoliberalism as social system tend to self-destruct. Much like Bolshevism (neoliberalism actually can be viewed as Trotskyism
for the rich with the same dream of "world revolution" as the central part of the religion and a slightly modified Marxism slogan
-- "financial elites of the world unite" ).
"This week, Congressional
Democrats released a detailed tax hike plan that they
promised to implement if given majority control of the House and Senate after the 2018
midterm elections. So much for the crocodile tears about the deficit--
Democrats want to raise taxes not to reduce the debt, but rather to spend that tax hike
money on boondoggle projects.
OK. That will work. (irony) So, they will raise both corporate and personal income taxes if
they gain control of the congress. That will work as a political program (irony). The
California state government will probably back that. (no irony)
Well, there is always Stormy Daniels to fall back on as an issue. She was interviewed
outside a strip joint yesterday where she was to perform. "You call me a whore? she said. I
tell you I am a successful whore." I suppose the idea is to alienate Trump's evangelical base
from him. Oh, well, this theme rings a bit hollow. Trump's base knew what they were voting for
... pl
in fairness to our friends the democrats, the Dems. are proposing an infrastructure plan
that is woefully inadequate, and propose to rescind the recent tax cuts.
Personally, I am just not feeling the electoral excitement.
Of course those suffering TDS (trump derangement syndrome) will applaud undoing Trump
agenda, but then again, they were going to vote Democrat anyway and cut a check, which IMO is
the real point. Funny how now they want to do infrastructure, but not during the Obama
years.
Personally, wrt the tax cuts, I am ambivalent. Anyone who pays anywhere near the official
rate needs to hire a good tax accountant. Net effect on businesses that already take all
available deductions will be a percent or two on gross. A 2% weaker dollar would have a far
bigger benefit for businesses (but worse for the banks).
ISL
the only reason the individual tax rate is important is the effect on LLCs and S corps.
Nevertheless, the corporate tax rate cut is the more important. pl
Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA
descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental
exploitation.
NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods.
But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda,
corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries
to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance
service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was
due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax
money.
Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay
for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the
middle class support the endless wars.
I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the
bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. The recent Italian
election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of
the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt,
implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill
Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it.
To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long
term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only.
Well that settles it. I thought that maybe the Dems were just acting delusional to coddle
their base. This settles it. They actually ARE delusional.
So in addition to replacing us with an infinite number of illiterate third worlders,
taking our guns and jailing us for using the wrong pronoun out of an ever evolving list of
hundreds they are going to take more of our hard earned money. Yeah, how can they not sweep
the 2018 elections with a platform like that. Sheesh.
I never did support the Trump tax cuts. I regard them as being mainly mainstream Republican
tax cuts. President Trump supports them and signed them for all the economic benefits reasons
he cited and cites. But the Republicans' main reason for seeking them remains their long term
goal of destroying Social Security and privatizing the Social Security money . . . the money
I and everyone else have been pre-paying double for ever since the Great Reagan Rescue of
1983. They sought these tax cuts in order to increase vastly the deficit and the debt. Their
expectation is that the next inevitable recession
will make the debt so-nearly-unpayable as to give them another opportunity to accuse Social
Security of causing the debt and of being unaffordable.
So I would support cancellation of the Republican tax cuts for that reason. I would be
defending my Social Security against longstanding Republican efforts to destroy it and
retro-steal all the money I have been paying ( and will keep paying) every since 1983.
(Actually, since 1980 when I worked at half the rate of FICA taxation as after 1983). But
then, I have said years ago in comments that I would like to see taxes re-raised against the
Bush's Base class to recover all the Social Security pre-payment money which was
future-looted-from to give the Bush's Base class a tax cut instead. A tax cut which President
Obama supported and ratified when he conspired with Boehner and McConnell to make the
self-sunsetting Bush Tax cuts into permanent tax cuts. That's why I now call them the
Bushobama Tax cuts now.
There is boondoggle and there is needed repair. The "high speed railway" proposed and
haltingly begun in California is a boondoggle. Fixing all the rotting and decaying bridges
and all the potholes is needed repair. ( Come to Michigan to see some impressive potcraters).
The present and future space program is an investment in possible futures and in
technological advances. Government spending can be a boondoggle but it doesn't have to
be.
At least some of the Democrats have decided to run on something specific instead of vague
emotional appeals only. Something specific can either be voted "for" or "against".
(The Democrats should remember that "tax restoration" may not be enough to get all the
votes they think they are due. There are enough bitter berners out here who remain convinced
that applying political chemotherapy against the malignant metastatic clintonoma and the
Yersiniobama pestis plague infection afflicting the Democratic Party is more important right
now than "more democrats". There is, and will be, a growing effort to defeat every piece of
Clintonite scum and Obamazoid filth which dares to call itself a "Democrat" in every election
that one of these things runs in. The Democratic Party has to be made into a New Deal Party
again, and that means purging and burning every trace of Clinton and Obama out of the Party.
If any DLC/Third Way/Hamilton Project/ Pink Pussy Hat/ Rainbow Oligarchy Democrats are
reading this, they should consider themselves warned.)
If Trump's evangelical base was willing to ignore the p-grabber tape, I doubt this will do
much to change their minds. Don't tell CNN, they were running the story 24/7 even as the
Senate, including many Democrats such as the odious Mark Warner, was voting to roll back the
fairly toothless restrictions on the big banks passed after the 2008 financial crash.
This is the REAL reason Trump will not be removed even if impeached--he's too valuable to
the political class as a never ending media freak show that allows them to get away with
whatever they want while the idiot public is distracted.
Exactly, Sir, it is the corporate tax cut that is the big deal because it starts to level the
playing field for small businesses. The largest corporations hardly pay any tax anyway
because they have the armies of tax lawyers and accountants to leverage all the
"... If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress. ..."
"... Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. ..."
"... The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely
predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as
half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the
lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting
candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the
best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the
field for a favored "star" recruit.
A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who
worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top
aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep
involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of
responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its
top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable
Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which
includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term
Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At
the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political
vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic
Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic
primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
"... If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. ..."
"... Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice. ..."
"... The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century. ..."
"... The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated." ..."
"... The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks . ..."
"... This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine. ..."
"... The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. ..."
"... The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments. ..."
In a three-part series published last week, the
World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and
military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence
candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant
seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant
swing to the Democrats.
If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control
of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department
officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The
presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature
is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.
Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry
Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the
activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation,
assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.
In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon,
reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in
an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report
triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage
control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank
Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to
investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against
foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in
Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly
subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD;
Operation Mockingbird, in
which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an
effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the
telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.
The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating
political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA
became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was
widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated."
In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of "former"
military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be
welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and
Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy
apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American
journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the
Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan
administration's CIA director, William Casey.
How times have changed. One of the main functions of the "war on terror," launched in the
wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to
rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed
protector of the American people against terrorism.
This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al
Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in
Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US
intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.
The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies,
backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies
glorifying American spies and assassins ( 24 , Homeland , Zero Dark
Thirty , etc.)
The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New
York Times , with her reports on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, is only the most
notorious of the stable of "plugged-in" intelligence-connected journalists at the
Times , the Washington Post , and the major television networks. More
recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother
of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International
Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based
entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either
unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been
accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly
paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while
essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with
ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food
stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the
agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political
voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and
expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United
States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the
Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate
the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of
resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the
campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of
media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire
editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part
of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds
for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence
operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in
Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are
"former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however,
purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the
Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not
covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic
primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat
experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on
their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party
officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand,
the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other
previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a
"friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an
expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the
extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state
apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working
class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right
policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects
the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of
military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade
unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary,
working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled
two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
Posted on
March 10, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. As depressing and
predictable as it is to see Democrats yet again prostituting themselves to financiers, payback
may finally be coming. From Lambert in Water Cooler
yesterday :
Senate: Poll: Five Senate Dems would lose to GOP challenger if elections held today" [
The Hill ]. "New polls published Thursday morning in Axios show Sens. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi
Heitkamp (D-N.D.) would all lose reelection to GOP challengers if voters were heading to the
polls this week." Blue Dogs all. Why vote for a fake Republican when you can vote for a real
one?
So these Blue Dogs who are gutting the already underwhelming Dodd Frank may not be with us
much longer, at least politically. And even though the party is remarkably insistent on
adhering to a strategy of corporate toadying that has led it to hemorrhage seats at all levels
of government, if these seats all go red, it might be a message even the Democrats might not be
able to ignore.
By Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Originally published at
Alternet
This act of regulatory vandalism highlights everything that is corrupt about our
political system.
As if to maximize the possibility of another major financial crisis, the Trump
administration and the GOP have recently been busy undercutting the limited safeguards
established a decade ago via Dodd-Frank. The latest example of this stealth attack on Wall
Street reform is the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,
appropriately sponsored by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate
Banking Committee. Appropriate, because this is literally a "crapo" bill. It provides a few
"technical tweaks" to Dodd-Frank in the same way in which protection payouts to organized crime
provide businesses with "insurance" against property damage. In reality, it is an act of
regulatory vandalism, which highlights everything that is corrupt about our political
system.
We have grown to expect no less from the GOP, whose sole r aison d'etre these days
seems to be filling the trough from which America's fat cats can perpetually gorge themselves.
What is truly disturbing, however, is that the Republican effort is being given bipartisan
cover by more than a dozen Democratic senators: Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi
Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both from Va.), Claire
McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Chris Coons
(Del.), and Tom Carper of Delaware. To this esteemed group, we should also add Senator Angus
King (ME), an Independent who regularly caucuses with the Democrats. So, in reality, it's a
filibuster-proof "Baker's Dirty Dozen." Digging into the details, perhaps this is what Senator
Mitch McConnell had in mind when he predicted
more bipartisanship in Congress this year . In co-sponsoring this bill, the 13 senators are
providing cover for the GOP when the inevitable fallout comes, dissipating the Democrats'
political capital with the electorate in the process.
Yes, we get it: some of these senator incumbents are in red states that voted heavily for
Donald Trump in the last election. And
the latest polls suggest many are vulnerable in this year's elections. But the last time we
checked, there didn't seem to be an overwhelming wave of populist protest demanding regulatory
relief for banks. All 50 states -- red and blue -- suffered from the last financial crisis, and
it's hard to believe voters in Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana or Missouri would
be more likely to support Senators Tester, Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly or McCaskill because
they backed a bank deregulation bill (which in reality goes well beyond helping small community
banks). Nor do the 2018 races factor as far as Senators Warner, Coons, or Bennet are concerned,
given that none are up for re-election this year.
No, the more likely answer is money, plain and simple. The numbers aren't in for 2017, but
an analysis of the Federal Election Commission data from the 2016 election appears to explain
what is driving this newfound solicitousness toward the banks. The
Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) points out that "nine of the twelve Democrats
supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or
second-biggest donor." (At least now we have a better understanding as to why Hillary Clinton's
" responsibility
gene " induced her to select running mate Tim Kaine, who
received "large contributions from Big Law partners that represent Wall Street," as opposed
to a genuine finance reformer, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren is vigorously
opposing the new bill.)
"included among his 20 largest donors the mega Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs and
JPMorgan Chase. Goldman's employees and PACs gave Warner's campaign $71,600 while JPMorgan
Chase gave the Warner campaign committees $50,566 Senator Heidi Heitkamp is also up for
reelection this year and her number one contributor at present is employees and/or PACs of
Goldman Sachs which have contributed $79,500 thus far."
Naturally, all of the senators claim their motives are pure. With no hint of irony, a
spokesman
for Tim Kaine suggested that , "Campaign contributions do not influence Senator Kaine's
policy positions." Likewise, an aide for Mark Warner vigorously
contested the idea that campaign donations from Wall Street ever influenced the Virginia
senator's decision-making on policy matters. Sure, and it was shocking to find out that
gambling took place in Rick's Café.
It is true, as Senator Jon Tester (another co-sponsor)
notes , that the proposed changes introduced in the Crapo bill (notably the increase in the
asset size from $50 billion to $250 billion of those banks that are considered "systemically
important" and therefore subject to greater oversight and tighter rules) do not affect the
likes of Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JP MorganChase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs
and Morgan Stanley, all of which are still covered by the most stringent oversight provisions
of Dodd-Frank. But the increased asset threshold does exempt the U.S. bank holding companies of
systemically significant foreign banks: Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse, all of whom were
implicated in multiple violations of both American and international banking laws in the
aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
Deutsche Bank alone has paid billions of dollars for its role in perpetuating mortgage
fraud,
money-laundering and interest rate manipulation (the LIBOR scandal), which ideally should
invite more regulatory scrutiny, not less. Instead, a new law ostensibly crafted to provide a
few "technical fixes" for Dodd-Frank is now reducing the regulatory oversight of a bank that
has been
cited in an IMF report as one of Germany's "global systemically important financial
institutions." Translating the couched-IMF-speak, the report suggests that Deutsche Bank on its
own has the potential to set off a new global contagion, given the scale of its derivatives
exposure. Not only too big to fail, but evidently too big to regulate properly either, aided
and abetted by members of a party who claim to be appalled at the level of corruption in the
Trump administration.
Another side-effect of raising the regulatory threshold to $250 billion in assets is that it
diminishes the chance of obtaining an early warning detection signal from somewhat smaller
financial institutions. As the experience of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns illustrated,
smaller problems that remain hidden in the shadows can ultimately metastasize if left alone,
and become much bigger -- and more systemically dangerous -- later.
So when Senator Kaine nobly suggests
that he is merely providing relief for "small community banks and credit unions" in his home
state, or Jon Tester argues that he is only helping local banks suffering from Dodd-Frank's
regulatory overkill, both are being extraordinarily disingenuous. The reality is that
increasing the oversight threshold by 500 percent does not just help a few "small community
banks and credit unions" crawl out from a thicket of onerous and costly regulation. Even former
Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who favored some regulatory relief for community banks, felt that
$250 billion threshold
was excessive ly lax.
In fact, (
per the Americans for Financial Reform ), the increase "removes the most severe mandate for
25 of the 38 largest banks," which
together "account for over $3.5 trillion in banking assets, more than one-sixth of the U.S.
total." Additionally, as Pat Garofalo
writes : "The bill also includes an exemption from capital standards -- essentially the
amount of money that banks need to have on hand in case things go south -- that benefits some
big financial firms, and even more are lobbying to be included." In other words, this isn't
just George Bailey's friendly neighborhood bank that is getting some regulatory relief
here.
All of this newfound regulatory laxity comes at a time when many of the largest Wall Street
banks have again resurrected the same practices that almost destroyed them a decade ago. Bank
credit analyst Chris Whalen
observes : "The leader of this effort is none other than Citigroup (NYSE:C), which has
surpassed JP MorganChase (NYSE:JPM) to become the largest derivatives shop in the world. Citi
has embraced the most notorious product of the roaring 2000s, the synthetic collateralized debt
obligation or 'CDO' security, a product that fraudulently leverages the real world and
literally caused the bank to fail a decade ago."
Another example: Trump and his henchman, Mick Mulvaney, have also joined the big banks in
attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which by virtue of the Crapo act, will be
blocked "from collecting key data showing when and where families of color are being
overcharged for home loans or steered into predatory products."
Let's be honest here: even in its original form, Dodd-Frank was the bare minimum the
government could have done in the wake of the 2008 disaster. But lobbyists, paid-for
politicians and co-opted bank-friendly regulators have been busy "applying technical fixes" to
the bill virtually from the moment it was passed a decade ago. The upshot is that the
much-trumpeted Wall Street reform is a joke when compared to the comprehensive legislation
passed in the aftermath of the Great Depression (which set the stage for decades of relative
financial stability). Under Dodd, the banks are purportedly subject to "meaningful stress
tests" (
in the words of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ), but the tests are neither
particularly stressful, nor do they adequately reflect today's twin dangers of off-balance
sheet leverage and the concentration of big banks' on-balance sheet assets in relatively
low-return loans.
What should have been done after the global financial crisis? Professors Eric Tymoigne and
Randall Wray
proposed the following :
"Any of the 'too big to fail' financial institutions that needed funding should have been
required to submit to Fed oversight. Top management should have been required to proffer
resignations as a condition of lending (with the Fed or Treasury holding the letters until
they could decide which should be accepted -- this is how Jessie Jones resolved the bank
crisis in the 1930s). Short-term lending against the best collateral should have been
provided, at penalty rates. A comprehensive 'cease and desist' order should have been
enforced to stop all trading, all lending, all asset sales, and all bonus payments until an
assessment of bank solvency could have been completed. The FDIC should have been called-in
(in the case of institutions with insured deposits), but in any case, the critically
undercapitalized institutions should have been dissolved according to existing law: at the
least cost to the Treasury and to avoid increasing concentration in the financial
sector."
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this whole sordid episode. An obvious one is that
our model of campaign finance is completely broken. While it is encouraging to see some
Democratic politicians increasingly adopting the Sanders model of fundraising,
swearing off large corporate donations , not enough are doing so. Democrats are united in
their concern pertaining to foreign threats that pose risks to the integrity of U.S. elections,
but the vigorous opposition to Vladimir Putin and the Russians isn't extended to the domestic
oligarchs destroying American democracy (and the economy) from within.
The whole history behind Senator Crapo's bill shows how quickly bank lobbyists can
routinely exploit their financial muscle to turn a seemingly innocuous bill into something
which pokes yet more holes into the Swiss Cheese-like rules already in place for Dodd. The
Baker's Dirty Dozen have accepted donations from Wall Street that not only constrain their
ability to implement genuine reforms in finance (and other areas) but also discourage the
mobilization of voters, who see this legislative horror show, and consequently opt out of
showing up to vote at elections because they know that the system is rigged and dominated by
corporate cash (making their votes irrelevant).
Ironically, no less a figure than Donald Trump exploited that voter cynicism in 2016. In
striking contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, and Wall Street (and made effective
mockery of Hillary Clinton's ties to Goldman Sachs) and thereby mobilized blue-collar voters in
marginal Rust Belt states, giving him his path to the presidency. Of course, we now know that
this was all bait-and-switch politics, likely facilitated by forces outside the U.S., along
with large corporation donations from domestic elites. We've probably reached the endgame as
far as this "
investment approach to politics " as it disintegrates into a cesspool of corruption and
further financial fragility. It may take another crash before this problem is truly fixed.
In the meantime, this bipartisan subversion of Wall Street reform not only risks making the
next crisis at least as bad as 2008, but also reinforces the notion that both parties are
equally corrupt,
catalyzing the collapse of the American political order . In a further sick twist of fate,
the twin corrosive forces of "golden rule politics" (i.e., he who has the gold rules) and a
rapidly deflating "bubble-ized" economy could all come to a head under the watch of Donald the
Unready. But he won't own this disaster alone, thanks to the help of compromised Wall Street
Democrats.
Jen
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill
to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968
days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of
fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.
"... This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." ..."
"... The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation on its borders in Ukraine. ..."
"... On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash, it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's because the system itself encouraged those inflows. ..."
"... "Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it really doesn't need a standalone military anyway. ..."
"... From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who inspected the premises. ..."
"... There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen other people at the same time. ..."
"... The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian! ..."
Mark Rice-Oxley,
Guardian columnist and the first in line to fight in WWIII.
The alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 agent Sergei Skripal has caused the Russophobic MSM to go into overdrive. Nowhere is the desperation
with which the Skripal case has been seized more obvious than the Guardian. Luke Harding is spluttering incoherently about a
weapons lab that might not even exist anymore . Simon Jenkins gamely takes up his position as the only rational person left at
the Guardian, before being heckled in the comments and dismissed as a contrarian by Michael White on twitter. More and more the media
are becoming a home for dangerous, aggressive, confrontational rhetoric that has no place in sensible, adult newspapers.
Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury,
one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during
the cold war.
Read this. It's from a respected "unbiased", liberal news outlet. It is the worst, most partisan political language I have ever
heard, more heated and emotionally charged than even the most fraught moments of the Cold War. It is dangerous to the whole planet,
and has no place in our media.
If everything he said in the following article were true, if he had nothing but noble intentions and right on his side, this would
still be needlessly polarizing and war-like language.
To make it worse, everything he proceeds to say is a complete lie.
Usually we would entitle these pieces "fact checks", but this goes beyond that. This? This is a reality check.
Its agents pop over for murder and shopping
FALSE: There's no proof any of this ever happened. There has been no trial in the Litvinenko case. The
"public
inquiry" was a farce, with no cross-examination of witnesses, evidence given in secret and anonymous witnesses. All of which
contravene British law regarding a fair trial.
even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots.
TRUE sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too
busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here is that WE let them. Oligarchs
have been fleeing Russia for over a decade. Why? Because, in Russia, Putin's government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and
embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That's why you have wanted criminals like
Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he's down to
his
"last 270 million" .
When was the last time a British billionaire was prosecuted for financial crimes? Mega-Corporations owe
literally billions in tax , and our government lets them
get away with it.
Its digital natives use their skills not for solving Russia's own considerable internal problems but to subvert the prosperous
adversaries that it secretly envies.
FALSE: Russiagate is a farce,
anyone with an open-mind can see that . The reference to Russians envying the west is childish and insulting. The 13, just thirteen,
Russians who were indicted by Mueller have no connection to the Russian government, a
nd allegedly
campaigned for many candidates , and both for and against Trump. They are a PR firm, nothing more.
It bought a World Cup,
FALSE: The World Cup bids are voted on, and after years and years of investigation the US/UK teams have found so little evidence
of corruption in the Russia bid that they simply stopped talking about it. If the FBI had found even the slightest hint of financial
malpractice, would we ever have stopped hearing about it?
Regarding the second "neighbour": Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are not at war. Ukraine has claimed to have been "invaded" by Russia
many times but has never declared war. Why? Because they rely on Russian gas to live, and because they know that if Russia were to
ever REALLY invade, the war would last only just a big longer than the Georgian one. The
"anti-terrorist operation" in Ukraine was started by the coup government in 2014. Since that time over 10,000 people have died.
The vast majority killed by the governments mercenaries and far-right militias many of whom
espouse outright fascism
.
bombed children to save a butcher in the Middle East.
MISLEADING: The statement is trying to paint Russia/Assad as deliberately targeting children, which is clearly untrue. Russia
is operating in Syria in full compliance with international law. Unlike literally everybody else bar Iran. When Russia entered the
conflict, at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government, Jihadists were winning the war. ISIS had huge swathes of territory,
al-Qaeda affiliates had strongholds in all of Syria's major cities. Syria was on the brink of collapse. Rice-Oxley is unclear whether
or not he thinks this is a good thing.
Today, ISIS is obliterated, Aleppo is free
and the war is almost over. Apparently Syria becoming another Libya is preferable to a secular government winning a war against terrorists
and US-backed mercenaries.
And now it wants to start a new nuclear arms race.
FALSE: America started the arms race when they pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
Putin warned at the time it was a dangerous move . America then moved their
AEGIS "defense
shield" into Eastern Europe . Giving them the possibility of first-strike without retaliation. This is an untennable position
for any country.
Putin warned, at the time, that Russia would have to respond. They have responded. Mr Rice-Oxley should take this up with Bush
and Cheney if he has a problem with it.
And before the whataboutists say, "America does some of that stuff too", that may be true, but just because the US is occasionally
awful it doesn't mean that Russia isn't.
MISLEADING: America doesn't do "some of that stuff". No, America aren't "occasionally awful". They do ALL of that stuff, and have
been the biggest destructive force on the planet for over 70 years. Since Putin came to power America has carried out aggressive
military operations against Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. They have sanctioned and threatened
and carried out coups against North Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Honduras, Venezuela and Cuba. All that time, the US has also claimed the
right to extradite and torture foreign nationals with impunity. The war crimes of American forces and agencies are beyond measure
and count.
We are so used to American crimes we just don't see them anymore. Imagine Putin, at one his epic four-hour Q&A sessions, off-handedly
admitting to torturing people in illegal prison camps .
Would we ever hear the end of it?
Even if you cede the utterly false claim that Russia has "invaded two neighbours", the scale of destruction just does not compare.
Invert the scale of destruction and casualties of Georgia and Iraq. Imagine Putin's government had killed 500,000 people in Georgia
alone, whilst routinely condemning the US for a week-long war in Iraq that killed less than 600 people. Imagine Russia kidnapped
foreign nationals and tortured them, whilst lambasting America's human rights record.
The double-think employed here is literally insane.
Note to Rice-Oxley and his peers, pointing out your near-delusional hypocrisy is not "whataboutism". It's a standard rhetorical
appeal to fairness. If you believe the world shouldn't be fair, fine, but don't expect other people not to point out your double
standards.
As for poor little Britain, it seems to take this brazen bullying like a whipping boy in the playground who has wet himself.
Boycott the World Cup? That'll teach them!
FALSE: Rice-Oxley is trying to paint a picture of false weakness in order to promote calls for action. Britain has been anything
but cooperative with Russia. British forces operate illegally in
Syria , they arm and train rebels. They refused to let Russian authorities see the evidence in the Litvinenko case, and refused
to let Russian lawyers cross-examine witnesses. Britain's attitude to Russia has been needlessly, provocatively antagonistic for
years.
Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful, a lazy smear
casting an entire nation as a ludicrous two-dimensional pantomime villain with a pocketful of poisonous potions .Of course, the
vast majority of Russians are indeed misrepresented by such portrayals, because they are largely innocent in these antics.
TRUE: Russians do complain about this, which is entirely justifiable. The western representation of Russians is ignorant and racist
almost without exception. It is an effort, just like Rice-Oxley's column, to demonize an entire people and whip up hatred of Russia
so that people will support US-UK warmongering.
Most ordinary Russians are in fact also victims of the power system in their country, which requires ideas such as individual
comfort, aspiration, dignity, prosperity and hope to be subjugated to the wanton reflexes of the state
FALSE: Putin's government has decreased poverty by
over 66% in 17 years . They have increased life-expectancy, decreased crime, and increased public health. Pensions, social security
and infrastructure have all been rebuilt. These are not controversial or debated claims. The Guardian published them itself just
a few years ago. That is hardly a state where hope and aspiration are put aside.
Why is Russian power like this: cynical, destructive, zero-sum, determined to bring everything down to a base level where everyone
thinks the worst of each other and behaves accordingly?
MISLEADING FALLACY: This is simply projection. There is no logical basis for this statement. He is simply employing the old rhetorical
trick of asking WHY something exists, as a way of establishing its existence. This allows the (dishonest) author to sell his own
agenda as if it solves a riddle. Before you can explain something, you need to establish an explanandum something which requires
explaining. This is the basic logical process that our dear author is attempting to circumvent. We don't NEED to explain why
Russian power is like this, because he hasn't yet established that it is .
I think there are two reasons. The most powerful political idea in Russia is restoration. A decade of humiliation – economic,
social and geopolitical – that followed its rebirth in 1991 became the defining narrative of the new nation.
MISLEADING LANGUAGE: Describing the absolute destruction caused by the fall of the USSR as "rebirth" is an absurd joke. People
sold their medals, furniture and keepsakes for food, people froze to death in the streets.
At times, even the continued existence of the Russian Federation appeared under threat.
TRUE: This is true. Russia was in danger of Balkanisation. The possibility of dozens of anarchic microstates, many with access
to nuclear weapons, was very real. Most rational people would consider this a bad thing. The achievement of Putin's government in
pulling Russia back from the brink should be applauded. Especially when compared with our Western governments who can barely even
maintain the functional social security states created by their predecessors. Compare the NHS now with the NHS in 2000, compare Russia's
health service now to 17 years ago. Who do you think is really in trouble?
The second reason is that the parlous internal state of Russia – absurdist justice, a threadbare social safety net, a pyramid
society in which a very few get very rich and the rest languish – creates moral ambivalence.
PROJECTION: he actually makes this statement without even a hint of irony. The Tory government has killed people by slashing their
benefits, and homeless people froze to death during the recent blizzards. The overall trend of British social structure has been
down, for decades.
Poverty is increasing all the time ,
food banks are opening and people are increasingly desperate. We are trending down. 20%, one in five British people,
now live in poverty .
In that same time, as stated above, Russia's poverty has gone down and down. 13% of Russians live in poverty, almost half the
UK rate. In 2014, before we sanctioned Russia, it was only 10%. Even the briefest research would show this. Columnists like Rice-Oxley
go out of their way to avoid inconvenient facts.
What is to be done? I wouldn't respond with empty threats, Boris Johnson. No one cares.
Here we come to the centre of the shrubbery maze, up until now the column was just build up. Establishing a "problem" so he can
pitch us a "solution".
There are only two weaknesses in this bully's defences. The first is his money. Britain needs to do something about the dodgy
Russian billions swilling through its financial system. Make it really hard for Kremlin-connected money to buy football clubs
or businesses or establish dodgy limited partnerships; stop oligarchs from raising capital on the London stock exchange. Don't
bother with sanctions. Just say: "No thanks, we don't want your business."
FALSE: This shows not even the most basic understanding of the way money works. Money being made in Russia and spent in London
is bad fo Russia. Sending billionaires back to Russia would inject money INTO the Russian economy. Either Rice-Oxley is actually
a moron, or he is being deliberately dishonest.
What he REALLY means is that we should put pressure on the oligarchs, not to the hurt the Russian economy, but in the hopes the
oligarchs will turn on Putin and remove him by undemocratic means.
He is pushing for backdoor regime change. And if you think I'm reading too much into this, then here
The second is public opinion. The imminent presidential election is a foregone conclusion, but the mood in Russia can turn
suddenly, as we saw in 1991, 1993 and 2011-2012.
Notice how quickly he dismisses the democratic will of the Russian people. Poor, stupid, "envious" Russians aren't equipped to
make their own decisions. We need to step in. "Public opinion" turning means a colour revolution. It means US backed regime change
in a nuclear armed super-power. Backed by the cyberwarriors paid to spread Western propaganda online.
Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public
opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to
win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.
The hypocrisy is mind-blowing, when I read this paragraph I was dumb-founded. Speechless. For months we've been hearing about
how terrible Russia is for allegedly interfering in the American election. Damaging democracy with reporting true news out of context
and some well placed memes.
Our response? Our defense of our "values"? Use the armies of online propagandists our governments employ –
their existence
was reported in the
Guardian – in order to undermine, or undo the democratic will of the Russian people. Rice-Oxley is positing this with a straight
face.
Russia is such a destabilising threat to "our democratic values", such a moral vacuum, that we must use subterfuge to undermine
their elections and remove their popular head of state.
Rice-Oxley wants to push and prod and provoke and antagonise a nuclear armed power that, at worst, is guilty of nothing but playing
our game by our rules and winning. He wants to build a case for war with Russia, and he's doing it on bedrock of cynical lies.
It's all incredibly dangerous. Hopefully they'll realise that before it's too late. For all our sakes.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Putin's 10 year plan for the future of Russia. Putin is a builder, like Peter the Great. He
is a seeker after excellence, like Catherine the Great. If his 10 year plan can achieve the half of what he set out in his recent
speech, the name Putin will go down in history with the same sobriquet.
The most important part of Putin's March 1st speech:
And on the village level, because that's where most of the real work of the world is done, a snippet BTL from Auslander who
lives in the Crimea: "the first implications of anti corruption efforts are obvious in our little village. We'll see how it pans
out but everyone can, and should, assist in this task. The proof will be in the pudding when The West starts screaming about certain
kind, gentle and innocent 'businessmen' who end up counting trees [in Siberia?] for a decade or three."
I wonder how much longer the general readership over there will cotton on to the pro-war and propaganda agenda of the Guardian
and leave it en masse? It's as dishonest as The Sun.
"Poor little Britain", with half the population, a much smaller territory ,and being part of the largest military alliance in
the world, spends only 10 billions less than Russia in "defense". One of those "defense" strategies included in the budget, one
that all those commentators vilifying Russia conveniently ignore, is to blow up weddings, funerals and entire villages with missiles
fired from drones. No trial, no public kill list, no record of people killed, no accountability. That is sanctioned, extra-judicial
murder of suspects and everyone around them. And these progressive commentators, eager to spread prosperity by any mean, seem
to be ok with it.
Update: as I was writing this I noticed that The Guardian has a piece by (of all people!), Simon Jenkins, which, yes, takes
for granted that the assassination attempt was carried out by the Russians, but asks if there is a moral difference between that
and killing suspects with drone strikes. For that, he has been labeled an useful idiot and "an apologist for attempted mass murder
on British soil". Highly amusing if you ask me, but also a terrifying example of how straying if only a little bit from the official
line ("yes, the Russians tried to kill this guy, they are the worst, but maybe we should have a look at ourselves and our (kind
of) inappropriate tendency to murder everyone we want") has to be punished. There are no ifs or buts while at the two minutes
of hate. Now even the pieces that are there to give a semblance of balance have to be torn apart by those liberal, prosperity
loving persons that can´t seem to be able to condemn the murder of children at will. Now it is time to express hatred towards
Goldstein, I mean, of course, Putin and everything Russia.
This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war."
Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during
the cold war."
All suffering from PTDS AKA Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Russophobes over at the Guardian (and the rest of the corporate media) would be well advised to review the trial of Julius
Streicher at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine
and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation
on its borders in Ukraine.
I find it the ultimate paradox that a publication purporting to be 'liberal' acts so enthusiastically
for deadly regime changes from this once Trotskyist but now extreme Right Wing group. There is nothing 'liberal', 'humanitarian',
or moral about promotion of deadly regime changes that have destroyed previously peaceful nations and murdered hundreds of thousands
in the process. Guardian for the geopolitical goals of the self-declared 'exceptional' Empire, the new 'master race' that of the
US.
One final observation on the Skripal case (for now): this stuff is so toxic. We don't know what the stuff is: nevertheless,
we know it is so toxic, can only be made by a state, and needs careful expert handling. We know this because every paper
and TV channel has by now emphasised that this stuff is so toxic, etc. If we missed the "nerve agents and what they do
to you" coverage: we can ascertain for ourselves from the men in the hazmat suits, the this stuff must be so toxic. The
Army have now been deployed: on hand after completing the largest CW exercise ever held, 'Toxic Dagger'; they are now employing
their specialist skills to carry out "Sensitive Site Operations" because this stuff is you get it by now. In another piece of
pure theater: police in hazmat suits were examining the grave of Alexander and Liudmila Skripal because even after a year or more
buried underground, you can't be too careful, because this stuff is A woman from the office next to Zizzi was taken ill (maybe
she had the risotto con pesce) because even after a week, and next door, traces of this stuff can still be
11 (or 16) people were hospitalised from the effects of 'this stuff': the first attending officer, Nick Bailey, is only just
out of ICU and lucky to be alive. The Skripal's are not so lucky: and on "palliative care" according to H de Bretton-Gordon. Yet
the eye-witness calling himself 'Jamie Paine' was close enough to get coughed on; and the unnamed passing doctor and nurse that
attended the Skripals at the scene, clearing their airways, are all fine (despite being hospitalised). Yet PC Bailey nearly died?
Funny that?
When first you practice to deceive: someone in the propaganda department must have noticed this glaring inconsistency. Enter,
stage right, former Met Chief Ian (now Lord) Blair (guess who was leading the Met when Litvinenko was poisoned?): to clarify that
PC Bailey was contaminated when he was the first officer to enter the Skripal's home – not attend them in Salisbury. This allowed
the Torygraph and Fox to speculate that Yulia brought a contaminated present for her father (which she kept in a drawer for a
week, because this stuff is so toxic?). The Torygraph's previous spin: that Skripal was poisoned for his contributions
to the Pissgate dossier were torpedoed by Orbis (Steele's company). Speaking on Radio 4: after pushing the Buzzfeed "14 other
deaths" dodgy dossier; Blair said "So there maybe some clues floating around in here." Yes, clues that you are lying? This is
pure theater: only it is more Morecambe and Wise than Shakespeare.
Check out the report from
C4News (mute the sound).
Two guys plodding around in fluorescent breather suits, another couple with gas masks, but behind them firemen in normal uniform
and no gas masks and the reporter 20 feet in front, in civvies wih no protective gear at all.
Virulent nerve agent threat? Theatre, and not very convincing at that.
Flaxgirl: a bit OT, but not too much as this event does not seem to have too much basis in reality: on the question of fabrication
the UK Home Office held an event this week – Security and Policing 2018 – where the "Live Demo Area" was sponsored by Crisis Cast.
I though you might interested? Are they providing critical incident training: or the critical incidents themselves is a legitimate
question after the events in Salisbury?
I suppose by now we should be used to the nauseating, self-righteous bluster dished out on a daily basis by the Anglo-Zionist
media. The two minutes hate by the flabby 'left' liberals who now have apparently joined forces with the demented US neo-cons
in openly baying for a war against Russia. How, exactly did these people expect Russia to react to the abrogation of the ABM agreement,
marching NATO right up to Russia's doorstep, staging coups in the Ukraine and Georgia, having the US sixth fleet swanning around
in the Black Sea? Of course, Russia reacted as any other self-respecting state would react to such blatant provocations. And this
includes the US during the Cuba crisis and its self-proclaimed right to intervene in its sphere of influence – Latin America –
and for that matter anywhere else on the planet. And it does so A L'outrance.
But I was foregetting, the Anglo-Zionist axis has a divine mission mandated by the deity to reconfigure the world and bring
democracy and freedom to those "Lesser breeds without the Law" (Kipling). Of course, this updated version of 'taking up the white
man's burden' by the 'exceptional people' may involve mass murder, mayhem, destruction and chaos, unfortunately necessary in the
short(ish) run. But these benighted peoples should realise it is for their own good, and if this means starving to death 500,000
Iraqi children through sanctions, well, it was 'worth it' according to the lovely Madeline Albright. This is the language and
methodology of a totalitarian imperialism. As someone has remarked the Anglo-zionist empire is not on the wrong side of history,
it is the wrong side of history.
The arrogance, ignorance and crass venality of these people is manifest to the point of parody.
I agree with Mark Rice-Oxley that Russian oligarchs should pull their money out of Britain and return it to Russia to invest in
businesses there. That would be the ethical thing for them to do, to fulfill their proper tax obligations and stop using Britain
as a tax haven.
I hear that Russia has had another bumper wheat harvest and is now poised to take over from Australia as the major wheat exporter
to Egypt and Indonesia, the world's biggest buyers of wheat. So if Russian oligarchs are wondering where to put their money in,
wheat production, research into improving wheat yields and the conditions wheat is grown in are just a few areas they can invest
in.
Be careful what you wish for, Mr Rice-Oxley – your wish might come true bigger than you realise!
On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash,
it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial
services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's
because the system itself encouraged those inflows.
"Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's
a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it
really doesn't need a standalone military anyway.
"It's them, over there, they are evil. We must stop them. They are coming for us, they will take our children and steal our i
phones !!! Arrgh!!!" "I'll have another strong short black thanks"
Their world is falling apart- in Korea and the Middle East the Empire is on the verge of eviction. All the certitudes of yesteryear
are dissolving. Even the Turks, who, famously, held the line in Korea when the PLA attacked and the US Eighth Army fled south,
are now on the other side. The same Turks who hosted US nuclear armed strategic missiles so openly that the USSR sent missiles
of its own to Cuba.
As to the UK, the economy is contracting and the economic infrastructure is cracking up- living standards are plummeting and the
only recourse of those responsible for the mess-the officers on the bridge- is propaganda. Like the Empire the British Establishment
has been living on the fruits of its own propaganda for so long that, when it is exposed as merely empty bullying, there is nothing
left but to resort to more lies in the hope that they will obscure raw and looming reality.
In The Guardian newsroom the water
is three feet deep and rising inexorably, the ship is sinking and all hands are required to bail or the screens will go black.
There is no time to wait for developments, for investigations to be completed, for evidence- every ounce of strength must be thrown
into the defiance of nature, the shocking nakedness of reality.
There is something very significant about the way that simultaneous attacks of impotent russophobic dementia are eating away
the brains of the rulers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The game, which has been going the same way for about 500 years, is up. The maritime empire is becoming marginal and the force
that it has used, throughout these centuries, no longer overwhelms. The cruisers and carriers no longer work except to intimidate
those not worth frightening.
There is only one thing left for the Empire and its hundreds of thousands of apparatchiki-from cops to pundits, from Professors
to jailers- either they adjust to a new dispensation because the Times are Changing or they blow themselves and the whole planet
up.
From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal
for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who
inspected the premises.
Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England's fascist regime controlled by the City of London when it surrendered its hard
drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls -- although the Guardian had already been in decline before they nabbed Glenn
Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive credibility.
Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank GOd for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation
AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional
US Empire.
One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that -- for the first time ever -- the
Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over "The West."
I'll bet Putin won't invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North and from the sea in the wintertime.
The Big Problem Is YThat Americans are afraid -- frightened -- but they are NOT afraid or frightened of a particular tbhing
-- it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of nuclear war. Trotsky said A'meria was the strongest nation but also
the most terrified' and nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has shifted to Russia
and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war -- or say, of an invasion from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas -- there might be hope.
But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or
American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by
coming to the homeland. The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup
in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapoms and Old Bush promised NAto wouldn;t
expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / miklitary
/congressional industyrial complex.
Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown
how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive
to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.
He really is taking Russians for idiots and fools!
There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen
other people at the same time.
The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions
and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian!
It's rather scary. The Guardian screaming for a crusade aimed at toppling the Russian system and replacing it with something
else, something closer to 'our values.' The moralizing is shocking and grotesque. I really wish the ground would just open up
and swallow the Guardian whole. We'd be far better off with out it.
Are powerful intelligence agencies compatible even with limited neoliberal democracy, or
democracy for top 10 or 1%?
Notable quotes:
"... I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy ..."
"... Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them. ..."
"... Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play... ..."
You have a good point, but I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression
becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip
service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian. Karl
Rove's dream to return the economy to the late 19th Century standard.
The Clintonoid project seems set on taking it to the late 16th century. Probably with a
return of chattel slavery. I recall during the George II administration someone in congress
advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to
bankruptcy
Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he
demands of them.
Do you really contend that Soros and the Koch brothers, and people like Adelson, aren't busily "undermining American democracy," whatever that is, via their
organizations (like ALEC and such) in favor of their oligarchic kleptocratic interests, and
going at it 24/7?
The phrase "reductio ad absurdam" comes to mind, for some reason...
Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the
Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are
putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us
mopes have only slave roles to play...
Loss of legitimacy of neoliberal elite reminds loss of legitimacy of Nomenklatura in the USSR.
This descent "into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental exploitation " also reminds epidemic
of alcoholism due to lack of persepdtives both in job environment and housing crisis, where young families did not
have a space to live in the USSR.
The logical end on the US empire might well be the USSR style crisis. which might eventually lead to the disintegration of the country.
Notable quotes:
"... NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services to save tax money. ..."
"... I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters. ..."
"... The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and themselves only. ..."
Have you seen the movie "Wind River" yet? It is the best depiction I've seen of the USA
descending into tribalism due to the loss of jobs, the drug epidemic and environmental
exploitation.
NBC News daily has Kumbaya propaganda to facilitate importing of cheap labor and
goods. But, what good is a service economy if there is no service? Just like Soviet
propaganda, corporate media today is in service of the oligarch owners and sold out party
elite. It tries to avoid the truth. Although, NBC did report on the astronomical rise in cost
of ambulance service. A couple thousand dollars for mile and half trip to the hospital. They
said it was due to the 2008 recession and the cutting of local volunteer emergency services
to save tax money.
Rather than tax the wealthy and corporations, the middle class is going into debt to pay
for education, medical bills, and $40 Northern Virginia one-way tolls. Federal taxes on the
middle class support the endless wars.
I agree the Democrats shot themselves in the foot because they are unconcerned for the
bottom 80% except for their identity issues. They serve their paymasters.
The recent Italian election documents the complete collapse of left leaning parties
that ignored the plight of the workers in the West. To me, to win, the left in America must
write off student debt, implement Medicare for All, end the forever wars and tax George
Soros, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pierre Omidyar, the Koch Brothers and the
Walton Family to pay for it. To work, criminal bankers need to be jailed and corporate boards
required to manage for long term profits that benefit society not just quarterly and
themselves only.
"... This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war." ..."
"... The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation on its borders in Ukraine. ..."
"... On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash, it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's because the system itself encouraged those inflows. ..."
"... "Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it really doesn't need a standalone military anyway. ..."
"... From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who inspected the premises. ..."
"... There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen other people at the same time. ..."
"... The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian! ..."
Mark Rice-Oxley,
Guardian columnist and the first in line to fight in WWIII.
The alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 agent Sergei Skripal has caused the Russophobic MSM to go into overdrive. Nowhere is the desperation
with which the Skripal case has been seized more obvious than the Guardian. Luke Harding is spluttering incoherently about a
weapons lab that might not even exist anymore . Simon Jenkins gamely takes up his position as the only rational person left at
the Guardian, before being heckled in the comments and dismissed as a contrarian by Michael White on twitter. More and more the media
are becoming a home for dangerous, aggressive, confrontational rhetoric that has no place in sensible, adult newspapers.
Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury,
one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during
the cold war.
Read this. It's from a respected "unbiased", liberal news outlet. It is the worst, most partisan political language I have ever
heard, more heated and emotionally charged than even the most fraught moments of the Cold War. It is dangerous to the whole planet,
and has no place in our media.
If everything he said in the following article were true, if he had nothing but noble intentions and right on his side, this would
still be needlessly polarizing and war-like language.
To make it worse, everything he proceeds to say is a complete lie.
Usually we would entitle these pieces "fact checks", but this goes beyond that. This? This is a reality check.
Its agents pop over for murder and shopping
FALSE: There's no proof any of this ever happened. There has been no trial in the Litvinenko case. The
"public
inquiry" was a farce, with no cross-examination of witnesses, evidence given in secret and anonymous witnesses. All of which
contravene British law regarding a fair trial.
even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots.
TRUE sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too
busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here is that WE let them. Oligarchs
have been fleeing Russia for over a decade. Why? Because, in Russia, Putin's government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and
embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That's why you have wanted criminals like
Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he's down to
his
"last 270 million" .
When was the last time a British billionaire was prosecuted for financial crimes? Mega-Corporations owe
literally billions in tax , and our government lets them
get away with it.
Its digital natives use their skills not for solving Russia's own considerable internal problems but to subvert the prosperous
adversaries that it secretly envies.
FALSE: Russiagate is a farce,
anyone with an open-mind can see that . The reference to Russians envying the west is childish and insulting. The 13, just thirteen,
Russians who were indicted by Mueller have no connection to the Russian government, a
nd allegedly
campaigned for many candidates , and both for and against Trump. They are a PR firm, nothing more.
It bought a World Cup,
FALSE: The World Cup bids are voted on, and after years and years of investigation the US/UK teams have found so little evidence
of corruption in the Russia bid that they simply stopped talking about it. If the FBI had found even the slightest hint of financial
malpractice, would we ever have stopped hearing about it?
Regarding the second "neighbour": Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are not at war. Ukraine has claimed to have been "invaded" by Russia
many times but has never declared war. Why? Because they rely on Russian gas to live, and because they know that if Russia were to
ever REALLY invade, the war would last only just a big longer than the Georgian one. The
"anti-terrorist operation" in Ukraine was started by the coup government in 2014. Since that time over 10,000 people have died.
The vast majority killed by the governments mercenaries and far-right militias many of whom
espouse outright fascism
.
bombed children to save a butcher in the Middle East.
MISLEADING: The statement is trying to paint Russia/Assad as deliberately targeting children, which is clearly untrue. Russia
is operating in Syria in full compliance with international law. Unlike literally everybody else bar Iran. When Russia entered the
conflict, at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government, Jihadists were winning the war. ISIS had huge swathes of territory,
al-Qaeda affiliates had strongholds in all of Syria's major cities. Syria was on the brink of collapse. Rice-Oxley is unclear whether
or not he thinks this is a good thing.
Today, ISIS is obliterated, Aleppo is free
and the war is almost over. Apparently Syria becoming another Libya is preferable to a secular government winning a war against terrorists
and US-backed mercenaries.
And now it wants to start a new nuclear arms race.
FALSE: America started the arms race when they pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
Putin warned at the time it was a dangerous move . America then moved their
AEGIS "defense
shield" into Eastern Europe . Giving them the possibility of first-strike without retaliation. This is an untennable position
for any country.
Putin warned, at the time, that Russia would have to respond. They have responded. Mr Rice-Oxley should take this up with Bush
and Cheney if he has a problem with it.
And before the whataboutists say, "America does some of that stuff too", that may be true, but just because the US is occasionally
awful it doesn't mean that Russia isn't.
MISLEADING: America doesn't do "some of that stuff". No, America aren't "occasionally awful". They do ALL of that stuff, and have
been the biggest destructive force on the planet for over 70 years. Since Putin came to power America has carried out aggressive
military operations against Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. They have sanctioned and threatened
and carried out coups against North Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Honduras, Venezuela and Cuba. All that time, the US has also claimed the
right to extradite and torture foreign nationals with impunity. The war crimes of American forces and agencies are beyond measure
and count.
We are so used to American crimes we just don't see them anymore. Imagine Putin, at one his epic four-hour Q&A sessions, off-handedly
admitting to torturing people in illegal prison camps .
Would we ever hear the end of it?
Even if you cede the utterly false claim that Russia has "invaded two neighbours", the scale of destruction just does not compare.
Invert the scale of destruction and casualties of Georgia and Iraq. Imagine Putin's government had killed 500,000 people in Georgia
alone, whilst routinely condemning the US for a week-long war in Iraq that killed less than 600 people. Imagine Russia kidnapped
foreign nationals and tortured them, whilst lambasting America's human rights record.
The double-think employed here is literally insane.
Note to Rice-Oxley and his peers, pointing out your near-delusional hypocrisy is not "whataboutism". It's a standard rhetorical
appeal to fairness. If you believe the world shouldn't be fair, fine, but don't expect other people not to point out your double
standards.
As for poor little Britain, it seems to take this brazen bullying like a whipping boy in the playground who has wet himself.
Boycott the World Cup? That'll teach them!
FALSE: Rice-Oxley is trying to paint a picture of false weakness in order to promote calls for action. Britain has been anything
but cooperative with Russia. British forces operate illegally in
Syria , they arm and train rebels. They refused to let Russian authorities see the evidence in the Litvinenko case, and refused
to let Russian lawyers cross-examine witnesses. Britain's attitude to Russia has been needlessly, provocatively antagonistic for
years.
Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful, a lazy smear
casting an entire nation as a ludicrous two-dimensional pantomime villain with a pocketful of poisonous potions .Of course, the
vast majority of Russians are indeed misrepresented by such portrayals, because they are largely innocent in these antics.
TRUE: Russians do complain about this, which is entirely justifiable. The western representation of Russians is ignorant and racist
almost without exception. It is an effort, just like Rice-Oxley's column, to demonize an entire people and whip up hatred of Russia
so that people will support US-UK warmongering.
Most ordinary Russians are in fact also victims of the power system in their country, which requires ideas such as individual
comfort, aspiration, dignity, prosperity and hope to be subjugated to the wanton reflexes of the state
FALSE: Putin's government has decreased poverty by
over 66% in 17 years . They have increased life-expectancy, decreased crime, and increased public health. Pensions, social security
and infrastructure have all been rebuilt. These are not controversial or debated claims. The Guardian published them itself just
a few years ago. That is hardly a state where hope and aspiration are put aside.
Why is Russian power like this: cynical, destructive, zero-sum, determined to bring everything down to a base level where everyone
thinks the worst of each other and behaves accordingly?
MISLEADING FALLACY: This is simply projection. There is no logical basis for this statement. He is simply employing the old rhetorical
trick of asking WHY something exists, as a way of establishing its existence. This allows the (dishonest) author to sell his own
agenda as if it solves a riddle. Before you can explain something, you need to establish an explanandum something which requires
explaining. This is the basic logical process that our dear author is attempting to circumvent. We don't NEED to explain why
Russian power is like this, because he hasn't yet established that it is .
I think there are two reasons. The most powerful political idea in Russia is restoration. A decade of humiliation – economic,
social and geopolitical – that followed its rebirth in 1991 became the defining narrative of the new nation.
MISLEADING LANGUAGE: Describing the absolute destruction caused by the fall of the USSR as "rebirth" is an absurd joke. People
sold their medals, furniture and keepsakes for food, people froze to death in the streets.
At times, even the continued existence of the Russian Federation appeared under threat.
TRUE: This is true. Russia was in danger of Balkanisation. The possibility of dozens of anarchic microstates, many with access
to nuclear weapons, was very real. Most rational people would consider this a bad thing. The achievement of Putin's government in
pulling Russia back from the brink should be applauded. Especially when compared with our Western governments who can barely even
maintain the functional social security states created by their predecessors. Compare the NHS now with the NHS in 2000, compare Russia's
health service now to 17 years ago. Who do you think is really in trouble?
The second reason is that the parlous internal state of Russia – absurdist justice, a threadbare social safety net, a pyramid
society in which a very few get very rich and the rest languish – creates moral ambivalence.
PROJECTION: he actually makes this statement without even a hint of irony. The Tory government has killed people by slashing their
benefits, and homeless people froze to death during the recent blizzards. The overall trend of British social structure has been
down, for decades.
Poverty is increasing all the time ,
food banks are opening and people are increasingly desperate. We are trending down. 20%, one in five British people,
now live in poverty .
In that same time, as stated above, Russia's poverty has gone down and down. 13% of Russians live in poverty, almost half the
UK rate. In 2014, before we sanctioned Russia, it was only 10%. Even the briefest research would show this. Columnists like Rice-Oxley
go out of their way to avoid inconvenient facts.
What is to be done? I wouldn't respond with empty threats, Boris Johnson. No one cares.
Here we come to the centre of the shrubbery maze, up until now the column was just build up. Establishing a "problem" so he can
pitch us a "solution".
There are only two weaknesses in this bully's defences. The first is his money. Britain needs to do something about the dodgy
Russian billions swilling through its financial system. Make it really hard for Kremlin-connected money to buy football clubs
or businesses or establish dodgy limited partnerships; stop oligarchs from raising capital on the London stock exchange. Don't
bother with sanctions. Just say: "No thanks, we don't want your business."
FALSE: This shows not even the most basic understanding of the way money works. Money being made in Russia and spent in London
is bad fo Russia. Sending billionaires back to Russia would inject money INTO the Russian economy. Either Rice-Oxley is actually
a moron, or he is being deliberately dishonest.
What he REALLY means is that we should put pressure on the oligarchs, not to the hurt the Russian economy, but in the hopes the
oligarchs will turn on Putin and remove him by undemocratic means.
He is pushing for backdoor regime change. And if you think I'm reading too much into this, then here
The second is public opinion. The imminent presidential election is a foregone conclusion, but the mood in Russia can turn
suddenly, as we saw in 1991, 1993 and 2011-2012.
Notice how quickly he dismisses the democratic will of the Russian people. Poor, stupid, "envious" Russians aren't equipped to
make their own decisions. We need to step in. "Public opinion" turning means a colour revolution. It means US backed regime change
in a nuclear armed super-power. Backed by the cyberwarriors paid to spread Western propaganda online.
Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public
opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to
win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.
The hypocrisy is mind-blowing, when I read this paragraph I was dumb-founded. Speechless. For months we've been hearing about
how terrible Russia is for allegedly interfering in the American election. Damaging democracy with reporting true news out of context
and some well placed memes.
Our response? Our defense of our "values"? Use the armies of online propagandists our governments employ –
their existence
was reported in the
Guardian – in order to undermine, or undo the democratic will of the Russian people. Rice-Oxley is positing this with a straight
face.
Russia is such a destabilising threat to "our democratic values", such a moral vacuum, that we must use subterfuge to undermine
their elections and remove their popular head of state.
Rice-Oxley wants to push and prod and provoke and antagonise a nuclear armed power that, at worst, is guilty of nothing but playing
our game by our rules and winning. He wants to build a case for war with Russia, and he's doing it on bedrock of cynical lies.
It's all incredibly dangerous. Hopefully they'll realise that before it's too late. For all our sakes.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Putin's 10 year plan for the future of Russia. Putin is a builder, like Peter the Great. He
is a seeker after excellence, like Catherine the Great. If his 10 year plan can achieve the half of what he set out in his recent
speech, the name Putin will go down in history with the same sobriquet.
The most important part of Putin's March 1st speech:
And on the village level, because that's where most of the real work of the world is done, a snippet BTL from Auslander who
lives in the Crimea: "the first implications of anti corruption efforts are obvious in our little village. We'll see how it pans
out but everyone can, and should, assist in this task. The proof will be in the pudding when The West starts screaming about certain
kind, gentle and innocent 'businessmen' who end up counting trees [in Siberia?] for a decade or three."
I wonder how much longer the general readership over there will cotton on to the pro-war and propaganda agenda of the Guardian
and leave it en masse? It's as dishonest as The Sun.
"Poor little Britain", with half the population, a much smaller territory ,and being part of the largest military alliance in
the world, spends only 10 billions less than Russia in "defense". One of those "defense" strategies included in the budget, one
that all those commentators vilifying Russia conveniently ignore, is to blow up weddings, funerals and entire villages with missiles
fired from drones. No trial, no public kill list, no record of people killed, no accountability. That is sanctioned, extra-judicial
murder of suspects and everyone around them. And these progressive commentators, eager to spread prosperity by any mean, seem
to be ok with it.
Update: as I was writing this I noticed that The Guardian has a piece by (of all people!), Simon Jenkins, which, yes, takes
for granted that the assassination attempt was carried out by the Russians, but asks if there is a moral difference between that
and killing suspects with drone strikes. For that, he has been labeled an useful idiot and "an apologist for attempted mass murder
on British soil". Highly amusing if you ask me, but also a terrifying example of how straying if only a little bit from the official
line ("yes, the Russians tried to kill this guy, they are the worst, but maybe we should have a look at ourselves and our (kind
of) inappropriate tendency to murder everyone we want") has to be punished. There are no ifs or buts while at the two minutes
of hate. Now even the pieces that are there to give a semblance of balance have to be torn apart by those liberal, prosperity
loving persons that can´t seem to be able to condemn the murder of children at will. Now it is time to express hatred towards
Goldstein, I mean, of course, Putin and everything Russia.
This,,,"Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war."
Should be changed to "The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during
the cold war."
All suffering from PTDS AKA Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Russophobes over at the Guardian (and the rest of the corporate media) would be well advised to review the trial of Julius
Streicher at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine
and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation
on its borders in Ukraine.
I find it the ultimate paradox that a publication purporting to be 'liberal' acts so enthusiastically
for deadly regime changes from this once Trotskyist but now extreme Right Wing group. There is nothing 'liberal', 'humanitarian',
or moral about promotion of deadly regime changes that have destroyed previously peaceful nations and murdered hundreds of thousands
in the process. Guardian for the geopolitical goals of the self-declared 'exceptional' Empire, the new 'master race' that of the
US.
One final observation on the Skripal case (for now): this stuff is so toxic. We don't know what the stuff is: nevertheless,
we know it is so toxic, can only be made by a state, and needs careful expert handling. We know this because every paper
and TV channel has by now emphasised that this stuff is so toxic, etc. If we missed the "nerve agents and what they do
to you" coverage: we can ascertain for ourselves from the men in the hazmat suits, the this stuff must be so toxic. The
Army have now been deployed: on hand after completing the largest CW exercise ever held, 'Toxic Dagger'; they are now employing
their specialist skills to carry out "Sensitive Site Operations" because this stuff is you get it by now. In another piece of
pure theater: police in hazmat suits were examining the grave of Alexander and Liudmila Skripal because even after a year or more
buried underground, you can't be too careful, because this stuff is A woman from the office next to Zizzi was taken ill (maybe
she had the risotto con pesce) because even after a week, and next door, traces of this stuff can still be
11 (or 16) people were hospitalised from the effects of 'this stuff': the first attending officer, Nick Bailey, is only just
out of ICU and lucky to be alive. The Skripal's are not so lucky: and on "palliative care" according to H de Bretton-Gordon. Yet
the eye-witness calling himself 'Jamie Paine' was close enough to get coughed on; and the unnamed passing doctor and nurse that
attended the Skripals at the scene, clearing their airways, are all fine (despite being hospitalised). Yet PC Bailey nearly died?
Funny that?
When first you practice to deceive: someone in the propaganda department must have noticed this glaring inconsistency. Enter,
stage right, former Met Chief Ian (now Lord) Blair (guess who was leading the Met when Litvinenko was poisoned?): to clarify that
PC Bailey was contaminated when he was the first officer to enter the Skripal's home – not attend them in Salisbury. This allowed
the Torygraph and Fox to speculate that Yulia brought a contaminated present for her father (which she kept in a drawer for a
week, because this stuff is so toxic?). The Torygraph's previous spin: that Skripal was poisoned for his contributions
to the Pissgate dossier were torpedoed by Orbis (Steele's company). Speaking on Radio 4: after pushing the Buzzfeed "14 other
deaths" dodgy dossier; Blair said "So there maybe some clues floating around in here." Yes, clues that you are lying? This is
pure theater: only it is more Morecambe and Wise than Shakespeare.
Check out the report from
C4News (mute the sound).
Two guys plodding around in fluorescent breather suits, another couple with gas masks, but behind them firemen in normal uniform
and no gas masks and the reporter 20 feet in front, in civvies wih no protective gear at all.
Virulent nerve agent threat? Theatre, and not very convincing at that.
Flaxgirl: a bit OT, but not too much as this event does not seem to have too much basis in reality: on the question of fabrication
the UK Home Office held an event this week – Security and Policing 2018 – where the "Live Demo Area" was sponsored by Crisis Cast.
I though you might interested? Are they providing critical incident training: or the critical incidents themselves is a legitimate
question after the events in Salisbury?
I suppose by now we should be used to the nauseating, self-righteous bluster dished out on a daily basis by the Anglo-Zionist
media. The two minutes hate by the flabby 'left' liberals who now have apparently joined forces with the demented US neo-cons
in openly baying for a war against Russia. How, exactly did these people expect Russia to react to the abrogation of the ABM agreement,
marching NATO right up to Russia's doorstep, staging coups in the Ukraine and Georgia, having the US sixth fleet swanning around
in the Black Sea? Of course, Russia reacted as any other self-respecting state would react to such blatant provocations. And this
includes the US during the Cuba crisis and its self-proclaimed right to intervene in its sphere of influence – Latin America –
and for that matter anywhere else on the planet. And it does so A L'outrance.
But I was foregetting, the Anglo-Zionist axis has a divine mission mandated by the deity to reconfigure the world and bring
democracy and freedom to those "Lesser breeds without the Law" (Kipling). Of course, this updated version of 'taking up the white
man's burden' by the 'exceptional people' may involve mass murder, mayhem, destruction and chaos, unfortunately necessary in the
short(ish) run. But these benighted peoples should realise it is for their own good, and if this means starving to death 500,000
Iraqi children through sanctions, well, it was 'worth it' according to the lovely Madeline Albright. This is the language and
methodology of a totalitarian imperialism. As someone has remarked the Anglo-zionist empire is not on the wrong side of history,
it is the wrong side of history.
The arrogance, ignorance and crass venality of these people is manifest to the point of parody.
I agree with Mark Rice-Oxley that Russian oligarchs should pull their money out of Britain and return it to Russia to invest in
businesses there. That would be the ethical thing for them to do, to fulfill their proper tax obligations and stop using Britain
as a tax haven.
I hear that Russia has had another bumper wheat harvest and is now poised to take over from Australia as the major wheat exporter
to Egypt and Indonesia, the world's biggest buyers of wheat. So if Russian oligarchs are wondering where to put their money in,
wheat production, research into improving wheat yields and the conditions wheat is grown in are just a few areas they can invest
in.
Be careful what you wish for, Mr Rice-Oxley – your wish might come true bigger than you realise!
On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash,
it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain's GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial
services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain's financial system are "dodgy", that's
because the system itself encouraged those inflows.
"Poor little Britain" which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it's
a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it's part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it
really doesn't need a standalone military anyway.
"It's them, over there, they are evil. We must stop them. They are coming for us, they will take our children and steal our i
phones !!! Arrgh!!!" "I'll have another strong short black thanks"
Their world is falling apart- in Korea and the Middle East the Empire is on the verge of eviction. All the certitudes of yesteryear
are dissolving. Even the Turks, who, famously, held the line in Korea when the PLA attacked and the US Eighth Army fled south,
are now on the other side. The same Turks who hosted US nuclear armed strategic missiles so openly that the USSR sent missiles
of its own to Cuba.
As to the UK, the economy is contracting and the economic infrastructure is cracking up- living standards are plummeting and the
only recourse of those responsible for the mess-the officers on the bridge- is propaganda. Like the Empire the British Establishment
has been living on the fruits of its own propaganda for so long that, when it is exposed as merely empty bullying, there is nothing
left but to resort to more lies in the hope that they will obscure raw and looming reality.
In The Guardian newsroom the water
is three feet deep and rising inexorably, the ship is sinking and all hands are required to bail or the screens will go black.
There is no time to wait for developments, for investigations to be completed, for evidence- every ounce of strength must be thrown
into the defiance of nature, the shocking nakedness of reality.
There is something very significant about the way that simultaneous attacks of impotent russophobic dementia are eating away
the brains of the rulers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The game, which has been going the same way for about 500 years, is up. The maritime empire is becoming marginal and the force
that it has used, throughout these centuries, no longer overwhelms. The cruisers and carriers no longer work except to intimidate
those not worth frightening.
There is only one thing left for the Empire and its hundreds of thousands of apparatchiki-from cops to pundits, from Professors
to jailers- either they adjust to a new dispensation because the Times are Changing or they blow themselves and the whole planet
up.
From what's emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury. Instead, it appears Mr Skripal
for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who
inspected the premises.
Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England's fascist regime controlled by the City of London when it surrendered its hard
drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls -- although the Guardian had already been in decline before they nabbed Glenn
Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive credibility.
Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank GOd for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation
AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional
US Empire.
One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that -- for the first time ever -- the
Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over "The West."
I'll bet Putin won't invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North and from the sea in the wintertime.
The Big Problem Is YThat Americans are afraid -- frightened -- but they are NOT afraid or frightened of a particular tbhing
-- it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of nuclear war. Trotsky said A'meria was the strongest nation but also
the most terrified' and nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has shifted to Russia
and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war -- or say, of an invasion from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas -- there might be hope.
But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or
American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by
coming to the homeland. The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup
in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapoms and Old Bush promised NAto wouldn;t
expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / miklitary
/congressional industyrial complex.
Maybe it's time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown
how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive
to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.
He really is taking Russians for idiots and fools!
There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn't do it: The Russians aren't so clumsy as to poison over a dozen
other people at the same time.
The whole piece is an emotionally charged rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions
and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the 'liberal' 'left of centre' Guardian!
It's rather scary. The Guardian screaming for a crusade aimed at toppling the Russian system and replacing it with something
else, something closer to 'our values.' The moralizing is shocking and grotesque. I really wish the ground would just open up
and swallow the Guardian whole. We'd be far better off with out it.
Is it so difficult to understand that there are strong incentives to create the "Russia
Threat" to hide the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. The current can of political worms
and infighting in Washington, DC between POTUS and intelligence agencies factions supporting
anti-trump color revolution clearly demonstrate that this crisis is systemic in nature. In
this sense, we can talk about the transformation of the US political system into something
new.
One feature of this new system is that the US foreign policy now is influenced, if not
controlled by intelligence agencies. The latter also proved to be capable of acting as the
kingmakers in the US Presidential elections (this time with side effects: derailing Sanders
eventually led to the election of Trump; that's why efforts to depose Trump commenced
immediately.)
A large part of the US elite is willing to create the situation of balancing on the edge
of nuclear war because it allows them to swipe the dirt under the carpet and unite the nation
on bogus premises, suppressing the crisis of confidence in the neoliberal elite.
Neo-McCarthyism witch hunt serves exactly this purpose.
Also now it is clear that the intelligence agencies and Pentagon, play active, and maybe
even decisive part in determining the US foreign policy, US population and elected POTUS be
damned.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff showed this new arrangement in Syria in July
2017. And the fact that he was not fired on the spot might well signify the change in
political power between the "deep state" and the "surface state". With the latter one step
closer to being just a Potemkin Village.
So now we are supposed to believe unquestioningly the word of torturers, perjurers and
entrapment artists, all talking about alleged evidence that we are not allowed to see?
Did you learn nothing from the "Iraqi WMD" fiasco or the "ZOMG! Assad gassed his own
peoples ZOMG!" debacle?
Funny how in each of these instances, the intelligence community's lies just happened to
coincide with the agenda of empire.
It will be interesting to see why the interviewing FBI Agents to whom Flynn has admitted to
the Mueller Op telling a lie, or lies, did not avail Flynn the opportunity of the 'lie
circumstantial." From what I think I know about the case, the answers to the questions put to
Flynn were already known to the Agents from wire overhears; and their substance did not
constitute a crime in any case. Why would not the Agents interviewing Flynn have said "If
you're telling me this, we have reason to think that you're mistaken?" If I'm correct in my
understanding, in my opinion, the Agents conducted themselves in a very chickenshit fashion
and I would suspect an Agenda was in play.
Making a more general observation regarding the Mueller Op, it seems to me that not the
least reprehensible effect of its existence is that de facto it has usurped the authority of
the White House and the State Department to conduct Foreign Policy vis a vis Russia. For
example, I doubt very much whether Mueller cleared his ridiculous indictment relating to the
Russian troll farm, a requirement that at one time would have been SOP for any FBI Office or
USAtty Office bringing an indictment of this kind. And even if Mueller did, what would, what
could the WH or State response have been given the mishapen political climate and the track
record of outrageous leaking that so far have gone on without consequence to the leaker.
So the net effect is that Mueller's office is conducting our Russian foreign policy.
Authority without either responsibility or expertise is not a desirable thing when it comes
to forging correct relations with a nuclear power.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in
waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the
wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this
around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with this
post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war
based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched
reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly,
for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the
Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before
Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking to
save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united against
Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that -- unlike
Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability threatens
the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary Clinton was a
sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am
not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
There is a Russian term for the political condition into which the USA political establishment has arrived: The USA
became "nedogovorosposobniy" -- a derogatory term for people who are iether mentally incapacitated or are such crooks that
nobody can't be rely on signed by them treaties and who can break any promises given and signed in writing with ease.
After painful months of negotiation with the US, Sergei Lavrov regretfully announced that the Americans were such. There are
rules, and the Americans do not know how to observe them. There are boundaries, but no-one has taught them to the Americans. In this
sense, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians are grown-ups. It is possible to do business with them without risking the
survival of the species.'
That's a sign of a "failed state"
Notable quotes:
"... He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of "illegitimate and unfair" efforts to contain Russia, adding that "we will win in the long run." He added that "those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves." ..."
Putin then ... vented his frustration with the U.S. political system saying "
it has demonstrated
its inefficiency and has been eating itself up."
"
It's quite difficult to interact with such a system, because it's unpredictable
,"
Putin said.
Russian hopes for a detente and better ties with Washington have been dashed by the ongoing
congressional and FBI investigations into allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.
Speaking about the bitter tensions in Russia-West relations, Putin said they have been rooted in Western
efforts to contain and weaken Russia.
"We are a great power, and no one likes competition," he said.
Turning his attention to a particularly sensitive topic, Putin said he was dismayed by what he
described as the U.S. role in the ouster of Ukraine's Russia-friendly president in February 2014 amid
massive protests.
Putin charged that the U.S. had asked Russia to help persuade then-President Viktor Yanukovych not to
use force against protesters and then "rudely and blatantly" cheated Russia,
sponsoring what he
called a "coup.
" Russia responded by rushing through a referendum in Ukraine's Crimean
Peninsula, whose result was an overwhelming majority voting to join Russia.
"
Few expected us to act so quickly and so resolutely, not to say daringly
," Putin
said.
He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of
"illegitimate and unfair" efforts to contain Russia, adding that "we will win in the long run." He added
that "those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves."
Responding to a question about Russia's growing global leverage, Putin responded: "If we play
strongly with weak cards, it means the others are just poor players, they aren't as strong as it seemed,
they must be lacking something."
* * *
Finally, Putin, who presented a sweeping array of new Russian
nuclear weapons last week
, voiced hope that nuclear weapons will never be used --
but warned
that Russia will retaliate in kind if it comes under a nuclear attack.
"The decision to use nuclear weapons can only be made if our early warning system not only detects a
missile launch but clearly forecasts its flight path and the time when warheads reach the Russian
territory," he said. "If someone makes a decision to destroy Russia, then we have a legitimate right to
respond."
He concluded ominously:
"Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire
world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What is such a world for, if
there were no Russia?"
Tags
War Conflict
Politics
"Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire
world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What
is such a world for, if there were no Russia?"
Many Americans are angry that Soviet socialists threw their communist
comrades out. Putin, a better capitalist than most US presidents in
recent decades, hates communists as much as everyone else does.
Well. It was obvious for some time that a corrupt gov will lead
unfortunately to capitalism going rogue and eating itself up.
Don't get me wrong, is not the capitalism failure is the failure
of the ones who supposedly had to ensure the existence of a true
free but balanced market, and that's the gov, so as in the former
Soviet bloc this proves again that too big and powerful gov
naturally evolves into an oligarchy which drives the system to
self cannibalize.
What Washington really haptes about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order.
Notable quotes:
"... The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. ..."
"... That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny. ..."
"... John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. ..."
"... What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. ..."
"... Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day. ..."
"... But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. ..."
"... The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. ..."
"... Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground. ..."
"... The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. ..."
"... The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble. ..."
"... After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad. ..."
"... China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. ..."
"... American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike. ..."
"... not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs. ..."
"... Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example? ..."
"... Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for. ..."
"... Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has. ..."
"... When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests." ..."
"... America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad. ..."
"... America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. ..."
"... In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons ..."
"... The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors. ..."
"... GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now? ..."
"... US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that. ..."
"... The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style. ..."
"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division
of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least
a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development,
and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to
all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems." Vladimir Putin, President
Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club
Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system
that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug",
Putin is the "new Hitler"?
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For
example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in
universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but
there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility.
Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International
Discussion Club:
"Another priority is global healthcare . All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long
and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all
priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion
Club)
How many "liberal" politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin's? Not very many. The Democrats are much more
partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the
voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They've
simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.
Many Americans would find Putin's views on climate change equally surprising. Here's another clip from the Valdai speech:
"Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. I suggest that
we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new,
groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us
to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.
It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity
to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities,
and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN
to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia
is willing to co-sponsor such a forum .." Valdai)
Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after
all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin's image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed
from the media's coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn't want people to know that Putin is a
reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that
he's is a scheming tyrannical despot who's obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it's
not true.
Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that's just more propaganda from
the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security.
He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction
ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:
"Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising
by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the
same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly."
Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from
Putin's reforms and a system of distribution that –judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that
in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation's wealth trickles upward
to the parasitic 1 percent.
Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty
and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have
been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate
taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have
a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the "kleptocracy has begun to fade."
Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative.
This helps to explain why Putin's public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin
the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at
the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third
(43 percent positive rating) behind Germany's Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According
to Gallup: "Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years."
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations
where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans
who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding
a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who
kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to "sow discord" and destroy our precious democracy
(no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It's a pathetic litany of
libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup's results indicate.
Bottom line: Propaganda works.
The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist
the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded
a report titled "Russia's Wrong Direction" that suggested that Russia's increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that
it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that "the very idea of a 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."
That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.
John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling
back democracy" in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing
less "open and pluralistic". Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign
against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations
that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.
Needless to say, none of the nation's newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly
from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM's views on Putin are either universally
accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called "free press" is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate
machine that censors all opinions that don't promote their own malign political agenda.
What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:
"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force,
one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for
the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival
that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against
each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.
But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the
turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced
the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and
their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating
strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.
The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current
war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression
is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The
War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy.
The focus going forward will be on "Great Power Competition", that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more
flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the "growing threat from revisionist powers", Russia and China. In
short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.
Putin has become an obstacle to Washington's imperial ambitions which is why he's has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1.
It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical "rolling back democracy" in Russia. It's
all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the
towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media
to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions,
more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.
Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its
lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington's "uncontained hyper-use of force" was creating "new centers
of tension", exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent
conflicts." He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and "overstepped its national borders
in every way." As a result of Washington's aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily
eroded and "No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this," Putin thundered in Munich. "No one feels safe."
On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly
in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing
account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington's use of force. Here's
Putin:
"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention
destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty,
social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life
The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy,
which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting
for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose
statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ."
US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions
have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where
anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern
Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington's ruthless stewardship.
Here's more from Putin:
"The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes.
Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions .It is irresponsible
to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of
them or somehow eliminate them ."
Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy
to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform
at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct
a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground.
Putin: "We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world."
Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.
Putin again: "Dear colleagues, relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are
facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism .Russia is confident of the United Nations' enormous
potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations,
we will consistently work to strengthen the UN's central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make
the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples."
So, here's the question: Is Putin "evil" for opposing Washington's regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and
for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he's evil, because he won't click his heels
and do as he's told by the global hegemon?
The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century.
The next war, if it comes, will be over something like Cobalt. The future lies in big and plentiful electric batteries and China
and Russia between them control almost 50% of the known supply of Cobalt, while the US has none. Stand by and wait, folks.
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the
two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class.
I would be staggered is only 14 percent of Americans had a negative view of Putin – almost everybody I have spoken to
has completely swallowed the media line. In Europe UK in particular has been brainwashed against him – southern Europe far less
so. The 28 percent is more realistic.
Is China trying to trash our constitution? Is China invading other countries, killing people with missiles and bombs all over
the world, staging "color revolutions" and subverting legitimate governments in the "West"? Is China patrolling the Gulf of Mexico
and putting missiles in Mexico and Canada? China hasn't done anything bad to me or to anyone I know, so please explain how China
is "our" "rival"?
This is a great article. The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful
for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble.
There's a simple reason why Putin is talking sense. He's doing nothing more than stating customary international law. Those
economic quotes have been set out in a series of UN resolutions including A/RES/41/128 on the right to development. This is the
acquis of the civilized world. No country in the world opposes it – except the USA. The US votes alone against it every time it
comes up, even though customary international law is US federal and state common law under the Supreme Court decision, The Paquete
Habana.
Mr. Whitney has accepted the official framing that it's all about Putin. That clever decision makes his article more provocative.
Calm appraisal of the current official foreign devil is inherently inflammatory. However, this has nothing to do with Putin. Rigid
legalist that he is, his hands are tied. Russia has ratified the ICESCR.
Russia has ratified the ICESCR. The USA has not. Here are some of the rights Russians have that you do not:
OHCHR has a convenient compilation showing how each government meets its legal obligations and commitments. The synoptic heatmap
below shows the US deep down in the shithole with Wahhabi headchoppers and neocolonial African presidents-for-life.
The exhaustively documented fact here is, the Russian state meets world standards. The US government does not. The Russian
government respects, protects, and fulfils human rights. The US government fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach,
and negates your incomplete half-assed constitutional rights with statist red tape. Russians get a better deal than you do. Merely
by reciting the law as he does, Putin would win a fair election here with Roosevelt-scale majorities, again and again. That's
why he drives the US government up the wall.
Where is it the propaganda campaign going? We have seen this before as preparation for a war or a regime change. In Russia both
are unlikely to succeed. That leaves an ever increasing propaganda bombast in the West, people brainwashed to the point where
outright racism against anything 'Russian' will become widespread. Then what? Move movies with white Russian villains, as if that
is what threatens West the most?
Russia can neither be isolated, nor 'collapsed' economically, nor ignored. It is too resource rich and powerful. Russia could
possibly be checked in a second tier conflict (Syria?), but that would be of minimal consequence. Ukraine could be escalated,
but there Russia has an enormous local logistics advantage, it would be a disaster for Kiev. And Russia is on friendly terms with
China, its only potential military threat on land.
Propaganda by itself does nothing, it is only means to an end. West is in no position to go beyond propaganda, so we might
experience a bizarre example of a mindless propaganda that goes on and on. As with all propaganda the main target is the domestic
population – in other words it is the common people in the West who are being propagandised and in effect made more stupid, less
capable of making rational decisions.
Even a slight u-turn is at this point unthinkable, almost all elites have too visibly engaged in the evil-Russia talk, how
could they let go of it? We are stuck, we might get saved by an unrelated 'big event' somewhere else. If not, this could just
be fatal, after all this belligerent talk we could perish because somebody dared to call Clinton a satan on Facebook. And they
didn't use their real name – the horror .
My own view is that Putin is probably as trustworthy and honest as any other ex-KGB man. On the other hand he does come across
as intelligent, cautious, and calm. Especially when compared to the crook Hillary or the oaf Trump.
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This is starting to bother me. Stuff is disappearing from the web. Look at the link below to an Al Jazeera documentary which
has disappeared from YouTube and the web.
Si1ver1ock, interesting problems you're having. I had no problem with the links, but then the magic of Tor means I'm reaching
them from the Netherlands. State censorship is harder when you can access suppressed URLs from a couple dozen different countries.
Please do respond, and in good faith, to the reply of commenter Harold Smith. I share his apparent concern that you may be
conflating the interests of the American people with the imperial ambitions of their Uncle Sam.
I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing. I
tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business,
while China certainly is.
Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned. However, I am afraid our national focus in this
unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able
to deal with it in a timely fashion.
"I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing."
In your original comment you said:
"The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century."
Since a big part of the U.S. "focus" on Russia is military encirclement, confrontation by proxy, the threat of direct conflict
even nuclear war, etc., this statement clearly suggests a "military solution" to "contain" an economically "rising" China, IMO.
(After all, when the only tool the U.S. "government" has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
But so what if China has some kind of "mastery" of the Eastern hemisphere? To the extent that's true, at least they didn't
do it by way of lawless imperial treachery.
The U.S. is losing influence all over the world because it's making itself hated; it's imposing itself everywhere and squandering
everything of value on the hopeless pursuit of world domination and control.
"I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade
and business, while China certainly is."
The thing is "we" don't demonize Russia "as a nation"; rather, it's done by the Satanic ruling class that hates Russia – not
for any rational reason, but for the same reason that Cain hated Abel: because "evil" hates a "good" example.
"Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned."
Unless you're going change the definition of "rival" again, I should point out that the U.S. "government" doesn't generally
attack "rivals" but deems any country that asserts its sovereign independence and refuses to take orders an "enemy", subject to
economic, political and military attack.
"However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious
competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion."
You seem to be conflating "us as a people" with the U.S. "government" which has by now lost even the pretense of moral and
constitutional legitimacy, and thus has nothing remotely to do with what's in the best interests of "us as a people".
Here is the explanation. China is economic rival to US. That is not only inconvenient, rival, it is the most efficient and
most dangerous rival, because who is wining the economic competition is pushing out the opponent from world markets.
That people in the West believe the lies that TPTB concoct for their consumption, I can conceive, though only after a convoluted
intellectual effort, for given all the now exposed deceit, one is left in wonder as to why the masses still believe proven liars.
After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very
low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders
committed abroad.
Still, I can't figure out if TPTB believe their own narrative. It takes a very peculiar mindset to be able to live in permanent
lies. Contrary to truth which can exist per se and is therefore essentially cost-free, lies demand permanent maintenance and have
high maintenance cost.
So, TPTB of the West are either delusional in thinking they can maintain their lies ad vitam aeternam, or they are mythomaniacs.
Either way, just think what happens when lies cannot be maintained any more and the liars don't want to relinquish power.
Bear in mind that lying being effectively irrational, they cannot be considered as rational actors. Prepare your shelters folks.
Very seldom, I've read such a realistic article on President Putin and his policy. I've been following not only his administration
but also that of the US Empire, and I'm always flabbergasted about the US elites demonization of this leader. He belongs to the
few leaders who got their act together compared to the political exorcists in Washington. The real thugs and psychopaths are the
members of the American political elite and their cheerleaders in the fawning US mainstream media. Following their analysis, I
often think they stem from lunatics who are coming from outer space.
Yes, China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically
facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour.
So -- Dr Frankenstein is now scared of his own monster. Oh the irony !
In the last two weeks a virtual book burning has begun on YouTube. Scores of independent truth seeking channels have been deleted.
Some were pretty amateur and sensationalist, many were good, top notch investigative fact checking in nature. Many had large numbers
of subscribers, a few had 100,000s subscribers.
Common denominator seemed to question official mainstream media narrative on mass shootings, 9/11, war on terror, human sex
trafficking, Clinton Foundation corruption, and even UFO coverups. One channel was a woman skilled at body language commenting
on videos of people like John Podesta being interviewed as to whether he was lying.
None of these channels advocated violence, quite the contrary. Most couched opinion alongside probable facts by asking deductive
and inductive questions. The YouTube virtual book burning appears to have gathered pace in last week.
So much for free speech in the fake but very slickly fake Western democracies. Where the geopolitical narrative is uniformly
uniform.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution.
American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free'
trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike.
"I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve
introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony
with it "
I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether
or not global warming is real.
not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him
trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs.
"China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. "
We all know the drill here. China makes stuff cheap so that WalMart can undercut competitors and grow rich. Therefore, alas,
what can be done?
Except that WalMart has over four hundred stores IN CHINA and plans to build forty more! So what's our excuse now for not being
able to compete?
Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows
administered by US/NATO.
A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed
to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example?
Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough
shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example.
It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for.
Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined
military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence.
Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms
race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has.
Alden, sounds like you stopped with the maps and didn't read any of the underlying documents because of the preconceptions you
wear on your sleeve: "idealistic pie in the sky by and by UN treaties impossible to effect." Those preconceptions happen to coincide
with the residual message of one persistent strand of US statist propaganda.
Have you ever read, in any US institution or medium, criticism as comprehensive and incisive as this?
IGs can't do this. Courts can't begin to do this. Congress wouldn't dare do this. Media would never do it if they could. The
recommendations are legally binding and the US government knows it. Each review is videoed. You haven't lived until you've seen
State and Justice bureaucrats crawling and sniveling and tying themselves in logical knots, making fools of themselves in the
most public forum in the world. You get to watch the US regime bleeding influence and standing and 'soft power.' It's public disgrace
in front of the 96% of the world outside the US iron curtain. You may not want to watch impartial legal experts make a laughingstock
of the USG, but everybody else in the world watches with amusement, so you might as well know.
Treaty body review has driven more reforms than Congress ever did. You know perfectly well how bad your government sucks, what
a useless parasite it is. The treaty bodies and charter bodies give you more say than either state-controlled political party.
Face it, human rights review is all you got. When your government sucks, you go over its head to the world.
"During a policy talk at the Valdai Discussion Club, the Russian leader spoke on a number of issues, especially criticizing
U.S. foreign policy moves across the globe and lauding Russia's increasingly relevant role as a world power. When asked by a Germany-based
academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust
in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests."
Well maybe you can make Vladimir Putin feel better about this. You can tell him that blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in
the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing
about it anyway, right?
This is a ridiculous statement. When Putin came aboard, there was no Russian economy to speak of. Now it's grown strong enough
to withstand the events in Ukraine, sanctions and what not and even derive benefits from these challenges. I am not saying everything's
coming up roses but it could hardly be expected considering the deep hole Russia dug itself into in the 1990s.
the entire region is upset with Putin's behavior as they have seen Putin's behavior in Crimea and the Donbas.
The entire region, it you mean our Eastern European neighbors, can like it or lump it. They, Poland in particular, participated
very willingly and actively in the coup in Ukraine. Crimea and Donbass are direct, and perfectly predictable, consequences of
that coup. If they forgot the law of physics that every action has a reaction, this is just as good a reminder as any.
the thing is, because of the recent study by J. Leroy Hulsey, Putin could still do it, but I predict that he unfortunately
will do nothing of the kind.
blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all,
since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?
Actually, it could've done a lot. Right at the beginning, Russia could've refused to trust in the word of the West's leaders
about the NATO expansion and demand guarantees. A formal treaty plus a couple of remaining military bases, say, in Poland and
East Germany, would've sufficed. This likely would've saved Yugoslavia as well.
Russia could've refrained from stopping the development of many weapon system and from destroying others. It could've also
kept its own industry (civil aviation comes to mind) instead of relying on cooperation with the West. It could've refrained from
allowing the US troops to use the Russia territory to move supplies to Afghanistan. Even recently it did occur to someone exceedingly
smart to order aircraft carriers in France – speaking about trust! I do hope they learned their lesson, finally.
America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic
how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria.
Very sad.
America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes.
Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. Come on dudes !
This is just a phase, we will turn it around and make America great again ( as opposed to israel which was never great anyway).
It is just a question of how long it will take.
It will start the day when we'll tell that terrorist, shit-hole country called israel to go the hell, fight your own wars,
pay for your own wars.
In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons.
Because of this the Sept 11 shock, while in reality it meant very little, as USA citizens working in the Netherlands soon afterwards
said 'we have 30.000 traffic deaths each year'.
Good comeback there that was one of the best ones in a while!
I'm sorry, but no we're not. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we here in the "West" are living under a Satanic judeo-communist
dictatorship, bent on world domination and control at any cost.
The difference between corporate state, and totalitarian state like old Soviet system is getting blurier all the time. Like
planned economies of command systems, now they just create money for the cronies, who might as well be commies, and they don't
give a care about what's true or honest, they lie and that's, like you mentioned, (Satanic), the truth isn't in 'em.
' I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable
energy–whether or not global warming is real '
Good comment however the environment is about more than just 'global warming' which may or may not be man-caused there is no
scientific certainty but certainly what looks like a concerted push by certain quarters
But there is also habitat loss the toxins introduced through pollution industrial farming and the problems it causes with erosion,
bad food etc
Putin's comments and Mike's citation of them reflect a thoughtful and realistic approach to at least start looking at these
problems
Anon from TN
The author is painting Putin as larger-than-life figure, which he isn't. Just like the Soviet Union was not defeated by the US,
but actually collapsed due to internal problems, regime change rampage is over largely because the United States pushed their
luck and overextended themselves, and not just thanks to Putin. Throughout history, all dominant empires lose their grip and eventually
crumble (remember Roman or British), and now it's the turn of the US Empire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the next will be the
Chinese Empire, not Russian. (PS. Muslims missed the train. Again)
It's not like he used the term 'enemy,' which too many unfortunately resort to in these discussions. During Cold War 1.0, a
lot of us referred to the Sovs as the 'Adversary' because it was a less loaded term than enemy, though many equate the two. Are
the Chinese rivals? Sure. Are they adversaries? You bet, especially when we keep stepping into their back yard. Are they enemies?
The will be if we keep stepping into their back yard and telling them how to behave with their next door neighbours. All of this
applies to Russia as well.
The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying
to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors.
GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British
empire now?
From an empire on which the sun never sets, pretty soon they'll be a country where the sun never rises – thanks to their stupid
immigration policies and preoccupations with Russia (still!), like they (the British) are still even a factor in the global power
games.
US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them
militarily. Good luck with that.
The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various
"dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using
those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British
style.
If anything the British military record was at least better than US's, at least they used to win wars – they pretty much went
down undefeated – but they did went down and US military doesn't have the same success rate and even if they did, they will not
accomplish holding the world back – same as Britain didn't.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution
I do not see anything 'liberal' in Putin's ideas, certainly not as in the liberal agendas in the US.
I see him advocating Balance . creating a better order for the needs of populations and interactions between nations
. therefore preserving nations, people and earth. Balance is not rocket science .nature is the ultimate example of balance, when it is tampered with all species eventually suffer.
The neocons were/are Zionist in essence and mainly Jewish in thought leadership – this is inarguable.
Also inarguable, though I am not aware of very many well-written essays on the topic, is that under Yeltsin, brought to power
in no small part by US meddling, there was a fire sale of Russian assets – something arranged very largely by Jewish economists
and Jewish bureaucrats. And the new 'oligarchs?' Why 6 of 7 of the most enriches were Jews in a nation <3% Jewish.
Ukraine was largely a coup by Nuland, Pyatt, Feltman ato help Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who suddenly found themselves in
the very top of the new govt. Jewish names pop up inordinately as to authors and editors of unhinged Russophobic articles. At what point do we say that the mideast wars are driven by Jews, so, disproportionately (maybe even mainly as to the media)
is the aggression and disinfo on Russia.
The Jewish Problem is to be taken seriously. We need to find a way to discuss it, rescued from Zionists and bona fide Judeophobes. Our lives may well depend on it.
What Washington really haptes about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order.
Notable quotes:
"... The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. ..."
"... That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny. ..."
"... John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. ..."
"... What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. ..."
"... Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day. ..."
"... But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. ..."
"... The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. ..."
"... Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground. ..."
"... The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. ..."
"... The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble. ..."
"... After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad. ..."
"... China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. ..."
"... American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike. ..."
"... not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs. ..."
"... Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example? ..."
"... Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for. ..."
"... Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has. ..."
"... When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests." ..."
"... America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad. ..."
"... America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. ..."
"... In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons ..."
"... The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors. ..."
"... GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now? ..."
"... US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that. ..."
"... The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style. ..."
"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division
of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least
a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development,
and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to
all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems." Vladimir Putin, President
Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club
Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system
that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug",
Putin is the "new Hitler"?
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For
example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in
universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but
there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility.
Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International
Discussion Club:
"Another priority is global healthcare . All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long
and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all
priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion
Club)
How many "liberal" politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin's? Not very many. The Democrats are much more
partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the
voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They've
simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.
Many Americans would find Putin's views on climate change equally surprising. Here's another clip from the Valdai speech:
"Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. I suggest that
we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new,
groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us
to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.
It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity
to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities,
and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN
to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia
is willing to co-sponsor such a forum .." Valdai)
Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after
all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin's image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed
from the media's coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn't want people to know that Putin is a
reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that
he's is a scheming tyrannical despot who's obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it's
not true.
Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that's just more propaganda from
the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security.
He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction
ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:
"Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising
by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the
same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly."
Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from
Putin's reforms and a system of distribution that –judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that
in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation's wealth trickles upward
to the parasitic 1 percent.
Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty
and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have
been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate
taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have
a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the "kleptocracy has begun to fade."
Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative.
This helps to explain why Putin's public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin
the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at
the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third
(43 percent positive rating) behind Germany's Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According
to Gallup: "Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years."
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations
where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans
who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding
a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who
kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to "sow discord" and destroy our precious democracy
(no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It's a pathetic litany of
libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup's results indicate.
Bottom line: Propaganda works.
The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist
the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded
a report titled "Russia's Wrong Direction" that suggested that Russia's increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that
it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that "the very idea of a 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."
That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.
John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling
back democracy" in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing
less "open and pluralistic". Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign
against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations
that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.
Needless to say, none of the nation's newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly
from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM's views on Putin are either universally
accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called "free press" is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate
machine that censors all opinions that don't promote their own malign political agenda.
What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:
"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force,
one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for
the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival
that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against
each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.
But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the
turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced
the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and
their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating
strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.
The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current
war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression
is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The
War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy.
The focus going forward will be on "Great Power Competition", that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more
flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the "growing threat from revisionist powers", Russia and China. In
short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.
Putin has become an obstacle to Washington's imperial ambitions which is why he's has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1.
It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical "rolling back democracy" in Russia. It's
all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the
towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media
to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions,
more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.
Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its
lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington's "uncontained hyper-use of force" was creating "new centers
of tension", exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent
conflicts." He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and "overstepped its national borders
in every way." As a result of Washington's aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily
eroded and "No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this," Putin thundered in Munich. "No one feels safe."
On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly
in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing
account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington's use of force. Here's
Putin:
"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention
destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty,
social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life
The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy,
which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting
for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose
statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ."
US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions
have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where
anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern
Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington's ruthless stewardship.
Here's more from Putin:
"The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes.
Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions .It is irresponsible
to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of
them or somehow eliminate them ."
Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy
to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform
at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct
a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground.
Putin: "We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world."
Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.
Putin again: "Dear colleagues, relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are
facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism .Russia is confident of the United Nations' enormous
potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations,
we will consistently work to strengthen the UN's central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make
the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples."
So, here's the question: Is Putin "evil" for opposing Washington's regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and
for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he's evil, because he won't click his heels
and do as he's told by the global hegemon?
The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century.
The next war, if it comes, will be over something like Cobalt. The future lies in big and plentiful electric batteries and China
and Russia between them control almost 50% of the known supply of Cobalt, while the US has none. Stand by and wait, folks.
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the
two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class.
I would be staggered is only 14 percent of Americans had a negative view of Putin – almost everybody I have spoken to
has completely swallowed the media line. In Europe UK in particular has been brainwashed against him – southern Europe far less
so. The 28 percent is more realistic.
Is China trying to trash our constitution? Is China invading other countries, killing people with missiles and bombs all over
the world, staging "color revolutions" and subverting legitimate governments in the "West"? Is China patrolling the Gulf of Mexico
and putting missiles in Mexico and Canada? China hasn't done anything bad to me or to anyone I know, so please explain how China
is "our" "rival"?
This is a great article. The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful
for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble.
There's a simple reason why Putin is talking sense. He's doing nothing more than stating customary international law. Those
economic quotes have been set out in a series of UN resolutions including A/RES/41/128 on the right to development. This is the
acquis of the civilized world. No country in the world opposes it – except the USA. The US votes alone against it every time it
comes up, even though customary international law is US federal and state common law under the Supreme Court decision, The Paquete
Habana.
Mr. Whitney has accepted the official framing that it's all about Putin. That clever decision makes his article more provocative.
Calm appraisal of the current official foreign devil is inherently inflammatory. However, this has nothing to do with Putin. Rigid
legalist that he is, his hands are tied. Russia has ratified the ICESCR.
Russia has ratified the ICESCR. The USA has not. Here are some of the rights Russians have that you do not:
OHCHR has a convenient compilation showing how each government meets its legal obligations and commitments. The synoptic heatmap
below shows the US deep down in the shithole with Wahhabi headchoppers and neocolonial African presidents-for-life.
The exhaustively documented fact here is, the Russian state meets world standards. The US government does not. The Russian
government respects, protects, and fulfils human rights. The US government fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach,
and negates your incomplete half-assed constitutional rights with statist red tape. Russians get a better deal than you do. Merely
by reciting the law as he does, Putin would win a fair election here with Roosevelt-scale majorities, again and again. That's
why he drives the US government up the wall.
Where is it the propaganda campaign going? We have seen this before as preparation for a war or a regime change. In Russia both
are unlikely to succeed. That leaves an ever increasing propaganda bombast in the West, people brainwashed to the point where
outright racism against anything 'Russian' will become widespread. Then what? Move movies with white Russian villains, as if that
is what threatens West the most?
Russia can neither be isolated, nor 'collapsed' economically, nor ignored. It is too resource rich and powerful. Russia could
possibly be checked in a second tier conflict (Syria?), but that would be of minimal consequence. Ukraine could be escalated,
but there Russia has an enormous local logistics advantage, it would be a disaster for Kiev. And Russia is on friendly terms with
China, its only potential military threat on land.
Propaganda by itself does nothing, it is only means to an end. West is in no position to go beyond propaganda, so we might
experience a bizarre example of a mindless propaganda that goes on and on. As with all propaganda the main target is the domestic
population – in other words it is the common people in the West who are being propagandised and in effect made more stupid, less
capable of making rational decisions.
Even a slight u-turn is at this point unthinkable, almost all elites have too visibly engaged in the evil-Russia talk, how
could they let go of it? We are stuck, we might get saved by an unrelated 'big event' somewhere else. If not, this could just
be fatal, after all this belligerent talk we could perish because somebody dared to call Clinton a satan on Facebook. And they
didn't use their real name – the horror .
My own view is that Putin is probably as trustworthy and honest as any other ex-KGB man. On the other hand he does come across
as intelligent, cautious, and calm. Especially when compared to the crook Hillary or the oaf Trump.
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This is starting to bother me. Stuff is disappearing from the web. Look at the link below to an Al Jazeera documentary which
has disappeared from YouTube and the web.
Si1ver1ock, interesting problems you're having. I had no problem with the links, but then the magic of Tor means I'm reaching
them from the Netherlands. State censorship is harder when you can access suppressed URLs from a couple dozen different countries.
Please do respond, and in good faith, to the reply of commenter Harold Smith. I share his apparent concern that you may be
conflating the interests of the American people with the imperial ambitions of their Uncle Sam.
I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing. I
tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business,
while China certainly is.
Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned. However, I am afraid our national focus in this
unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able
to deal with it in a timely fashion.
"I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing."
In your original comment you said:
"The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century."
Since a big part of the U.S. "focus" on Russia is military encirclement, confrontation by proxy, the threat of direct conflict
even nuclear war, etc., this statement clearly suggests a "military solution" to "contain" an economically "rising" China, IMO.
(After all, when the only tool the U.S. "government" has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
But so what if China has some kind of "mastery" of the Eastern hemisphere? To the extent that's true, at least they didn't
do it by way of lawless imperial treachery.
The U.S. is losing influence all over the world because it's making itself hated; it's imposing itself everywhere and squandering
everything of value on the hopeless pursuit of world domination and control.
"I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade
and business, while China certainly is."
The thing is "we" don't demonize Russia "as a nation"; rather, it's done by the Satanic ruling class that hates Russia – not
for any rational reason, but for the same reason that Cain hated Abel: because "evil" hates a "good" example.
"Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned."
Unless you're going change the definition of "rival" again, I should point out that the U.S. "government" doesn't generally
attack "rivals" but deems any country that asserts its sovereign independence and refuses to take orders an "enemy", subject to
economic, political and military attack.
"However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious
competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion."
You seem to be conflating "us as a people" with the U.S. "government" which has by now lost even the pretense of moral and
constitutional legitimacy, and thus has nothing remotely to do with what's in the best interests of "us as a people".
Here is the explanation. China is economic rival to US. That is not only inconvenient, rival, it is the most efficient and
most dangerous rival, because who is wining the economic competition is pushing out the opponent from world markets.
That people in the West believe the lies that TPTB concoct for their consumption, I can conceive, though only after a convoluted
intellectual effort, for given all the now exposed deceit, one is left in wonder as to why the masses still believe proven liars.
After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very
low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders
committed abroad.
Still, I can't figure out if TPTB believe their own narrative. It takes a very peculiar mindset to be able to live in permanent
lies. Contrary to truth which can exist per se and is therefore essentially cost-free, lies demand permanent maintenance and have
high maintenance cost.
So, TPTB of the West are either delusional in thinking they can maintain their lies ad vitam aeternam, or they are mythomaniacs.
Either way, just think what happens when lies cannot be maintained any more and the liars don't want to relinquish power.
Bear in mind that lying being effectively irrational, they cannot be considered as rational actors. Prepare your shelters folks.
Very seldom, I've read such a realistic article on President Putin and his policy. I've been following not only his administration
but also that of the US Empire, and I'm always flabbergasted about the US elites demonization of this leader. He belongs to the
few leaders who got their act together compared to the political exorcists in Washington. The real thugs and psychopaths are the
members of the American political elite and their cheerleaders in the fawning US mainstream media. Following their analysis, I
often think they stem from lunatics who are coming from outer space.
Yes, China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically
facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour.
So -- Dr Frankenstein is now scared of his own monster. Oh the irony !
In the last two weeks a virtual book burning has begun on YouTube. Scores of independent truth seeking channels have been deleted.
Some were pretty amateur and sensationalist, many were good, top notch investigative fact checking in nature. Many had large numbers
of subscribers, a few had 100,000s subscribers.
Common denominator seemed to question official mainstream media narrative on mass shootings, 9/11, war on terror, human sex
trafficking, Clinton Foundation corruption, and even UFO coverups. One channel was a woman skilled at body language commenting
on videos of people like John Podesta being interviewed as to whether he was lying.
None of these channels advocated violence, quite the contrary. Most couched opinion alongside probable facts by asking deductive
and inductive questions. The YouTube virtual book burning appears to have gathered pace in last week.
So much for free speech in the fake but very slickly fake Western democracies. Where the geopolitical narrative is uniformly
uniform.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution.
American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free'
trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike.
"I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve
introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony
with it "
I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether
or not global warming is real.
not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him
trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs.
"China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. "
We all know the drill here. China makes stuff cheap so that WalMart can undercut competitors and grow rich. Therefore, alas,
what can be done?
Except that WalMart has over four hundred stores IN CHINA and plans to build forty more! So what's our excuse now for not being
able to compete?
Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows
administered by US/NATO.
A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed
to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example?
Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough
shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example.
It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for.
Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined
military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence.
Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms
race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has.
Alden, sounds like you stopped with the maps and didn't read any of the underlying documents because of the preconceptions you
wear on your sleeve: "idealistic pie in the sky by and by UN treaties impossible to effect." Those preconceptions happen to coincide
with the residual message of one persistent strand of US statist propaganda.
Have you ever read, in any US institution or medium, criticism as comprehensive and incisive as this?
IGs can't do this. Courts can't begin to do this. Congress wouldn't dare do this. Media would never do it if they could. The
recommendations are legally binding and the US government knows it. Each review is videoed. You haven't lived until you've seen
State and Justice bureaucrats crawling and sniveling and tying themselves in logical knots, making fools of themselves in the
most public forum in the world. You get to watch the US regime bleeding influence and standing and 'soft power.' It's public disgrace
in front of the 96% of the world outside the US iron curtain. You may not want to watch impartial legal experts make a laughingstock
of the USG, but everybody else in the world watches with amusement, so you might as well know.
Treaty body review has driven more reforms than Congress ever did. You know perfectly well how bad your government sucks, what
a useless parasite it is. The treaty bodies and charter bodies give you more say than either state-controlled political party.
Face it, human rights review is all you got. When your government sucks, you go over its head to the world.
"During a policy talk at the Valdai Discussion Club, the Russian leader spoke on a number of issues, especially criticizing
U.S. foreign policy moves across the globe and lauding Russia's increasingly relevant role as a world power. When asked by a Germany-based
academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust
in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests."
Well maybe you can make Vladimir Putin feel better about this. You can tell him that blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in
the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing
about it anyway, right?
This is a ridiculous statement. When Putin came aboard, there was no Russian economy to speak of. Now it's grown strong enough
to withstand the events in Ukraine, sanctions and what not and even derive benefits from these challenges. I am not saying everything's
coming up roses but it could hardly be expected considering the deep hole Russia dug itself into in the 1990s.
the entire region is upset with Putin's behavior as they have seen Putin's behavior in Crimea and the Donbas.
The entire region, it you mean our Eastern European neighbors, can like it or lump it. They, Poland in particular, participated
very willingly and actively in the coup in Ukraine. Crimea and Donbass are direct, and perfectly predictable, consequences of
that coup. If they forgot the law of physics that every action has a reaction, this is just as good a reminder as any.
the thing is, because of the recent study by J. Leroy Hulsey, Putin could still do it, but I predict that he unfortunately
will do nothing of the kind.
blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all,
since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?
Actually, it could've done a lot. Right at the beginning, Russia could've refused to trust in the word of the West's leaders
about the NATO expansion and demand guarantees. A formal treaty plus a couple of remaining military bases, say, in Poland and
East Germany, would've sufficed. This likely would've saved Yugoslavia as well.
Russia could've refrained from stopping the development of many weapon system and from destroying others. It could've also
kept its own industry (civil aviation comes to mind) instead of relying on cooperation with the West. It could've refrained from
allowing the US troops to use the Russia territory to move supplies to Afghanistan. Even recently it did occur to someone exceedingly
smart to order aircraft carriers in France – speaking about trust! I do hope they learned their lesson, finally.
America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic
how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria.
Very sad.
America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes.
Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. Come on dudes !
This is just a phase, we will turn it around and make America great again ( as opposed to israel which was never great anyway).
It is just a question of how long it will take.
It will start the day when we'll tell that terrorist, shit-hole country called israel to go the hell, fight your own wars,
pay for your own wars.
In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons.
Because of this the Sept 11 shock, while in reality it meant very little, as USA citizens working in the Netherlands soon afterwards
said 'we have 30.000 traffic deaths each year'.
Good comeback there that was one of the best ones in a while!
I'm sorry, but no we're not. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we here in the "West" are living under a Satanic judeo-communist
dictatorship, bent on world domination and control at any cost.
The difference between corporate state, and totalitarian state like old Soviet system is getting blurier all the time. Like
planned economies of command systems, now they just create money for the cronies, who might as well be commies, and they don't
give a care about what's true or honest, they lie and that's, like you mentioned, (Satanic), the truth isn't in 'em.
' I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable
energy–whether or not global warming is real '
Good comment however the environment is about more than just 'global warming' which may or may not be man-caused there is no
scientific certainty but certainly what looks like a concerted push by certain quarters
But there is also habitat loss the toxins introduced through pollution industrial farming and the problems it causes with erosion,
bad food etc
Putin's comments and Mike's citation of them reflect a thoughtful and realistic approach to at least start looking at these
problems
Anon from TN
The author is painting Putin as larger-than-life figure, which he isn't. Just like the Soviet Union was not defeated by the US,
but actually collapsed due to internal problems, regime change rampage is over largely because the United States pushed their
luck and overextended themselves, and not just thanks to Putin. Throughout history, all dominant empires lose their grip and eventually
crumble (remember Roman or British), and now it's the turn of the US Empire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the next will be the
Chinese Empire, not Russian. (PS. Muslims missed the train. Again)
It's not like he used the term 'enemy,' which too many unfortunately resort to in these discussions. During Cold War 1.0, a
lot of us referred to the Sovs as the 'Adversary' because it was a less loaded term than enemy, though many equate the two. Are
the Chinese rivals? Sure. Are they adversaries? You bet, especially when we keep stepping into their back yard. Are they enemies?
The will be if we keep stepping into their back yard and telling them how to behave with their next door neighbours. All of this
applies to Russia as well.
The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying
to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors.
GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British
empire now?
From an empire on which the sun never sets, pretty soon they'll be a country where the sun never rises – thanks to their stupid
immigration policies and preoccupations with Russia (still!), like they (the British) are still even a factor in the global power
games.
US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them
militarily. Good luck with that.
The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various
"dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using
those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British
style.
If anything the British military record was at least better than US's, at least they used to win wars – they pretty much went
down undefeated – but they did went down and US military doesn't have the same success rate and even if they did, they will not
accomplish holding the world back – same as Britain didn't.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution
I do not see anything 'liberal' in Putin's ideas, certainly not as in the liberal agendas in the US.
I see him advocating Balance . creating a better order for the needs of populations and interactions between nations
. therefore preserving nations, people and earth. Balance is not rocket science .nature is the ultimate example of balance, when it is tampered with all species eventually suffer.
The neocons were/are Zionist in essence and mainly Jewish in thought leadership – this is inarguable.
Also inarguable, though I am not aware of very many well-written essays on the topic, is that under Yeltsin, brought to power
in no small part by US meddling, there was a fire sale of Russian assets – something arranged very largely by Jewish economists
and Jewish bureaucrats. And the new 'oligarchs?' Why 6 of 7 of the most enriches were Jews in a nation <3% Jewish.
Ukraine was largely a coup by Nuland, Pyatt, Feltman ato help Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who suddenly found themselves in
the very top of the new govt. Jewish names pop up inordinately as to authors and editors of unhinged Russophobic articles. At what point do we say that the mideast wars are driven by Jews, so, disproportionately (maybe even mainly as to the media)
is the aggression and disinfo on Russia.
The Jewish Problem is to be taken seriously. We need to find a way to discuss it, rescued from Zionists and bona fide Judeophobes. Our lives may well depend on it.
The size of funds that Democrats and Republicans operated were in billions. And , IRA
staffers purchased just $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56% of which ran after Election
Day. So only $44K was spent during election campaign.
There author is wrong about color revolution against Trump. It is progressing.
One interesting side effect will be ruthless suppression of the US influence in Russian
elections. Bismark famously remarked that "the Russians are slow to saddle up, but ride fast."
Here media dogs also are off leash and there will be innocent victims, blamed in treason and
other nefarious activities just to voicing dissent. Russiagate discredited neoliberal fifth
column in Russia, making them all "enemies of the people".
Notable quotes:
"... After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new. ..."
"... Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact. ..."
"... Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor." ..."
"... This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working: ..."
"... No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more. ..."
"... " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are. ..."
"... But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians? ..."
"... "I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead. ..."
"... But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees. ..."
"... Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed. ..."
"... The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock. ..."
"... As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts ..."
"... That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election. ..."
"... The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that. ..."
"... This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War. ..."
"... Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens. ..."
Fads and scandals often follow a set trajectory. They grow big, bigger, and then, finally,
too big, at which point they topple over and collapse under the weight of their own internal
contradictions. This was the fate of the "Me too" campaign, which started out as an
exposé of serial abuser Harvey Weinstein but then went too far when Babe.net published a
story about one
woman's bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari. Suddenly, it became clear that different types of
behavior were being lumped together in a dangerous way, and a once-explosive movement began to
fizzle.
So, too, with Russiagate. After dominating the news for more than a year, the scandal may
have at last reached a tipping point with last week's indictment of thirteen Russian
individuals and three Russian corporations on charges of illegal interference in the 2016
presidential campaign. But the indictment landed with a decided thud for three reasons:
It
failed to connect the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the alleged St. Petersburg troll factory
accused of political meddling, with Vladimir Putin, the all-purpose evil-doer who the corporate
media say is out to destroy American democracy. It similarly failed to establish a connection
with the Trump campaign and indeed went out of its way to describe contacts with the Russians
as "unwitting." It described the meddling itself as even more inept and amateurish than many
had suspected.
After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a
mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's
unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually
nothing that's new.
Yes, IRA staffers purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56 percent of which ran
after Election Day. Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary
Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they
also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White
House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA
founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days
away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling
freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact.
Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at
war with our democracy,"
screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America
since 9/11,"
blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through
21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York
Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's
activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor."
All of which merely demonstrates, in proper backhanded fashion, how grievously Mueller has
fallen short. Proof that the scandal had at last overstayed its welcome came five days later
when the Guardian, a website that had previously flogged Russiagate even more vigorously than
the Post, the Times, or CNN, published a
news analysis by Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, admitting
that it was all a farce – and a particularly self-defeating one at that.
Mudde's article made short work of hollow pieties about a neutral and objective
investigation. Rather than an effort to get at the truth, Russiagate was a thinly-veiled effort
at regime change. "[I]n the end," he wrote, "the only question everyone really seems to care
about is whether Donald Trump was involved – and can therefore be impeached for
treason.
With last week's indictment, the article went on, "Democratic party leaders once again
reassured their followers that this was the next logical step in the inevitable downfall of
Trump." The more Democrats play the Russiagate card, in other words, the nearer they will come
to their goal of riding the Orange-Haired One out of town on a rail.
This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde
gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't
working:
"While there is no doubt that the Trump camp was, and still is, filled with amoral and
fraudulent people, and was very happy to take the Russians help during the elections, even
encouraging it on the campaign, I do not think Mueller will be able to find conclusive evidence
that Donald Trump
himself colluded with Putin's Russia to win the elections. And that is the only thing that will
lead to his impeachment as the Republican party is not risking political suicide for anything
less."
Other Objectives of "Russiagate"
No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort
that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans
believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority
according to a recent poll ,
figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax
policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67
percent, 72 percent, or even more.
Summed up Mudde: " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in
Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover
country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a
nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization,
infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the
only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is
to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are.
But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is
repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're
now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion
and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the
RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times
described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert
disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the
West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are
banned or foreign musicians?
"I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist
Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of
both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains
that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who
designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised
when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its
activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead.
Add to this the classic moral panic promoted by #MeToo – to believe charges of sexual
harassment and assault without first demanding evidence "is to disbelieve, and deny due process
to, the accused,"
notes Judith Levine in the Boston Review – and it's clear that a powerful wave of
cultural conservatism is crashing down on the United States, much of it originating in a
classic neoliberal-Hillaryite milieu. Formerly the liberal alternative, the Democratic Party is
now passing the Republicans on the right.
But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster warns
that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams
Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review"
suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's
plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the
previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war
drive is the best way to bring him to his knees.
Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while
Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But
where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US
regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi
Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now
a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera
cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed.
The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The
process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion,
and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known
as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too
soon.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Zachary Smith , February 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm
First thing I checked before reading this was to check for instances of misuse of the term
"liberal". When I found none at all, the piece suddenly looked very promising. And it
was a fine essay!
A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or
"Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel
wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all
the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock.
With that small objection on record, I will declare this was great.
Zachary, I wouldn't get too hung up on words like "liberal" which have been used and
abused to become almost meaningless but yes, "the Democratic Party is now passing the
Republicans on the right." Somehow I think they believe they can pick up enough "moderate"
Republicans in the midterms to make up for the "angry white males"(& intellectuals) they
lost in the last election the same losing strategy.
mike k , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm
As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the
threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the
enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off
the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to
give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with
something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts
Mark Thomason , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm
From its first moment, this was a Team Hillary exercise, decided on by her in the days
right after the election and promoted through her media contracts that had been an extension
of her campaign.
Why? At first they seemed to imagine it possible to reverse the election outcome.
Then it shifted to Trump hate. Why?
That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence
and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election.
The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they
were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in
progress. This cured that.
This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a
Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped
it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame,
like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar
from recent Cold War.
It was completely cynical, guided by the same greed that had produced the candidacy of
Hillary and run it the whole time, doing fund raising in friendly places instead of
campaigning in swing states.
JDQ , February 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm
..please do read this. It gives Liberals more a bashing than Conservatives
Joe Tedesky , February 24, 2018 at 2:40 pm
Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that
these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to
promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible
reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes
be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens.
This
is the way the MSM sell too many needless pharmaceutical products, and their drugs are
products, to insurance ad's and somehow make commercial space for the MIC defense
contractors. This is how the MSM makes real money, as they forfeited our learning of anything
worthwhile, as to pave the way for more exploitation of our country's struggles with
everything and anything, but all forfeited simply to make the MSM more money.
It goes without saying that we the American public aren't necessarily as fooled, and
tricked, as our masters would like to believe we are. So to explain away the Empire's
failings certain forces from within our nation's Beltway are hard at work trying to blame all
of their misgivings on another, and that another is Vladimir Putin and his American
engineered misunderstood Russians. For this reason our MSM hardly ever put the real Putin on
our television screens. No never, these American media producers always when describing
Putin, use a prop, or a slimy squinty eyed shirtless Russian stereotype instead. For our MSM
ever to air a speech of Putin, or do as Oliver Stone did, is beyond question, so don't wait
up kids to see ever steady Vladimir on our American TV sets because it just isn't going to
happen.
So now our MSM is exploiting the Florida mass shooting, and it is with their slants and
predisposed opinions where I lose faith in anything our media does. Even as terrible as this
Florida school shooting was, our MSM must politicize and adhere left right slants to this
story as in their daff journalistic heads this is what they must do. Like I said this is my
opinion taken from my own experiences, so take my comment for what it is, and not from any
references I happened upon.
The size of funds that Democrats and Republicans operated were in billions. And , IRA
staffers purchased just $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56% of which ran after Election
Day. So only $44K was spent during election campaign.
There author is wrong about color revolution against Trump. It is progressing.
One interesting side effect will be ruthless suppression of the US influence in Russian
elections. Bismark famously remarked that "the Russians are slow to saddle up, but ride fast."
Here media dogs also are off leash and there will be innocent victims, blamed in treason and
other nefarious activities just to voicing dissent. Russiagate discredited neoliberal fifth
column in Russia, making them all "enemies of the people".
Notable quotes:
"... After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new. ..."
"... Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact. ..."
"... Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor." ..."
"... This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working: ..."
"... No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more. ..."
"... " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are. ..."
"... But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians? ..."
"... "I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead. ..."
"... But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees. ..."
"... Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed. ..."
"... The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock. ..."
"... As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts ..."
"... That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election. ..."
"... The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that. ..."
"... This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War. ..."
"... Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens. ..."
Fads and scandals often follow a set trajectory. They grow big, bigger, and then, finally,
too big, at which point they topple over and collapse under the weight of their own internal
contradictions. This was the fate of the "Me too" campaign, which started out as an
exposé of serial abuser Harvey Weinstein but then went too far when Babe.net published a
story about one
woman's bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari. Suddenly, it became clear that different types of
behavior were being lumped together in a dangerous way, and a once-explosive movement began to
fizzle.
So, too, with Russiagate. After dominating the news for more than a year, the scandal may
have at last reached a tipping point with last week's indictment of thirteen Russian
individuals and three Russian corporations on charges of illegal interference in the 2016
presidential campaign. But the indictment landed with a decided thud for three reasons:
It
failed to connect the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the alleged St. Petersburg troll factory
accused of political meddling, with Vladimir Putin, the all-purpose evil-doer who the corporate
media say is out to destroy American democracy. It similarly failed to establish a connection
with the Trump campaign and indeed went out of its way to describe contacts with the Russians
as "unwitting." It described the meddling itself as even more inept and amateurish than many
had suspected.
After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a
mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's
unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually
nothing that's new.
Yes, IRA staffers purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56 percent of which ran
after Election Day. Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary
Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they
also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White
House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA
founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days
away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling
freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact.
Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at
war with our democracy,"
screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America
since 9/11,"
blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through
21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York
Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's
activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor."
All of which merely demonstrates, in proper backhanded fashion, how grievously Mueller has
fallen short. Proof that the scandal had at last overstayed its welcome came five days later
when the Guardian, a website that had previously flogged Russiagate even more vigorously than
the Post, the Times, or CNN, published a
news analysis by Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, admitting
that it was all a farce – and a particularly self-defeating one at that.
Mudde's article made short work of hollow pieties about a neutral and objective
investigation. Rather than an effort to get at the truth, Russiagate was a thinly-veiled effort
at regime change. "[I]n the end," he wrote, "the only question everyone really seems to care
about is whether Donald Trump was involved – and can therefore be impeached for
treason.
With last week's indictment, the article went on, "Democratic party leaders once again
reassured their followers that this was the next logical step in the inevitable downfall of
Trump." The more Democrats play the Russiagate card, in other words, the nearer they will come
to their goal of riding the Orange-Haired One out of town on a rail.
This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde
gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't
working:
"While there is no doubt that the Trump camp was, and still is, filled with amoral and
fraudulent people, and was very happy to take the Russians help during the elections, even
encouraging it on the campaign, I do not think Mueller will be able to find conclusive evidence
that Donald Trump
himself colluded with Putin's Russia to win the elections. And that is the only thing that will
lead to his impeachment as the Republican party is not risking political suicide for anything
less."
Other Objectives of "Russiagate"
No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort
that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans
believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority
according to a recent poll ,
figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax
policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67
percent, 72 percent, or even more.
Summed up Mudde: " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in
Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover
country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a
nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization,
infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the
only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is
to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are.
But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is
repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're
now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion
and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the
RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times
described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert
disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the
West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are
banned or foreign musicians?
"I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist
Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of
both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains
that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who
designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised
when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its
activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead.
Add to this the classic moral panic promoted by #MeToo – to believe charges of sexual
harassment and assault without first demanding evidence "is to disbelieve, and deny due process
to, the accused,"
notes Judith Levine in the Boston Review – and it's clear that a powerful wave of
cultural conservatism is crashing down on the United States, much of it originating in a
classic neoliberal-Hillaryite milieu. Formerly the liberal alternative, the Democratic Party is
now passing the Republicans on the right.
But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster warns
that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams
Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review"
suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's
plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the
previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war
drive is the best way to bring him to his knees.
Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while
Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But
where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US
regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi
Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now
a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera
cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed.
The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The
process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion,
and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known
as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too
soon.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Zachary Smith , February 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm
First thing I checked before reading this was to check for instances of misuse of the term
"liberal". When I found none at all, the piece suddenly looked very promising. And it
was a fine essay!
A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or
"Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel
wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all
the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock.
With that small objection on record, I will declare this was great.
Zachary, I wouldn't get too hung up on words like "liberal" which have been used and
abused to become almost meaningless but yes, "the Democratic Party is now passing the
Republicans on the right." Somehow I think they believe they can pick up enough "moderate"
Republicans in the midterms to make up for the "angry white males"(& intellectuals) they
lost in the last election the same losing strategy.
mike k , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm
As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the
threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the
enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off
the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to
give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with
something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts
Mark Thomason , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm
From its first moment, this was a Team Hillary exercise, decided on by her in the days
right after the election and promoted through her media contracts that had been an extension
of her campaign.
Why? At first they seemed to imagine it possible to reverse the election outcome.
Then it shifted to Trump hate. Why?
That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence
and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election.
The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they
were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in
progress. This cured that.
This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a
Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped
it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame,
like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar
from recent Cold War.
It was completely cynical, guided by the same greed that had produced the candidacy of
Hillary and run it the whole time, doing fund raising in friendly places instead of
campaigning in swing states.
JDQ , February 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm
..please do read this. It gives Liberals more a bashing than Conservatives
Joe Tedesky , February 24, 2018 at 2:40 pm
Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that
these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to
promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible
reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes
be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens.
This
is the way the MSM sell too many needless pharmaceutical products, and their drugs are
products, to insurance ad's and somehow make commercial space for the MIC defense
contractors. This is how the MSM makes real money, as they forfeited our learning of anything
worthwhile, as to pave the way for more exploitation of our country's struggles with
everything and anything, but all forfeited simply to make the MSM more money.
It goes without saying that we the American public aren't necessarily as fooled, and
tricked, as our masters would like to believe we are. So to explain away the Empire's
failings certain forces from within our nation's Beltway are hard at work trying to blame all
of their misgivings on another, and that another is Vladimir Putin and his American
engineered misunderstood Russians. For this reason our MSM hardly ever put the real Putin on
our television screens. No never, these American media producers always when describing
Putin, use a prop, or a slimy squinty eyed shirtless Russian stereotype instead. For our MSM
ever to air a speech of Putin, or do as Oliver Stone did, is beyond question, so don't wait
up kids to see ever steady Vladimir on our American TV sets because it just isn't going to
happen.
So now our MSM is exploiting the Florida mass shooting, and it is with their slants and
predisposed opinions where I lose faith in anything our media does. Even as terrible as this
Florida school shooting was, our MSM must politicize and adhere left right slants to this
story as in their daff journalistic heads this is what they must do. Like I said this is my
opinion taken from my own experiences, so take my comment for what it is, and not from any
references I happened upon.
This is an old method to unite the nation against external enemy. Carnage (with so much oil and gas) needs to be
destroyed. And it's working only partially with the major divisions between Trump and Hillary supporters remaining
open and unaffected by Russiagate witch hunt.
Notable quotes:
"... It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances. ..."
"... The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media. ..."
"... A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together." ..."
"... He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning." ..."
"... The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law. ..."
"... The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies? ..."
"... The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference". ..."
"... Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. ..."
Russophobia - "blame it all on Russia" - is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious
and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union.
But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news", he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed off in
December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by
"weaponizing disinformation" and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based
news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia
destabilized the US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir
Julian King, casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated
disinformation" to destabilize the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned
that Russia is stepping up its efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later
this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary"
, he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save
it, Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as
well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact"
.
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When
the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must
stop contributing to a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real scandal that
the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt the democratic
process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several
languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation
and Press TV.
This is an old method to unite the nation against external enemy. Carnage (with so much oil and gas) needs to be
destroyed. And it's working only partially with the major divisions between Trump and Hillary supporters remaining
open and unaffected by Russiagate witch hunt.
Notable quotes:
"... It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances. ..."
"... The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media. ..."
"... A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together." ..."
"... He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning." ..."
"... The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law. ..."
"... The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies? ..."
"... The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference". ..."
"... Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. ..."
Russophobia - "blame it all on Russia" - is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious
and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union.
But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news", he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed off in
December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by
"weaponizing disinformation" and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based
news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia
destabilized the US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir
Julian King, casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated
disinformation" to destabilize the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned
that Russia is stepping up its efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later
this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary"
, he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save
it, Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as
well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact"
.
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When
the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must
stop contributing to a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real scandal that
the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt the democratic
process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several
languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation
and Press TV.
"... In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital. And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority, and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through force. ..."
"... I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. ..."
"... The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect. There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. ..."
"... Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future. ..."
"... I think that the struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here, but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future. ..."
"... The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools. ..."
"... Any hierarchic system will be exploited by intelligent sociopaths. Systems will not save us. ..."
"... What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear & loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps. ..."
"... Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group or something. :-) ..."
Yves here. This Real News Network interview with professor emeritus John Weeks discussed how economic ideology has weakened or
eliminated public accountability of institutions like the Fed and promote neo[neo]liberal policies that undermine democracy.
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The concept of the [neo]liberal democracy
is generally based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the face of
the law. The rise of financial capital and its efforts to deregulate financial markets, however, raises the question whether [neo]liberal
democracy is a sustainable form of government. Sooner or later, democratic institutions make way for the interests of large capital
to supersede.
Political economist John Weeks recently gave this year's David Gordon Memorial Lecture at the meeting of the American Economic
Association in Philadelphia where he addressed these issues with a talk titled, Free Markets and the Decline of Democracy. Joining
us now is John Weeks. He joins us from London to discuss the issues raised in his lecture. You can find a link to this lecture just
below the player, and John is, as you know, Professor Emeritus of the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies
and author of Economics of the 1%: How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy. John, good to
have you back on The Real News.
JOHN WEEKS: Thank you very much for having me.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, let me start with your talk. Your talk describes a struggle between efforts to create a democratic
control over the economy and the interest of capital, which seeks to subjugate government to the interest, its own interest. In your
assessment, it looks like this is a losing battle for democracy. Explain this further.
JOHN WEEKS: Yeah, so I think that Marx in Capital, in the first volume of Capital, refers to a concept called bourgeois
right, by which he meant that, you said it in the introduction, that in a capitalist society there is a form of equality that mimics
the relationship of exchange. Every commodity looks equal in exchange and there is a system of ownership that you might say is the
shadow of that. I think more important, in the early stages of development of capitalism, of development of factories, that those
institutions or those factories prompted the growth of trade unions and workers' struggles in general. Those workers' struggles were
key to the development, or further development of democracy, freedom of speech, a whole range of rights, the right to vote.
However, with the development of finance capital, you've got quite a different dynamic within the capitalist system. Let me say,
I don't want to romanticize the early period of capitalism, but you did have struggles, mass struggles for rights. Finance capital
produces nothing productive, it doesn't do anything productive. So, what finance capital does basically is it redistributes the income,
the wealth, the, what Marx would call the surplus value, from other sectors of society to itself. And it employs relatively few people,
so that dynamic of the capital, industrial capital, generating its antithesis So, that a labor movement doesn't occur under financial
capital.
In addition, financial capital leads to inequality, and that inequality, as you've seen in the United States and in Europe
and many other places, it increases. And suddenly, not suddenly, but bit by bit, people begin to realize that they aren't getting
their share and that means that the government, to protect capitalism, must use force to maintain the order of financial capital.
And I think Trump is the fulfillment of that, and I think there are other examples too which I can go into. So, basically, my argument
is that with the rise of finance and its unproductive activities, you've got the decline in living standards of the vast majority,
and in order to maintain order in such a system where people no longer think that they're sort of getting their share, and so justice
doesn't become, a just distribution doesn't become the reason why people support this system, increasingly it has to be done through
force.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Before we get further into the relationship between neo[neo]liberalism and democracy, give
us a brief summary of what you mean by neo[neo]liberalism. You say that it's not really about deregulation, as most people usually conceive
of it. If that's not what it's about, what is it, then?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that if you think about the movements in the United States, and as much as I can, I will take examples
from the United States because most of your listeners will be familiar with those, beginning in the early part of the twentieth century,
in the United States you have reform movements, the breaking up of the large monopolies, tobacco monopoly, a whole range of Standard
Oil, all of that. And then of course under Roosevelt you began to get the regulation of capital in the interests of the majority,
much of that driven by Roosevelt's trade union support. So, that was moving from a system where capital was relatively unregulated
to where it was being regulated in the interests of the vast majority. I also would say, though, I won't go into detail, to a certain
extent it was regulated in the interest of capital itself to moderate competition and therefore, I'd say, ensure a relatively tranquil
market environment.
Neo[neo]liberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital. So,
it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in a way
that enhances capital. These regulations, to get specific about them, restrictions on trade unions, as you, on Real News, a number
of people have talked about this. The United States now have many restrictions on the organizing of trade unions which were not present
50 or 60 years ago, making it harder to have a mass movement of labor against capital, restrictions on the right to demonstrate,
a whole range of things. Then within capital itself, the regulations on the movement of capital that facilitate speculation in international
markets. We have a capitalism in which the form of regulation is shifted from the regulation of capital in the interest of labor
to regulation of capital in the interest of capital.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, give us a brief summary of the ways in which neo[neo]liberalism undermines democracy.
JOHN WEEKS: Well, I think that there are many examples, but I'm going to focus on economic policy. For an obvious case
is the role of the Central Bank, in the case of the United States' Federal Reserve System, in which reducing its accountability to
the public, one way you can do that is by assigning goals to it, such as fighting inflation, which then override other goals. Originally,
the Federal Reserve System, its charter, or I'll say its terms of reference, if you want me to use that phrase, included full employment
and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation.
Control of inflation basically means maintaining an economy at a relatively high level of unemployment or part-time employment, or
flexible employment, where people have relatively few rights at work. And that the Central Bank becomes a vehicle for enforcing a
neo[neo]liberal economic policy.
Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed
exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic
policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic
policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring that
the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say grinding
into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely neo[neo]liberal
ideology.
In summary, one way that the democracy has been undermined is to take away economic policy from the public realm and move it to
the realm of experts. So, we have certain allegedly expert guidelines that we have to follow. Inflation should be low. We should
not run deficits. The national debt should be small. These are things that are just made up ideologically. There is no technical
basis to them. And so, in doing that, you might say, the term I like to use is, you decommission the democratic process and economic
policy.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, speaking of ideology, in your talk you refer to the challenge that fascism posed or poses to neo[neo]liberal
democracies. Now, it is interesting when you take Europe into consideration and National Socialist in Germany, for example, appeal
mostly to the working class, as does contemporary far-right leaders in Poland and Hungary, that they support more explicit neo[neo]liberal
agendas. Why would people support a neo[neo]liberal agenda that exasperate inequalities and harm public services that they depend on,
including jobs?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that to a great extent it is country-specific, but I can make generalizations. First of all, I'm talking
about Europe, because you raised a case in some European countries, and then I'll make some comments about the United States and
Trump, if you want me to. I think in Europe, a combination of three things resulted in the rise of fascism and authoritarian movements
which are verging on fascism. One is that the European integration project, which let me say that I have supported, and I would still
prefer Britain not to leave the European Union, but nevertheless, the European Union integration project has been a project run by
elites.
It has not been a bottom-up process. It has been a process very much run by elite politicians, in which they get together in closed
door, and they make policies which they subsequently announce, and many of the decisions they come to being extremely, the meaning
of them being extremely opaque. So, therefore, you have the development in Europe of the European Union which, not from the bottom
up, but very much from the top down. You might suggest from the top, but I'm not sure how much goes down. That's one.
The second key factor, I would say, for about 20 years in European integration, it was relatively benign elitism because it was social
democratic, it had the support of the working class, or the trade unions, at any rate. Then, increasingly, it began to become neo[neo]liberal.
So, you have an elite project which was turning into a neo[neo]liberal project. Specifically, what I mean by neo[neo]liberal is where they're
generating flexibility rules for the labor market, austerity policies, bank, balanced budgets, low inflation, the things I was talking
about before.
Then the third element, toxic, the most toxic of them, but the other, they're volatile, is the legacy of fascism in Europe. Every
European country, with the exception of Britain, had a substantial fascist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. I can go into why Britain
didn't sometime. It had to do with the particular class struggle of the, I mean, class structure of Britain. Poland, ironically enough,
though, is one of them. It was overrun by the Nazis, and occupied, and incorporated into the German Reich. Ironically, it had a very
right-wing government with a lot of sympathies towards fascism when it was invaded in the late summer of 1939.
France had a strong fascist movement. Of course, Italy had a fascist government, and Hungary, where now you have a right-wing
government, a very strong fascist movement. The incorporation of these countries into the Soviet sphere of influence, or the empire,
as it were, did not destroy that fascism. It certainly suppressed it, but it didn't destroy it. So, as soon as the European project
began to transform into a neo[neo]liberal project, and that gathered strength in the early 1990s, I mean, the neo[neo]liberal aspect of the
European Union gathered strength in the early 1990s, exactly when you were getting the "liberation" of many countries from Soviet
rule. And so, when you put those together, it led to, It was a rise of fascism waiting to happen and now it is happening.
SHARMINI PERIES: John, earlier, you said you'll factor in Trump. How does Trump fit into this phenomena?
JOHN WEEKS: I think that as The Real News has pointed out, that many of Trump's policies appear just to be more extreme
versions of things that George Bush did, and in some cases not that much different from what Barack Obama did. Now, though I
wouldn't go too deeply into that, I think that that is the most serious offenses by Obama that have been carried on by Trump have
to do with the use of drones and the military. But at any rate, but there's a big difference from Trump. For the most part, the previous
Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents, accepted the framework of, the formal framework of [neo]liberal democracy in the United
States. That is, formally accepted the constraints imposed by the Constitution.
Now, of course, they probably didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart. They did it because they saw that the things that
they wanted to achieve, the neo[neo]liberal goals that they wanted to achieve were perfectly consistent with the Constitution's framework
and guarantees of rights and so on, that most of those rights are guaranteed in a way that's so weak that you didn't have to repeal
the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution in order to have repressive policies.
The difference with Trump is, he has complete contempt for all of those constraints. That is, he is an authoritarian. I don't
think he's a fascist, not yet, but he is an authoritarian. He does not accept that there are constraints which he should respect.
There are constraints which bother him, and he wants to get rid of them, and he actually takes steps to do so. What you have
in Trump, I think, is a sea change. You have a, we've had right-wing presidents before, certainly. What the difference with Trump
is, he is a right-wing president that sees no reason to respect the institutions of democratic government, or even, you might say,
the institution of representative government. I won't even use a term as strong as "democratic." That lays the basis for an explicitly
authoritarian United States, and I'd say that we're beginning to see the vehicle by which this will occur, the restriction on voting
rights. Of course, that was going on before Trump, it does in a more aggressive way. I think the, soon, we will have a Supreme Court
that will be quite lenient with his tendency towards authoritarian rule.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, John. Let's end this segment with what can be done. I mean, what must be done to prevent neo[neo]liberal
interests from undermining democracy? And who do you believe is leading the struggle for democracy now, and what is the right strategy
that people should be fighting for?
JOHN WEEKS: Well, one thing, I think, where I'd begin is that I think progressives, as The Real News represents, and Bernie
Sanders, and all the people that support him, and Jeremy Corbyn over here, I'll come back to talk about a bit about Jeremy. We must
be explicit that we view democracy, by which we mean the participation of people at the grassroots, their participation in the government,
we view that as a goal. It's not merely a technique, or a tool which, what was it that Erdoğan so infamously said? "Democracy
is like a train. You take it to where you want to go and then you get off." No. Progressive view is that democracy is what it's all
about. Democracy is the way that we build the present and we build a future.
I'm quite fortunate in that I live in perhaps the only large country in the world where there's imminent possibility of a progressive,
left-wing, anti-authoritarian government. I think that is the monumental importance of Jeremy Corbyn and his second-in-command, John
McDonnell, and others like Emily Thornberry, who is the Foreign Secretary. These people are committed to democracy. In the United
States, Bernie Sanders is committed to a democracy, and a lot of other people are too, Elizabeth Warren. So, I think that the
struggle in the United States is extremely difficult because of the role of the big money and the media, which you know more about
than I do. But it is a struggle which we have to keep at, and we have to be optimistic about it. It's a good bit easier over here,
but as we saw, and you reported, during the last presidential election, a progressive came very close to being President of the United
States. That, I don't think was a one-off event, not to be repeated. I think it lays the basis for hope in the future.
"A lot of money" in those days- Some say JI "bought land" with the shekels. An early form of asset swap? A precursor to current
financialist activities?
Good article. If it were any bleaker, I'd suspect Chris Hedges having a hand in writing it.
The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions
of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.
There it is, the Gorgon Thiel, surrounded by terror and rout.
"Altman felt that OpenAI's mission was to babysit its wunderkind until it was ready to be adopted by the world. He'd been reading
James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention for guidance in managing the transition. 'We're planning a way to allow
wide swaths of the world to elect representatives to a new governance board,' he said."
I was having trouble choosing which of the passages in this article to provide a mad quote from. Some other choices were
Altman's going to work with the Department of Defense, then help defend the world from them.
Or:
OpenAI's going to take over from humans, but don't worry because they're going to make it (somehow) so OpenAI can only terminate
bad people. Before releasing it to the world.
Or:
Altman says 'add a 0 to whatever you're doing but never more than that.'
But if this sort of wisdom (somehow) doesn't work out well for everybody and the world collapses, he's flying with Peter Thiel
in the private jet to the New Zealand's south island to wait out the Zombie Apocalypse on a converted sheep farm. (Before returning
to the Valley work with more startups?)
I think it's revealing that the only type of democracy discussed, in spite of the title, is "[neo]liberal democracy", which the
host describes as "based on capitalistic markets along with respect for individual freedoms and human rights and equality in the
face of the law."
I've always argued that [neo]liberal democracy is a contradiction in terms, and you can see why from that quotation. [neo]liberalism (leaving
aside special uses of the term in the US) is about individuals exercising their personal economic freedom and personal
autonomy as much as they can, with as little control by government as possible.
But given massive imbalances in economic power, the influence
of media-backed single issue campaigns and the growth of professional political parties, policy is decided by the interventions
of powerful and well-organised groups, without ordinary people being consulted. At the end, Weeks does start to talk of grassroots
participation, but seems to have no more in mind than a campaign to get people to vote for Sanders in 2020, which hardly addresses
the problem. The answer, if there is one, is a system of direct democracy, involving referendums and popular assemblies chosen
at random.
This has been much talked about, but since you would have the entire political class against you, it's not going to
happen. In the meantime, we are stuck with [neo]liberal democracy, whose contradictions, I'm afraid are becoming ever more obvious.
"Contradictions?" One question for me at least would be whether the features and motions of the current regime are best characterized
as "contradictions." If so, to what? And implicit in the use of the word is some kind of resolution, via actual class conflict
or something, leading to "better" or at least "different." All I see from my front porch is more of the same, and worse. "The
Matrix" in that myth gave some comforting illusions to the mopery. I think the political economy/collapsed planet portrayed in
"Soylent Green" is a lot closer to the likely endpoints.
At least in the movie fable, the C-Suite-er of the Soylent Corp. as the lede in the film, was sickened of what he was helping
to maintain, and bethought himself to blow his tiny little personal whistle that nobody would really hear, and got axed for his
disloyalty to the ruling collective. I doubt the ranks of corporatists of MonsantoDuPont and LockheedMartin and the rest include
any significant numbers of folks sickened by "the contradictions" that get them their perks and bennies and power (as long as
they color inside the lines.)
I hope I am way off the mark, but within that genre & in terms of where we could be heading, the film " Snowpiercer " sums
it up best for me- a dystopian world society illustrated through the passengers on one long train.
Thanks for the Real News Network for covering issues that never see the light of day on the corporate media and never mentioned
by the Rachel Maddow's of the "news" shows.
I actually like the term and find it useful, insofar as it describes an ideology -- as oposed a real political-economic arrangement.
The presence of "free markets" may not be a characteristic of the neo[neo]liberal phase, but the belief in them sure is.
(Which is not to say there aren't people who don't believe in free markets but do invoke them rhetorically for
other ends. That's a feature of many if not most successful ideologies.)
' Originally, the Federal Reserve charter included full employment and a stable economy. Those have been overridden in more
recent legislation, which puts a great emphasis on the control of inflation.
Eh, this is fractured history. The Fed was set up in 1913 as a lender of last resort -- a discounter of government and private
bills.
In late 1978 Jimmy Carter signed the Humphrey Hawkins Act instructing the Fed to pursue three goals: stable prices, maximum
employment, and moderate long-term interest rates, though the latter is rarely mentioned now and the Fed is widely viewed as having
a dual mandate.
The Fed's two percent inflation target it simply adopted at its own initiative -- it's not enshrined in no Perpetual Inflation
Act.
' We had a world of fixed exchange rates which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic policy.
We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool. '
LOL! This is totally inverted and flat wrong. The Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system prevented radical monetary experiments
such as QE which would have broken the peg. Nixon unilaterally suspended fixed exchange rates in 1971 because he was unwilling
to take the political hit of formally devaluing the dollar (or even more unlikely, sweating out Vietnam War inflation with falling
prices to maintain the peg).
Floating rates are a new and potentially lethal monetary tool which have produced a number of sad examples of "governments
gone wild" with radical monetary experiments and currency swings. Bad boys Japan & Switzerland come readily to mind.
To render history accurately requires getting hands dirty with dusty old books. Icky, I know. :-(
Yes but globalisation meant that all central banks and finance ministers had to act concertedly as in G-20 and similar meetings.
While we may talk of floating exchange rates, each country fixes its interest rate to maintain parity with the others. Isn't that
so?
I think that the key piece of info is that the Federal Reserve was created on December 23rd, 1913. That sounds like that it
was slipped in the legislative back door when everybody was going away for the Christmas holidays.
===== quote =====
Second of all, probably most of your viewers will not remember the days when we had fixed exchange rates. We had a world of fixed
exchange rates in those days that represented the policy, which government could use to affect its trade and also affect its domestic
policy. There have been deregulation of that. We now have floating exchange rates. That takes away a tool, an instrument of economic
policy. And in fiscal policy, there the, here it's more ideology than laws, though there are also laws. There's a law requiring
that the government balance its budget, but more important than that, the introduction into the public consciousness, I'd say
grinding into the public consciousness, the idea that deficits are a bad thing, government debt is a bad thing, and that's a completely
neo[neo]liberal ideology.
===== /quote =====
This makes absolutely no sense and seems to have the case exactly backward. Our federal government has no rule that the budget
must be balanced. Fixed exchange rates were not a tool that could be used to affect trade and domestic policy in a good way.
I enjoyed John Weeks' point of view. He's the first person I've read who refers to the usefulness of a fixed exchange rate.
Useful for a sovereign government with a social spending agenda. We have always been a sovereign government with a military agenda
which is at odds with a social agenda.
Guns and butter are a dangerous combination if you are dedicated to at least maintaining
the illusion of a "strong dollar." That's basically what Nixon finessed. John Conally told him not to worry, we could go off the
gold standard and it wasn't our problem since we were the reserve currency – it was everybody else's problem and we promptly exported
our inflation all around the world. And now it has come home to roost because it was fudging and it couldn't last forever.
Much
better to concede to some fix for the currency and maintain the sovereign power to devalue the dollar as necessary to maintain
proper social spending. I don't understand why sovereign governments cannot see that a deficit is just the mirror image of a healthy
social economy (Stephanie Kelton).
And to that end "fix" an exchange rate that maintains a reasonable purchasing power of the
currency by pegging it to the long term health of the economy. What we do now is peg the dollar to a "basket of goods and services"-
Ben Bernanke. That "basket" is effectively "the market" and has very little to do with good social policy.
There's no reason we
can't dispense with the market and simply fiat the value of our currency based on the social return estimated for our social investments.
Etc. Keeping the dollar stubbornly strong is just tyranny favoring those few who benefit from extreme inequality.
" Democracy is not under stress – it's under aggressive attack, as unconstrained financial greed overrides public accountability
."
I request a lessatorium* on the term 'democracy', because there aren't any democracies. Rather than redefine the term, why
not use a more accurate one, like 'plutocracy', or 'corporatocracy'.
-- -- -- -
* It's like a moratorium, you just do less of it.
I had not given much thought to "Fascist" until the term was challenged as a synonym for "bully." So, I started reading Wikipedia's
take on Fascismo. What I discovered was the foremost, my USA education did not teach jack s -- about Fascism – and I went to elite
high school in libr'l Chicago.
Is Fascism right or left? Does it matter? What goes around comes around.
What I gleaned from my quick Wikiread was the apparent pattern of economic inequality causing the masses to huddle in fear
& loathing to one corner – desperation, and then some clever autocrat subverts the energy from their F&L into political power
by demonizing various minorities and other non-causal perps.
Like nearly every past fascism emergence in history, US Trumpismo is capitalizing on inequality, and fear & loathing (his capital
if you will) to seize power. That brings us to Today – to Trump, and an era (brief I hope) of US flirtation with fascism. Thank
God Trump is crippled by a narcissism that fuels F&L within his own regime. Otherwise, I might be joining a survivalist group
or something. :-)
Neoliberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital.
So, it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in
a way that enhances capital.
Prominent politicians in the US and UK have spent their entire political careers representing neoliberalism's agenda at the
expense of representing the voters' issues. The voters are tired of the conservative and [neo]liberal political establishments' focus
on neoliberal policy. This is also true in Germany as well France and Italy. The West's current political establishments see the
way forward as "staying the neoliberal course." Voters are saying "change course." See:
'German Politics Enters an Era of Instability' – Der Speigel
Very weak analysis The authors completely missed the point. Susceptibility to rumors (now
called "fake new" which more correctly should be called "improvised news") and high level of
distrust to "official MSM" (of which popularity of alternative news site is only tip of the
iceberg) is a sign of the crisis and tearing down of the the social fabric that hold the so
social groups together. This first of all demonstrated with the de-legitimization of the
neoliberal elite.
As such attempt to patch this discord and unite the US society of fake premises of Russiagate
and anti-Russian hysteria look very problematic. The effect might be quite opposite as the story
with Steele dossier, which really undermined credibility of Justice Department and destroyed the
credibility o FBI can teach us.
In this case claims that "The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan
" are just s a sign of rejection of neoliberalism by voters. Nothing more nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made. ..."
"... A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption. ..."
That these efforts might have actually made a difference, or at least were intended to,
highlights a force that was already destabilizing American democracy far more than any
Russian-made fake news post: partisan polarization.
"Partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgment," the
political scientists Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira wrote in a recent paper . "The human attraction to fake and
untrustworthy news" -- a danger cited by political scientists far more frequently than
orchestrated meddling -- "poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning."
It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it
vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but
laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more
damaging, is all American-made.
... ... ...
A recent study found
that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers
of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media
consumption.
Americans, it said, sought out stories that reflected their already-formed partisan view of
reality. This suggests that these Russians efforts are indicators -- not drivers -- of how
widely Americans had polarized.
That distinction matters for how the indictment is read: Though Americans have seen it as
highlighting a foreign threat, it also illustrates the perhaps graver threats from
within.
An Especially Toxic Form of Partisanship
... ... ...
"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she
said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."
The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a
faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.
Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic
processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other
side.
In taking this approach, the Russians were merely riding a trend that has been building for
decades.
Since the 1980s , surveys have found that Republicans and Democrats' feelings toward the
opposing party have been growing more and more negative. Voters are animated more by distrust
of the other side than support for their own.
This highlights a problem that Lilliana Mason, a University of Maryland political scientist,
said had left American democracy dangerously vulnerable. But it's a problem driven primarily by
American politicians and media outlets, which have far louder megaphones than any Russian-made
Facebook posts.
"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she
said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."
The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a
faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.
Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic
processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other
side.
Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of
ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer
that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.
Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa,
Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......
Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the
extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing
ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking
that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.
Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual
level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.
Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".
Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have
been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt
and horror, let alone find him funny.
In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of
power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we
in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of
power?
My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell
the tale and take revenge.
Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the
Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it,
the entire West.
Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after
as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies;
really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.
So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you
to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).
And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.
When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they'
allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)
Rule One: If an American politician is speaking, then they are lying to you.
Rule Two: If an American Politician is quiet, they they want you to believe a lie.
Rule Three: If you have relations with the United States, you will be lied to.
And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.
Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually
pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.
Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)
I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the
Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.
The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch
Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).
Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election,
2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just
a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their
elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.
Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be
disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by
a minority."
and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking
industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too
...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good
as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
"... This rings true as well; "The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded. His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world." ..."
"... This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc. that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded". ..."
"... Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well. All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine? ..."
"... Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of their little darlings. ..."
"... I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more than 1935. ..."
"... Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead. ..."
"... I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out. ..."
"... The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous. ..."
"... Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. ..."
"... Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great. ..."
"... Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists. ..."
"... But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a 'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even further. ..."
"... The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency, more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches, perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what the Magister Militum tells them to do. ..."
"... The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building ..."
"... Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological impacts. ..."
"... The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have now. ..."
"... For me the frame changed with the restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President Donald Trump is incompetent. ..."
All of the warnings, predictions, knowledge, tech advances and humor of sci-fi, real
science, history, and literature alike has boiled down to this? This low quality "news" that
reports on the latest predictable, preventable outrage/injustice when it not intentionally
turning up the hysteria/fear tuner? It's like living in a simulation of a society ruled by
the insane and hearing about its unwinding day after day.
This rings true as well;
"The implications for the future of the American republic were terrifying, Tesich concluded.
His words are haunting to read today: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool
about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the
truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired
a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way
we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."
Yeat's captures the inexorable feel of our times perfectly;
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This also applies to the UK. What goodwill, mythology ("worldliness, pragmatism") etc.
that was attached by continentals to the UK has been "exploded".
This makes me wonder whether the US will exist in its current form. Is it desirable?
Genuine questions from someone who visits annually, including "fly over", and enjoys doing
so. I don't see the UK existing as currently constituted much beyond the next decade.
Lately, I've detected a certain sense of malaise among my fellow citizens. In my opinion, it's long been apparent that this won't end well.
All of these factors points to a day of reckoning that is rapidly approaching. Perhaps the
prevalence of school shootings is acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine?
Don't think that the elite have not noticed the way things are moving. In my own line of
work I interact with the 1% on a regular basis. I can tell you that even though they are
doing better that ever, there is a sense of discreet terror. It's obvious when they discuss
all the ways that they're trying to replicating their own advantages in the education of
their little darlings.
I'm starting to think that what we are experiencing is the realization that we've spent
way too much time expecting that explaining our selves, our diverse grievances, and our
political insights would naturally result in growing an irresistible movement that would wash
over, and cleanse our politics of the filth that is the status quo.
It is sobering to realize that it took almost four decades for the original Progressive
Era organizers to bring about even the possibility of change.
I think it's dawning on us that we're not re-experiencing the moment before the election
of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we're actually just now realizing
the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more
than 1935.
Government by the people, and for the people has been drowned in the bath-tub, and the
murderers have not only taken the reigns of power, but have convinced half the population
that their murderous act represents a political correction that will return America to
greatness.
It remains to be seen whether we will find it in our hearts to embrace both the hard, and
un-glamorous work of relieving the pain inflicted by the regime that has engulfed us, and the
necessity of embracing as brothers and sisters those who haven't yet realized that it is the
rich and powerful who are the problem, and not all the other poor and oppressed.
The difficulty of affecting political change might be explained the way Black-Smiths
describe their problem;
Life so short the craft so long to learn.
Even if it takes half as much time to defeat the Robber Barons this go-round, many of us
will not see anything resembling ' victory ' in our lifetimes, so we have to make
adjustments in our expectations, and accept the monumental nature of the tasks ahead.
"that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
A nice excerpt from the non-binding Gettysburg address. Too bad he was referring to a
system of governance which never existed.
In a conversation with several friends yesterday.. all of us found among our greatest
despairs the behavior of our long time friends who are Democrats. Much more pig-headed and
determined to stay that way than Republicans ever were during the Bush Jr. years. Pretending
we live in some sort of system (much less a party) which could or would possibly represent.
Seemingly incapable of listening, blinded by delusion and propaganda demanding anyone in
their presence double down on what's failed so many of us for far longer than we have
lived.
All of us men in our fifties. Hard working. None of us had kids of our own, but several
are in relationships with women who did. None of us have anything close to high living
standards. Barely getting by now with great uncertainty ahead. Hell, we all own our homes
outright, drive ten to twenty year old cars, buy most clothes second hand, grow much of our
own food, cut our own firewood, several live off the grid entirely. Only one has access to
health care and that's because he's on disability due to spinal injury on the job and an
inherited heart condition. He's also the only one who might be able to get by in 'retirement'
years on what he will receive. Every one of the rest of us realized if we lose our current
jobs we would be hard pressed to replace them at half the income we have now.
I went to orientation for jury duty this week. Out of a hundred and fifty people I was the
only man wearing a button down shirt and a sport coat. The only man who removed his hat in
the courtroom. And I felt like a freak. It was all I could do to not ask the judge about jury
nullification. The only reason I held back is because I knew every citizen in the joint just
wanted out of there.
I think delegitimization is upon us. General malaise is nearly to the point of a general
strike. The house of cards is in a slow motion but certain wind storm. Those thousand dollar
checks at Wal-Mart payday will vanish overnight while the wealthy reap tax benefits for years
on end. We are down to the twenty seven percent (Dems) waging false battles with the twenty
six percent (Reps). Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.
Only the 47 percent rest of us will grow in numbers from here on out.
So there is our hope. Personally, I suspect that Trump's working-class supporters will join us sooner than the
deluded, diehard Clintonista faction of the democratic base. And let's hope the false battles don't turn into real battles. It's obvious there are some
who would love to have us throwing rocks at each other, or worse.
Yes, indeed, you have it. Delegitimization is the appropriate word. My thought on seeing
the headline that 17 died in the Florida school shooting was how many months to go before the
school year ends. I won't read anything about the shooter, or the deaths, or the bravery and
self sacrifice. There have been too many; there will be far too many more.
It is an end-of-Vietnam moment. It is a moment for poems such as the above mentioned, and
for me T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.
Book: The Administration of Fear – Paul Virilio.
From the back cover:
We are facing the emergence of a real, collective madness reinforced by the synchronization
of emotions: the sudden globalization of affects in real time that hits all of humanity at
the same time, and in the name of Progress. Emergency exit: we have entered a time of general
panic.
-- --
Perhaps because I live in the UK, I echo particularly what Clive, Windsock and Plutonium
Kun say.
Having spent much of the winter in Belgium, Mauritius, Spain and France, so none
Anglo-Saxon, it was a relief to get away from the UK in the same way as JLS felt. Although
these countries have their issues, I did notice their MSM appear not as venal as the UK and
US MSM and seem more focused on local bread and butter. Brexit and Trump were mentioned very
briefly, the latter nothing as hysterical and diversionary as in the UK and US. There were
little identity politics on parade. Locals don't seem as worn out, in all respects, as one
observes in Blighty.
With regard to PK's reference about Pearl Harbour, I know some well informed remainers who
want a hard Brexit just for the relief that it will bring. Others, not necessarily remainers,
have no idea what's going on and think Trump is a bigger threat. I must confess to, often,
sharing what the former think, if only to bring the neo-liberal house down once and for
all.
All this makes me think whether anglo-saxon countries are in a class of their own and how,
after Brexit, the EU27 will evolve, shorn of the UK. This is not to say that the UK (the
neo-liberal bit) is the only rotten apple in the EU.
If it was not for this site and community, I know of no other place where I would get a
better source of news, insight and sanity. I know a dozen journalists, mainly in London, well
and echo what Norello said.
The Anglo-American countries can not be anything but in a class of their own. They include
the mother country with former colonies, some especially successful, and rule the world by
virtue of language, wealth and, often necessarily, violence, almost always gratuitous.
Violence has an effect on peoples lives at both the giving and receiving ends. What was this
school shooting? The 13th or something since the beginning of the year. War. Nuclear war. A
fear of war is the undertone which has been droning (!) on long before Donald Trump took
power. Image you are in Baghdad on the glorious, glittering night of Shock and Awe to get a
feel for things. That happened when the US was supposedly great.
Is pretending all is well a rational defense against the overwhelming feeling that there
is nothing an individual can do to deflect the trajectory we are on? And the emotional energy
it takes to keep up that pretense is exhausting.
I think for myself and others that the complete hopelessness of our situation is starting
to take more of a toll. The amount of personal and social capital used to finally get some
sanity back in government after Bush and the disastrous wasted opportunity of Obama that led
to Trump is overwhelming. The complete loss of fairness is everywhere and my pet one this
week is how Experian after losing over 200 million personal financial records is now
advertising during the Olympics as the personal security service experts instead of being
prosecuted out of business.
Yesterday was peculiar, Yves Smith. You should have sent me an e-mail! My colleagues were
having meltdowns (overtired, I think). My computers were glitchy. The WWW seemed to switch on
and off all day long. I am of a mind that it has to due with the false spring: We had a thaw
in Chicago.
Like Lambert, and I won't speak for Lambert, who can speak for himself, I am guardedly
optimistic: I have attended Our Revolution meetings here in Chicago as well as community
meetings. There are many hardworking and savvy people out there. Yet I also believe that we
are seeing the collapse of the old order without knowing what will arise anew. And as always,
I am not one who believes that we should advocate more suffering so that people "learn their
lesson." There is already too much suffering in the world–witness the endless U.S.
sponsored wars in the Middle East. (The great un-covered story of our time: The horrors of
the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi sponsored massacres from Algeria to Pakistan.)
I tend to think that the Anglo-American world is having a well-deserved nervous
breakdown.
I note on my FB page that a "regular Democrat" is calling for war by invoking Orwell. When
someone has reached that point of rottenness, not even knowing that Orwell was almost by
nature anti-war, the rot can only continue its collapse.
So I offer Antonio Gramsci, who in spite of everything, used to write witty letters from
prison. >>
My state of mind brings together these two sentiments and surpasses them: I am pessimistic
because of intelligence, but a willed optimist. I think, in every circumstance, of the worst
scenario so I can marshal all of my reserves of will and be ready to overcome the obstacle. I
never allow myself illusions, and I have never had disappointments. I am always specially
armed with endless patience, not passive or inert, but patience animated by perseverance. –Antonio Gramsci, letter to his brother Gennaro, December 1929. Translation DJG.
Every collapse brings intellectual and moral disorder in its wake. So we must foster
people who are sober, have patience, who do not despair when faced with the worst horrors yet
who do not become elated over every stupid misstep. Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our
will makes us optimists. –Antonio Gramsci, first Prison Notebook, 1929-1930. Translation DJG.
So: Commenting groundlings and comrades, we must be alert, somewhat severe in our
judgments of people and of the news, and yet open to a revolution that includes bread and
roses.
Nice find, DJG: "Our intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us
optimists."
Too big for a bumper sticker . but good for a bedside table or the bathroom mirror. To
remind us that, for the realists, being optimistic takes an effort of will, a determined
reach every single morning to find just one small thing that will keep us going for that day
and give us hope for the future. It could be a rosy sunrise, or the imminent arrival of a
grandchild, or a packet of seeds ready to be sown. Or meeting a good friend for coffee, or
mastering a new dance step or a difficult passage on the fiddle.
Not denial of the world's shameful faults and of our increasingly precarious position
within it, but a refusal to allow them to grind us down completely.
Intelligence makes us pessimists, and our will makes us optimists.
My favorite quote. What else is there?
And if you want to know who the enemy is, it is all those whose cure for what ails us is
either "Just going on living your life (i.e. shopping)" or "just vote". I view the current
period of disquiet and all of us wondering what we can and should do, and who will be
alongside us, or opposed to us, when we do.
> Pessimism of the the intellect, optimism of the will
I think -- call me Pollyanna if you wish -- that optimism of the intellect is warranted as
well. My only concern is that collapse will come (or be induced) when "the good guys,"* let
us say, are still to weak to take advantage of the moment. That's why I keep saying that
gridlock is our friend.
* Who in the nature of the case have been unaccustomed to wielding real power.
I have been fortunate, in the past decade, to have 'hung out' with lots of 20-somethings
(and a few older beings) who have been passionately optimistic about what they can accomplish
against the forces of darkness. From the environmentalists who are fighting the corporations
who would build pipelines and LNG terminals to activists building tiny houses for the
homeless and working with the city to find land to place them on, and those who happily get
arrested for sleeping under a blanket, in protest against 'urban camping' bans, to a woman
who for the last five years has served Friday night meals for all, on sidewalks in front of
businesses supporting the urban camping ban.
And, I have been constantly in awe of those who, in the face of centuries of being
relocated, dispossessed, despised and massacred, will not give up on protecting their lands
and their way of life. These Lakota and Kiowa and Dineh people are truly optimistic that they
will prevail. Or, perhaps fatalistic is a better description; hey know they may die
trying.
Looks like this article has a lot of legs on it but will wait to read more commentator's
thoughts and ideas before doing so myself. Too much to take in. In the meantime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WatQeG5fMU
As a New Zealander living in the USA for around 7 years now (but routinely spending
Christmas months back in NZ, and often multi month stints remote working in Europe) the
'tension' just living in the USA – NYC / LA is through the roof.
I can remember being in Vienna some time after trump won, a few days shy of returning to
the US and wondering what the hell I was thinking – and that's related to people /
media's reaction to trump just as much as trump being in charge.
It's hard to put your finger on exactly what it is – partly just the 'big
metropolis' thing.. but there's also something else nasty in the air.
Similar (but amplified) feeling at work last week at the office as one quarter of the
company were sacked on a days notice – a downsizing at a start up that supposedly has
'great culture'.
It's that nasty squeeze of fast capitalism I believe that has a grip on everyone's psyche
– elevated fear levels, etc.
Re-read Ames' 'going postal' a few weeks back, which covers brilliantly the vicious
cultural turn under Reagan.
Ps – Naked Capitalism has become my 'News refuge' having dropped off social media
entirely, and wanting to avoid the general insanity of the news cycle but not disengage,
thank you!
It's not so much the presence of angst that I see, among my working brethren we're pretty
numb to the current hopeless future and tend to focus instead on the present for efficiencies
sake, for if one thinks too much about the hopeless future it's hard to get up and get going
on fighting back the tide and muddling through the hopeless present that will be more
hopeless if you don't do anything. (as an aside my opinion is that this psychology has much
to do with the current homeless crisis it takes confidence to try and those who can delude
themselves into doing so seem to be a little better off) But now the angst is in the the
10%er's in my acquaintance, who claim to be really worried about nuclear war. Not
surprisingly they're mostly informed by npr, which as far as I can see makes people really
stupid. The trump as crazy fascist narrative has them in it's clutches so much so that his
weekend I had to give the "don't be too pessimistic b/c if the world doesn't end you will be
unprepared for it, and if it ends who cares?" speech normally reserved for youngsters who see
no point in trying due to end of the world thinking (as anecdote since when I was in college
in the early '80's I was pretty certain there would be a nuclear war and made different
choices than the best ones,, anyone remember the star wars missile defense system?). That
said I think the "we're all gonna die" theme is just more bs sour grapes and more proof that
the residence of hopelessness is actually the democrat partisans who refuse to live in the
present, so denial is where they are at. But isn't that the thing about angst, it doesn't
have to be real to effect one's life negatively, and I'm hearing it from people who I think
should know better, but I read nc daily and live out in the woods (highly recommended, almost
as good as being in another country as the rural areas of the US are actually
another country) and npr was so unhinged this weekend that I felt that even the reporters
were having a hard time mustering the outrage. As Hope said commenting on the uber series
"What a pleasure it is to read a genuine (and all too rare) piece of financial analysis."
I couldn't agree more, and I might send it on to a 10%er, but they seem kind of fragile
lately and I don't know if they could handle "uber is a failing enterprise", they might not
get out of bed
Don't know if I'm any more sensitive than you guys, and I'm certainly not that good at
articulating what's going in with something this subtle.
I will say that when the dogs stop barking its time to start getting REALLY worried. What
we may now be hearing, or not hearing, may be a sign of fatigue, but more depressingly,
impending resignation. EVERY day for the past year there's been yet another affront, and the
opposition has been ineffective in any meaningful sense. Trump has apparently learned that
the way to parry any thrust is to counter with something even more outrageous, literally in a
matter of minutes. The initiative he is thus able to maintain is scary, and something I see
no way to surmount.
But Trump is not the problem here, only the Front Man for something larger. Even during
the early oughts one could perceive a fundamental societal drift, empowered by a
'conservative' (read: fascist) willingness to do whatever was necessary in pursuit of their
particular vision. It is not a vision of returning disempowered white folks to some rosy past
that never existed; I sense a more feudal vision, with princes and lords in gated
communities, with peasants conned into doing their bidding, every day being fleeced even
further.
Hence, having the means, though by no means being rich, I began my move off-shore over ten
years ago. I now have 3 passports and permanent residency on as many continents. What
Jerri-Lynn senses is very, very real, as I learned in the US over Xmas past in a series of
vignettes I'll spare anyone reading this. I was sharing my experiences there to a local
student recently (here in South America) who had once lived in the US and who continues to be
enamored of the now frayed, and largely repudiated, American Dream. As I explained to him,
it's not a pretty picture, and hardly one to succumb to.
My sense is that the media has succeeded in instilling into the North American zeitgeist a
sense of the US being At War against the rest of the world, not unlike that of the mentality
of Israel, which has a far more real situation to contend with. The tragedy, in the case of
the US, is that it really, really does not have to be like this. This is a hole we have begun
digging ourselves into only recently, as opposed to Israel, which at this point can hardly
see the light of day.
At some point this mentality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and while the US could
easily turn itself around, the momentum is strong and decidedly in the other direction. The
vision of the fascists and the imperatives of the media pretty much guarantee the US, and by
extension the world, is on a collision course with negative time and space.
I'm probably the last person able to comment on this topic having spent the last three
months ignoring the news and not even reading Naked Capitalism daily. I was never bothered by
the big stories like the drama over North Korea which I thought of as nothing more than a
psy-op incidentally aimed at the American populace. Nor did I find Liberal Hezbollah (The
Resistance) or #Metoo to be anything more than a joke. I kinda suspected that American
culture would be plagued by another round of hysterical superstition driven by Calvinist
social-jihadism.
If there seems to be a lack of consequential events it's because history doesn't move as
swiftly as we might want. It doesn't mean that we aren't moving towards more worldview
shattering events which will challenge the ability of our body politic to react to them. The
United States continues to collapse driven by external and internal factors. The lack of
clarity and unity of action will eventually usher in the end of the empire aboard. The
inability of our ruling class to respond to Trump's election in such a manner which would
constructively restore faith in our institutions will only accelerate the process at home.
There isn't a lack of stories which serve as a useful guide through history. The story about
American troops being ambushed and dying in Niger was significant.
A few years before the Islamic State steamrolled through Iraq and Syria it was mostly
unnoticed that the French were contending with rebels marauding through their African
protection racket in Mali and the Central African Republic. The fact that the US is having to
prop up the French and that the chaos has been migrating southward is significant especially
given the economic factors at stake. Another story I found interesting was a recent DW
article about the woeful state of readiness of the German military given it is assuming
leadership of a prominent position in NATO. It notably reveals that in the aftermath of the
2008 economic crisis and euro crisis the Germans, but probably the European countries as a
whole, have been strip-mining their military budgets which is something that America did
during the Great Depression. I'm sure there is even more stories out there that are little
pieces of a much larger puzzle but to be honest I've mostly spent my downtime playing video
games.
True enough. It shouldn't go unnoticed that Obama was calling for NATO nations to increase
their military spending 'til they reach 2% of their GDP. The Germans wouldn't theoretically
have any trouble meeting under normal circumstances. It's also a far cry from what Germany
spent on the eve of both World Wars.
"Basically everything and anything anti-Republican & anti-Trump that gets published on
Facebook gets re-posted on our church Facebook page."
Hmmm. Are you losing parishioners as a result? Or gaining them? It doesn't seem to me like
what people would be looking for in a faith community – an overload of politics –
but what do I know.
Oh, I see that you've already sort of answered that question.
the tendency to excessive rage when identity is questioned is a feature of narcissism.
excessive, misplaced, out of proportion rage (at being denied what was expected, at being
wrong, at being seen as incompetent, whatever conflicts with the rager's identity) is what
this sounds like to me. which is I guess another form of not thinking enough, unfortunately
narcissism isn't curable.
in fact so much of this thread makes me feel like we're all suffering a bit as grey rocks
in a narcissistic abuse scenario. the narcissism is at the individual level and at the
societal level; we're all just trying to keep our heads down and avoid the maelstrom, which
keeps increasing in intensity to get our attention back.
What I have noticed is: a sense of powerlessness and not being able to control basic
aspects of your life .that at any moment things could spiral widely out of control; people
have become more enraged, meaner and feel they don't even have to be polite anymore (my
friends and I have noticed this even with drivers); people who normally would be considered
comfortable are feeling more and more financially insecure. Almost everyone I know feels this
tension and is trying to figure out what they need to do to survive – I know several
who are exploring becoming expats. I think we are rapidly moving towards a breaking point
.
The angst feels not like the angst of an impending, singular catastrophe, but rather the
angst of decline. There's a late empire feel to the current mood: leaders without agency,
more interested in their own, internal sense of normalcy and maintaining their perches,
perches that increasingly feel pointless as they're all just listless figureheads doing what
the Magister Militum tells them to do.
The military feels all-encompassing yet simultaneously
incapable of exercising its will in the theater of war, so dispersed and aimless, as the
missions are no longer about winning wars but about resume building. Same for the security
agencies, whose invasive practices feel less like a preparation for a 1984-style security
state, and more a cover for their own incompetence and inability to do proper legwork, as
these mass shootings seem to inevitably come with the revelation about how authorities were
alerted prior to the fact of the shooter's warning signs and did no follow up. Meanwhile,
standards of living decline for the vast majority of Americans, the sense of national unity
is eroding as regional and rural/urban identities are superseding that of country. Not to
mention the slow simmer that is global warming and climate change.
So yeah, nothing that translates to a flashy headline or all-at-once collapse, but
definitely an angst of a slow slide down, with too much resistance to the change needed to
reverse it.
My feeling is that the U$A, along with various sovereign entities around much the planet
will, within a decade or so, cease to exist in their current form. When people coalesce and
societies reform, is when one gets/is forced .. to choose their 'new' afilliation(s) !
It will be facinating to behold, if one is alive to partake in it !
As for positive, or negative outcomes who knows ?
I believe that what is happening is that slowly but surely the numbers of people who are
subconsciously reacting to the ongoing collapse of civilization are growing. They are uneasy,
anxious, deflated, waiting for Godot, in depression and so on.
Civililizations don't collapse like falling off a table. They stress resources of
materials and people and such stresses build and build. This has serious psychological
impacts. Numbness to new is bad news. Or what used to be bad news has to be Trumped by
exceedingly bad news before folks can rise to deal with them, but for a shorter time than
they had the ability they used to. As the number of people grows who have reached their
capacity to tolerate the stress we will find more and more of them just shut down as their
subconscious tells them there is no point in caring anymore as things are just going to get
worse.
We all see things getting worse.
So we have little collapses on a regular basis which hardly ruffle anyone's feathers
anymore. The moderate catastrophic disasters like Trumps election cause much bigger
disruptions to the civilizational equilibrium, but only for a time. We all know deep inside
that what comes next in Brexit or say Trumps removal will actually be worse than what we have
now. And we know that such will be the trend for the duration. Each time we seem to overcome
a disaster we will be presented with another building disaster. A worse one. As we continue
to stair step down the long slope that our civilization climbed during the renaissance and
the enlightenment. Trump and Brexit are medium steps down.
The Black Swan is out there somewhere watching us. The big step down. We can feel it
coming and we cannot stop it. We know that what seems bad now is going to be a lot worse in
the future. We know this and it makes us helpless.
Skip above has the word on this.
"The centre does not hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world".
The Worst Well-Being Year on Record for the U.S. – Gallup
"Americans' well-being took a big hit nationally in 2017, according to the
Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, which recorded declines in 21 states. Why did well-being
drop, and where were the declines most pronounced?"
OK- no endorsement from me re the validity of this Index, BUT the podcast raises an
important point vis a vis 2009 downturn in their Index.
I think what we have here is a Mexican standoff the likes of which has perhaps never been
seen. I am 51 years old. For most of my life there has been a polite changing of the guards
to no great effect every four years. Trump rode into Washington on a bridge burning mission
and all that has changed. Or were the bridges burned upon his approach, after which he was
framed for the crime? This is the essence of the problem we face as a country, and the world
watching on with bated breath.
I still do not know what is "true" about any of this "Russiagate" contretemps. Perhaps
none of it. Perhaps all of it. I suspect both parties and candidates were hand fed dubious
information then tried to hide the wrappers from the "authorities" who (naturally) were only
interested in how any of it impacted them personally and institutionally, and so on and so
forth, etc. etc.
But where does that get us a nation? If you are a child and you walk into your parent's
bedroom to find your mother screwing the gardener you may be upset. But then if you run down
the hall to your brother's room to tell him and find your father en flagrante with the nanny,
well where do you go from there?
We have to find a way to deescalate with each other as Americans. I find myself repeatedly
smiling blankly in conversations with family, friends, and strangers who will all equally
complain vociferously about someone who is definitely destroying the planet/country/children.
But that only gets you so far. If you do not engage after a few minutes you are viewed with
great suspicion. And then only the strongest bonds of love can save you from being cast aside
or worse.
Deescalate now. I'm gonna put it on a tshirt.
By the way, reading a lot of Jung right now. Anyone else?
For the better part of the last 45 years I have traveled the world, worked with
individuals in different cultures, walked among and shared bread and stories with many people
in their living quarters and the news of today is not so much (occasionally) about the depth
of love that exists around the world but only about the evils we are told about in pages of
the WaPo, NYTimes and even the WST. So sad because there is so much good to view but good
rarely delivers headlines and headlines sell news and make journalists.
The news is slow because the liberal media just can't dig out that one great story or
smokin' gun that brings down Trump & Co. This whole story is stale and at the point of
"who cares" ..well, the liberals seem to be the only interested parties. I am not a
Republican or Conservative or aligned with any party but an American who looks for the best
talent of any party to represent us .citizens of the U.S.A. I laugh at the whole 'Russian
Thing' . like this is NEW news when it's as old as the Roman Empire. There are many of us
true Americans that if our democracy was every challenged, threatened or in trouble would
rise up against any threat–and more than likely not with guns but with our minds, our
knowledge and our ability to talk calmly and rationally rather than shout threats on
Twitter.
The media needs to get over itself and quit trying to be the type of police we all despise
.manipulated headlines are part of the problem with the 'stillness' today. If you can't dig
up any worthy headlines that will sell the news, then go home and close the cover of your
computer and find someone to hug ..God knows we can all use an extra level of love in today's
seemingly gloomy lack of news world.
a pretty good question in the face of all the noise.
i believe it is in response to the saturated level of cognitive dissonance. an inverse
reaction to the lack of transparency and unresponsiveness of both commercial and governmental
activities.
the sensitivity of untoward persuasion on social media an indication of the fallibility of
the centralized narrative?
I have felt an eery disquiet for the last several years, more or less since the year I
retired. I think retirement finally offered me the time I needed to see and think about the
world. For the last few years I have felt a strong need to move away to higher ground and a
smaller community further out from the cities. Churchill's book title "Gathering Storm" seems
apt, but war seems only one of the many possible storms gathering and I think one of the
least likely at present although the actions and qualities of those who rule us make even
nuclear war seem possible. And I take little comfort from learning how close we came to
nuclear war in the past and how the unstable mechanisms guiding us toward this brink remain
in place with new embellishments for greater instability.
The economy is ambling a drunkard's walk climbing a knife's edge. The Corporations remain
hard at work consolidating and building greater monopoly power, dismantling what remains of
our domestic jobs and industry, and building ever more fragile supply chains. The government
is busy dismantling the safety net, deconstructing health care, public education and science,
bolstering the wealth of the wealthy, and stoking foreign wars while a tiff between factions
within those who rule us fosters a new cold war and an arms build-up including building a new
nuclear arsenal. In another direction Climate Disruption shows signs of accelerating while
the new weather patterns already threaten random flooding and random destruction of cities.
It already destroyed entire islands in the Caribbean. The government has proven its inability
and unwillingness to do anything to prepare for the pending disasters or help the areas
struck down in the seasons past. The year of Peak Oil is already in our past and there is
nothing to fill its place. The world populations continue to grow exponentially. Climate
Disruption promises to reduce food production and move the sources for fresh water and the
worlds aquifers are drying up. It's as if a whole flock of black swans is looking for places
to land.
I quit watching tv, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers long ago. The news
desert isn't new or peculiar to this moment. I haven't seen much of interest in the news from
any source since the election. The noise of social media and celebrity news does seem turned
up higher recently, although I base this judgment on occasional peeks at magazines or
snatches of NPR. After the last election I gave up on the possibility that we still had a
democracy in this country. Over the last several years I've had some expensive and unpleasant
dealings with local government, the schools, law enforcement, the courts, and government
agencies in helping one and then the other of my children through difficulties which
confirmed in the particular all my worst beliefs about the decay of our government and legal
systems. In short my personal anxiety has been at a high level for some time now and I can't
say its peaked lately. I don't get out and around enough to get a good sense of how others
feel and certainly can't judge whether this moment is a moment of peaking anxiety. When I've
been in the City and nearby cities I've long had a feeling of passing through a valley
between mountains of very dry tender. I hold my head low and walk quickly to my destinations.
Every so often I warn my children to move out, but they don't listen.
This is an excellent post and valid observations. Things don't seem right. I blame old age
and being awaken by F-16s on combat patrols out of Andrews. For me the frame changed with the
restart of the Cold War. I remember "Duck and Cover, McCarthyism, John Birchers, and Who Lost
China". It has all come back. The Democrats are idiots for scapegoating Russia. President
Donald Trump is incompetent. Scott Pruitt must fly first class because he cannot sit next to
riff-raft like me who worked at his Agency for 37 years and hear that he has sold out the
earth for short term gain and profit. America is at war, inside and out, with no way of
winning.
I am going to try to see if I can make sense of what has been happening the past few years
but I could easily be as wrong as the next person but will try nonetheless. In reading the
comments I can see the tension seeping through so to try to come to terms with it I will use
the US as my focus though I could just as easily be talking about any other western country
like the UK, Germany, Australia, France, etc. The US though is at the forefront of these
changes so should be mentioned first.
The American people are now in what the military call a fire-sac and the door has been
slammed shut behind them. What is more, I think they realize it. A few threads need
mentioning here. A study that came out last year showed that what Americans wanted their
government to do never becomes a consideration unless it aligned what some upper echelon also
wanted. People want a military pull-back but are ignored and now find that American troops
are digging into Syria and are scattered in places like Africa with the military wanting to
go head-to-head with North Korea, Russia, China and a host of other nations. It has become
blatantly obvious too that their vaunted free media has become little more than Pravda on the
Potomac and in fact has aligning with the wealthy against the interests of the American
people. The media is even helping bring in censorship as they know that their position is
untenable. The entire political establishment is now recognized as a rigged deck with radical
neoliberal politicians in charge and at the last election the best candidates that they could
find out of 330 million Americans were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The massive industry
that built America has been mostly disassembled and shipped overseas and without the wealth
and skills that it generated, infrastructure has been left to rack and ruin when it should be
a core government function. Climate change cannot be ignored anymore and is starting to bite.
Even the Pentagon is realising that some of its vaunted bases will be underwater in decades.
I am sure other commentators can list yet more trends here but you get the picture.
OK, so there are massive problems but they can be faced and taken on but here is the kicker.
The political establishment in your country does not want anything to change but to keep
doing what is generated these problems. There is too much money at stake to change for them.
In fact, one of the two presidential candidates in 2016 was specifically chosen to keep
things going they way that they are. So where does that leave the American people? British
officers have always been taught that when their men were complaining and bitching, that that
was how it was but when the men were very quiet, that was the time to watch them carefully. I
think something similar is at work here. It has not yet coalesced but what I think we are
seeing is the beginnings of a phase shift in America. The unexpected election of Trump was a
precursor but as nothing changed after he was elected the pressure is still building.
Now here is the part where I kick over everybody's tea wagon. In looking for a root cause to
how all these challenges are being pushed down the road to an even worse conclusion, I am
going to have to say that the problem lies in the fact that representative democracy no
longer works. In fact, the representatives in the form of Senators, Reps, Judges and even the
President have been almost totally dislocated from the will of the people. The connection is
mostly not there anymore. It is this disconnection that is frustrating change and is thus
building up pressure. I am all for democracy but the democracy we have is not the only form
there is of democracy. There are others.
What this means is that somehow this is going to have to be changed and if not done
peacefully, then I suspect that it will be done in some other way. That lull in the news may
represent a general milling around if you will until some unknown catalyst appears to give
the beginnings of a push in another direction. How it will work out in practice I do not know
but if a mass of independents were elected in your mid-terms then that may be a good sign of
change coming. If both parties clamp down and continue to keep all others out and continue
with neoliberal policies, well, game on.
We have for the last generation or two, (maybe three?) been relentlessly conditioned (name
your puppet-master of choice) to equate happiness and contentment with the never ending
pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses. The competitive underpinnings encouraging our
participation in this futile contest fit well with our innate drives for "success". The race
was over-subscribed by throngs of enthusiastic participants yearning for glory.
For decades many of us did well. We ran strong and felt rewarded with the material
enhancements to our lives, which encouraged many of us to run faster, even if that motivation
was rooted more in the fear of being passed by Ron and Nancy Jones than it was for improving
our chances of ending up on the podium.
Even though we never seemed to catch or pass Ron or Nancy, surely they must have been out
there ahead in the haze somewhere? After all, this was the race that we so eagerly had
trained for. Plus, life was going well while we chased, so we figured it was a fruitful one
to be a part of. All the effort and toil would be worth it in the end.
The slow arc of realization and barely perceptible sense over time (coupled with the self
delusion that comes with resisting acceptance) that we have been duped that this Jones
Marathon has actually been taking place on a treadmill which gradually (hardly
noticeable, but cumulatively significant) has been ratcheted up in both speed and incline,
has now hit home. We have been running for years, but going nowhere. We can't find the stop
button, and don't even want to think what will happen to us if we were to slow down or stop
running! Problem is not only are we are growing physically weary, we are dejected and
defeated in spirit knowing that all our efforts have yielded little other than illusionary
gains.
"... The concern of the American ruling class is not Russian or Chinese "subversion," but the growth of social opposition within the United States. The narrative of "Russian meddling" has been used to justify a systematic campaign to censor the Internet and suppress free speech. ..."
The concern of the American ruling class is not Russian or Chinese "subversion," but the
growth of social opposition within the United States. The narrative of "Russian meddling" has
been used to justify a systematic campaign to censor the Internet and suppress free
speech.
Senator Mark Warner
The performance of Senator Mark Warner , the ranking Democrat on the committee, was
particularly obscene. Warner, whose net worth is estimated at $257 million, appeared to be
doing his best impersonation of Senator Joe McCarthy . He declared that foreign subversion
works together with, and is largely indistinguishable from, "threats to our institutions from
right here at home."
Alluding to the publication of the so-called Nunes memo, which documented the fraudulent
character of the Democratic-led investigation of White House "collusion" with Russia, Warner
noted,
"There have been some, aided and abetted by Russian Internet bots and trolls, who have
attacked the basic integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department."
Responding to questioning from Warner, FBI Director Christopher Wray praised the US
intelligence agencies' greater "engagement" and "partnership" with the private sector,
concluding,
"We can't fully police social media, so we have to work with them so that they can police
themselves."
Wray was referring to the sweeping measures taken by social media companies, working
directly with the US intelligence agencies, to implement a regime of censorship, including
through the hiring of tens of thousands of "content reviewers," many with intelligence
backgrounds, to flag, report and delete content.
The assault on democratic rights is increasingly connected to preparations for a major war,
which will further exacerbate social tensions within the United States. Coats prefaced his
remarks by declaring that "the risk of inter-state conflict, including among great powers, is
higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War."
As the hearing was taking place, multiple news outlets were reporting that potentially
hundreds of Russian military contractors had been killed in a recent US air strike in Syria.
This came just weeks after the publication of the Pentagon's National Defense Strategy, which
declared,
"Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US
national security."
However, the implications of this great-power conflict are not simply external to the US
"homeland." The document argues that "the homeland is no longer a sanctuary," and that "America
is a target," for "political and information subversion" on the part of "revisionist powers"
such as Russia and China.
Since "America's military has no preordained right to victory on the battlefield," the only
way the US can prevail in this conflict is through the "seamless integration of multiple
elements of national power," including "information, economics, finance, intelligence, law
enforcement and military."
In other words, America's supremacy in the new world of great-power conflict requires the
subordination of every aspect of life to the requirements of war. In this totalitarian
nightmare, already far advanced, the police, the military and the intelligence agencies unite
with media and technology companies to form a single seamless unit, whose combined power is
marshaled to manipulate public opinion and suppress political dissent.
The dictatorial character of the measures being prepared was underscored by an exchange
between Wray and Republican Senator Marco Rubio , who asked whether Chinese students were
serving as spies for Beijing.
"What is the counterintelligence risk posed to US national security from Chinese students,
particularly those in advanced programs in the sciences and mathematics?" asked Rubio.
Wray responded that
"the use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it's
professors, scientists, students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around
the country, not just in major cities, small ones as well, basically every discipline."
This campaign, with racist overtones, recalls the official rationale -- defense of "national
security" -- used to justify the internment of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during
the Second World War.
In its open letter calling for a
coalition of socialist, antiwar and progressive websites against Internet censorship, the
World Socialist Web Site noted that
"the ruling class has identified the Internet as a mortal threat to its monopolization of
information and its ability to promote propaganda to wage war and legitimize the obscene
concentration of wealth and extreme social inequality."
It is this mortal threat -- and fear of the growth of class conflict -- that motivate the
lies and hypocrisy on display at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of
ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer
that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.
Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa,
Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......
Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the
extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing
ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking
that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.
Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual
level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.
Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".
Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have
been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt
and horror, let alone find him funny.
In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of
power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we
in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of
power?
My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell
the tale and take revenge.
Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the
Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it,
the entire West.
Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after
as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies;
really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.
So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you
to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).
And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.
When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they'
allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)
Rule One: If an American politician is speaking, then they are lying to you.
Rule Two: If an American Politician is quiet, they they want you to believe a lie.
Rule Three: If you have relations with the United States, you will be lied to.
And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.
Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually
pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.
Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)
I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the
Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.
The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch
Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).
Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election,
2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just
a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their
elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.
Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be
disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by
a minority."
and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking
industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too
...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good
as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
"... Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com . ..."
The hawks and internationalists who set our house on fire don't now deserve the contract to rebuild it.
While it may have significant popular support, much of the anti-Trump "Resistance" suffers from a severe weakness of message.
Part of the problem is with who the Resistance's leading messengers are: discredited neoconservative poltroons like former president
George W. Bush, unwatchable alleged celebrities like Chelsea Handler, and establishment Republicans who routinely
slash and burn the middle class like Senator Jeff Flake. Furthermore, what exactly is the Resistance's overriding message? Invariably
their sermonizing revolves around vague bromides about "tolerance," diversity, unrestricted free trade, and multilateralism. They
routinely push a supposed former status quo that was in fact anything but a status quo. The leaders of the Resistance have in their
arsenal nothing but buzzwords and a desire to feel self-satisfied and turn back to imagined pre-Trump normality. A president like
Donald Trump is only possible in a country with opposition voices of such subterranean caliber.
Remember when Trump steamrolled a crowded field of Republicans in one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history? Surely
many of us also recall the troupes of smug celebrities and Bushes and Obamas who lined up to take potshots at Trump over his unacceptably
cruel utterances that upset their noble moral sensibilities? How did that work out for them? They lost. The more that opposition
to Trump in office takes the same form as opposition to him on the campaign trail, the more hypocritical and counterproductive it
becomes. Further, the resistance to Trump's policies is coming just at the moment when principled opposition most needs to up its
game and help turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock. It's social conservatives who are also opposed to war and exploitation of
the working class who have the best moral bona fides to effectively oppose Trump, which is why morally phrased attacks on Trump from
the corporate and socially liberal wings of the left, as well as the free market and interventionist conservative establishment,
have failed and will continue to fail. Any real alternative is going to have to come from regular folks with hearts and morals who
aren't stained by decades of failure and hypocrisy.
A majority of Democrats now have
favorable views
of George W. Bush, and that's no coincidence. Like the supposedly reasonable anti-Trump voices on their side, Bush pops up like a
dutiful marionette to condemn white supremacy and
"nativism," and to
reminisce about the good old days when he was in charge. Bush also lectures about how Russia is ruining everything by meddling in
elections and destabilizing the world. But how convincing is it really to hear about multilateralism and respect for human rights
from Bush, who launched an unnecessary war on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and left thousands of American
servicemen and women dead and wounded? How convincing is it when former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously remarked
that an estimated half a million Iraqis dead from our 1990s sanctions was "worth it," haughtily claims that she's
"offended" by Trump's travel ban ? "Offended" -- is that so, Madame Secretary? I have a feeling millions of Muslims in the Middle
East may have also been "offended" when people like you helped inflame their region and turned it into an endless back-and-forth
firestorm of conflict between U.S.-backed dictators and brutal jihadists, with everyone else caught in between.
Maybe instead of being offended that not everyone can come to America, people like Albright, Kerry, and Bush shouldn't have contributed
to the conditions that wrecked those people's homes in the first place? Maybe the U.S. government should think more closely about
providing military aid to 73 percent of the world's dictatorships? Sorry, do excuse the crazy talk. Clearly all the ruthless
maneuvering by the U.S. and NATO is just being done out of a selfless desire to spread democratic values by raining down LGBT-friendly
munitions on beleaguered populations worldwide. Another congressman just gave a speech about brave democratic principles so we can
all relax.
Generally, U.S. leaders like to team up with dictators before turning on them when they become inconvenient or start to upset
full-spectrum dominance. Nobody have should been surprised to see John Kerry fraternizing in a friendly manner with Syrian butcher
Bashar al-Assad and then moralistically threatening him with war several years later, or Donald Rumsfeld grinning with Saddam Hussein
as they cooperated militarily before Rumsfeld did an about-face on the naïve dictator based on false premises after 9/11. Here's
former president Barack Obama
shaking Moammar Gaddafi's hand in 2009 . I wonder what became of Mr. Gaddafi?
It's beyond parody to hear someone like Bush sternly opine that there's
"pretty clear evidence" Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Even if that were deeply significant in the way some argue, Bush
should be the last person anyone is hearing from about it. It's all good, though: remember when Bush
laughed about how there hadn't been weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2004? It's all just a joke; don't you get it? (Maybe Saddam Hussein had already
used all the chemical weapons
the U.S. helped him get during the 1980s on Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, which killed over one million people by the time the coalition
of the willing came knocking in 2003). That's the kind of thing people like Bush like to indirectly joke about in the company of
self-satisfied press ghouls at celebratory dinners. However, when the mean man Mr. Trump pals around with Russian baddie Vladimir
Putin, mistreats women, or spews out unkind rhetoric about "shitholes," it's far from a joke: it's time to get out your two-eared
pink hat and hit the streets chanting in righteous outrage.
To be fair, Trump is worthy of opposition. An ignorant, reactive egotist who needs to have his unfounded suppositions and inaccuracies
constantly validated by a sycophantic staff of people who'd be rejected even for a reality show version of the White House, he really
is an unstable excuse for a leader and an inveterate misogynist and all the other things. Trump isn't exactly Bible Belt material
despite his stamp of approval from Jerry Falwell Jr. and crew; in fact he hasn't even succeeded in
getting rid of the Johnson Amendment and allowing churches to get more involved in politics, one of his few concrete promises
to Christian conservatives. He's also a big red button of a disaster in almost every other area as commander-in-chief.
Trump's first military action as president reportedly killed numerous innocent women and children (some unnamed U.S. officials
claim some of the women were militants) as well as a Navy SEAL. Helicopter gunships strafed a Yemeni village for over an hour in
what Trump called a
"highly successful" operation against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A senior military official felt differently,
saying that
"almost
everything went wrong." The raid even killed eight-year-old American girl Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of previously killed extremist
leader Anwar al-Awlaki, whose other innocent child, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was also droned while eating outdoors at a
restaurant in 2010 (with several friends and his 17-year-old cousin). The Obama administration dismissed Abdulrahman's death at the
time as
no big deal .
The list goes on with the Trump administration, a hollow outfit of Goldman Sachs operatives and detached industry and financier
billionaires helping out their hedge fund friends and throwing a small table scrap to the peasants every now and then. As
deformed babies are born in Flint, Michigan , Ivanka grandstands about
paid parental leave
. Meanwhile, Trump and Co. work to
expand the war in Afghanistan
and Syria. It's a sad state of affairs.
So who are the right voices to oppose the mango man-child and his cadre of doddering dullards? Not degenerate celebrities, dirty
politicians of the past, or special interest groups that try to fit everyone into a narrow electoral box so mainline Democrats can
pass their own version of corporate welfare and run wars with more sensitive rhetoric and politically correct messaging. Instead,
the effective dissidents of the future will be people of various beliefs, but especially the pro-family and faith-driven, who are
just as opposed to what came before Trump as they are to him. The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying
liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative
individuals who define their own destinies instead of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational
corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity outreach strategies. It's possible, for example, to be socially conservative,
pro-worker, pro-environment, and anti-war. In fact, that is the norm in most countries that exist outside the false political
paradigm pushed in America.
If enough suburbanite centrists who take a break from Dancing With The Stars are convinced that Trump is bad because
George W. Bush and Madeleine Albright say so, it shows that these people have learned absolutely nothing from Trump or the process
that led to him. These kind of resistors are the people nodding their heads emphatically as they read Eliot Cohen talk about why
he and his friends
can't stomach the evil stench of Trump or
Robert Kagan whine about fascism in The Washington Post. Here's a warning to good people who may not have been following
politics closely prior to Trump: don't get taken in by these charlatans. Don't listen to those who burned your town down as they
pitch you the contract to rebuild it. You can oppose both the leaders of the "Resistance" and Trump. In fact, it is your moral duty
to do so. This is the End of the End of History As We Know It, but there isn't going to be an REM song or Will Smith punching an
alien in the face to help everyone through it.
Here's a thought for those finding themselves enthusiastic about the Resistance and horrified by Trump: maybe, just maybe
, the water was already starting to boil before you cried out in pain and alarm.
Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to the Week, The
Federalist, and others. He covered the fledgling U.S. alt-right at a 2014 conference in Hungary as well as the 2015 New Hampshire
primary, and also made a documentary about his time living in the Republic of Georgia in 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian
or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com .
"The future of a meaningful political alternative to the underlying liberalism, materialism, and me-first individualism on the
left and right will revolve around traditionalists and pro-family conservative individuals who define their own destinies instead
of letting themselves be engineered into destinies manufactured by multinational corporations and boardroom gremlins with diversity
outreach strategies."
They will have to lose their faith in "Free Market God" first. I don't believe that will happen.
I enjoyed the heat. The comments made are on point, and this is pretty much what my standard response to reactionary trump dissidents
are. Trump is terrible, but so is what came before him, he is just easier to dislike.
Even with inadequate opposition, Trump has managed to be the most unpopular president after one year, ever. I'm guessing this
speaks to his unique talent of messing things up.
Wow! Paul! Babylon burning. Preach it, brother! Takes me back to my teenage years, Ramparts 1968, as another corrupt infrastructure
caught fire and burned down. TAC is amazing, the only place to find this in true form.
Either we are history remembering fossils soon gone, or the next financial crash – now inevitable with passage of tax reform
(redo of 2001- the rich got their money out, now full speed off the cliff), will bring down this whole mass of absolute corruption.
What do you think will happen when Trump is faced with a true crisis? They're selling off the floorboards. What can remain standing?
And elsewhere in the world, who, in their right mind, would help us? Good riddance to truly dangerous pathology. The world
would truly become safer with the USA decommissioned, and then restored, through honest travail, to humility, and humanity.
You are right. Be with small town, front porch, family and neighborhood goodness, and dodge the crashing embers.
The Flying Burrito Brothers: 'On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door
Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain '
The depressing thing to me is how hard it is to get people to see this. You have people who still think Trump is doing a great
job and on the other side people who admire the warmongering Resistance and think Hillary's vast experience in foreign policy
was one of her strengths, rather than one of the main reasons to be disgusted by her. Between the two categories I think you have
the majority of American voters.
"... The pro-Hillary warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding' with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really can explain what that 'interference' means. ..."
"... They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would push against that degradation ..."
"... Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator, " Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? " ..."
"... And by the way, if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has become a commonplace. We are degraded. ..."
"... We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory. That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. ..."
"... Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days, the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative. ..."
"... Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the conclusion that war is coming. ..."
"... The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia. ..."
How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war with Russiaglobinfo freexchange
Corporate Democrats can't stop pushing for war through the Russiagate fiasco.
The party has been completely taken over by the neocon/neoliberal establishment and has nothing to do with the Left. The pro-Hillary
warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of
this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding'
with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really
can explain what that 'interference' means.
But things are probably much worse, because this completely absurd persistence on Russiagate fiasco that feeds an evident anti-Russian
hysteria, destroys all the influence of the Kremlin moderates who struggle to keep open channels between Russia and the United States.
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at NY University and Princeton University, explained
to Aaron Maté and the RealNews
the terrible consequences:
They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However
much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American
political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would
push against that degradation.
Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture
and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive
wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator,
" Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? "
I think all of us need to focus on what's happened in this country when in the very mainstream, at the highest, most influential
levels of the political establishment, this kind of discourse is no longer considered an exception. It is the norm. We hear it daily
from MSNBC and CNN, from the New York Times and the Washington Post, that people who doubt the narrative of what's loosely called
Russiagate are somehow acting on behalf of or under the spell of the Kremlin, that we aren't Americans any longer. And by the way,
if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy
was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence
of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study
it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has
become a commonplace. We are degraded.
The new Cold War is unfolding not far away from Russia, like the last in Berlin, but on Russia's borders in the Baltic and in
Ukraine. We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory.
That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. Meanwhile, not only do we not have a discussion of
these real dangers in the United States but anyone who wants to incite a discussion, including the President of the United States,
is called treasonous. Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism
in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days,
the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and
its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called
Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative.
Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains
who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the
conclusion that war is coming. They can't think of a single thing to tell the Kremlin to offset hawkish views in the Kremlin. Every
day, there's something new. And these were the people in Moscow who are daytime peacekeeping interlockers. They have been
destroyed by Russiagate. Their influence as Russia is zilch. And the McCarthyites in Russia, they have various terms, now
called the pro-American lobby in Russia 'fifth columnists'. This is the damage that's been done. There's never been anything like
this in my lifetime.
The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party
has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions
in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia.
And, unfortunately,
even the most progressives of the Democrats are adopting the Russiagate bogus, like Bernie Sanders, because they know that if they
don't obey to the narratives, the DNC establishment will crush them politically in no time.
"... The DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals. ..."
"... Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. ..."
"... The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize the charade and are demanding real progressive change? ..."
Victor Sciamarelli says: February 10, 2018 at 2:35 pm
An interesting article especially the conclusion under "Top Priorities" where it states, "It
is here that Russiagate performs a critical function for Trump's political foes. Far beyond
Israelgate, Russiagate allows them [democrats] to oppose Trump while obscuring key areas where
they either share his priorities or have no viable alternative."
This is important and I largely agree, but the observation could have gone further. The
DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by
campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals.
Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade
deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran
mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business
bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. Jill Stein was attacked and
brought before the Senate Intelligence Committee because the dossier claimed, falsely, that she
accepted payment from Russia to attend a RT event in Moscow. And we all know what happened to
the Sanders' campaign.
None of this would matter because Clinton was expected to win. Trump is a hypocrite and a
fake populist but the populist message resonated with voters. Bernie Sanders, the real deal
populist, remains the most popular politician in America and he is the most popular democratic
politician among Republican voters.
The recent FISA reauthorization bill passed with 65 House Democrats who joined Trump and the
Republicans. In 2002 the DP controlled the Senate, but 29 Dems joined Republicans to pass the
Iraq War Resolution along with 82 House Dems. And was the Republican regime change in Iraq
better than the Democratic regime change in Libya? And recall that Hugo Chavez, who was
democratically elected, governed constitutionally, and complied with international law, and if
he ever crossed a line it was trivial compared to the lines Bush crossed, was labeled a
dictator and attacked much like Putin is today.
The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate
with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize
the charade and are demanding real progressive change?
Maintaining a neoliberal course on behalf of elite interests is more important than winning
elections. Thus, while Trump is investigated, the DP and supportive media are preparing to
demonize progressives and any alternative voices as nothing more than Russian puppets.
"... An investigation of the State Dept should bring the focus around to issues of substance. ..."
"... DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT "Security" company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election ..."
"... DNC consultant Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent whose entire family is tied to Ukrainian Intelligence ..."
"... Further research revealed that Andrea Chalupa and her two siblings are actively involved with other sources of digital terrorism, disinformation and spamming, like TrolleyBust com, stopfake org, and informnapalm. ..."
"... Ms. Chalupa kept cooperating with the Khodorovky owned magazine "The Interpreter." Now, it's a part of RFE/RL run by the government funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose director, Dr. Leon Aron also a director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute ..."
Sessions is not recused from a Ukraine investigation. An investigation of the State Dept should bring the focus around
to issues of substance.
Obama repeal of Smith-Mundt to allow State Dept propaganda in the domestic US
Obama coup of Ukraine
Obama / McCain support of Nazis in Ukraine
Adam Schiff relationship with Ukrainian arms dealer Igor Pasternak
DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT "Security" company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative
of DNC hack and malware to influence US election
DNC consultant Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent whose entire family is tied to Ukrainian Intelligence
Further research revealed that Andrea Chalupa and her two siblings are actively involved with other sources of digital
terrorism, disinformation and spamming, like TrolleyBust com, stopfake org, and informnapalm.
Ms. Chalupa kept cooperating with the Khodorovky owned magazine "The Interpreter." Now, it's a part of RFE/RL run by
the government funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose director, Dr. Leon Aron also a director of Russian Studies
at the American Enterprise Institute.
It was not only that Steele memo enabled eavesdropping. More troubling fact that FBI considered both Trump and Sanders as
insurgents and was adamant to squash them and ensure Hillary victory. In other word it tried to play the role of kingmaker.
Notable quotes:
"... The former British spy Steele had been hired by the Democratic Party via Fusion GPS to dig up dirt about Donald Trump. He came back with a package of "reports" which alleged that Trump was "colluding" with Russia or even a puppet of Putin. The content of the reports is hilarious and so obviously made up that one wonders how anyone could have treated it seriously. ..."
"... Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page meant that all his communication with the Trump campaign was effectively under surveillance of the Obama administration. While Page was no longer an official member of the campaign at the time of the warrant it is likely that he had kept contact. All internal communication that Page had access to was thereby also accessible for at least some people who tried to prevent a Trump election victory. ..."
"... One may (like me) dislike Trump and the Republican party and all they stand for. But this looks like an extremely dirty play by the Democrats and by the Obama administration far outside of any decency and fairness. The Steele dossier is obviously made up partisan nonsense. To the use it for such a FISA warrant was against the most basic rules of a democratic system. It probably broke several laws. ..."
Over the last month political enemies of U.S. President Trump and the FBI and Justice
Department have desperately tried to prevent the publishing of a memo written by the Republican
controlled House Intelligence Committee.
The memo (pdf) describes parts of the process that let to court sanctioned spying on the
Trump campaign. The
key points of the memo that was just published:
* The Steele dossier formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA
applications against Carter Page.
* Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court
without the Steele dossier information.
* The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials,
but excluded from the FISA applications.
* DOJ official Bruce Ohr met with Steele beginning in the summer of 2016 and relayed to
DOJ information about Steele's bias. Steele told Ohr that he, Steele, was desperate that
Donald Trump not get elected president and was passionate about him not becoming
president.
If the above memo proves to be correct one can conclude that a Democratic front organization
created "evidence" that was then used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to get FISA
warrants to spy on someone with intimate contacts into the Trump campaign.
The Democrats as well as the FBI have done their utmost to keep this secret.
Carter Page was a relative low ranking volunteer advisor of the Trump campaign with some
business contacts to Russia. He had officially left the campaign shortly before the above FISA
warrant was requested.
Andrew McCabe was an FBI assistant director. A few month earlier his wife ran for a Virginia
State Senate seat with the help of $700,000 she had received from Clinton allies.
The wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the outlet hired by the Democrats
to find Trump dirt. Fusion GPS hired the former British agent Steele.
The former British spy Steele had been hired by the Democratic Party via Fusion GPS to dig
up dirt about Donald Trump. He came back with a package of "reports" which alleged that Trump
was "colluding" with Russia or even a puppet of Putin. The content of the reports is hilarious
and
so obviously made up that one wonders how anyone could have treated it seriously.
Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page meant that all his communication with the Trump
campaign was effectively under surveillance of the Obama administration. While Page was no
longer an official member of the campaign at the time of the warrant it is likely that he had
kept contact. All internal communication that Page had access to was thereby also accessible
for at least some people who tried to prevent a Trump election victory.
One must wonder if the FISA warrant and eavesdropping on Page was the only one related to
the Trump campaign.
One may (like me) dislike Trump and the Republican party and all they stand for. But this
looks like an extremely dirty play by the Democrats and by the Obama administration far outside
of any decency and fairness. The Steele dossier is obviously made up partisan nonsense. To the
use it for such a FISA warrant was against the most basic rules of a democratic system. It
probably broke several laws.
There are still many questions: What was, exactly, the result of the surveillance of Carter
Page and the Trump campaign? Who was getting these results - officially and unofficially? How
were they used?
I am pretty sure now that more heads of those involved will role. Some of the people who
arranged the scheme, and some of those who tried to cover it up, may go to jail.
If Trump and the Republicans play this right they have practically won the next
elections.
"... Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike. ..."
"... The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers. Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s. ..."
"... The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door. ..."
"... Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets. ..."
"... If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat. If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war. ..."
The Democrats don't seem to understand that the Russia investigation has made Trump stronger
not weaker. They don't see that their evidence-free probe has strengthened Trump's base and
convinced his supporters that their leader is being unfairly attacked. (According to a January
Quinnipiac survey, a full eighty-three percent of Republicans believe the current investigation
is "a witch hunt". The data suggests that Russia-gate has rallied Trump's backers to his
defense.) Dems don't grasp that, in the last 12 months, Trump has pushed through a massive tax
bill followed by immigration reform that has broadened his support and silenced his GOP
critics. When Trump took office, McConnell, Ryan and Graham were all on opposite sides of the
political divide. Now Trump has them eating out of his hand. He took a fractious, splintered
party and forced them to fall in line. Trump has succeeded in unifying his base while the
collusion fiasco has had no noticeable impact at all. None.
As for the Dems, well, the Dems still refuse to pay attention to their own polling data that
says that rank-and-file members want less emphasis on Russia and more emphasis on jobs, college
tuition, health care, and entitlements. The tone-deaf Dems completely ignore that message
choosing instead to pursue a counterproductive probe that has yet to produce a scintilla of
hard evidence and that has helped to underscore the fact that the Dems have no platform, no
vision for the future, and no solutions for the problems facing ordinary working class
people.
Let me be completely honest: I don't give a flying fig about Russia, Russia hacking, Russia
meddling, Russia collusion or any other screwball thing related to Russia. What I do care about
is what's going on in this country. I do care that the man who ran on a campaign of
"non-intervention" is currently building military bases in East Syria, stirring up trouble in
the South China Sea, supporting counterinsurgency operations across Africa, facing off with
Turkey, providing bombs for the ongoing genocide in Yemen, threatening North Korea with total
annihilation, and pledging to build a new regime of "usable" nuclear weapons. That's what
worries me, not Russia. But what worries me even more is that, just when we need a strong,
highly-principled, credible opposition party to fight the good fight for wages, the
environment, social services, education, infrastructure, civil liberties, and peace– the
Democrats have turned into jello, a wobbly, gelatinous mass of ingratiating losers. What's that
all about?
The Dems are a party without a leader and without a message. They keep carping about Russia
and Trump because they have no convictions, no beliefs, and no fire in the belly. It's a party
of empty suits and phony flannel-mouth politicos. The only thing they're good at is losing,
which is an art they appear to have perfected. The problem is, that the rest of us are sick of
the party's sad-sack song-and-dance, sick of the excuses, sick of the buck passing, and sick of
losing. We want candidates who actually stand for something, who actually believe in something,
and who'll actually fight for something.
Two weeks ago, the Dems shut down the government to see if they could force Trump into
bending on the DACA issue. In less than 72 hours, they checked the polls, ran up the white
flag, and caved in. I cannot remember a more flagrant display of political cowardice in my
lifetime. Personally, I'd rather be on the side of someone who believes in something (even if
he's wrong!), than on the side of someone who believes in nothing at all. Democrat leaders
believe in nothing, which is why they are not worthy of our support. Here's how the World
Socialist Web Site summed up the DACA cave in:
"The US Senate and House of Representatives voted Monday to approve a short-term budget
resolution, putting an end to the partial shutdown of the federal government that began
midnight Friday night. The deal leaves 800,000 DACA recipients without protection in what
amounts to a total capitulation by Democrats to Trump and the Republicans ..
In the annals of cowardly capitulations, there are few spectacles that can match Monday's
collapse by the Democratic Party, which abandoned its blockade against the budget resolution
less than 72 hours after it began. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced the
decision in a brief, nearly blubbering speech on the Senate floor, which combined phony
invective directed against Trump with a complete surrender to the bigot-in-chief in the White
House .
The surrender was not Schumer's individual decision, but the action of the entire
Democratic caucus, which had no stomach for any serious fight .." ("Federal shutdown ends as
Democrats cave in to Trump", World Socialist Web Site)
No stomach. No guts. No spine. Admit it: The entire Democratic party leadership isn't worth
the powder to blow it to hell. It would be better for everyone if someone just put them out of
their misery.
The Dems think the midterms are going to be a landslide-blowout. But don't count on it. It's
going to take more than Russia-gate and a few glitzy photos with ME TOO celebrity-victims to
get disillusioned liberals back to the polls. It's going to take a "message", a vision, a
progressive way out of the dark, Trumpian fog we're all stuck in. Unfortunately, the Dems have
no such vision, and they're too busy chasing fictitious Russian trolls on FaceBook to give it a
second thought.
ORDER IT NOW
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the
grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the country
a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the
reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms
dealers, the neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control
this country.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the truth.
It's time to pull up our big boy pants and face the facts: The Democratic party is NOT a
suitable vehicle for the progressive agenda. It just isn't. We need to cut our losses and move
on.
This is something that has to be said and is the salient fact of the political reality today.
Once the FBI Rosenstein, Comey and Mueller et al are exposed as is likely, it will be back to
the drawing board, and Trump's sellouts to the deep state on Syria, the Ukraine, Korea and
elsewhere are fundamentally dangerous.
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the
grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the
country a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to
accept the reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip
with arms dealers, the Neo-cons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin
who control this country.
Yes, it degrades as you go up the structure. Senate Democratic Party leader, dual Israeli/US citizen Charles "Chuck" Schumer was
elected unanimously in 2017, while openly declaring that he's the Nº1 defender of
Israel. You can't say the he believes in nothing – it's just that the interests of the
United States are secondary those of Israel, whatever happens. And apart from the current leaders, that also seems to apply in the past, to a host of
other dual Israeli/US citizens holding top US government positions, for example:
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level.
I know that the people at the grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are
truly committed to making the country a better place for everyone.
Every politician that gets elected is committed to making the country a better place for
everyone. But once elected, the tune changes, when they get indoctrinated by the AIPAC and
get a tour of Israel.
I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the reality the party's
leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms dealers, the
neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control this
country.
I was a union man back when labor was part of the Dem coalition. I voted for the Dems because
the union said I should. I became neither Dem nor union man when Clinton sent my job to
Mexico. What took you so long Mike? Didn't you see what they did to Nader? Kucinich?
Sarah Palin said we have two parties. Pick one. Is that why you stuck with the Dems?
Loathing for the GOP? Fear of the political wilderness?
I used to hang out at firedoglake. Now I'm at Unz Review. One of the commenters here spoke
for me when he said, paraphrasing, I'm with the Alt Right because there is no Alt Left.
Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not
our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike.
The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers.
Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the
Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s.
The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of
Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they
always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door.
Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less
money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets.
What the Democratic voters want, "jobs, college tuition, health care, and entitlements",
is obviously the exact opposite of what the Wall Street bankers and the other big money
behind the modern Democrats want. And in today's Democrat Party, the Big Money controls
everything. Anyone paying attention to what few primary challenges occur in the party already
knew this. And by now its public record and should be well known that the creature of the
Wall Street banks (aka Hillary) helped make sure the Bernie-Hillary race was rigged towards
the favorite candidate of the bankers.
Since the same forces are blocking any 'reform' within the party, its going to stay this
way. If anything, the party of the bankers is making sure that none of the Bernie people have
any positions of power within the party. And there is no sign that the next Presidential
nomination contest won't be as rigged, fake and corrupt as the last one. There is also no
sign of a wave of primary challenges to the banker-favorite Democrat incumbents in the
primaries that will be occuring within the coming months.
So, the drive to nuclear war suits the bankers. It makes sure the focus is off any
policies the bankers oppose, which is anything that helps anyone except the bankers. The same
bankers are invested in the nuke and defense industries that seem intent on driving the world
towards a nuclear holocaust.
If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat.
If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war.
You can have a functional welfare state. You can have mass immigration.
You can't have both. Or, ordinarily you can't, not in a fiscally feasible way, as much of
Europe has found out the hard way over the past decade. America's long-time status as the
world's reserve currency let us get away with things that other countries couldn't for a few
decades, but time is running out on that status.
(And even still-immigration levels in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were much, much less
than the torrent flood we've experienced in the 21st Century. America had a population of
"only" around 225 million in 1979, for comparison. The growth of over *100 million* we've had
since then is nearly all immigration fueled. I don't think people contemplate what 100
million people means.)
In 1972 the democrats ran McGovern on a platform of the three As : acid, abortion, and
amnesty. Richard Nixon went on to win forty nine states out of fifty, an unprecedented rout.
Today fifty years later the Democrats are still running on the three As: Acid(legalization of
drugs), abortion ( total non restriction of all abortions and government funded Planned
Parenthood) and Amnesty( complete removal of any border control and the importation of any of
the seven billion people who live on planet earth). I would also add that today they have
added transgenderism and the idea that there is no difference between male and female and the
widespread belief that all science is created by the DNC and its famous "the science is
settled" dictum. If the Americans vote this absurd party into power then they deserve the
grim future that they will surely reap.
Well we are shit for after all this country and its voters really don't care how many are
slaughtered in our name, as long as it dosen't disturb Monday night football, Bob Dole
referred to the working class as "Joe six pack" and that term still applies long after Dole
left office.. Hell as far as a solution go no farther than the post on here, and just how many
agree/dis-agree with each other for its called divide and conquer and they are very good at
the game, in fact its the only game in town
"... Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike. ..."
"... The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers. Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s. ..."
"... The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door. ..."
"... Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets. ..."
"... If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat. If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war. ..."
The Democrats don't seem to understand that the Russia investigation has made Trump stronger
not weaker. They don't see that their evidence-free probe has strengthened Trump's base and
convinced his supporters that their leader is being unfairly attacked. (According to a January
Quinnipiac survey, a full eighty-three percent of Republicans believe the current investigation
is "a witch hunt". The data suggests that Russia-gate has rallied Trump's backers to his
defense.) Dems don't grasp that, in the last 12 months, Trump has pushed through a massive tax
bill followed by immigration reform that has broadened his support and silenced his GOP
critics. When Trump took office, McConnell, Ryan and Graham were all on opposite sides of the
political divide. Now Trump has them eating out of his hand. He took a fractious, splintered
party and forced them to fall in line. Trump has succeeded in unifying his base while the
collusion fiasco has had no noticeable impact at all. None.
As for the Dems, well, the Dems still refuse to pay attention to their own polling data that
says that rank-and-file members want less emphasis on Russia and more emphasis on jobs, college
tuition, health care, and entitlements. The tone-deaf Dems completely ignore that message
choosing instead to pursue a counterproductive probe that has yet to produce a scintilla of
hard evidence and that has helped to underscore the fact that the Dems have no platform, no
vision for the future, and no solutions for the problems facing ordinary working class
people.
Let me be completely honest: I don't give a flying fig about Russia, Russia hacking, Russia
meddling, Russia collusion or any other screwball thing related to Russia. What I do care about
is what's going on in this country. I do care that the man who ran on a campaign of
"non-intervention" is currently building military bases in East Syria, stirring up trouble in
the South China Sea, supporting counterinsurgency operations across Africa, facing off with
Turkey, providing bombs for the ongoing genocide in Yemen, threatening North Korea with total
annihilation, and pledging to build a new regime of "usable" nuclear weapons. That's what
worries me, not Russia. But what worries me even more is that, just when we need a strong,
highly-principled, credible opposition party to fight the good fight for wages, the
environment, social services, education, infrastructure, civil liberties, and peace– the
Democrats have turned into jello, a wobbly, gelatinous mass of ingratiating losers. What's that
all about?
The Dems are a party without a leader and without a message. They keep carping about Russia
and Trump because they have no convictions, no beliefs, and no fire in the belly. It's a party
of empty suits and phony flannel-mouth politicos. The only thing they're good at is losing,
which is an art they appear to have perfected. The problem is, that the rest of us are sick of
the party's sad-sack song-and-dance, sick of the excuses, sick of the buck passing, and sick of
losing. We want candidates who actually stand for something, who actually believe in something,
and who'll actually fight for something.
Two weeks ago, the Dems shut down the government to see if they could force Trump into
bending on the DACA issue. In less than 72 hours, they checked the polls, ran up the white
flag, and caved in. I cannot remember a more flagrant display of political cowardice in my
lifetime. Personally, I'd rather be on the side of someone who believes in something (even if
he's wrong!), than on the side of someone who believes in nothing at all. Democrat leaders
believe in nothing, which is why they are not worthy of our support. Here's how the World
Socialist Web Site summed up the DACA cave in:
"The US Senate and House of Representatives voted Monday to approve a short-term budget
resolution, putting an end to the partial shutdown of the federal government that began
midnight Friday night. The deal leaves 800,000 DACA recipients without protection in what
amounts to a total capitulation by Democrats to Trump and the Republicans ..
In the annals of cowardly capitulations, there are few spectacles that can match Monday's
collapse by the Democratic Party, which abandoned its blockade against the budget resolution
less than 72 hours after it began. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced the
decision in a brief, nearly blubbering speech on the Senate floor, which combined phony
invective directed against Trump with a complete surrender to the bigot-in-chief in the White
House .
The surrender was not Schumer's individual decision, but the action of the entire
Democratic caucus, which had no stomach for any serious fight .." ("Federal shutdown ends as
Democrats cave in to Trump", World Socialist Web Site)
No stomach. No guts. No spine. Admit it: The entire Democratic party leadership isn't worth
the powder to blow it to hell. It would be better for everyone if someone just put them out of
their misery.
The Dems think the midterms are going to be a landslide-blowout. But don't count on it. It's
going to take more than Russia-gate and a few glitzy photos with ME TOO celebrity-victims to
get disillusioned liberals back to the polls. It's going to take a "message", a vision, a
progressive way out of the dark, Trumpian fog we're all stuck in. Unfortunately, the Dems have
no such vision, and they're too busy chasing fictitious Russian trolls on FaceBook to give it a
second thought.
ORDER IT NOW
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the
grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the country
a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the
reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms
dealers, the neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control
this country.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the truth.
It's time to pull up our big boy pants and face the facts: The Democratic party is NOT a
suitable vehicle for the progressive agenda. It just isn't. We need to cut our losses and move
on.
This is something that has to be said and is the salient fact of the political reality today.
Once the FBI Rosenstein, Comey and Mueller et al are exposed as is likely, it will be back to
the drawing board, and Trump's sellouts to the deep state on Syria, the Ukraine, Korea and
elsewhere are fundamentally dangerous.
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level. I know that the people at the
grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are truly committed to making the
country a better place for everyone. I know that! But there comes a time when you have to
accept the reality the party's leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip
with arms dealers, the Neo-cons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin
who control this country.
Yes, it degrades as you go up the structure. Senate Democratic Party leader, dual Israeli/US citizen Charles "Chuck" Schumer was
elected unanimously in 2017, while openly declaring that he's the Nº1 defender of
Israel. You can't say the he believes in nothing – it's just that the interests of the
United States are secondary those of Israel, whatever happens. And apart from the current leaders, that also seems to apply in the past, to a host of
other dual Israeli/US citizens holding top US government positions, for example:
Look: I worked in the Democratic party at the local level.
I know that the people at the grassroots level are sincere, principled people that are
truly committed to making the country a better place for everyone.
Every politician that gets elected is committed to making the country a better place for
everyone. But once elected, the tune changes, when they get indoctrinated by the AIPAC and
get a tour of Israel.
I know that! But there comes a time when you have to accept the reality the party's
leaders believe in nothing, that they are joined at the hip with arms dealers, the
neocons, the Intel agencies, Wall Street and the rest of the vermin who control this
country.
I was a union man back when labor was part of the Dem coalition. I voted for the Dems because
the union said I should. I became neither Dem nor union man when Clinton sent my job to
Mexico. What took you so long Mike? Didn't you see what they did to Nader? Kucinich?
Sarah Palin said we have two parties. Pick one. Is that why you stuck with the Dems?
Loathing for the GOP? Fear of the political wilderness?
I used to hang out at firedoglake. Now I'm at Unz Review. One of the commenters here spoke
for me when he said, paraphrasing, I'm with the Alt Right because there is no Alt Left.
Trumps victory was a defeat for the corrupt political duopoly. The Uniparty. Trump is not
our savior. But he is a foot in the door. Welcome aboard Mike.
The Democrats are now the party of the Wall Street bankers.
Congrats to the Clintons and the Gores, because this was their dream when they started the
Democratic Leadership Council back in the '80′s.
The Democrat campaigns before the Clintons struck were very different. The Chamber of
Commerce Republican campaigns always had more money. The Democrats weren't broke, but they
always had less. But they always had grassroots efforts going door to door.
Looking backwards, its obvious why the Clintons didn't like this. Campaigns that had less
money meant less money going into their pockets and into the consultants pockets.
What the Democratic voters want, "jobs, college tuition, health care, and entitlements",
is obviously the exact opposite of what the Wall Street bankers and the other big money
behind the modern Democrats want. And in today's Democrat Party, the Big Money controls
everything. Anyone paying attention to what few primary challenges occur in the party already
knew this. And by now its public record and should be well known that the creature of the
Wall Street banks (aka Hillary) helped make sure the Bernie-Hillary race was rigged towards
the favorite candidate of the bankers.
Since the same forces are blocking any 'reform' within the party, its going to stay this
way. If anything, the party of the bankers is making sure that none of the Bernie people have
any positions of power within the party. And there is no sign that the next Presidential
nomination contest won't be as rigged, fake and corrupt as the last one. There is also no
sign of a wave of primary challenges to the banker-favorite Democrat incumbents in the
primaries that will be occuring within the coming months.
So, the drive to nuclear war suits the bankers. It makes sure the focus is off any
policies the bankers oppose, which is anything that helps anyone except the bankers. The same
bankers are invested in the nuke and defense industries that seem intent on driving the world
towards a nuclear holocaust.
If you love bankers and nuclear war, then be a proud Democrat.
If not, run like heck and get away from the party of bankers and nuclear war.
You can have a functional welfare state. You can have mass immigration.
You can't have both. Or, ordinarily you can't, not in a fiscally feasible way, as much of
Europe has found out the hard way over the past decade. America's long-time status as the
world's reserve currency let us get away with things that other countries couldn't for a few
decades, but time is running out on that status.
(And even still-immigration levels in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were much, much less
than the torrent flood we've experienced in the 21st Century. America had a population of
"only" around 225 million in 1979, for comparison. The growth of over *100 million* we've had
since then is nearly all immigration fueled. I don't think people contemplate what 100
million people means.)
In 1972 the democrats ran McGovern on a platform of the three As : acid, abortion, and
amnesty. Richard Nixon went on to win forty nine states out of fifty, an unprecedented rout.
Today fifty years later the Democrats are still running on the three As: Acid(legalization of
drugs), abortion ( total non restriction of all abortions and government funded Planned
Parenthood) and Amnesty( complete removal of any border control and the importation of any of
the seven billion people who live on planet earth). I would also add that today they have
added transgenderism and the idea that there is no difference between male and female and the
widespread belief that all science is created by the DNC and its famous "the science is
settled" dictum. If the Americans vote this absurd party into power then they deserve the
grim future that they will surely reap.
Well we are shit for after all this country and its voters really don't care how many are
slaughtered in our name, as long as it dosen't disturb Monday night football, Bob Dole
referred to the working class as "Joe six pack" and that term still applies long after Dole
left office.. Hell as far as a solution go no farther than the post on here, and just how many
agree/dis-agree with each other for its called divide and conquer and they are very good at
the game, in fact its the only game in town
"... at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge." ..."
The claim of Russian meddling in the US election has brought US-Russia relations to what may
be an all-time low, substantially contributing to the near-universal demonization of Russian
president Vladimir Putin and of Russia itself in virtually all major media, with little or no
discussion of the supposed evidence for the claim. A stellar exception is the London Review
of Books, which published a critically important essay by Rutgers University professor
Jackson Lears in the January 4, 2018 issue. Titled "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about
Russian Hacking," the article is an excellent overview and analysis of many of the issues the
title suggests.
The claim of Russian meddling in the election remains to this day
evidence-free, although you would never know that from the treatment of the topic in the
mainstream media. As Professor Lears observes:
Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on
evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and
their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment'
produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper,
the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the
NSA. The claims of the last were made with only 'moderate' confidence. The label Intelligence
Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of
the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself
contained this crucial admission: 'Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof
that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is
often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.' Yet the
assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing
journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for
the intelligence agencies, or at least for those 'hand-picked' analysts.
But although Professor Lears refers to the reports of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity in his discussion of "Russian hacking," it seems clear there must have been a leak, not
a hack, because "the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds
an Internet capability for a remote hack ." ("Was the 'Russian Hack' An Inside Job?", July
25, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/
.)
In any case, definitive claims about who was responsible (assuming, purely arguendo
, it was a hack) face the fact that, according to Ray McGovern and William S. Binney, two
members of VIPS,
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, was the
agency's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and
created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.
In other words, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has explained,
today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an
extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it
is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they
are the exact source of that attack. (Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4,
2017), by NBC News' Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of
Russia, June 5, 2017.)
[9]
Demonization of Putin and Russia
The demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia itself is just part, albeit
the most dangerous part, of a disinformation campaign flowing from the mainstream media. I
don't propose to present a full treatment of the subject here. But in broad outline, it's my
understanding that when the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin accepted
the advice of Western neoliberal planners and dismantled much of the Russian "safety net," with
the result that the Russian economy tanked and millions of people faced terrific hardship.
Vladimir Putin has been attempting to repair that situation, and his initial success is part of
the reason for his popularity in Russia. That understanding comes from a number of articles
I've read over the years, but primarily from Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow ,
mentioned above. I'm hardly an expert on internal Russian politics. But I've read many of the
extensive public statements Mr. Putin has made since 2007, and with my primary concern being
his role in international relations and with respect to the control of Russia's nuclear
arsenal, he strikes me as a statesman.
[10] . Yet as investigative journalist Robert Parry observes,
The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and
the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to
Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the
infamous
Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane
coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from
hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to
the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge."
Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that
otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many "liberals" who
cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam
War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us,
even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith.
[11] .
One result is a needless heightening of the dangers and risks outlined in this article.
"... In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable." ..."
"... CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths. ..."
"... Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable. ..."
"... I have found that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies ..."
"... I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. ..."
Randy Credico: A lot of mainstream journalists complain when Trump refers to them as the enemy of the people, but they
have shown themselves to be very unwilling to circle the wagons around Assange. What is the upshot for journalists of Assange being
taken down?
John Pilger: Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected,
because most people don't trust the mainstream media anymore.
In my experience as a journalist, the public have always been ahead of the media. And yet, in many news outlets there has
always been a kind of veiled contempt for the public. You find young journalists affecting a false cynicism that they think ordains
them as journalists. The cynicism is not about the people at the top, it's about the people at the bottom, the people that Hillary
Clinton dismissed as "irredeemable."
CNN and NBC and the rest of the networks have been the voices of power and have been the source of distorted news for such
a long time. They are not circling the wagons because the wagons are on the wrong side. These people in the mainstream have been
an extension of the power that has corrupted so much of our body politic. They have been the sources of so many myths.
This latest film about The Post neglects to mention that The Washington Post was a passionate supporter of the Vietnam
War before it decided to have a moral crisis about whether to publish the Pentagon Papers. Today, TheWashington Post
has a $600 million deal with the CIA to supply them with information.
Media in the West is now an extension of imperial power. It is no longer a loose extension, it is a direct extension. Whether
or not it has fallen out with Donald Trump is completely irrelevant. It is lined up with all the forces that want to get rid of Donald
Trump. He is not the one they want in the White House, they wanted Hillary Clinton, who is safer and more reliable.
I've always liked Mr. Pilger, and Mr. Parry, of course, and Hedges and so on However in this statement made by Mr. Pilger,
"Trump knows which nerves to touch. His campaign against the mainstream media may even help to get him re-elected, because most
people don't trust the mainstream media anymore." I would really disagree based on my own personal experiences. I have found
that those who voted for Clinton are very quick to swallow what mainstream media has to say, and those that voted for Trump, at
this moment, hold the media in contempt, however they also very willingly accept Trump's policies and his lies, like his
climate change denial and his position on Iran. It's more about taking sides then it is in being interested in the truth.
Annie , January 24, 2018 at 4:33 pm
I would like to add, that In the US most of Americans are usually ignorant of politics and government. Many believe that
their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about the subject. So we
have a country of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know.
Joe Tedesky , January 24, 2018 at 6:28 pm
You got that right Annie. In fact I know people who voted for Hillary, and they wake up every morning to turn on MSNBC or CNN
only to hear what Trump tweeted, because they like getting pissed off at Trump, and get even more self induced angry when they
don't hear his impeachment being shouted out on the screen.
I forgive a lot of these types who don't get into the news, because it just isn't their thing I guess, but I get even madder
that we don't have a diversified media enough to give people the complete story. I mean a brilliant media loud enough, and objective
enough, to reach the mass uncaring community. We have talked about this before, about the MSM's omission of the news, as to opposed
just lying they do that too, as you know Annie, and it's a crime against a free press society. In fact, I not being a lawyer,
would not be surprised that this defect in our news is not Constitutional.
Although, less and less people are watching the news, because they know it's phony, have you noticed how political our Late
Night Talk Show Host have become? Hmmm boy, sometimes you have to give it to the Deep State because they sure know how to cover
the market of dupes. To bad the CIA isn't selling solar panels, or something beneficial like that, which could help our ailing
world.
We are living in a Matrix of left vs right, liberal vs conservative, all of us are on the divide, and that's the way it suppose
to be. You know I don't mean that, but that's what the Deep State has done to us, for a lack of a better description of their
evil unleashed upon the planet.
I like reading your thoughts, because you go kind of deep, and you come up with angles not thought of, well at least not by
me so forgive me if I reply to often. Joe
Annie , January 24, 2018 at 10:18 pm
I know I keep referring to Facebook, but it really allows you to see how polarized people have become. Facebook posts political
non issues, but nonetheless they will elicit comments that are downright hateful. Divide and conquer is something I often think
when I view these comments. I rarely watch TV, but enough to see how TV Talk Show hosts have gotten into the act, and Trump supplies
them with an endless source of material, not that their discussing core issues either.
I don't remember whether I mentioned this before in a recent article on this site, but when a cousin posts a response to a
comment I made about our militarism and how many millions have died as a result that all countries do sneaky and underhanded things,
I can only think people don't want to hear the truth either, and that's why most are so vulnerable to our propaganda, which is
we are the exceptional nation that can do no wrong. Those who are affluent want to maintain the status quo, and those that live
pay check to pay check are vulnerable to Trump's lies, and the lies of the Republican party whose interest lie with the top 1
percent.
Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 12:36 am
Talking about lies you mention only Trump and the Republicans Annie. Is this because the Democrats are such party of criminals
that you consider them worth mentioning only in the crime chronic not in the context of lies?
About that "Climate Change" religion of yours: how much does it make sense that people around US are freezing but TPTB still
want to tax fossil fuels, the only one thing which can keep people warm? Does that not look to your left-wing mind as taking
from the poor to give to the Green & Connected ? Will a wind-turbine or a solar-panel keep you warm on a -50 degree day? I
am yet to live to see one green-scheme which is not for the benefit of the Green & Connected, whilst this constant braying about
global warming renamed into climate change is simply as annoying as the crimes of the Israelis hidden by the media (Did you see
that photo of a 3-year old Palestinian child whose brain was splattered out by an Israeli sniper's bullet? She must have been
throwing stones or slapping Israeli soldiers, right?).
I am not a US voter and I do not care either way which color gang is running your horrible country, because it always turns
out the same. But the blatant criminality of your Demoncrats is only surpassed by their humanitarian sleaze – they always bomb,
kill and rape for the good of humanity or for the greenery or for some other touchy-feelly bull like that, which the left-wing
stupidos can swallow.
Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:15 am
Oh, Kiza, are you one of those people that patrol the internet for people who dare mention climate change? I have no intentions
of changing your mind on the subject, even though my background is in environmental science with a Masters degree in the subject.
I am not a registered democrat, but an independent and didn't vote for Clinton, or Trump. I'm too much of a liberal. I'm very
aware of the many faults of the democratic party, and you're right about them. They abandoned their working class base decades
ago and they pretty much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country. Yes, both parties
proclaim their allegiance to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world
and that world pretty much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war.
P. S. However being fair, the Republican base is the top 1 percent in this country.
Kiza , January 25, 2018 at 6:46 am
Hello again Annie, thank you for your response. I must admit that your mention of climate change triggered an unhappy reaction
in me, otherwise I do think that our views are not far from each other. Thank you for not trying to change my mind on climate
change because you would not have succeeded no matter what your qualifications are. My life experience simply says – always follow
the money and when I do I see a climate mafia similar to the MIC mafia. I did think that the very cold weather that gripped US
would reduce the climate propaganda, but nothing can keep the climate mafia down any more – the high ranked need to pay for their
yachts and private jets and the low ranks have to pay of their house mortgages. But I will never understand why the US lefties
are so dumb – to be so easily taken to imperial wars and so easily convinced to tax the 99% for the benefit of 1% yet again. Where
do you think the nasty fossil fuel producers will find the money to pay for the taxes to be or already imposed? Will they sacrifice
their profits or pay the green taxes from higher prices?
Other than this, I honestly cannot see any difference between the so called Democrats and the so called Republicans (you say
that the Republicans are for the 1%). Both have been scrapping the bottom of the same barrel for their candidates, thus the elections
are always a contest between two disasters.
Sam F , January 25, 2018 at 7:02 am
Good that you both see the bipartisan corruption and can table background issues.
Joe Tedesky , January 25, 2018 at 9:09 am
Yeah Sam I was impressed by their conversation as well. Joe
Bob Van Noy , January 25, 2018 at 11:05 am
I agree, an excellent thread plus a civil disagreement. In my experience, only at CN. Thanks to all of you.
Realist , January 25, 2018 at 1:04 pm
I am with you, Annie, when you state that "They [the Democrats] abandoned their working class base decades ago and they pretty
much shun liberals within their own party, and pander to the top 10 percent in this country." And yet they are so glibly characterised
as "liberal" by nearly everyone in the media (and, of course, by the Republicans). Even the Nate Silver group, whom I used to
think was objective is propagating the drivel that Democrats have become inexorably more liberal–and to the extreme–in their latest
soireé analysing the two parties:
In reality, the Dems are only "liberal" in contrast to the hard right shift of the Republicans over the past 50-60 years. And
what was "extreme" for both parties is being sold to the public as moderate and conventional by the corporate media. It's almost
funny seeing so much public policy being knee-jerk condemned as "leftist" when the American left became extinct decades ago.
Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 12:16 pm
Annie, it's not just the Democrats who are bought and paid for.
Annie , January 25, 2018 at 2:54 pm
Virginia, I didn't say that only the democrats were bought and paid for, but said, " yes, both parties proclaim their allegiance
to their voting base, but both parties are lying, since in my opinion their base is the corporate world and that world pretty
much controls their agenda, and both parties have embraced the neocons that push for war." I also mentioned that the republicans
pander to the top 1 percent in this country.
Virginia , January 25, 2018 at 3:04 pm
And my reply was meant to say,
It's not just the Democrats who pander to the 1% who have bought and paid for them!
"... at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge." ..."
The claim of Russian meddling in the US election has brought US-Russia relations to what may
be an all-time low, substantially contributing to the near-universal demonization of Russian
president Vladimir Putin and of Russia itself in virtually all major media, with little or no
discussion of the supposed evidence for the claim. A stellar exception is the London Review
of Books, which published a critically important essay by Rutgers University professor
Jackson Lears in the January 4, 2018 issue. Titled "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about
Russian Hacking," the article is an excellent overview and analysis of many of the issues the
title suggests.
The claim of Russian meddling in the election remains to this day
evidence-free, although you would never know that from the treatment of the topic in the
mainstream media. As Professor Lears observes:
Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on
evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and
their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment'
produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper,
the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the
NSA. The claims of the last were made with only 'moderate' confidence. The label Intelligence
Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of
the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself
contained this crucial admission: 'Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof
that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is
often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.' Yet the
assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing
journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for
the intelligence agencies, or at least for those 'hand-picked' analysts.
But although Professor Lears refers to the reports of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity in his discussion of "Russian hacking," it seems clear there must have been a leak, not
a hack, because "the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds
an Internet capability for a remote hack ." ("Was the 'Russian Hack' An Inside Job?", July
25, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/
.)
In any case, definitive claims about who was responsible (assuming, purely arguendo
, it was a hack) face the fact that, according to Ray McGovern and William S. Binney, two
members of VIPS,
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, was the
agency's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and
created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.
In other words, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has explained,
today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an
extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it
is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they
are the exact source of that attack. (Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4,
2017), by NBC News' Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of
Russia, June 5, 2017.)
[9]
Demonization of Putin and Russia
The demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia itself is just part, albeit
the most dangerous part, of a disinformation campaign flowing from the mainstream media. I
don't propose to present a full treatment of the subject here. But in broad outline, it's my
understanding that when the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin accepted
the advice of Western neoliberal planners and dismantled much of the Russian "safety net," with
the result that the Russian economy tanked and millions of people faced terrific hardship.
Vladimir Putin has been attempting to repair that situation, and his initial success is part of
the reason for his popularity in Russia. That understanding comes from a number of articles
I've read over the years, but primarily from Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow ,
mentioned above. I'm hardly an expert on internal Russian politics. But I've read many of the
extensive public statements Mr. Putin has made since 2007, and with my primary concern being
his role in international relations and with respect to the control of Russia's nuclear
arsenal, he strikes me as a statesman.
[10] . Yet as investigative journalist Robert Parry observes,
The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and
the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to
Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the
infamous
Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane
coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from
hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to
the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge."
Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that
otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many "liberals" who
cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam
War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us,
even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith.
[11] .
One result is a needless heightening of the dangers and risks outlined in this article.
"... If the FBI keeps losing stuff they need to hire a security guard to keep it safe. Come on! Start charging these people with treason and this will stop!! ..."
"... I wonder what their plan is when they really have to arrest someone? lol It ain't gonna happen. Theatric, scripted politics. It's like a bad reality show. Compare criminal politics to the sitcom Gilligan's Island. They never get rescued, and criminal politicians never see jail time. ..."
If the FBI keeps losing stuff they need to hire a security guard to keep it safe. Come on!
Start charging these people with treason and this will stop!!
THERE ARE NO TEXTS MISSING!
DETECTIVES GET SEARCH WARRANTS FOR TEXT MESSAGES ALL THE TIME! WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE ANY
DIFFERENT!
I wonder what their plan is when they really have to arrest someone? lol It ain't gonna
happen. Theatric, scripted politics. It's like a bad reality show. Compare criminal politics
to the sitcom Gilligan's Island. They never get rescued, and criminal politicians never see
jail time.
"... Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the 'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT. ..."
"... I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to get political advantage ..."
"... "I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents." ..."
"... "The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe they did, and he believes that." ..."
"... "I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained. ..."
"... Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it ..."
"... "has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia. From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially." ..."
"... "I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like," he said. ..."
Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the
'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the
FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT.
A top-secret intelligence memo, believed to reveal political bias at the highest levels of
the FBI and the DOJ towards President Trump, may well be as significant as the Republicans say,
Ron Paul told RT. But, he added, "there's still to many unknowns, especially, from my view
point."
"Trump connection to the Russians, I think, has been way overblown, and I'd like to just
get to the bottom of this the new information that's coming out, maybe this will reveal
things and help us out," he said.
"Right now it's just a political fight," the former US Congressman said. "I think they're
dealing with things a lot less important than the issue they ought to be talking about Right
now, I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to
get political advantage."
Trump's claims that he was wiretapped by US intelligence agencies on the orders of the Obama
administration may well turn out to be true, Paul said.
"I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they
have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents."
However, he criticized Trump for doing nothing to prevent the Senate from voting in the
expansion of warrantless surveillance of US citizens under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) earlier this week.
"The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the
president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe
they did, and he believes that."
"I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have
their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work
on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the
worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained.
The fact that Democrats on the relevant committees have all voted against releasing the memo
"might mean that Trump is probably right; there's probably a lot of stuff there that would
exonerate him from any accusation they've been making," he said.
Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher
Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it
"has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia.
From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially."
"I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way
overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and
they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like,"
he said.
Donald Trump Jr. called for the release of a memo that allegedly contains information about
Obama administration surveillance abuses and suggested that Democrats are complicit with the
media in misleading the public.
"It's the double standard that the people are fed by the Democrats in complicity with the
media, that's why neither have any trust from the American people anymore," Trump said on Fox
News Friday.
"Institutionally, the Democratic Party Is Not Democratic"
Very apt characterization "the Democratic Party is nothing more
than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the
campaigns they run;" ... " after all, the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play
in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in
warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly
nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class"
Notable quotes:
"... That said, the revivification of the DNC lawsuit serves as a story hook for me to try to advance the story on the nature of political parties as such, the Democratic Party as an institution, and the function that the Democratic Party serves. I will meander through those three topics, then, and conclude. ..."
"... What sort of legal entity is ..."
"... Political parties were purely private organizations from the 1790s until the Civil War. Thus, "it was no more illegal to commit fraud in the party caucus or primary than it would be to do so in the election of officers of a drinking club." However, due to the efforts of Robert La Follette and the Progressives, states began to treat political parties as "public agencies" during the early 1890s and 1900s; by the 1920s "most states had adopted a succession of mandatory statutes regulating every major aspect of the parties' structures and operations. ..."
"... While 1787 delegates disagreed on when corruption might occur, they brought a general shared understanding of what political corruption meant. To the delegates, political corruption referred to self-serving use of public power for private ends, including, without limitation, bribery, public decisions to serve private wealth made because of dependent relationships, public decisions to serve executive power made because of dependent relationships, and use by public officials of their positions of power to become wealthy. ..."
"... Two features of the definitional framework of corruption at the time deserve special attention, because they are not frequently articulated by all modern academics or judges. The first feature is that corruption was defined in terms of an attitude toward public service, not in relation to a set of criminal laws. The second feature is that citizenship was understood to be a public office. The delegates believed that non-elected citizens wielding or attempting to influence public power can be corrupt and that elite corruption is a serious threat to a polity. ..."
"... You can see how a political party -- a strange, amphibious creature, public one moment, private the next -- is virtually optimized to create a phishing equilibrium for corruption. However, I didn't really answer my question, did I? I still don't know what sort of legal entity the Democratic Party is. However, I can say what the Democratic Party is not ..."
"... So the purpose of superdelegates is to veto a popular choice, if they decide the popular choice "can't govern." But this is circular. Do you think for a moment that the Clintonites would have tried to make sure President Sanders couldn't have governed? You bet they would have, and from Day One. ..."
"... More importantly, you can bet that the number of superdelegates retained is enough for the superdelegates, as a class, to maintain their death grip on the party. ..."
"... could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. ..."
"... That's exactly ..."
"... Functionally, the Democratic Party Is a Money Trough for Self-Dealing Consultants. Here once again is Nomiki Konst's amazing video, before the DNC: https://www.youtube.com/embed/EAvblBnXV-w Those millions! That's real money! ..."
"... Today, it is openly acknowledged by many members that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were running an operation together. In fact, it doesn't take much research beyond FEC filings to see that six of the top major consulting firms had simultaneous contracts with the DNC and HRC -- collectively earning over $335 million since 2015 [this figure balloons in Konst's video because she got a look at the actual budget]. (This does not include SuperPACs.) ..."
"... One firm, GMMB earned $236.3 million from HFA and $5.3 from the DNC in 2016. Joel Benenson, a pollster and strategist who frequents cable news, collected $4.1m from HFA while simultaneously earning $3.3 million from the DNC. Perkins Coie law firm collected $3.8 million from the DNC, $481,979 from the Convention fund and $1.8 million from HFA in 2016. ..."
"... It gets worse. Not only do the DNC's favored consultants pick sides in the primaries, they serve on the DNC boards so they can give themselves donor money. ..."
"... These campaign consultants make a lot more money off of TV and mail than they do off of field efforts. Field efforts are long-term, labor-intensive, high overhead expenditures that do not have big margins from which the consultants can draw their payouts. They also don't allow the consultants to make money off of multiple campaigns all in the same cycle, while media and mail campaigns can be done from their DC office for dozens of clients all at the same time. They get paid whether campaigns win or lose, so effectiveness is irrelevant to them. ..."
"... the Democratic Party is nothing more than a layer of indirection between the donor class and the Democratic consultants and the campaigns they run; ..."
"... the Democratic Party -- in its current incarnation -- has important roles to play in not expanding its "own" electorate through voter registration, in the care and feeding of the intelligence community, in warmongering, in the continual buffing and polishing of neoliberal ideology, and in general keeping the Overton Window firmly nailed in place against policies that would convey universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. ..."
"... the bottom line is that if Democratic Party controls ballot access for the forseeable future, they have to be gone through ..."
"... In retrospect, despite Sanders evident appeal and the power of his list, I think it would have been best if their faction's pushback had been much stronger ..."
An alert reader who is a representative of the class that's suing the DNC Services
Corporation for fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary -- WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES
CORPORATION et al., a.k.a. the "DNC lawsuit" -- threw some interesting mail over the transom;
it's from Elizabeth Beck of Beck & Lee, the firm that brought the case on behalf of the
(putatively) defrauded class (and hence their lawyer). Beck's letter reads in relevant
part:
Social order crumbles then the elite became detached from common people and distrusted by
them, as the US neoliberal elite now is. Trump elections were mostly semi-conscious protest
against the neoliberal elite which was symbolized by Hillary candidacy.
The problem with the article is that the author mixed liberalism and neoliberalism:
Liberalism and neoliberalism are opposite. Neoliberalism has nothing to do with Christianity. It
is, in essence, a Satan-worshiping cult ("greed is good"). The fact that it is dominant in the
USA and Western Europe suggests that we can talk about persecution of Christians under
neoliberalism.
That's why neoliberal elite resorted to Russophobia -- to rally the nation against the flag
and to hash the distrust with anti-Russian hysteria.
Notable quotes:
"... It has been observed many times that liberalism is mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that. ..."
I disagree. The problems in liberalism didn't show up until now because most people in
liberal democratic countries took the Judeo-Christian moral framework for granted. If the human
rights (for example) that liberalism enshrines are something real, then they have to be
grounded in something transcendent. It has been observed many times that liberalism is
mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there's a lot of truth to that.
As I read Why Liberalism Failed , I take Deneen as saying that liberalism had to fail
because at its core it stands for liberating the individual from an unchosen obligation.
Ultimately, it forms consumers, not citizens.
I don't see Deneen airbrushing the good parts
of liberalism from history, but rather honing his critique on what he believes are its
structural flaws that make it unsustainable. His critique is strong, certainly, and I think
dead-on, in that he sees that liberalism cannot generate within itself the virtues it needs to
survive.
Deneen's critique is also matter-of-fact. Free markets are a core part of the liberal
democratic model, but given the globalized nature of the economy, and rapid technological
changes, we have to face the possibility that liberalism as we have understood it is inadequate
to provide for the good of workers left behind by these changes.
If we have neglected the moral order embedded within liberalism itself, on what basis can we
regain it? I keep going back to Adams's line about our Constitution is only good for a "moral
and religious people," because self-government by the people can only work for people who
possess the virtues to govern their own passions. This says to me that to perceive and to
achieve the virtues embedded within liberalism, one has to be oriented towards a sense that
there really are moral and religious truths beyond ourselves that bind our conduct.
Liberalism has degenerated into Justice Anthony Kennedy's famous line:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning,
of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
I think most Americans today would not get what the problem is with that definition. You
can't support a governing order based on something that weak. That, I believe, is Patrick
Deneen's overall point.
"If prudence and temperance are synonyms for modesty and self-restraint – the rising
generation of Americans has utterly abandoned these values."
They are not synonyms. Prudence is appropriate concern for the future. It has nothing to
so with modesty. Temperance has to do with appropriate self-restraint. It is not
temperate to constrain oneself in a way that causes oneself senseless suffering. That is what
some conservatives are asking people who don't fit into traditional gender categories to
do.
I believe Brooks is more correct than Deneen. Robert Heinlein always made the point that
liberty was not compatible with ignorance and ineptitude. Rather, liberty and self-ownership
requires a certain level of competence. Competent people are capable of self-rule.
Incompetent people are not. The problem with Deneen's ideas is that they force the competent
people to surrender a certain measure of liberty and self-ownership in order to "accommodate"
and "fit in" with the less competent, and that is a trade off that people like myself will
never accept in a million years. In other words, Deneen does not speak for competent
individuals such as myself. Hence, his ideas could never work for the likes of myself.
I believe the only solution, and a partial one at that (there is no such thing as a
perfect solution as perfection does not exist in nature) is radical decentralization on a
global scale. I call this the "thousand state sovereignty" model or the "21st century
Westphalis". Some might even call it the "Snow Crash" scenario. This is where conventional
nation-states and institutions fade away and new ones based more on networks of individual
with common interests, objectives, and character traits form. The more competent members of
the human race, who have no need to give up classical liberalism and individual
self-ownership are able to form their own societies politically and culturally autonomous
from the rest of the human species. Other factions of humanity can do the same thing. Call it
"GTOW" on a global scale. Hence, the nation-state will decline in relative importance and the
city-state will come back into vogue.
I believe this is the ONLY pathway forward to a better world for everyone. It does have
the advantage of being a "positive-sum" solution, as most everyone gets what they want.
Positive-sum solutions are always superior to zero-sum solutions, which are really
negative-sum solutions.
Even John Locke, who is basically the father of liberalism, said that the state "need not
tolerate" atheism because a state cannot rely on enforcement mechanisms alone to ensure
proper civic behavior. A citizen must have a healthy fear of some form of divine retribution
as guarantor of his behavior. It's possible, of course, to develop some form of morality
based in natural reason that can ensure proper behavior, but I think Locke was onto something
in his exhortation that the law alone is not enough.
Based on Brooks's summary, Deenen appears to believe that people in ancient Greece, ancient
Rome, and medieval times were more virtuous than people are in contemporary America.
That is not a reasonable thing to think. Maybe people in contemporary America have
different vices than people did in past societies. But vice is part of the human condition,
and people in America have not stopped caring for virtue. We value the cardinal virtues of
prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as much as ever (though our understanding of
what these virtues require has changed in some ways).
We also continue to value kindness, though Catholic teaching regards kindness as a
theological virtue. True, as religious adherence has declined, some have joined the cult of
Ayn Rand. But a culture of charity flourishes among secular people. Witness the growth of the
effective altruism movement.
The only traditional Christian virtues that are now widely rejected are those specifically
concerning religious belief and those that concerned sexual morality. Even if you think that
sexual purity is a virtue (I don't), regarding it as among the most important virtues has
never been reasonable.
As another writer somewhere wrote on the topic of Deneen's book (or perhaps it was a quote
from the book itself, I don't remember), liberalism has until now been surviving by spending
down the store of accumulated moral norms and civic mindedness that it inherited from its
pre-modern progenitors. But since it cannot replenish those stores, it is essentially
starving itself of that which it needs to survive. Eventually we (the people) will forget
those things, and as norms break down and social trust diminishes toward the point of
anarchy, we will beg for the state to step in and protect us from our fellow citizens. And
that is when liberalism will give way to authoritarianism in what I'm sure will be an irony
appreciated by almost no one when it actually happens.
I'm afraid our gracious host has affirmed David Brooks in the substance of Rod's stated
disagreement. The Judeo-Christian moral order is as good as any moral order, and better than
most in significant aspects. Its probably not the only one that would work, but if liberalism
is a secular version of Christianity, then Brooks is right.
As a critic of liberalism from the left, but a sadder and wiser adherent of constitutional
liberty after flirting in theory with Bolshevism, I think the word "liberal" is overplayed
here. Liberalism is a political expression of laissez-faire capitalism. The concept of
individual liberty, and the concept of ordered liberty, are not the exclusive province of
liberalism.
Colonel Bogey provides a modest case in point. He is an advocate of the divine right of
kings and monarchical superiority to any parliament the king may deign to authorize although
he comfortably enjoys the privileges of living in a federal republic that prohibits any
hereditary nobility. Colonel Bogey is no liberal, yet he is an enemy of the most viable
alternatives to liberalism.
Embedded within liberalism the the emancipation of the self from constraint. How do you
maintain tradition in such a culture?
The murderer is unregulated capitalism a la Ronald Reagan, just as Reagan was the murderer
of the Savings and Loans, a true Mr. Potter. If the only virtue is getting rich at the
expense of the general community, and only a few make it, what do faith, family, and
tradition have to do with it? Now if the union hall was a center of social life, not only for
you but for your entire family, and solidarity was woven into the fabric of your life, things
might be different.
Only certain selves are liberated from restraint by liberalism. It also, historically
speaking, involves the subordination of the employee to the employer, and the consumer to the
purveyor of shoddy goods at exorbitant prices. Which has a morally degrading effect on both
the dominant and the oppressed classes. The faux-left dismissal of the "working class," or to
indulge a politically correct euphemism, the "white working class," is just another variant
on the traditional class distinctions in liberalism.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Nothing wrong with that statement, per se. The problem is overlooking that "one's own
concept" is not binding on anyone else, nor does a law of general application have to bend
and twist to accommodate each and every "own concept" every individual may have. Which is why
Lawrence was valid, Windsor plausible and Obergefell a terribly sloppy
application of generally valid constitutional principles.
The problem with Brooks is that he fails to realize that the things he treasures -- personal
virtue, community, self-restraint, temperance and so on -- are not actually creations of
liberalism, nor are they necessary products of it. To a large degree these came from the
pre-existing culture(s) that came to the US before the founding from non-liberal societies.
Included among these was, of course, Christianity as a prominent influence on values,
virtues, community and so on. Liberalism was draped over this, but it doesn't create this,
and none of this is inherent in liberalism. The liberal system in America has "free ridden"
on these inherited aspects, which stem from non-liberal sources, for pretty much the entire
history of the country. But they didn't come from liberalism.
The very things that Brooks values the most do not themselves come from liberalism, and it
is far from clear, particularly as Western liberalism reaches its particularly
illiberal/hegemonic phase culturally, actively seeking to strictly limit the permitted
influence of these things which glued the society together for most of our history but did
not stem from liberalism itself, that liberalism is the best system in which to preserve or
even practice these things moving forward. I think a part of Brooks's brain senses this, but
he is so committed to liberalism -- or at least so fearful of potential alternatives -- that
although he sees the problem (much of his column writing bemoans the loss of these things,
really), he can't really bring himself to see that liberalism is fundamentally indifferent as
to whether the things that David Brooks so cherishes fade into the mists of history
completely, so long as the absolute prioritization of individual freedom of action remains
paramount.
It's unfortunate, really, because it makes a lot of what he writes rather painful to read,
sadly.
"... Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is "owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb enough to waste their time voting. ..."
"... America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is absent of any kind of deity. ..."
"... If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them -- contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically, not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get fired. ..."
to finally restore the sovereignty of the US to the people of the US
Come on dude. I mean, I really like your stuff, but get with the times -- the U.S. is
"owned" whole and complete. At the risk of repeating thy self; They've got a giant segment of
the population duped into believing they live in a democracy, and some of them are just dumb
enough to waste their time voting.
The owners throw the elected(owned prostitutes) officials a bone now and then, but that's
all they get. If there ever was a corporate house negro, Obama, and the rest of them are it,
and Trump has had his dumb ass neoconed from day one.
America is like a religion -- you are required to "believe", because the reality is
absent of any kind of deity.
If only, Americans could get the kind of understanding of how the owners think of them --
contemptuous at best -- needed for certain tasks, but expendable if required -- basically,
not well liked. Akin to a dirty, smelly employee that keeps showing up as not to get
fired.
Democracy in crisis? What democracy? There has not been a democracy for quite
some time. Matter of fact it turned into a corporate oligarchy ruled by them, Wall Street and
the Pentagon and not to forget Israel.
If Trump is messing with this so called democracy so be it. He is the bull walking through
the delicate china closet the shadow rulers have set up for a long time. He smashes most of all
those delicate dishes who really did not help the regular people at all. They were just there
on display as teasers. Well Trump is smashing things left and right. "Racism" is being so
overdone that it is becoming ridiculous and that real racism is still being hidden. Don't know
about Bannon, never cared or paid much attention to him nor Breitbart news.
But believe me democracy is not in crisis because of Trump. There had to be a real democracy
to begin with in order to be in crisis. What's in crisis is the two party system, the
oligarchy, the false prophets, the media and the exceptionalism of the USA. All good things to
have a crisis over and change things towards a new awakening.
● Republicans are top 25% of society who own 75% of wealth. ● Democrats are educated middle-class who own 25% of wealth. ● Working-poor are uneducated bottom 50% who refuse to vote until they stop getting shit
upon. see more
That is true if the election really reflected the will of the American people. But do our
elections do that?
Although we have all been indoctrinated into believing that we have the best democracy in
the world, do our elections really reflect what the people want? Even if we believe
the counting of votes to be accurate , we know that
many citizens are denied their right to vote by manipulation of the voting rolls, voter
intimidation, or the engineering of long lines.
But even if these issues are ignored, there is
the two-party system that makes it so easy for big money and in particular big media to
ensure that we do not get to choose from candidates that we would really want. A good step in
moving toward a multi-party system would be to adopt
some voting system that would encourage a multi-party system.
Democracy in America? We should work to give it a try.
It's a good point. You figure that, at best, maybe 60 or 70 per cent of voters
actually participate in an election. Then, out of that, it takes only 50%+1 to win. That means
that a seat can be won with as little as perhaps 35% of all voters casting ballots.
However, first-past-the-post vote calculations are not an absolute impediment to winning
elections. In Seattle, there is a socialist on the city council. In Minneapolis, another
socialist came extremely close to a win there also. And the example of Canada's CCF/NDP cannot
be ignored. All of these examples are in the context of first-past-the-post.
Now, I am firmly in favor of RCV. But we will probably only get RCV once the American Left
gets itself to a position of power where it can make that kind of reform reality. The duopoly
powers will not concede this to us gleefully, unless they see an opportunity to benefit from it
somehow, such as gaming the system somehow (maybe setting off competition on the Left to ensure
a win for the Right during a prolonged period of Rightwing solidarity as sometimes happens...
like right now). I urge people to learn about the rise of the NDP even if they do not believe
it to be a legitimate Left party (and there is plenty to support the impression that it has
drifted to the center, sadly). I urge people to closely and carefully the Sawant win in
Seattle. We can learn from these historical lessons.
We could be winning far more often and deeply if we just had something like RCV, like
Proportional Representation (PR). But we don't. And the fact we don't have them should be that
much more fuel for ignition. We must start winning. I always suggest starting at the bottom,
not the top, where the Left could make inroads far more easily than attempting heroic battles
with the duopoly at the highest levels of government. Over time, our presence would strengthen
and our local efforts would weave a strong fabric of regional and maybe federal parties.
Getting depressed by the unfairness of the electoral college should move us in efforts to
abolish it (and that is happening, btw). But at the same time, it should not be discouraging us
from doing sensible things, like organizing local campaigns, taking over city halls, disrupting
city planning departments and planning committees, and beginning to build what will one day
become a national presence.
Yes, we should definitely give democracy a try. And we could be trying, mostly, at the local
level with an eye toward eventual coalescence into more regional bodies of power. It has
been done, and we would be wise to examine thoroughly how it was done and how we could improve
that process.
Bannon's "far right Leninism" does not read well the first time, or the
second time, or as many times as I read and re-read that phrase. I wish writers for the Left
press would take the time to carefully proofread their own work before posting.
Yeah, I think I get what the author meant , but maybe it would have read more easily
if it had been written something like "the Bannon version of authoritarianism" (or whatever it
is the author precisely meant). It would have been clearer and not have appeared to conflate a
rather Leftish ideology with some form of RW extremism.
"... The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites. ..."
"... And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself. ..."
"... With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests". ..."
On New Year's Day, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman issued a series of
tweets in which he proclaimed as follows:
The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians
who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites.
and then, a few minutes later:
And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself.
Was I psyched to see this! With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's
the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong"
by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests".
... ... ...
Let me be more explicit. We have just come through an election in which underestimating working-class conservatism in northern
states proved catastrophic for Democrats. Did the pundits' repeated insistence that white working-class voters in the north were
reliable Democrats play any part in this underestimation? Did the message Krugman and his colleagues hammered home for years help
to distract their followers from the basic strategy of Trump_vs_deep_state?
I ask because getting that point wrong was kind of a big deal in 2016. It was a blunder from which it will take the Democratic
party years to recover. And we need to get to the bottom of it.
"... The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites. ..."
"... And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself. ..."
"... With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests". ..."
On New Year's Day, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman issued a series of
tweets in which he proclaimed as follows:
The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians
who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites.
and then, a few minutes later:
And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself.
Was I psyched to see this! With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's
the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong"
by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests".
... ... ...
Let me be more explicit. We have just come through an election in which underestimating working-class conservatism in northern
states proved catastrophic for Democrats. Did the pundits' repeated insistence that white working-class voters in the north were
reliable Democrats play any part in this underestimation? Did the message Krugman and his colleagues hammered home for years help
to distract their followers from the basic strategy of Trump_vs_deep_state?
I ask because getting that point wrong was kind of a big deal in 2016. It was a blunder from which it will take the Democratic
party years to recover. And we need to get to the bottom of it.
"Controlling the narrative" is politically correct term for censorship.
Notable quotes:
"... I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. ..."
"... "controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was). ..."
"... In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods. ..."
Maybe this is the same kind of clinical detachment doctors have to cultivate, a way of distancing oneself from the subject,
protecting yourself against a crippling empathy. I won't say that writers or artists are more sensitive than other people, but
it may be that they're less able to handle their own emotions.
It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid
actually experiencing it.
Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert
and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader.
It's a nerdy, sensitive kid's way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation.
I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate
commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or
they feel personally wounded or threatened.
"controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the
USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was).
In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology
is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods.
They want to invoke your emotions in the necessary direction and those emotions serve as a powerful filter, a firewall which
will prevents you from seeing any alternative facts which taken as whole form an "alternative narrative".
It also creates certain taboo, such as "don't publish anything from RT", or you automatically become "Putin's stooge." But
some incoherent blabbing of a crazy neocon in Boston Globe is OK.
This is an old and a very dirty game, a variation of method used for centuries by high demand cults:
"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best
that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same way in any country."
– Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials)
You need to be able to decipher this "suggested" set of emotions and detach it from the set of facts provided by neoliberal
MSM. It might help to view things "Sine ira et studio" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_ira_et_studio
)
That helps to destroy the official neoliberal narrative.
Here skepticism (whether natural or acquired) can be of great help in fighting groupthink pushed by neoliberal MSM.
We are all guilty of this one sidedness, but I think that we need to put some efforts to move in direction of higher level
of skepticism toward our own views and probably provide at least links to alternative views.
"Controlling the narrative" is politically correct term for censorship.
Notable quotes:
"... I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. ..."
"... "controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was). ..."
"... In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods. ..."
Maybe this is the same kind of clinical detachment doctors have to cultivate, a way of distancing oneself from the subject,
protecting yourself against a crippling empathy. I won't say that writers or artists are more sensitive than other people, but
it may be that they're less able to handle their own emotions.
It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid
actually experiencing it.
Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert
and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader.
It's a nerdy, sensitive kid's way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation.
I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate
commenters alike, are lashing out because they've been hurt -- their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or
they feel personally wounded or threatened.
"controlling the narrative" by neoliberal MSM is the key of facilitating the neoliberal "groupthink". Much like was in the
USSR with "communist" groupthink. This is a step in the direction of the theocratic society (which the USSR definitely was).
In other words "controlling the narrative" is the major form of neoliberal MSM "war on reality" as the neoliberal ideology
is now completely discredited and can be sustained only by cult-style methods.
They want to invoke your emotions in the necessary direction and those emotions serve as a powerful filter, a firewall which
will prevents you from seeing any alternative facts which taken as whole form an "alternative narrative".
It also creates certain taboo, such as "don't publish anything from RT", or you automatically become "Putin's stooge." But
some incoherent blabbing of a crazy neocon in Boston Globe is OK.
This is an old and a very dirty game, a variation of method used for centuries by high demand cults:
"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best
that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same way in any country."
– Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials)
You need to be able to decipher this "suggested" set of emotions and detach it from the set of facts provided by neoliberal
MSM. It might help to view things "Sine ira et studio" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_ira_et_studio
)
That helps to destroy the official neoliberal narrative.
Here skepticism (whether natural or acquired) can be of great help in fighting groupthink pushed by neoliberal MSM.
We are all guilty of this one sidedness, but I think that we need to put some efforts to move in direction of higher level
of skepticism toward our own views and probably provide at least links to alternative views.
I find Democratic Party optimism for the 2018 mid-term election to be odd. It seems to rest
on two expectations.
1. The yearning of the faithful Left for some crime that could be laid at DJT's feet as a
plausible basis for impeachment or "sale" to Trump supporters as a basis for voting Democratic
in congressional and gubernatorial elections. This seems an unlikely outcome to me. In spite of
all the hyper-ventilation in the MSM over every rumored "smoking gun" to come in the
Russophobic investigations, there is nothing yet in evidence of a crime with which DJT could be
charged in the process of impeachment and trial. Manafort, Flynn, etc. all have profound legal
problems, but they are not Trump. Guilt by association has not yet become a chargeable offense
in the US. Removal for mental incompetence under the 25th Amendment is not a realistic
possibility. This would require a majority vote of the cabinet and with the concurrence of the
VP. Good luck on that! AND, a hell of a lot of people across the country like Trump's actions
even if they think his behavior is bizarre. Is it seemly for a serving president to host a for
profit $750/plate gala at his Florida resort? No. It is not but most people just don't care
about that. It is not a crime.
2. The Democrats believe/hope that the US economy will decline between now and November and
that will cause scales to fall from the eyes of the masses. Well, pilgrims, that is a hell of a
thing to hope for and that collapse in the economy seems to me to be very unlikely given the
cumulative stimulative effect of DJT actions in tax law, deregulation and his various
jaw-boning efforts with business. The private sector added 250,000 jobs in December BEFORE the
tax law was signed. the DOW crossed the 25,000 frontier early today and just kept going. Rich
people in New York, New Jersey, California and other blue states were never going to vote for
Trump anyway sooo ... the loss of their state income tax deduction is not politically
significant. Republican Congressman Reed from western New York state was asked about this today
on the Tee Vee. He replied that he understood this would be difficult for rich people in the
big cities but that in his district the average income is $42,000/year and that the continued
$10,000 real estate deduction would take care of 99.9% of his constituents and so he had voted
for the new tax law.
It seems to me that the Democrats are counting their chickens mighty early. pl
A.Pols ,
The Democrats are indeed counting their chickens....
The economy can do all kinds of things such as deflate when the hot money (endless levitation
by the Fed) runs out, which it won't unless Petrodollar and Dollar reserve currency status
come to an end. Now there is a real good chance that will happen, but probably not by
November of this year, though by November of 2038 it probably will have come to pass.
I had been a Democrat since my first election in 1968, but these days what do the Democrats
actually represent? If you love the idea of Stone Mountain being blown up and you're a full
fledged diversity catamite or gender crybaby, then They're the virtue signalling voice of
"progressivism". Otherwise what do they offer except domestic stagnation, persecution of the
people who keep the lights on, and schizoid foreign intervention?
Anyone who thinks Alabama was a call to man the barricades is mistaken.Roy Moore was a
stinker of a candidate, but he still made it to the one yard line.
Greco ,
Perhaps Democrats have reason to be cautiously optimistic, if not assured of themselves.
They have been aided no less by Trump's former strategist. The self-proclaimed Leninist,
Mr.Bannon, has stuck his little dagger into the president. I don't know what mindlessness
propelled him to sit for hours with Mr. Wolffe on record and mercilessly attack the president
and his family. It's possible Wolffe is playing loose with Bannon's words, but it doesn't
appear that Bannon himself can recall with any certainty that he didn't say what has been
attributed to him.
I assume Bannon's inner Machiavelli figured he would be quoted anonymously as a "White
House source." Serves him right to be exposed like this, but he has caused untold damage to a
movement he has both helped to propel and control, not to mention having forced Trump into
unneeded damage control just at a time when he was getting into the swing of things and was
beginning to turn the table on his enemies.
At least we now know why McMaster astutely decided to get rid of Bannon from the NSC and
why Kelly had him fired. Bannon was not only a leaker, he would privately disparage anyone
who attempted to stand in the way of his influence, including the president. I just hope
Trump is now better served by those around him now, but that doesn't strike me being
necessarily so.
Where will the economy be at the end of 2018
I HAVE NO CLUE!
too many variables for me:
Reasons for crash:
Personal debt rising starting to cause problems. Credit card debt up/Car loan defaults up
US debt rising.
US balance of trade continuing
Fed says it will quit increasing QE & may raise interest rates.
China and bricks completing parallel monetary trade and movement systems to stop US financial
monopoly. Ie chinese SWIFT replacement system, Chinese credit cards, Russian increasing gold
holdings compared to US$
Rents and housing most expensive compared to wages ever.
US health care costs rising
Reasons for good times
Central banks printing money and buying stocks.
Tax laws brings money back to US (more stock buybacks)
US debt ceiling seems to be an illusion
Trump great spokesman for business
Trump may use new tools to fight recession (helicopter money etc.)
Trump says he likes cheap US$
Momentum of stock markets
Trump has started no new wars. Military $$ stay mostly inside the USA
Trump gets huge infrastructure bill passed
Wild cards
Crypto currencies?
Interest rates?
Job outsourcing or coming back to USA?
Economic Black Swan from outside USA
I tend to agree that the economy is due for a crash to the limited degree I read economics
news and opinion (I used to be much more interested but after forty years of waiting for the
"Big Depression" which hasn't come, I've become tired.) But hoping it will happen in the next
year is clearly speculative.
Bottom line is Democrats have no plan for 2018 - and therefore are likely to lose big
again.
Of all the components of the tax bill (many of which are problematic--but that's mostly b/c
it's a tax bill, not necessarily for ideological reasons), I thought putting a lot of tax
onus on wealthy bicoastals was a stroke of genius. Having said that, things are looking in a
lot of mixed directions: many people are uneasy for all sorts of reasons about Trump, but the
bottom line (esp on economic matters) does not look too bad, to say the least.
In many ways, actually, the overall situation looks like Bill Clinton 2.0: people had all
sorts of issues with WJC--Democrats were uneasy with him and Republicans absolutely hated
him. But things were looking OK or better in general and voters weren't going to punish him
for nothing that was particularly off track. I see the Democrats trying some of the same
tricks. Maybe even all the way to impeachment. Unless things come apart at the seams very
visibly, none of them will stick on DJT.
The stock market and financial asset prices in general drive perceptions of the strength
of the economy. As long as financial assets prices remain in melt-up mode it will benefit the
incumbents. While the Fed and the other major central banks are slowly reducing liquidity by
either reducing the rate of growth of their balance sheet or reducing it outright as in the
case of the Fed, there's no knowing when speculation peaks. The one thing that bulls should
watch is the flattening of the yield curve.
It you need to read a singe article analyzing current anti-Russian hysteria in the USA this in the one you should read. This is
an excellent article Simply great !!! And as of December 2017 it represents the perfect summary of Russiagate, Hillary defeat and, Neo-McCarthyism
campaign launched as a method of hiding the crisis of neoliberalism revealed by Presidential elections. It also suggest that growing
jingoism of both Parties (return to Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation' bulling. Both Trump and Albright assume that the
United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena) and loss of the confidence and paranoia of the US
neoliberal elite.
It contain many important observation which in my view perfectly catch the complexity of the current Us political landscape.
Bravo to Jackson Lears !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress ..."
"... Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed. ..."
"... A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton's chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s. ..."
"... The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. ..."
"... Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment' produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. ..."
"... It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. 'fake news') as a tactic for advancing one administration or another's political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had 'wittingly' spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. ..."
"... In May 2017, he told NBC's Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump's campaign because they are 'almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique'. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, 'almost genetically' diabolical. ..."
"... It's hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump's election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It's true that Trump's menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. ..."
"... Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors' lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation'. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it's the greatest country in the world, Albright because it's an exceptional force for global good. ..."
"... Besides Trump's supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. ..."
"... So far, after months of 'bombshells' that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. ..."
"... The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record. ..."
"... Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. ..."
"... The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. ..."
"... More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders's supporters. ..."
"... Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin's interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. ..."
"... Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey's briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment. ..."
"... The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the 'tree of smoke' that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. ..."
"... Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party's base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about 'treason' like a reconstituted John Birch Society. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. ..."
"... For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless. ..."
"... The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington's ways than their president will ever be. ..."
"... They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton's defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. ..."
"... Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. ..."
"... Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire. ..."
"... This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. 'The Democratic Party's claims of fighting for "working families" have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,' Autopsy announces. ..."
"... Clinton's record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. ..."
"... If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It's a long shot, but there is something happening out there. ..."
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are
troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign.
Bernie Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as
usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington.
Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means
of fighting evil in order to secure global progress . Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered
their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a
widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more
capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed.
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
The fact that he is employed by Guardia tells a lot how low Guardian fall. It's a yellow press (owned by intelligence agencies
if we talk about their coverage of Russia).
Notable quotes:
"... In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal". ..."
"... Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument. ..."
"... That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument. ..."
Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel
debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate
those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely
clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
Real News host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most
articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy
theory, and has published in The Nation some of the
clearest
arguments against both that I've yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian
where he has been
writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of
New
York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald
Trump Win.
In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of
this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy
Scahill accurately described as "brutal".
The term Gish gallop
, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a
fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in
rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the
opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the
Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a
deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by
Maté who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.
In this part here , for
example, the following exchange takes place while Harding is already against the ropes on the
back of a previous failed argument. I'm going to type this up so you can clearly see what's
happening here:
Harding: Look, I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not a kind of head of the CIA or
the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most
recently when President Macron was elected ? -
Harding: Yeah. But, if you'll let me finish, there've been attacks on the German parliament ?
-
Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed
didn't happen?
Harding: [pause] What? -- ?that it didn't happen? Sorry?
Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just
claimed actually is not true?
Harding: [pause] Well, I mean that it's not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive,
but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen attacks on other European
states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.
Maté: Where else?
Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It's a state in the Baltics which was
crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and
former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the
time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing
thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does
the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was
different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public
space and try and influence public opinion there. That's unusual. And of course that's a
matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.
Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently
presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world
prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot
of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out? -- ?and there's
plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this? - ? that actually there was no
Russian hack in Germany.
In the above exchange, Maté derailed Harding's Gish gallop, and Harding actually
admonished him for doing so, telling him "let me finish" and attempting to go on listing more
flimsy examples to bolster his case as though he hadn't just begun his Gish gallop with a
completely
false example .
That's really all Harding brought to the debate. A bunch of individually weak arguments, the
fact that he speaks Russian and has lived in Moscow, and the occasional straw man where he tries to imply that
Maté is claiming that Vladimir Putin is an innocent girl scout. Meanwhile Maté
just kept patiently dragging the debate back on track over and over again in the most polite
obliteration of a man that I have ever witnessed.
The entire interview followed this basic script. Harding makes an unfounded claim,
Maté holds him to the fact that it's unfounded, Harding sputters a bit and tries to zoom
things out and point to a bigger-picture analysis of broader trends to distract from the fact
that he'd just made an individual claim that was baseless, then winds up implying that
Maté is only skeptical of the claims because he hasn't lived in Russia as Harding
has.
jeremy scahill 0
@jeremyscahill
This @aaronjmate interview is brutal. He makes mincemeat of Luke Harding, who can't seem to
defend the thesis, much less the title, of his own book: Where's the 'Collusion' -
YouTube
11:03 AM-Dec 25, 2017
Q 131 11597 C? 1,148
The interview ended when Harding once again implied that Maté was only skeptical of
the collusion narrative because he'd never been to Russia and seen what a right-wing oppressive
government it is, after which the following exchange took place:
Maté: I don't think I've countered anything you've said about the state of Vladimir
Putin's Russia. The issue under discussion today has been whether there was collusion, the
topic of your book.
Harding: Yeah, but you're clearly a kind of collusion rejectionist, so I'm not sure what sort
of evidence short of Trump and Putin in a sauna together would convince you. Clearly nothing
would convince you. But anyway it's been a pleasure.
At which point Harding abruptly logged off the video chat, leaving Maté to wrap up
the show and promote Harding's book on his own.
You should definitely watch this debate for yourself , and enjoy
it, because I will be shocked if we ever see another like it. Harding's fate will serve as a
cautionary tale for the establishment hacks who've built their careers advancing the Russiagate
conspiracy theory , and it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever make the mistake of
trying to debate anyone of Maté's caliber again.
The reason Russiagaters speak so often in broad, sweeping terms? - saying there are too many
suspicious things happening for there not to be a there there, that there's too much smoke for
there not to be fire? - ? is because when you zoom in and focus on any individual part of their
conspiracy theory, it falls apart under the slightest amount of critical thinking (or as
Harding calls it, "collusion rejectionism"). Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain
zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the
appearance of a legitimate argument.
Well, Harding did say he's a storyteller.
* * *
Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece
please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , bookmarking my website , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . Our Hidden History4
days ago (edited) That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right
nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard
Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is
to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western
intelligence agencies.
That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority -
Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read
my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin
is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long
history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around
of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when
it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know
about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be
involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not
explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he
death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian
were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
The fact that he is employed by Guardia tells a lot how low Guardian fall. It's a yellow press (owned by intelligence agencies
if we talk about their coverage of Russia).
Notable quotes:
"... In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal". ..."
"... Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument. ..."
"... That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument. ..."
Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel
debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate
those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely
clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
Real News host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most
articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy
theory, and has published in The Nation some of the
clearest
arguments against both that I've yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian
where he has been
writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of
New
York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald
Trump Win.
In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of
this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy
Scahill accurately described as "brutal".
The term Gish gallop
, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a
fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in
rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the
opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the
Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a
deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by
Maté who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.
In this part here , for
example, the following exchange takes place while Harding is already against the ropes on the
back of a previous failed argument. I'm going to type this up so you can clearly see what's
happening here:
Harding: Look, I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not a kind of head of the CIA or
the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most
recently when President Macron was elected ? -
Harding: Yeah. But, if you'll let me finish, there've been attacks on the German parliament ?
-
Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed
didn't happen?
Harding: [pause] What? -- ?that it didn't happen? Sorry?
Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just
claimed actually is not true?
Harding: [pause] Well, I mean that it's not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive,
but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen attacks on other European
states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.
Maté: Where else?
Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It's a state in the Baltics which was
crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and
former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the
time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing
thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does
the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was
different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public
space and try and influence public opinion there. That's unusual. And of course that's a
matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.
Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently
presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world
prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot
of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out? -- ?and there's
plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this? - ? that actually there was no
Russian hack in Germany.
In the above exchange, Maté derailed Harding's Gish gallop, and Harding actually
admonished him for doing so, telling him "let me finish" and attempting to go on listing more
flimsy examples to bolster his case as though he hadn't just begun his Gish gallop with a
completely
false example .
That's really all Harding brought to the debate. A bunch of individually weak arguments, the
fact that he speaks Russian and has lived in Moscow, and the occasional straw man where he tries to imply that
Maté is claiming that Vladimir Putin is an innocent girl scout. Meanwhile Maté
just kept patiently dragging the debate back on track over and over again in the most polite
obliteration of a man that I have ever witnessed.
The entire interview followed this basic script. Harding makes an unfounded claim,
Maté holds him to the fact that it's unfounded, Harding sputters a bit and tries to zoom
things out and point to a bigger-picture analysis of broader trends to distract from the fact
that he'd just made an individual claim that was baseless, then winds up implying that
Maté is only skeptical of the claims because he hasn't lived in Russia as Harding
has.
jeremy scahill 0
@jeremyscahill
This @aaronjmate interview is brutal. He makes mincemeat of Luke Harding, who can't seem to
defend the thesis, much less the title, of his own book: Where's the 'Collusion' -
YouTube
11:03 AM-Dec 25, 2017
Q 131 11597 C? 1,148
The interview ended when Harding once again implied that Maté was only skeptical of
the collusion narrative because he'd never been to Russia and seen what a right-wing oppressive
government it is, after which the following exchange took place:
Maté: I don't think I've countered anything you've said about the state of Vladimir
Putin's Russia. The issue under discussion today has been whether there was collusion, the
topic of your book.
Harding: Yeah, but you're clearly a kind of collusion rejectionist, so I'm not sure what sort
of evidence short of Trump and Putin in a sauna together would convince you. Clearly nothing
would convince you. But anyway it's been a pleasure.
At which point Harding abruptly logged off the video chat, leaving Maté to wrap up
the show and promote Harding's book on his own.
You should definitely watch this debate for yourself , and enjoy
it, because I will be shocked if we ever see another like it. Harding's fate will serve as a
cautionary tale for the establishment hacks who've built their careers advancing the Russiagate
conspiracy theory , and it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever make the mistake of
trying to debate anyone of Maté's caliber again.
The reason Russiagaters speak so often in broad, sweeping terms? - saying there are too many
suspicious things happening for there not to be a there there, that there's too much smoke for
there not to be fire? - ? is because when you zoom in and focus on any individual part of their
conspiracy theory, it falls apart under the slightest amount of critical thinking (or as
Harding calls it, "collusion rejectionism"). Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain
zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the
appearance of a legitimate argument.
Well, Harding did say he's a storyteller.
* * *
Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece
please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , bookmarking my website , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . Our Hidden History4
days ago (edited) That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right
nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard
Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is
to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western
intelligence agencies.
That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority -
Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read
my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin
is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long
history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around
of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when
it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know
about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be
involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not
explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he
death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian
were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
"... I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim ..."
"... However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news. ..."
"... As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored. ..."
On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to
influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well
it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.
I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same
coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk
averse.
Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very
predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim , so if
Putin were to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election, logic would suggest that he
would do so on Hillary Clinton's side. However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton
had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk
averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia
hacking the election are fake news.
As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including
state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian
state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored.
Neocons dominate the US foreign policy establishment.
In other words Russiagate might be a pre-emptive move by neocons after Trump elections.
Notable quotes:
"... The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so. ..."
"... "The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind." ..."
"... But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future. ..."
"... USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come. ..."
I have great respect for the reporting on this site regarding Syria and the Middle East. I
regret that for some reason there is this dogmatic approach to the issue of Russian attempts
to influence the US election. Why wouldn't the Russians try to sway the election? Allowing
Hillary to win would have put a dangerous adversary in the White House, one with even more
aggressive neocon tendencies than Obama. Trump has been owned by Russian mobsters since the
the 1990s, and his ties to Russian criminals like Felix Sater are well known.
Putin thought that getting Trump in office would allow the US to go down a more restrained
foreign policy path and lift sanctions against Russia, completely understandable goals. Using
Facebook/Twitter bots and groups like Cambridge Analytica, an effort was made to sway public
opinion toward Trump. That is just politics. And does anyone really doubt there are
incriminating sexual videos of Trump out there? Trump (like Bill Clinton) was buddies with
billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Of course there are videos of Trump that can be used
for blackmail purposes, and of course they would be used to get him on board with the Russian
plan.
The problem is that everything Trump touches dies. He's a fraud and an incompetent idiot.
Always has been. To make matters worse, Trump is controlled by the Zionists through his
Orthodox Jewish daughter and Israeli spy son-in-law. This gave power to the most openly
extreme Zionist elements who will keep pushing for more war in the Middle East. And Trump is
so vile that he's hated by the majority of Americans and doesn't have the political power to
end sanctions against Russia.
Personally, I think this is all for the best. Despite his Zionist handlers, Trump will
unintentionally unwind the American Empire through incompetence and lack of strategy, which
allows Syria and the rest of the world to breathe and rebuild. So Russia may have made a bad
bet on this guy being a useful ally, but his own stupidity will end up working out to the
world's favor in the long run.
there is considerable irony in use of "dogmatic" here: the dogma actually occurs in the
rigid authoritarian propaganda that the Russians Putin specifically interfered with the
election itself, which now smugly blankets any discussion. "The Russians interfered" is now
dogma, when that statement is not factually shown, and should read, "allegedly interfered."
The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the
campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those
who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the
usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't
need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so.
To suggest "possibly" in any argument does not provide evidence. There is no evidence.
Take a look at b's link to the following for a clear, sane assessment of what's going on. As
with:
"The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir
Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in
the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and
completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the
evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for
the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical
embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in
the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not
seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in
casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility –
even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been
moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind."
I echo you opinion that this site gives great reports on issues pertaining to Syria and
the ME. Credit to b.
On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to
influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it
makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD
make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential
level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than
a witch hunt.
But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts
to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its
free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world,
including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own
medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus
pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering
controls in the future.
USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have
not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come.
The rule for retired intelligence officials is to keep their mouth shut and disappear from
the public view. This not the case with Brennan. Probably worried about his survival chances in
case of failure, Brennan tries to justified the "putsch" of a faction of intelligence officials
against Trump. Nice... Now we have indirect proof that he conspired with Michael Morell to depose
legitimately elected president.
Now the question arise whether he worked with MI6 to create Steele dossier. In other words
did CIA supplied some information that went to the dossier.
Moreover, since JFK assassination, the CIA is prohibited from spying on American citizens,
especially tracking the activities of associates of a presidential candidate, which is clearly
political activity.
This alone should have sent warning bells off for Congress critters, yet Brennan clearly
persisted in following this dangerous for him and CIA trail. Very strange.
Notable quotes:
"... Speaking to a Russian becomes treasonous ..."
"... The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed 'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides . ..."
"... The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." ..."
"... At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it. ..."
"... It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and acting Director of the CIA, should know better. ..."
"... In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly lacking in any actual evidence. ..."
"... Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its front page with a piece entitled Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials. ..."
"... It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even if it almost never has that result. ..."
"... "The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ." ..."
"... US is now like USSR? https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/05/29/forget-russian-collusion-we-are-russia/ ..."
"... The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. ..."
"... Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to them is high treason. ..."
"... Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch. Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess., while the answer was so close, on the surface. ..."
"... "If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned." ..."
"... This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist. ..."
"... What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships. ..."
"... "Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference, it would be illegal". ..."
The Washington Post and a number
of other mainstream media outlets are sensing blood in the water in the wake of former CIA
Director John Brennan's public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The Post
headlined a front page featured article with
Brennan's explosive testimony just made it harder for the GOP to protect Trump . The
article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign "reviewed intelligence that showed
'contacts and interaction' between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump
campaign." Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled
Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides .
The precise money quote by Brennan that the two
articles chiefly rely on is "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that
revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the
Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such
individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the
co-operation of those individuals."
Now first of all, the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens and tracking the
activities of known associates of a presidential candidate should have sent warning bells off,
yet Brennan clearly persisted in following the trail. What Brennan did not describe, because it
was "classified," was how he came upon the information in the first place. We know from the New
York Times and other sources that it came from foreign intelligence services, including the
British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at
least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan
unofficially in the first place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear
that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian
operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and
elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began.
But where the information ultimately came from as well as its reliability is just
speculation as the source documents have not been made public. What is not speculative is what
Brennan actually said in his testimony. He said that Americans associated with Trump and his
campaign had met with Russians. He was "concerned" because of known Russian efforts to "suborn
such individuals." Note that Brennan, presumably deliberately, did not say "suborn those
individuals." Sure, Russian intelligence (and CIA, MI-6, and Mossad as well as a host of
others) seek to recruit people with access to politically useful information. That is what they
do for a living, but Brennan is not saying that he has or saw any evidence that that was the
case with the Trump associates. He is speaking generically of "such individuals" because he
knows that spies, inter alia , recruit politicians and the Russians presumably, like the
Americans and British, do so aggressively.
At a later point in his testimony Brennan also said that "I had unresolved questions in
my mind about whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons, involved
in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting
fashion," clearly meant to imply that some friends of Trump might have become Russian agents
voluntarily but others might have cooperated without knowing it.
It is a line that has surfaced elsewhere previously, most notably in the demented
meanderings of former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. As the
purpose of recruiting an intelligence agent is to have a resource that can be directed to do
things for you, the statement is an absurdity and Brennan and Morell, as a former Director and
acting Director of the CIA, should know better. That they don't explains a lot of things
about today's CIA
Brennan confirms his lack of any hard evidence when he also poses the question "whether or
not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." He doesn't know whether the
Americans were approached and asked to cooperate by Russian intelligence officers and, even if
they were, he does not know whether they agreed to do so. That means that the Americans in
question were guilty only of meeting and talking to Russians, which was presumably enough to
open an FBI investigation. One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia
was not and is not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal
offense.
In his testimony, Brennan also hit the main theme that appears to be accepted by nearly
everyone inside the beltway, namely that Russian sought to influence and even pervert the
outcome of the 2016 election. Interpreting his testimony, the Post article asserts that "Russia
was engaged in an 'aggressive' and 'multifaceted 'effort to interfere in our election." As has
been noted frequently before, even though this assertion has apparently been endorsed by nearly
everyone in the power structure AKA (also known as) "those who matter," it is singularly
lacking in any actual evidence.
Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that hacked the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) server, which now is accepted as Gospel, but that is just
one side to the story being promoted. Last Wednesday, the New York Times led off its
front page with a piece entitled Top
Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer . Based, as always, on
anonymous sources citing "highly classified" intelligence, the article claimed that "American
spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and
political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his
advisers " The "discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly
focused on two aides in particular, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, both of whom had
established relationships with Russian businessmen and government officials.
The article goes on to concede that "It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials
actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn ," and that's about all there
is to the tale, though the Times wanders on for another three pages, recapping Brennan
and the Flynn saga lest anyone has forgotten. So what do we have? Russians were talking on the
phone about the possibility of influencing an American's presidential candidate's advisers, an
observation alluded to by Brennan and also revealed in somewhat more detail by anonymous
sources. Pretty thin gruel, isn't it? Isn't that what diplomats and intelligence officers
do?
It would appear that the New York Times ' editors are unaware that the United
States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places
including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations. In some other places like Libya, Syria,
Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan the interference is particularly robust taking place at the point
of a bayonet, but the Times and Washington Post don't appear to have any problem
when the regime change is being accomplished ostensibly to make the world more democratic, even
if it almost never has that result.
How one regards all of the dreck coming out of the Fourth Estate and poseurs like John
Brennan pretty much depends on the extent one is willing to trust that what the government, its
highly-politicized bureaucrats and the media tell the public is true. For me, that would be not
a lot. The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable, but buying into
government and media lies will only lead to more lies that have real consequences, up to and
including the impending wars against North Korea and Iran. It is imperative that every American
should question everything he or she reads in a newspaper, sees on television "news" or hears
coming out of the mouths of former and current government employees.
Thanks for the reassurance, Phil. It's lonely standing against the tide, and many are
trying to fabricate excuses for the lack of evidence.
Take Melvin Goodman, author of Whistleblower at the CIA, for instance. (I realize CIA is a
big place, but did you know him?) I've met Mr. Goodman, and he struck me as thoughtful,
rational and capable of objective discussion. However, in his talk at the Gaithersburg Book
Festival, he seemed a rather different person. At the end of Q&A, he said that he was
trying to figure out how the Russians had laundered the "hacked" DNC emails to make it look
like they were leaked by an insider. He's sure the Russians did it. With such creative
speculation, who needs facts?
The book, though, is probably pretty good. Which makes it that much stranger that he's
taking the political line on the DNC emails!
Ah, another day, another disgraceful display by the media. Incidentally: "The
"discussions," which are presumably NSA intercepts of phone calls, reportedly ."
"Presumably" here is quite generous: I'd be tempted to presume a whole string of lies
.
It's like climate change: The MSM tells us that 17 intelligence agencies agree that the
Russians hacked the election and thereby influenced it, but when you dig a little you find
that NSA, for example, did not express a high degree of confidence that this might have
actually been the case. Nevertheless, the case is settled. Pravda and Izvestia should have
been so convinced in their day.
The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to
consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and
treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival.
It all seems quite simple to me. After WWI the USA people decided that their sons should
not die ever more for imperialism. Isolation, neutrality laws. In 1932 Roosevelt was brought
into politics to make the USA great, great as the country controlling the world. Trump and
his rich friends understand that this policy is not just ruining the USA, but is ruining them
personally. If I'm right in this, it is the greatest change in USA foreign policy since
1932.
Of course those, their mouth pieces Washpost, CNN and NYT, who still want USA control
of the world, have aligned their careers on this policy, do anything to get rid of Trump. As
Russia is seen by them as the next country to be subjugated, any talk with this 'enemy' to
them is high treason.
@exiled off mainstreet The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war,
since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both
fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our
survival.
Is he an Anglo-Zionist? I kind of missed a reference to the true puppet-masters in the
article
Is someone going to look in to how the Izzys influence our politicians and elections? No.
Why? Because Russia is the "enemy" and Israel is our "ally." Can someone explain in simple
terms why Russia is the enemy? Yes. Because Jews don't like them very much. Can someone
explain in simple terms why Israel is our ally? Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN,
Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual
citizenship, etc. And because every president just can't wait to wear the beanie and
genuflect at some wall. Any other questions?
" One might well consider that at the time and even to this day Russia was not and is
not a declared enemy of the United States and meeting Russians is not a criminal
offense".
Although in point of fact the USA has committed, and continues to commit, acts of war
against Russia.
"Because of New York City, Hollywood, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS and NBC, the major
newspapers, Wall Street, porn, military subsidies, dual citizenship, etc. "
Let's not forget 911 and it's ongoing coverup, the State Dept's Bureau of Near Eastern
Affairs exemplifying our bestest ally's parallel command and control apparatus in every
federal agency such as the FBI, etc
The only problem I have with the article is understanding the vehemence with which Brennan
and Morell are denounced for, as I read it, blathering about unwitting agents who might have
co-operated without knowing it. I construed the objection to be based on a foreign
intelligence service necessarily seeking to "direct" its agents. It would indeed follow that
the agents could not help knowing what they were doing. However .
Is there not a category of people who Brennan and Morell might be referring to who could
be aptly described as useful idiots. You meet them at a writer's festival, invite them to
accept your country's generous and admiring hospitality and soon have them spouting the memes
you have made sure they are fed as well inadvertently feeding you useful titbits of
information, especially about people.
I think something fascinating is going on, Tom. Our leaders made a choice to defraud us
into the Iraq war. Russia didn't. This is a very serious crime for which there has been zero
accountability. It seems that all the various people who should be in federal prison for
having done this, are the one's "braying the loudest" about the Russian threat.
The real crisis in our country is the absence of accountability for the heinous crimes
THEY committed, not anything the Russians did. If we allow acts of "war fraud" to go
unprosecuted, then War Fraud becomes acceptable behavior. I do not know of one American,
anywhere, who feels this is okay.
Nor has any evidence been produced to support the claim that it was Russia that
hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server
It doesn't matter. Mr. Clapper finally found the answer to this 1 billion dollar
question why US is suffering in his NBC interview -- it is because Russians are untermensch.
Russian genetics is wrong and we all were so sweating and suffering over this whole mess.,
while the answer was so close, on the surface.
"If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to
interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who
typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a
typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."
I know some others actually know you cannot believe spies. Some on the other hand so
not.
Mar 22, 2017 How the CIA Plants News Stories in the Media. It is no longer disputed that
the CIA has maintained an extensive and ongoing relationship with news organizations and
journalists, and multiple, specific acts of media manipulation have now been documented.
August 30, 2015 THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: 50 FACTS THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW By Prof. James F.
Tracy
Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in
US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears
and reads on a regular basis.
@alexander Alexander, I definitely don't think it's OK, but I am not American – I
am British (Scottish, to be exact). Although we have exactly the same problem over here
– in miniature – with our local pocket Hitlers strutting around in their
jackboots just salivating for the blood of foreigners.
I think the people who are braying about Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. are doing so
largely to distract attention from their own crimes. The following celebrated dialogue
explains very clearly how it works.
-------------------------------------–
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did
not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and
destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob
on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come
back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia
nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after
all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the
matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can
declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Conversation with Hermann Goering in prison, reported by Gustave Gilbert
@Tom Welsh I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is
true, he sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking
himself care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over
the Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at
least since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack
Poland. The trap worked.
@Agent76 That even Senator Moynihan, of the CIA Oversight Committee, was lied to by the
CIA director, about laying mines in Havana harbour, says enough. The CIA is not a secret
service, it is a secret army. This secret army began drugs production in Afghanistan, mainly
for the USA market, when funds for the CIA's war in Afghanistan were insufficient.
@alexander It is.
After an investigation of some seven years the lies of Tony Blair were exposed, in a report
of considerable size. What happened ? Nothing. Instead of being in jail, the man flies aroud
in a private jet, with an enormous income, paid by whom for what, I do not have a clue.
Dec 12, 2016 Georgia Official Says Homeland Security Tried To Hack Their State's Voter
Database
While most of the country frets over Russia's role in the 2016 election, the state of
Georgia has come forward saying that they've traced an IP from a hack of their voter database
right back to the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently we need to focus
on protecting our vote from our own government.
The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider
even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and
treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. Brennan is just a regular
profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel that the civil war in Ukraine
(initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started
immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make the visit secret but
this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known:
https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/
"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was
confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media
on Sunday.
Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in
eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday
to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a
violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence,"
Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.
"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and
Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne
Madsen, an American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."
This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in
creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies
and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this
miserable opportunist.
Unfortunately for you and myself there are literally millions of people in America who do
not think or challenge what they read or view as we do apparently. Thanks, *government
schooling* .
Mar 6, 2017 Drug Boss Escobar Worked for the CIA
The notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar worked closely with the CIA, according to his
son. In this episode of The Geopolitical Report, we look at the long history of CIA
involvement in the international narcotics trade, beginning with its collaboration with the
French Mafia to using drug money to illegally fund the Contras and overthrow the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua.
I suppose the story is meant to show that Goering wanted war. The opposite is true, he
sent the Swedish negotiator Dahlerus several times to London in his plane, taking himself
care, telephoning with the Dutch authorities, that the Junckers could fly safely over the
Netherlands. What Goering did not know was that Britain had been preparing for war at least
since 1936. The march 1939 guarantee to Poland was meant to provoke Hitler to attack Poland.
The trap worked.
What Goering did say – cogently and precisely – is that, regardless of the
form of government, the people can always be quite easily stirred up to want war. The key
sentence is this: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger". That is exactly what
the US, UK and European governments have been doing for years to justify their terrorist
scares and their wars of aggression. And Goering was absolutely right to point out that it
works just the same in democracies (or "democracies") as under dictatorships.
As for your point about Britain having deliberately fomented the war, I don't think that
holds water. Britain was grossly – almost grotesquely – underarmed in 1939, and
came very close indeed to being conquered in 1940. In my view, it was FDR and his friends who
assiduously wound up the Nazis and the Poles to fight one another, and then persuaded the
British and French to give Poland guarantees. Everyone believed that, if war came, the USA
would immediately join Britain and France in fighting Germany. Alas, they were very much
mistaken.
"Apparently we need to focus on protecting our vote from our own government". I very
much doubt if the Deep State needs to resort to such small-scale and easily-detected trickery
to retain control. As Philip Berrigan pointed out long ago, "If voting made any difference,
it would be illegal".
@Tom Welsh Well, another ruler also stated this, "Education is a weapon whose effects
depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." Joseph Stalin
Brennan is just a regular profiteering opportunist. Someone needs to remind the scoundrel
that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed
by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make
the visit secret but this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known:
https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/
"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was confirmed
by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media on
Sunday.
Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in
eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday
to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a
violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence,"
Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.
"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela,
has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne Madsen, an
American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."
This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in
creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies
and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this
miserable opportunist.
the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed
by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014
I wouldn't so much call it a civil war, as a ZUSA imposed putsch, installing a
Zio-bankster-quisling.
PG:
the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken
in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations.
getting to the crux of the matter
when Russia released the phone conversation where ZUS State Dept. – Kagan klan /
Zio-bitch Nuland was overheard deciding who was going to be the next president of Ukraine
(some democracy), it was this breach of global oligarch protocol that has riled the deepstate
Zio-war-scum ever since. Hence all the screeching and hysterics about "Russian hacking".
The thug Brennan, (as you correctly call him [imagine this mug coming into the room as
you're about to be 'enhanced interrogated'])
has his fingerprints not just all over the war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, but Syria
and elsewhere too.
All these war criminals are all scrambling to undermine Trump in the fear that he'll
eventually hold some of them accountable for their serial crimes, treasons, and treachery.
Which brings us to this curious comment..
The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable,
what the hell does Mr. G think will replace him?!
So far the "buffoonish Donald Trump" has not declared a no-fly zone in Syria, as we know
the war sow would have by now. He's not materially harmed the Assad regime, but only made
symbolic attempts to presumably mollify the war pigs like McBloodstain and co in the
zio-media/AIPAC/etc..
His rhetoric notwithstanding, he seems to be making nice with the Russians, to the
apoplectic hysteria of people like Brennan and the Stain.
In fact the more people like Brennan and Bloodstain and the zio-media and others seem on
the brink of madness, the better Trump seems to me every day.
And if it puts a smelly sock in the mouths of the neocons and war pigs to saber rattle at
Iran, with no possibility to actually do them any harm, because of the treaty and Europe's
need to respect it, then what's the harm of Trump sounding a little buffoonish if it gets
them off his back so that he can circle himself with a Pretorian guard of loyalists and get
to the bottom of all of this. I suspect that is what terrifies people like Brennan more than
anything else.
"... "I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively." ..."
"... Clapper took aim at the news that Putin called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture." ..."
"... He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible." ..."
"... The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he found the message to be contradictory. ..."
"... Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security, intelligence and foreign policy officials filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen," the brief reads. ..."
"I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is.
He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said
on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively."
Clapper took aim at the news that Putin
called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent
a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture."
He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed
over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not
all that visible."
The former intelligence chief said Putin likely learned to recruit assets to help with his
interests when he served as an officer in the KBG, which was the Soviet Union's main security
agency.
"You have to remember Putin's background. He's a KGB officer, that's what they do. They
recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play
here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our
president," he continued.
The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like
Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also
stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he
found the message to be contradictory.
He also pointed to his previous experiences of trying to share intelligence with the
Kremlin, stemming back to the early 1990s, describing the attempts as a "one-way street."
Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security,
intelligence and foreign policy officials
filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and
Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation
and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web
operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian
businessmen," the brief reads.
"They range from the unwitting accomplice who is manipulated to act in what he believes is
his best interest, to the ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to
the knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance Russian
operations and objectives," it continues.
"A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the US's parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense"
ecosystems." Well said. National security parasites are so entrenched (and well fed by MIC) that any change of the US foreign
policy is next to impossible. The only legitimate course is more wars and bombing.
Notable quotes:
"... This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even Joe McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise. ..."
"... To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave U.S. policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post , in an editorial . This is one reason why I have, in a previous commentary , argued that Russia-gate and its promoters have become the gravest threat to American national security. ..."
"... Russia-gate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus "dossier" and the still murky role of top U.S. intel officials in the creation of that document.) ..."
"... As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories, whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russia-gate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples of Russia-gate without Russia. ..."
"... Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of détente. ..."
"... Unfortunately, and I can't believe I'm going to concede this, but FOX News, regarding this one particular issue: the baloney of Russiagate, is probably the most accurate mainstream source out there right now. Despite everything else they get wrong, FOX News, pertaining to Russiagate, is generally (generally) accurate from the bits and pieces I've seen. ..."
"... I agree. It seems sort of like the Nazi regime with more advanced technology and more complete ability for the gestapo to exercise control or more aptly like the Soviet Union where people actually believe the regime's propaganda. ..."
"... The neocon perpetrators of the Russia-gate hoax will continue putting their own greed (for money and power) ahead of American national security. That's who they are and what they do. They conflate global domination with American national security because it benefits them to do so. Sure, they don't want a hot war with Russia because they are neither psychotic nor suicidal. But they are power-crazed: delusional to the extent they think they can prevent the Russian-American hostility provoked by their own machinations from spinning out of control. ..."
"... Reason #3: A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the U.S.'s parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense" ecosystems. ..."
"... Thanks, Professor Cohen, and I happen to think that this phony Russia hacking fabrication is breaking down, along with many other false narratives of the West. So many things are exposing the lies and there are truly good investigators who are weighing in, so I am hopeful that the neocons will be finally outed as hopelessly behind the times. ..."
Despite a lack of evidence at its core – and the risk of nuclear conflagration as its
by-product – Russia-gate remains the go-to accusation for "getting" the Trump
administration, explains Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen.
The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President
Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public
dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the
Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy."
As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half
of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia. (An apt
formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer James Carden.)
Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against retired Gen. Michael Flynn,
Trump's short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and
inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his
partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with
improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn.
Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion, have
spread to "contacts with Russia" -- political, financial, social, etc. -- on the part of a
growing number of people, often going back many years before anyone imagined Trump as a
presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal or
potentially so.
This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even Joe
McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of
American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise.
More to the point, advisers to U.S. policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must
have many and various contacts with Russia if they are to understand anything about the
dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. I myself, to take an individual example, was an adviser to
two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered my wide-ranging and longstanding
"contacts" with Russia to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president whom I
advised.
To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and
to leave U.S. policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is
also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow
suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The
Wall Street Journal and by
The Washington Post , in an editorial . This is one reason why I have, in a
previous commentary , argued that Russia-gate and its promoters have become the gravest
threat to American national security.
Russia-gate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in
November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom
remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus "dossier" and the
still murky role of top U.S. intel officials in the creation of that document.)
That said, the mainstream American media have been largely responsible for inflating,
perpetuating, and sustaining the sham Russia-gate as the real political crisis it has become,
arguably the greatest in modern American presidential and thus institutional political history.
The media have done this by increasingly betraying their own professed standards of verified
news reporting and balanced coverage, even resorting to tacit forms of censorship by
systematically excluding dissenting reporting and opinions.
(For inventories of recent examples, see
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Joe Lauria at Consortiumnews . Anyone interested in exposures of such truly "fake news" should
visit these two sites regularly, the latter the product of the inestimable veteran journalist
Robert Parry.)
Still worse, this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications
once prized for their journalistic standards, where expressed disdain for "evidence" and
"proof" in favor of allegations without any actual facts can sometimes be found. Nor are these
practices merely the ordinary occasional mishaps of professional journalism.
As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories, whether by print media or cable
television, were zealous promotions of Russia-gate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are
examples of Russia-gate without Russia.
Flynn and the FBI
Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution
and subsequent prosecution is highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI
about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, on behalf of the incoming
Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to
sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving
office.
Those sanctions were highly unusual -- last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of
Russian property in the United States, and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified
cyber-attacks on Russia. They gave the impression that Obama wanted to make even more difficult
Trump's professed goal of improving relations with Moscow.
Still more, Obama's specified reason was not Russian behavior in Ukraine or Syria, as is
commonly thought, but Russia-gate -- that is, Putin's "attack on American democracy," which
Obama's intel chiefs had evidently persuaded him was an entirely authentic allegation. (Or
which Obama, who regarded Trump's victory over his designated successor, Hillary Clinton, as a
personal rebuff, was eager to believe.)
But Flynn's discussions with the Russian ambassador -- as well as other Trump
representatives' efforts to open "back-channel" communications with Moscow – were
anything but a crime. As I pointed out in
another commentary , there were so many precedents of such overtures on behalf of
presidents-elect, it was considered a normal, even necessary practice, if only to ask Moscow
not to make relations worse before the new president had a chance to review the
relationship.
When Henry Kissinger did this on behalf of President-elect Nixon, his boss instructed him to
keep the communication entirely confidential, not to inform any other members of the incoming
administration. Presumably Flynn was similarly secretive, thereby misinforming Vice President
Pence and finding himself trapped -- or possibly entrapped -- between loyalty to his president
and an FBI agent. Flynn no doubt would have been especially guarded with a representative of
the FBI, knowing as he did the role of Obama's Intel bosses in Russia-gate prior to the
election and which had escalated after Trump's surprise victory.
In any event, to the extent that Flynn encouraged Moscow not to reply in kind immediately to
Obama's highly provocative sanctions, he performed a service to U.S. national security, not a
crime. And, assuming that Flynn was acting on the instructions of his president-elect, so did
Trump. Still more, if Flynn "colluded" in any way,
it was with Israel, not Russia , having been asked by that government to dissuade countries
from voting for an impending anti-Israel U.N. resolution.
Removing Tillerson
Finally, and similarly, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to
drive Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon,
anti-Russian, anti-détente head of the State Department. Tillerson was an admirable
appointee by Trump -- widely experienced in world affairs, a tested negotiator, a mature and
practical-minded man.
Originally, his role as the CEO of Exxon Mobil who had negotiated and enacted an immensely
profitable and strategically important energy-extraction deal with the Kremlin earned him the
slur of being "Putin's pal." This preposterous allegation has since given way to charges that
he is slowly restructuring, and trimming, the long bloated and mostly inept State Department,
as indeed he should do. Numerous former diplomats closely associated with Hillary Clinton have
raced to influential op-ed pages to denounce Tillerson's undermining of this purportedly
glorious frontline institution of American national security. Many news reports, commentaries,
and editorials have been in the same vein. But who can recall a major diplomatic triumph by the
State Department or a Secretary of State in recent years?
The answer might be the Obama administration's multinational agreement with Iran to curb its
nuclear-weapons potential, but that was due no less to Russia's president and Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, which provided essential guarantees to the sides involved. Forgotten,
meanwhile, are the more than 50 career State Department officials who publicly protested
Obama's rare attempt to cooperate with Moscow in Syria. Call it by what it was: the sabotaging
of a president by his own State Department.
In this spirit, there are a flurry of leaked stories that Tillerson will soon resign or be
ousted. Meanwhile, however, he carries on. The ever-looming menace of Russia-gate compels him
to issue wildly exaggerated indictments of Russian behavior while, at the same time, calling
for a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, in which he clearly believes. (And which, if
left unencumbered, he might achieve.)
Evidently, Tillerson has established a "productive" working relationship with his Russian
counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the two of them having just announced North Korea's readiness to
engage in negotiations with the United States and other governments involved in the current
crisis.
Tillerson's fate will tell us much about the number-one foreign-policy question confronting
America: cooperation or escalating conflict with the other nuclear superpower, a
détente-like diminishing of the new Cold War or the growing risks that it will become
hot war. Politics and policy should never be over-personalized; larger factors are always
involved. But in these unprecedented times, Tillerson may be the last man standing who
represents the possibility of some kind of détente. Apart, that is, from President Trump
himself, loathe him or not. Or to put the issue differently: Will Russia-gate continue to
gravely endanger American national security?
Stephen F.
Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and
Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation , where a version of this
article first appeared.
Abe , December 15, 2017 at 1:49 pm
"Thanks to Flynn's indictment, we now know that the Israeli prime minister was able to
transform the Trump administration into his own personal vehicle for undermining Obama's lone
effort to hold Israel accountable at the UN. A clearer example of a foreign power colluding
with an American political operation against a sitting president has seldom, if ever, been
exposed in such glaring fashion.
"Kushner's deep ties to the Israeli right-wing and ethical breaches
"The day after Kushner was revealed as Flynn's taskmaster, a team of researchers from the
Democratic Super PAC American Bridge found that the presidential son-in-law had failed to
disclose his role as a co-director of his family's Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation
during the years when his family's charity funded the Israeli enterprise of illegal
settlements. The embarrassing omission barely scratched the surface of Kushner's decades long
relationship with Israel's Likud-led government. [ ]
"A Clinton mega-donor defends Kushner's collusion
"So why isn't this angle of the Flynn indictment getting more attention? An easy
explanation could be deduced from the stunning spectacle that unfolded this December 2 at the
Brookings Institution, where the fresh-faced Kushner engaged in a 'keynote conversation' with
Israeli-American oligarch Haim Saban. [ ]
""The spectacle of a top Democratic Party money man defending one of the Trump
administration's most influential figures was clearly intended to establish a patina of
bipartisan normalcy around Kushner's collusion with the Netanyahu government. Saban's effort
to protect the presidential son-in-law was supplemented by an op-ed in the Jewish Daily
Forward headlined, 'Jared Kushner Was Right To 'Collude' With Russia -- Because He Did It For
Israel.'
"While the Israel lobby ran interference for Kushner, the favorite pundits of the liberal
anti-Trump "Resistance" minimized the role of Israel in the Flynn saga. MSNBC's Rachel
Maddow, who has devoted more content this year to Russia than to any other topic, appeared to
entirely avoid the issue of Kushner's collusion with Israel.
"There is simply too much at stake for too many to allow any disruption in the preset
narrative. From the journalist pack that followed the trail of Russiagate down a conspiracy
infested rabbit hole to the Clintonites seeking excuses for their mind-boggling campaign
failures to the Cold Warriors exploiting the panic over Russian meddling to drive an
unprecedented arms build-up, the narrative must go on, regardless of the facts."
Unfortunately, and I can't believe I'm going to concede this, but FOX News, regarding this
one particular issue: the baloney of Russiagate, is probably the most accurate mainstream
source out there right now. Despite everything else they get wrong, FOX News, pertaining to Russiagate, is generally
(generally) accurate from the bits and pieces I've seen.
One quick example -- a few months ago the otherwise execrable Hannity actually had on his
show the great Dennis Kucinich who railed against the deep state for attacking Trump b/c of
his overtures toward peace with Moscow and how the deep state was using Russiagate to do it,
etc. Kucinich was sensational. I doubt Maddow would ever have given him such a platform to
voice the truth like Hannity did on this particular occasion.
Patrick Lucius , December 15, 2017 at 2:27 pm
I may have to take a look at Fox again–I bet you are right. Hannity as an arbiter of
truth–oh my god
Drew Hunkins , December 15, 2017 at 3:35 pm
On this one particular issue, Hannity gets things right.
Rob , December 16, 2017 at 2:00 pm
If Hannity ever reports a story correctly, it's only because it coincides with his deeply
partisan interests. Being truthful is something about which he cares little, if at all.
Skip Scott , December 15, 2017 at 3:05 pm
Yeah Drew-
For years I railed against Fox, but nowadays they seem to be the relatively sensible ones.
Tucker Carlson is exceptionally bright, and I have no idea what got into Hannity. I used to
loathe him to no end. Him giving Dennis Kucinich a chance to speak his mind is something I
never would have imagined.
Drew Hunkins , December 15, 2017 at 3:36 pm
Isn't it something Mr. Scott?
Dave P. , December 15, 2017 at 11:34 pm
Drew and Skip Scott – Yes, I agree with you. I watched Dennis Kucinich too. Hannity
and Carlson have been doing some very good reporting on these issues. It is amazing how the
things have changed. Fox News was "No" for progressives to go to.
Annie , December 15, 2017 at 4:25 pm
Prior to Trump's presidency I would never watch Fox News, but on this issue,, they are a
more accurate source of information then any other broadcasting media. Rachel Maddow does
nothing but rave, as if she had her own personal agenda, and maybe she does, ousting Trump,
and that a woman didn't win the White House. I too saw the interview with Kucinich, and
indeed it was a very good one.
RamboDave , December 15, 2017 at 5:27 pm
Tucker Carlson, on Fox (right before Hannity), has had Glenn Greenwald on several
times.
David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:08 am
That basically maps directly onto the fact that Russia is the one issue Trump is right
on.
Patrick Lucius , December 15, 2017 at 2:20 pm
Great article. Has America gone off the deep end? I just watched the first ten minutes of
an anti-Putin and anti-Russian Frontline on television two nights ago. I have never seen more
blatant or shameless propaganda. Because my mom watches tv all day and I am taking care of
her, I see the same slop, drivel, and gibberish parroted all day long on the major news
outlets. Perhaps I should state that more professionally: I see the same shameless propaganda
parroted daily by the mainstream news media And it occurs to me–these young news
commentators are not part of a conspiracy, willfully lying–they actually believe the
propaganda. We are in trouble. I think as a group we act much more like bees in a hive or
monkeys in a troop than we do as rational beings, and I mean no disrespect to bees or
monkeys.
exiled off mainstreet , December 15, 2017 at 2:56 pm
I agree. It seems sort of like the Nazi regime with more advanced technology and more
complete ability for the gestapo to exercise control or more aptly like the Soviet Union
where people actually believe the regime's propaganda.
Annie , December 15, 2017 at 4:35 pm
Personally I believe that many do know that there is nothing to the Russia-gate story, but
go along to get along, and they are no different then politicians, who bow before the Israeli
Lobby, or NRA, or corporate groups to get reelected, and maintain their standing in their
party. Another way of putting it, is to say they are willing to prostitute themselves. I
can't see myself doing that.
occupy on , December 16, 2017 at 12:36 am
I, too, saw this scurrilous 'documentary' – "Putin's Revenge" – and made a
point of writing down the names of a good number of those commentators moving the narrative
along. All of them are well-known active Zionists or children of American Zionists who've
helped create and ardently protect the State of Israel. I wish I could remember now at least
some of the commentors' names. I didn't see Frontline' "Putin's Revenge" on PBS. It was on a
National Geographic channel that traditionally shows those anthropological 'documentaries'
about "Ancient Alien Visitors," "Gods from Outer Space, etc .pleasant programs to fall to
sleep by. 'Putin's Revenge', however, was grotesque in its downright lies – making me
furiously wide awake until I could google info on those names.
alley cat , December 15, 2017 at 2:36 pm
"Or to put the issue differently: Will Russia-gate continue to gravely endanger
American national security?"
The neocon perpetrators of the Russia-gate hoax will continue putting their own greed (for
money and power) ahead of American national security. That's who they are and what they do.
They conflate global domination with American national security because it benefits them to
do so. Sure, they don't want a hot war with Russia because they are neither psychotic nor
suicidal. But they are power-crazed: delusional to the extent they think they can
prevent the Russian-American hostility provoked by their own machinations from spinning out
of control.
exiled off mainstreet , December 15, 2017 at 2:54 pm
This is a great article by one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable commentators on
Russia remaining active despite the ongoing dangerous propaganda storm. Those responsible for
this storm are threatening our continued existence. Because of this depressing salient fact,
the democratic party, which has been fully on board with this, has totally sacrificed its
legitimacy and degenerated to a clear and present existential danger. Clear thinking people
have to view it as such and take necessary action based upon that fact, which is serious in
its implications, since it is difficult in the extreme to supplant an existing party in a two
party system (which has degenerated into a two faction one party state some time ago) in
light of the media propaganda, intelligence and police control exercised by this odious
system.
Bill , December 15, 2017 at 3:11 pm
Really glad, Mr, Cohen, to see your article in Consortium. Your voice is always a wise
one. Weekly listener.
Very important and accurate information, for the most part, in my view, though I have a
few caveats.
Unfortunately for our perception of the 'goodness' of those in power, I tend to think the
level of knowledge and intention of those who spread Russiagate are more cynical than you
imagine.
When we read certain articles from hardline think-tanks and serious political commentary
from those publications and outlets which sustain the current 'scandal' we see a surprising
awareness of Russia's true intentions and nature. Sober, and reasonable. The problem is that
this commentary is not what is used to persuade any element of the public toward a certain
view on Russia. You instead see it within the establishment essentially talking amongst
themselves.
The problem, as I see it, is that these people are fully aware of the truth, as well as
Russia's intentions. They are just quite simply spinning vast lies to the contrary whenever
they speak to, or in front of, the public. For two main reasons:
Hobbling Trump, for a number of reasons, not least of which amounts to his unwillingness
to pretend he cares about 'spreading Democracy' around the world. More immediate goal.
Trying to put a lid on a rapidly boiling over domestic discontent with the status quo.
Meaning corporate control over the government, pro-corporate, anti-democratic policy, and
endless senseless war.
The remainder of this piece refers to #2.
Russia is an 'enemy' now, more than anything else, because, for whatever it's
self-interested motivations, it is a loud, prominent, powerful voice actively and
methodically criticizing and opposing US imperial hypocrisy, double-standards, and
deception.
We are told they 'sow chaos'. Code for platforming anti-establishment truth-tellers.
We are told they cause us to 'lose trust in our system of government'. Code for them platforming people who help expose, like Bernie Sanders does, how 'our system of government'
has been taken from us by corporations, and making us want it back, for the people.
We are told that Russia is, in however many words, whatever we, ourselves are.
Imperialistic, disregarding of truth and reality, arrogant, entitled, expansionist etc. The
American people are waking up to what the Empire does, and why. The rather desperate idea is
to redirect that knowledge and stick it to Russia. Externalizing an internal threat.
Finally, we are told that Russia is criticizing and grand-standing against the West in
order to tamp down domestic discontent. Which, given the previous entry here, is showing to
be exactly what the US government is doing. To the letter.
Russia is a fake enemy, talked about in a fake way, by fake people in an increasingly fake
democracy. Respectfully, Mr. Cohen, I don't think ideology is the problem. I don't think
those at the helm of US foreign policy have had an ideology in a long, long time. I think
they have, with few exceptions, a 'prime directive': The retention and expansion of
Oligarchic corporate power.
Nowadays, fearmongering over immigrant crime, terrorists, non-state cyber-criminals, or
whatever else conjured to make the extremely safe-from-foreign-threats (To this day no war on
our soil since the Civil War. Itself a domestic threat) American people feel afraid, and thus
controllable and ignorant, is no longer working. Only a big fish like Russia can even hope to
do the job. Plus that big fish is one of the factors 'sowing chaos' by giving a voice to
anti-imperialists in the West to spread the truth of the government we actually live
under.
In short, Russiagate, and it's accompanying digital censorship efforts, are a desperate
attempt to rest control back over the American people and away from honest, rational
truth.
Even shorter, our rulers underestimated the power of the internet.
Kind regards,
Bill
Lois Gagnon , December 15, 2017 at 8:57 pm
Thank you. That is a really truthful post. It really is all about maintaining imperial
hegemony at all costs. Unfortunately, the cost could be the end of life on Earth. These
weasels controlling the machinery of state from the darkness must be exposed as the
treacherous criminals they are.
David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:22 am
Reason #3: A looming, aggressive enemy (so portrayed) is needed to sustain the U.S.'s
parasitic surveillance, "security", and "defense" ecosystems.
Thanks, Professor Cohen, and I happen to think that this phony Russia hacking fabrication
is breaking down, along with many other false narratives of the West. So many things are
exposing the lies and there are truly good investigators who are weighing in, so I am hopeful
that the neocons will be finally outed as hopelessly behind the times.
And Twitter is helping because western media sources will not tell the truth and people
are taking to it to push back. I agree that at this time Fox is more interested in the facts
than MSNBC, and particularly Tucker Carlson. (The sex scandals, now another witch hunt, are
showing what a fouled-up society America has become. It is feminist McCarthyism, sadly, and I
am glad Tavis Smiley is fighting back.)
Yesterday I had a conversation with a loud mouth believer of the "Putin did it" fable and
told him some details, that outright it was a fabrication, and someone nearby in the coffee
shop actually joined to support the pushback with other facts. So, I am hopeful that people
are waking up. And Nikki Haley has just been called by people on Twitter for her lies about
Iran provocation in Yemen. Plus documents on NATO expansion after Gorbachev was assured would
not happen, have just been revealed. I do think people are waking up.
Bill , December 15, 2017 at 3:30 pm
Jessica,
That's what it takes. The political battle of our times. Good on you. I think you're
right. The beginnings of which seem to have motivated Russiagate in the first place. I did a
longer post on this above. Please keep spreading sense. I'll do the same.
Best wishes,
Bill
RnM , December 15, 2017 at 9:25 pm
It's good to be optimistc, but let us not forget the long history (short by Old World
standards) of the oligarchy of doing anything and everything to get what they want.
The present cock-up of Russia-gate (Geez, I hate using that MSM concocted jingo term) points,
not to the oligarchs losing their groove, but to an incompetent but persistent bunch of
Clinton/Obama synchophants. Their days in any kind of power are, thankfully, numbered. But the
snakes are lurking in the bushes, as are the deeper parts of the deep state. It's the long
game that they are in for.
Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Thanks, Jessica,
A hopeful comment! Here, too, I sense at least some more dissent among us citizens with the
prevailing lies.
When the bubble bursts, the boy has cried and everyone "realises" the emperor is naked, I
wonder, will our governments, politicians and media survive? Everyone, practically, is
complicit.
Thanks, Bill, and I think we're at a profound crossroads in world history. I saw an
interview on YouTube with young Americans who did not even know who won the Civil War nor why
it was fought! We all must speak out with conviction and without anger.
Realist , December 15, 2017 at 3:44 pm
My parents always used to use the old argument to keep my thinking on track and avoid
conforming to dangerous groupthink: "if everyone else decided to jump off the cliff, in the
river or out the 10th floor window, would you just follow the crowd?" Professor Cohen is one
of the rare little boys who either learned that lesson well or has always had strong innate
instincts to avoid following the crowd or jumping on self-destructive bandwagons. Most of the
readers of this site seem to have similar predilections and are among the very few Americans
not being led by the Pied Pipers of all-encompassing self-destructive Russophobia. (Is there
some common childhood experience or shared gene in our personal biographies that compel our
rigorous adherence to the principles we all uphold?) As other posters have noted here, those
few media personalities with a seeming immunity to the pathological groupthink now infecting
most of America are indeed a very curious lot, with little else in the way of ideological
conformity, but thank heavens for them for any restoration of mass sanity will surely have to
originate from within their ranks, examples and leadership. I, for one, am pulling for
Professor Cohen to be among those leading this country out of the wilderness of lock-step
madness.
Bob Van Noy , December 15, 2017 at 3:47 pm
We remember an era before 11/22/1963
Joe Tedesky , December 15, 2017 at 4:30 pm
Realist I'm glad you brought up the readers on consortiumnews, and their not falling for
this Russia-Gate nonsense. People posting comments here in support of 'no Russian
interference' have been accused of being Trump supporters, but that was never the case. No,
instead many here just saw through the fog of propaganda, and certainly saw this Russia-Gate
idiocy as it being nothing more than an instigated coup. This defense of Trump could have
been for any newly elected president, but the division between Hillary supporters, and Trump
backers, has been the biggest obstacle to overcome, while attempting to explain your thought.
I truly think that if the shoe had been on the other foot, that the many posters of comments
here on consortiumnews would have been on Hillary's side, if it had been the same kind of
coup that had been put in place. It's time to tell John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey,
and Robert Mueller, to call Hillary and say, 'well at least we tried Madam Secretary', and
then be done with it.
Dave P. , December 16, 2017 at 2:43 pm
Realist and Joe – I always enjoy reading your thoughtful comments. Those of us who
have been reading professor Stephen Cohen's articles for more than four decades now , know
that he is the foremost authority on Russia. Instead of being courted to give his valuable
input into the relations with Russia, he and others like him are being vilified as Putin
apologists. It is the sign of the times we live in now.
As many comments posters here on this site had noted, the Russia-Gate has been
deliberately created to confront Russia at this time rather than later on. Russia is in the
way for final push for World domination – the Neoliberal Globalization.
Nobody, in Washington or elsewhere in the Country seems to ask why and for whom they, The
ruling Powers want to establish this World Empire at any cost – even at the risk of a
nuclear war. This process of building an Empire has changed the country as I had seen it more
than half a century ago.
NeoLiberal Globalization, building this World wide Empire during the last three or four
decades had its real winners and losers. Lot of wealth has been created all over the World
under neoliberal global economy.
The big time winners are top .01% and another about 10% are also in the winners category,
and have accumulated lot of wealth. From all over the World; China, India . . . this top 10%
class send their kids to the best universities in the West for professional education;
Finance, High tech, Sciences, and other professions and they get the jobs all over in Silicon
Valley, and big financial Institutions and other professional fields in U.S. , U.K.,
Australia Canada . . .
The losers are middle class in U.S. – whom Hillary called deplorables –
especially in those once mighty Industrial States in the Midwest, and East. With my marriage
here , I inherited lots of relatives more than forty five years ago, most of them in the
Midwest. As somebody commented a few weeks ago on this site about these middle class people
that their " Way of Life " has been destroyed. It is true. All these people voted for Trump.
With the exception of two, all our relatives in the Midwest and elsewhere on my wife's side
voted for Trump. They are good, hard working people. It is painful to look at those ruined
and abandoned factories in those States and ruined lives of many of those Middle Class
people. Globalization has been disastrous for the middle class people in U.S. It is a race to
the bottom for those people.
Ask those relatives if they have ever read anything about Russia during 2016. Not one of
them have ever read or listened to anything related to Russian media or other Russian source.
They did not even know if anything like RT or Sputnik News ever existed. Most of them don't
even know now. And it is true of the people we associate with here where we live. None of
them have time to read anything let alone Russian Media. I came to know about RT during
events in Ukraine in 2014, and about Sputnik News over a year ago when this Russia- Gate
commotion began. And I had read lot of Russian literature in my young age.
As several articles on this website have pointed out those email leaks were an inside job.
Russia-Gate is just a concocted scheme to bring down Trump. And to destabilize Russia –
a hurdle to Globalization and West's domination.
Skip Scott , December 17, 2017 at 8:39 am
Dave P-
Yours is a very accurate portrayal of the heartland of America. I live in a very rural
area of the southwest, and you describe reality there to a "T". They are much too busy trying
to survive to dig too deeply into world affairs. Thank goodness at least they've got Tucker
Carlson at Fox to contrast the propaganda spewers on the other networks. They know the latte
sippers and their government has abandoned them, but they don't fully understand the PNAC
empire's moves in pursuit of global domination, and many wind up in the military jousting at
windmills.
Realist , December 17, 2017 at 4:46 pm
I totally concur, Dave. I'm 70 and well remember, as a little kid, as a teenager and as a
young man, folks talking about a far-off ideal of world unity, wherein all people on earth
would share in earth's bounty and have the same democratic rights. The UN was supposed to be
one of the first steps in that general direction. However, nobody thought that the eventual
outcome would be what the movement has transmogrified into today: neoliberal globalism in
which a tiny fraction of the top 1% own and control everything, with the rest of us actually
suffering a drastic drop in our standard of living and a blatant diminution of our political
rights.
It's been fifty years since I lived in Chicago, and about 45 since I last lived in the
Midwest, but I was born and raised there and well recognise everything you have said about
the place and the people in your remark to be entirely correct. It's also true for most of
the other regions of this country in which I have lived, but the "Rust Belt" has paid the
price in spades to satiate the neoliberal globalist "free traders." (Remember when THAT
catchphrase was first sold to the working classes by Slick Willie's DLC wing of the
Democratic party? He and Al Gore basically ended up doubling the ranks of "Reagan Democrats"
whether they intended to do so or not. And, Hillary was so delusional as to assume those
people would be on her side!)
Dave P. , December 17, 2017 at 11:36 pm
Yes, Realist. That Slick Willie and Gore did the most damage to the working class than any
other administration in the recent American history. And being progressive democrats, we
worked hard for their election as volunteers registering voters. At that time Rolling Stone
Magazine called them as Saviors after Reagan and Bush era of greed – as they called it.
Clintons sold the Democratic Party to the Wall Street and to Neoliberal Globalization. Tony
Blair did the same in U.K. to the Labor Party.
Then we put faith in Hopey changey Obama and worked for his election. And he turned out to
be big fraud too. After his Libya intervention and then on to Syria, I finally got turned off
from Democratic Party politics. My wife, and I had started with McGovern Campaign in
1972.
Talking about Chicago, I landed at O'Haire fifty two years ago during snowy Winter, with
just a few hundred dollars in my pocket enough for one semester on my way to Graduate School.
You can not do it these days. America was at it's best. Ann Arbor was a Republican town those
days with very friendly people. Compared to Europe, and other cultures, I found Americans the
least prejudiced people, very open to other cultures. The factories In Michigan, Ohio,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana . . . were humming. Never on Earth, such a prosperous middle
class on such a scale has ever been created; made of good, hard working people in those small
and big towns. The workers were back bone of the Democratic Party. And every thing looked
optimistic. I, and couple of my friends thought it can not get better than this on Earth.
And all this seems like a past history now. Life is still good but that stability and that
optimism of 1960's is gone. I visited Wisconsin and Michigan last Spring and in Fall again
this year. It is painful to look at those gigantic factories shut down and in ruins. I lived
for a decade in Michigan. As I said in my comments above, the biggest loser in this
NeoLiberal Globalization is American Middle Class.
Piotr Berman , December 15, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Jessica K: The sex scandals, now another witch hunt, are showing what a fouled-up society
America has become.
One could say that there is nothing bad about a witch hunt, provided that it genuinely
goes after evil witches. Perhaps the worst hitch hunt in my memory was directed at preschool
teachers accused of sexual molestation and sometimes satanism. Probably we are not in this
Animal Kingdom story (yet):
Denizens of AK see a hare running very fast and they ask "what happen?" Mr. hare answers
"They are castrating camels!" "But you are a hare, not a camel!" "Try to prove that you are
not a camel!".
Abe , December 15, 2017 at 5:02 pm
"In a dramatic development in the trial in Kiev of several Berkut police officers accused
of shooting civilians in the Maidan demonstrations in February 2014, the defence has produced
two Georgians who confirm that the murders were committed by foreign snipers, at least 50 of
them, operating in teams. The two Georgians, Alexander Revazishvili and Koba Nergadze have
agreed to testify [ ]
"This dramatic and explosive evidence was first brought to light by the Italian journalist
Gian Micalessin on November 16 in an article in the Italian journal Il Giornale and is again
brought to the world's attention by a lawyer with some courage picking up on that report and
speaking with the witnesses himself. These witnesses stated to Gian Micalessin, even more
explosively, that the American Army was directly involved in the murders.
"The clear objective of the Maidan massacre in Kiev on February 20, 2014 was to sow chaos
and reap the fall of the democratically elected, pro-Russian Yanukovych government. People
were slaughtered for no other reason than to destroy a government the NATO powers, especially
the United States and Germany, wanted removed because of its opposition to NATO, the EU, and
their hegemonic drive to open Ukraine and Russia to American and German economic expansion.
In other words, it was about money and the making of money.
"The western media and leaders quickly blamed the Yanukovych government for the killings
during the Maidan demonstrations, but more evidence has become available indicating that the
massacre in Kiev of police and civilians – which led to the escalation of protests,
leading to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government – was the work of snipers working
on orders of government opponents and their NATO controllers using the protests as a cover
for a coup.
"One of the snipers already admitted to this in February 2015, thereby confirming what had
become common knowledge just a few days after the massacre in Kiev and in a secretly recorded
telephone call, the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet reported to the EU head of Foreign
Policy, Catherine Ashton, in early March 2014, that there was widespread suspicion that
"someone from the new coalition" in the Kiev government may have ordered the sniper murders.
In February 2016, Maidan activist Ivan Bubenchik confessed that in the course of the
massacre, he had shot Ukrainian police officers. Bubenchik confirmed this in a film that
gained wide attention.
'Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, at the University of Ottawa, published a devastating paper on the
Maidan killings setting out in extensive detail the conclusive evidence that it was a false
flag operation and that members of the present Kiev regime, including Poroshenko himself were
involved in the murders, not the government forces. [ ]
"In the November 16 article in the Italian journal Il Giornale, and repeated on Italian TV
Canale 5, journalist Gian Micalessin revealed that 3 Georgians, all trained army snipers, and
with links to Mikheil Saakashvili and Georgian security forces were ordered to travel to Kiev
from Tbilisi during the Maidan events. It is two of these men that are now being called to
testify in Kiev."
The pretext for the western-supported overthrow of Ukrainian President Yanukovych was the
massacre of more than a hundred protestors in Kiev in February 2014, which Yanukovych
allegedly ordered his forces to carry out. Doubts have been expressed about the evidence for
this allegation, but they have been almost entirely ignored by the western media and
politicians.
Ukrainian-Canadian professor Ivan Katchanovski has carried out a detailed study of the
evidence of those events, including videos and radio intercepts made publicly available by
pro-Maidan sources, and eye witness accounts. His findings point to the involvement of
far-right militias in the massacre and a cover-up afterwards:
– The trajectories of many of the shots indicate that they were fired from buildings
that were then occupied by Maidan forces.
– Many warnings were given by announcers on the Maidan stage about snipers firing from
those buildings.
– Several leaders of the then opposition felt secure enough to give speeches on the
Maidan around the time that gunmen in nearby buildings were shooting protestors dead, and
those leaders were not targeted by the gunmen .
– Many of the protesters were shot with an outdated type of firearm that was not used
by professional snipers but was available in Ukraine as a hunting weapon.
– Recordings of all live TV and Internet broadcasts of the massacre by five different
TV channels were either removed from their websites immediately after the massacre or not
made publicly available.
– Official results of ballistic, weapons, and medical examinations and other evidence
collected during the investigations have not been made public, while crucial evidence,
including bullets and weapons, has disappeared.
– No evidence has been given that links the then security forces' weapons to the
killings of the protesters.
– No evidence has been given of orders to shoot unarmed protestors even though the new
government claimed that Yanukovych issued those orders personally.
– So far the only three people have been charged with the massacre, one of whom has
disappeared from house arrest.
Thank you Abe that article could change everything
Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Abe,
Thanks for advocating Dr Katchanovski! I have been reading some of his papers since a year or
two and his work seems very thorough! He uses physical facts like trajectories of bullets to
determine where shots originated.
Another expert in the field who knows Mr Katchanovski fully endorsed his academic work
without any hesitation when I asked him recently. He is being published by publishers with
the highest demands. His work can be found in academia.com or is it .org, login is free of
charge.
His work deserves the attention of real journalists.
Martin - Swedish citizen , December 15, 2017 at 6:57 pm
Oh, sorry, I see u already mentioned academia.edu!
No harm repeating though.
And it is .edu. :)
Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:51 pm
Ditto with the airliner shootdown.
Russia is accused and evidence is destroyed/suppressed.
The pattern is quite clear. Russiagate is merely an extension of the same pattern.
Remember those intelligence tests that consist of presenting a series of numbers, and the
test taker has to figure out what the next number in the pattern is . . .
So, the Russiagate thing is merely the next item that continues the pattern of Maidan, plane
shootdown and cover-up, shootdown of plane in Sinai, etc. etc. etc.
I think the deep state REALLY went apoplectic when Snowden escaped to Russia.
They will have their revenged, at any price, to the USA, to Russia, to the world. These
are madmen.
Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:32 am
It's prove Abe that 'only if you live long enough' applies to learning these newly
uncovered facts regarding the Maiden Square riots. Let's hold out hope that the truth to MH17
comes out soon. Another thing, how can these sanctions against Russia stay in place while
everything known as a narrative to that event comes unraveled.
Marko , December 15, 2017 at 5:31 pm
That's a good article , worth reading in its entirety. Thanks.
occupy on , December 16, 2017 at 1:23 am
Abe, thank you so much for this information. US fingerprints are all over Ukraine's
sickening economic 'reforms', too! Have you read the House Ukraine Freedom Support Act
– passed by both houses in the middle of the night Dec. 2014? I have. Wade through
until nearly the end where it gives President Obama #1. the power to work toward US
corporations exploring and developing Ukraine's natural resources (including fracking) once
'reforms' have been put in place (privatization); #2. the power to ask the World Bank to
extend special loans for US corporations to develop those natural resources; #3. the power to
install 'defensive' missile sites all along Russia's western borders; #4. the power to free
US NGO's in Russia from their previously non-partisan restraints and allow them to work with
anti-Putin political groups.
I urge you to google Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul/Ukraine Freedom Support Act -2014. You won't
believe how that bill got through the House of Representatives and Senate. And you'll have to
laugh when you hear the word "democracy" in any context with "the USA".
Annie , December 15, 2017 at 6:48 pm
I also see the sexual allegations made against Trump, as another opportunity to oust him
from his presidency. I in no way condone such behavior, but it's disturbing to think the main
motivation driving this is another means of trying to oust him from his presidency. I don't
believe, as these women claim, that they felt "left out", in the recent outings of men who
have misused their positions of power to exploit women sexually.
Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:58 pm
Yep, the Weinstein thing is being trumpeted and amplified to the extent that it synergizes
wtih attempts to oust Trump. It is handy to the deep state. Trump qua political figure is
being tarred with the Weinstein brush. That is the main reason we are seeing such a heavy
dose of stories on male bad behavior. We would not be seeing this if Hillary were in power.
Just a few stories but not full-court press. Because too many of these bad actors are
actually in the Hillary camp. Like, most of Hollywood. The story wouldn't help her,
politically, if she were in power. It only helps politically to drag down Trump. Before the
Weinstein thing came along, we arleady had teh golden showers fairy tale. In fact it would
not surprise me at all if Rose McGowan had some kind of political support and encouragement
to "go public."
this is no way means that I think this kind of thing is OK. But, things are not
straightforward in our world. It is a political as well as a "moral" or lifestyle story. One
of the political targets is Trump. Notice that the heads of studios who knew all about this
behavior and did nothing are not being forced to step down. Let's check out their political
donations . . .
Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:44 am
What if the 'Sexual Predator Purge' stories along with the 'Get Trump Out of Office'
campaign were but two stories colliding into each other? I mean a reporter in our TMZ world
we live in would need paid a handsome sum to continually stay quiet over a Harvey Weinstein
kind of scoop, so eventually these scandals had to come out. And then there's hateable loud
mouth the Donald, who must be stopped by any means. Put the two together, and hey with how
all these big shot perv's are going down, why not corral Trump and force him to resign. It's
even cheaper than impeachment.
So the conniving once again craft together a piece of fiction, mixed in with some reality,
and take the American conscience off into another realm of fantasy. Hate can get anybody
carted off to the guillotine, if the timings right.
Joe Tedesky , December 16, 2017 at 12:55 am
Andrew Bacevich mentions the Weinstein scandal, and then goes on to suggest what the
conversation should be.
Bacevich is fine as far as he goes
But he never quite "turns the corner" himself in taking the story as far as it needs to be
taken and laying out the conclusions that the public needs to grasp.
David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:32 am
Yes! That! Thank you, Litchfield.
Bacevich is knowledgeable and worth reading. But he never, afaik, ventures to look deeply
enough into the imperial heart of darkness – "turn the corner", as you say.
Leslie F. , December 15, 2017 at 7:11 pm
So the investigation isn't really about Russia. It is about corruption, money laundering,
tax evasion, etc. All worthy of investigation. Not to mention the conspiracy to kidnap the
Turkish cleric and collusion with Israel This investigation should not be shut down because
the deep state and the press are in a conspiracy to blame it all on Russia. It is up to you
guys in the press to convince your colleagues to call it what it really is, and expose those
members who continue to misrepresent reality. The press, as a whole, has dropped the ball in
a big way on this, but that is not Mueller's responsibility. The 4th estate is a mess and you
should be trying to figure out how to clean it up without violating the constitution.
Annie , December 15, 2017 at 7:58 pm
This is one of the reasons I no longer support Democracy Now. As Mr. Cohen said, " worse,
this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for
their journalistic standards, "
God, help us, everyone including mental health professionals have no sense of
professionalism, but they sure know how to make a buck, and try to undo a presidency.
"There are Thousands of Us": Mental Health Professionals Warn of Trump's Increasing
Instability
I read your post, and of course I agree. Some of the allegations are so minor, as he
hugged me and gave me a kiss on my mouth. He touched my breast. I was in the dressing room
when he came in unannounced, and my hair was in curlers, and I was only wearing a robe, but I
was nude underneath. Of course some were more disconcerting then those I mentioned, but all
claim to be traumatized. I have no doubt their agenda is to bring him down and the whole
thing has been orchestrated to do just that. Where is all the concern, and coverage of rape
in this country where the estimates go from 300,000 to over a million women raped each year?
Where are the stories about sexual trafficking of children, or the children who are sexually
abused in their own homes? I've never seen coverage on these issues like what is happening
now. That is another reason I find this whole thing appalling. Not to mention using sexual
harassment as a political tool to bring down a president.
David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:41 am
So many examples of this. There's an alternative newspaper comic I used to like, "Tom the
Dancing Bug" – smart, subversive, and "progressive". But the writer has completely
bought into Scary Putin/Puppet Trump. It's depressing.
"unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous" sums it up nicely. It was also good to have
Professor Cohen's endorsement of this website's courageous initiatives in combatting the
Russia-gate farce.
Bob Van Noy , December 16, 2017 at 11:15 am
I'll happily second that thought BobH. And thanks
Litchfield , December 15, 2017 at 9:29 pm
Thank god Consortium News keeps up the pressure on the Russia-gate scam.
And glad to see Stephen Cohen published here.
Readers of this site need to keep reminding themselve of the basic background on this -- at
least, I do -- in case opportunities comes along to deflate others' credulousness.
One question for Stephen Cohen:
Your wife is the editor of The Nation.
What has The Nation done to stop the madness?
Not enough. What's the story?
In fact, during the campaign and post-election, The Nation shamefully lent itself to the
craziness on the left that sought to devalidate not only the results of the election but
Trump himself qua human being. Nothing has been too far below the belt for Nation editors and
writers to strike. I have had the ongoing impression that The Nation's editorial board really
cannot see below the surface on any of this and have driven a very superficial anti-Trump,
"resist" narrative dangerous in its implications. I think I have seen just one story, by a
Patrick someone, that seriously questioned the russia-gate narrative. The Nation has fallen
right in to the trap of "I hate Trump so much and am so freaked out by his election that I
will make common cause with any one and any forces in our polity that will get rid of him
somehow." The nation seems too scared of facing head on the reality of deep state actors in
the USA. Or is too wedded to its version of reality to see what has become incraseingly clear
to growing numbers of Americans.
As many an intelligent and more knowledgeable than I person has said: There is plenty to
decry about Trump. But worse is the actions taken in the name of ridding the country of him
and his presidency.
Because of this consistent cluelessness I have canceled all gift subscriptions to The Nation.
I'll pay for my own sub, to see where this magazine goes, but others will have to pay their
own way with The Nation if they so choose.
So, please clean up at home and get the act together on what is left of the left.
First.
Thought the acronym PEPs was clever, Progressives Except for Palestine. Now it has morphed
into PEPIRs pronounced Peppers, Progressives Except for Palestine, Iran and Russia. Actually
could be PEPIRS adding Syria. If we added Iraq it could be PIEPIRS or Peepers. Actually, I
have little regard for such people whose aims include killing and maiming for land and
money.
Professor Cohen's credentials are very impressive and his voice and pen are badly needed.
People like him are precious resources for America and the world.
PIEPIRS is incorrect with the I before the E making Pipers. So we have PEPs, Peppers and
Pipers. Please excuse the frivolous comments but it feels good to try to expose their
hypocrisy in any way you can, that is of the Peps, Peppers and Pipers.
Gregory Herr , December 15, 2017 at 9:43 pm
What has really been astonishing to me -- beyond a lack of evidence for all the
"Russia-gate" allegations–is the utterly preposterous nature of the narrative in the
first place. Robert Parry has addressed this, but the voice of Stephen Cohen–with the
perspective of specialized scholarship and experience vis-a-vis Russia–is a welcome
voice indeed.
David G , December 16, 2017 at 9:55 am
The NY Times printed an allegedly explanatory graphic a couple of days ago showing the
Trump/Russia "scandal" as a basically a proliferating root system descending from the central
"collusion" premise, with the roots and rootlets branching down to encompass all the
disjointed facts (and "facts") and allegations that have appeared in the media.
The graphic was unintentionally revealing of the phoniness of the whole business: instead
of showing numerous observations leading to a deeper truth, it accurately depicted
"Russia-gate" as a pre-existing (fact-free) conceit that has chaotically complexified to
accommodate random developments. That's the definition of a weak and useless theory!
Gregory Herr , December 16, 2017 at 4:37 pm
It seems to that as a representative of the incoming Administration's foreign policy team
Flynn was just doing his job speaking with the Russian ambassador about the sudden and
striking maneuvers of Obama during the transition. And in trying to defuse potential fallout
and escalation due to those sanctions he was doing his job well. Was it not perfectly legal
and well within the parameters of his duties to establish some baselines of discussion with
counterparts?
Flynn's expression of thoughts on policy to counterparts were, to my mind, subject to the
approval of the head of the incoming Administration -- namely Trump, and Trump only.
By the time the FBI questioned Flynn, he surely must have had an idea his conversation
with the Ambassador had been under surveillance. What was the "lie"? Was he forgetful of a
detail and just caught in a nitpicking technicality? Or did he deliberately manufacture a
falsehood? When he gets past his legal entanglement, I sure hope he sits down to a candid
interview. I'd like him to demystify me about all this.
I like your phraseology David this nonsense has been chaotically complexified to
accommodate random developments!
David G , December 16, 2017 at 6:46 pm
Thanks, Gregory Herr. In your earlier comment that I replied to, you reference "the
utterly preposterous nature of the narrative". That's not bad phraseology either.
And it also gets to something I've been thinking all along: I'd like to hear a
"Russia-gate" proponent, such as an MSNBC host, actually supply what they consider a
plausible narrative that fits all these breathless Trump/Russia "scoops".
I'm not demanding they prove anything, but just want to hear a story that makes sense.
Because it seems to me that all the little developments they rush toward with their
hummingbird attention spans don't fit together, *even if you concede all the dubious and
debatable "facts"*.
dhinds , December 16, 2017 at 7:28 am
An important interview, for anyone that wants to understand Russia, today.
Damn good Interview (on the part of Putin – He said what was needed to be said.
including "well, this is just more nonsense Have you lost your mind over there, or
something)? He then continued to wrap it up, in a reasonable and and diplomatic manner.
Effectively, the USA continues locked into denial, refusing to accept responsibility for
it's own current state of affairs. (The mass delusion is so thick you could eat it with a
spoon, if it wasn't so putrid).
Warmongering, terrorist and refugee creating Regime Change and mass assassinations (with
neither congressional oversight nor due process), arms and influence peddling profiteering,
the creation of a mass surveillance society and militarized police state that kills
minorities, the homeless and poor with impunity, mass incarceration in private for profit
prisons, increasingly gross inequality and the excessive cost of health care and education;
show the USA to be a society adrift and devoid of fundamental values. (And that's me talking,
not Vladimir Putin)
The Clintons, Bush's and their supporters are to blame and should be held accountable, but
mainly a new course for society must be charted and neither of the two corrupt major
political parties is capable of that at this time.
A new coalition is called for.
James , December 16, 2017 at 10:13 am
Thank you Mr. Cohen for your ever insightful and reasoned commentary on this disturbing
trend.
Clif , December 16, 2017 at 5:04 pm
Yes, thank you Dr. Cohen.
The lack of scrutiny is alarming. I'd like to offer Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan as
possible figures who are working the lines and should be drawn into the light.
rosemerry , December 16, 2017 at 5:53 pm
Professor Cohen is one of the few who really knows about Russia, so of course so any of
the Fawning Corporate Media (to quote Ray McGovern) denigrate his work. Even in GWBush's time
he often explained "the Cold War is over", and Obama's intemperate rush to expel diplomats
and push ahead the Russophobia after Trump's election had no basis in fact and just
encouraged the Hillary-Dems and neocons to continue the unjustified destruction of the one
aspect of Trump's "plan" that would have benefited the USA and peace.
Bill , December 17, 2017 at 12:03 pm
Do you really think that Obama was misled by others? I don't believe it. Obama and Hillary
are the origin of the fabrications. Will anyone hold their feet to the fire?
"It's the state-sponsorship of terrorism, stupid." The largest-scale, ongoing, organized
war criminal operation in the history of the world has murdered millions.
Vox has an article "The Left Shouldn't Make Peace With Neocons -- Even to Defeat Trump",
by Robert Wright. Bill Kristol of American Conservative and many other neocons including
Robert Kagan have dual US-Israel citizenship, and they push the MICC toward war. They'll be
pushing for war with Iran and maybe Russia.
Tim , December 18, 2017 at 10:13 am
Sadly, quite a concise, clear picture of the muddy waters called Russia-gate, Intel's
baby, and the faint possibilities of Tillerson and Lavrov holding fast against sabotage.
Let's hope against all hope.
"... Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " ..."
During yesterday's Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, James Clapper, former director
of national intelligence, put the kibosh on a major anti-Donald Trump talking point that 17
federal intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election.
That talking point was amplified last October, when Hillary Clinton
stated the following at the third presidential debate: "We have 17, 17 intelligence
agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these
cyber-attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence
our election. I find that deeply disturbing."
Clinton was referring to an October 7, 2016 joint
statement from the Homeland Security Department and Office of the Director of National
Intelligence claiming, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian
Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions,
including from U.S. political organizations."
The statement was followed by a January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report assessing
Russian intentions during the presidential election.
While the U.S. Intelligence Community is indeed made up of 17 agencies, Clapper made clear
in his testimony yesterday that the community's assessments regarding alleged Russian
interference were not the product of all seventeen agencies but of three – the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security
Agency (NSA).
Referring to the assessments, Clapper
stated : "As you know, the I.C. was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA and
the FBI, not all 17 components of the intelligence community. Those three under the aegis of my
former office."
Later in the hearing, Clapper corrected Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) when Franken claimed that
all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia attempted to influence the election.
FRANKEN: And I want to thank General Clapper and – and Attorney General Yates for
– for appearing today. We have – the intelligence communities have concluded all 17
of them that Russia interfered with this election. And we all know how that's right.
CLAPPER: Senator, as I pointed out in my statement Senator Franken, it was there were only
three agencies that directly involved in this assessment plus my office
FRANKEN: But all 17 signed on to that?
CLAPPER: Well, we didn't go through that – that process, this was a special situation
because of the time limits and my – what I knew to be to who could really contribute to
this and the sensitivity of the situation, we decided it was a constant judgment to restrict it
to those three. I'm not aware of anyone who dissented or – or disagreed when it came
out.
The January 6 U.S. intelligence community report is titled, "Background to
'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections': The Analytic Process and
Cyber Incident Attribution."
The report makes clear it is a product of three intelligence agencies and not 17.
The opening states: "This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated
among the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the
National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and
disseminated by those three agencies."
Following Clinton's presidential debate
claim about "17 intelligence agencies," PolitiFact rated her statement as "true."
However, within its ruling, PolitiFact conceded:
We don't know how many separate investigations into the attacks there were. But the Director
of National Intelligence, which speaks for the country's 17 federal intelligence agencies,
released a joint statement saying the intelligence community at large is confident that Russia
is behind recent hacks into political organizations' emails.
PolitiFact's "true" judgement was the basis for a USA Today
piece titled, "Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking."
Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He
is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, "Aaron Klein Investigative
Radio." Follow him onTwitter @AaronKleinShow.Follow him
onFacebook.
Hillary Clinton "actually listening to the people"??? Nonsense.
Democrats lost because she didn't bother to listen to the concerns of the working class.
Instead, she demonized and ridiculed them. If Democrats don't return to their one-time base
in the working class, we will be doomed to more Donald Trumps and more massive transfers of
wealth from those to work for a living to the very rich.
As a lifetime progressive, I categorically reject the neoliberal political philosophy of
both Clinton and Obama. In addition to being morally wrong, it is foolish, because in
kicking out both the working class and progressives like me, they don't have enough votes
to win elections. I also reject lying in order to undo the will of the American people.
Russia-gate is, from the "evidence" given, total BS.
The will of those stinking (not a word I would use) undesirables at Walmart was to raise
their collective middle fingers at the elites who have abandoned them and thrown them under
the bus. They were voting against phony promises of hope and change. They were voting
against NAFTA and the TPP. And guess what: Plenty of them would have voted for Bernie
Sanders.
"... More like he's denying the story peddled by the Democrats in some vain attempt at reducing his legitimacy over smashing Hillary in the elections. ..."
"... What is he going to prison for, again? Colluding with Israel? ..."
"... The most anger in the media against the POTUS seems to be directed against Russia gate. Time and energy is wasted on conjecture, most 'probables will not stand in a court of law. This media hysteria deflects from the destruction of the affordable healthcare act and the tax changes good for the rich against the many. I think the people are being played. ..."
"... In the 1990s and 2000s a large section of the American establishment was effectively bought off by people like Prince Bandar. These are the ones that are determined that the anti-Russian policy then instigated be continued, even at the cost of slandering the current President's son-in-law. The irony is that in the meantime an effective regime change has taken place in Saudi and Bandar's bandits are mostly locked up behind bars. ..."
"... True, and not just hypocrisy either. This has to be seen in the context of a war, cold for now, on Russia - with China, via Iran and NK, next in line. Dangerous times, as a militarily formidable empire in economic decline looks set to take us all out. For the few who think and resist the dominant narrative - and are thereby routinely called out as 'kremlin trolls' - it is dismaying how easily folk are manipulated. ..."
"... Your points are valid but, alas, factual truths are routinely trumped (!) by powerful mythology. Fact is, despite an appalling record since WW2, Washington and its pet institutions - IMF/World Bank/WTO - are still seen as good guys. How? Because (a) all western states have traded foreign policy independence for favoured status in Washington, (b) English as global lingua franca means American soft propaganda is lapped up across the world via its entertainment industry, and (c) all 'our' media are owned by billionaire corps or as with BBC/Graun, subject to government intimidation/market forces. ..."
"... Truth is, DRT is not some horrifically new entity. (Let's not forget how HRC's 'no fly zone' for Syria promised to take us into WW3, nor her demented "we came, we saw, he died - ha ha" response to Gaddafi's sodomisation by knife blade, and more importantly to Libya's descent into hell.) As John Pilger noted, "the obsession with Trump the man – not Trump as symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us". ..."
"... If all Meuller has is Flynn and the Russians during the transition period, he's got nothing. ..."
"... It's alleged that Turkey wanted Flynn to extradite Gullen for his alleged involvement in Turkey's failed coup. Just this weekend, Turkey have issued an arrest warrant for a former CIA officer in relation to the failed coup. So, IF the CIA were behind the failed coup and Flynn knows this - well, a good way to silence him would be to charge him with some serious crimes and then offer to drop them in return for his silence. But, like your theory, it's just speculation. ..."
"... The secret deep state security forces haven't been this diminished since Carter cleared the stables in the 70's - they fought back and stopped his second term ... ..."
"... Seeing how the case against Trump and Flynn is based on 'probable' and not hard proof its 'probable that the anti Trump campaign is directed from within the murky enclaves of the US intelligence community. ..."
"... Hatred against Trump deflects the anger, see the system works the US is still a democracy. Well it isn't, its a sick oligarchy run by the mega rich who own the media, 90% is owned by 5 corporations. Americans are fed the lie that their vast military empire with its 800 overseas bases are to defend US interests. ..."
"... Wow this is like becoming McCarthy Era 2.0. I'm just waiting for the show trials of all these so-called colluders. ..."
"... the interest of (Russian Ambassador) Kislyak in determining the position of the new administration on sanctions is not unheard of in Washington, or necessarily untoward to raise with one of the incoming national security advisers. Ambassadors are supposed to seek changes in policies and often seek to influence officials in the early stages of administrations before policies are established. Flynn's suggestion that the Russians wait as the Trump administration unfolded its new policies is a fairly standard response of an incoming official ..."
"... "The problem is charging Flynn for lying. A technicality. But not charging Hillary for email server. Another technicality. That's all the public will see if no collusion proved, and will ruin credibility of the FBI and the Dems" ..."
"... It's not just collusion is it, what about the rampant, naked nepotism, last seen on this unashamed scale in ancient Rome? ..."
"... So he lobbied for Israel not Russia then? Whoops. How does the author even know where Mueller's probe is heading, and which way Flynn flipped? Flynn worked much longer for the Obama administration than for Trump's. ..."
"... You can easily impeach Trump for bombing Syria's military airfield, which is by UN definition war crime of war aggression, starting war without the Congress approval; and doing so by supporting false flag of AQ, is support of terrorists and so on ..."
"... Oh you can't do it, of course, it was so - so presidential to bomb another country and it is just old habit and no war declaration, if country is too weak to bomb you back. And you love this exiting crazy balance of global nuclear annihilation too much, so you prefer screaming Russia, Russia to keep it hot, for wonderful military contracts. ..."
"... If the US wanted to do itself a massive favour it should shine the spotlight on Robert Mueller, the man now in charge of investigating the President of these United States for "collusion" with Russia and possible "obstruction of justice" himself obstructed a congressional investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ..."
"... Dealing with western backed coups on its own doorstep and being the only country actually to be legally fighting in Syria - a war that directly threatens its security - does not amount to global belligerence. ..."
"... Clinton lied under oath ..."
"... The logan act is a dead law no one will be prosecuted for a act that has never been used... plus the president elect can talk to any foreign leader he or she wishes to use and even talk deals even if a current president for 2 months is still in office... ..."
"... Should all countries which try to influence elections be treated as enemies? Where do you set the threshold? If we go by the actual evidence, Russia seems to have bought some Facebook ads and was allegedly involved in exposing HRC's meddling with the Democratic primaries. Compare that to the influence that countries like Israel and the Gulf Arabs exert on American politics and elections. Are you seriously claiming that Russia's influence is bigger or more decisive? ..."
"... The goal of weakening the US is also highly debatable. Accepting for a moment that Russia tried to tip the balance in favor of Trump, would America be stronger if it were engaged more actively in Syria and Ukraine? Is there a specific example where Trump's administration weakened the American position to the advantage of Russia? And how is the sustained anti-Russian information warfare helping anyone but the Chinese? ..."
"... The clues that Kushner has been pulling the strings on Russia are everywhere... He then pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN security council. ..."
"... And Russia didn't turn, so hardly a clue that Kushner was pulling strings with any effect. What this clue does suggest however, is that Israel pressured/colluded with the Trump Team to undermine the Obama administrations policy towards a UN resolution on illegal settlements. The elephant in the room is Israels influence on US politics. ..."
"... In relation to the "lying" charge - In December, Flynn (in his role as incoming National Security Advisor) was told to talk to the Russians by Kushner (in his role as incoming special advisor). In these conversations, Flynn told the Russians to be patient regarding sanctions as things may change when Trump becomes President. All of this is totally legal and is what EVERY new adminstration does. Flynn had his phoned tapped by the FBI so they knew he had talked to the Russian about sanctions - they also knew the conversation was totally legal - but when they asked him about it, he said he didn't discuss sanctions. So Flynn is being charged about lying about something that was totally legal for him to do. That's it. ..."
"... All those thinking this is the beginning of the end of Trump are going to be disappointed. Just look at the charges so far. Manafort has been charged with money laundering and not registering as a foreign agent - however, both of those charges pre-date him working for Trump. Flynn has been charged with lying to the FBI about speaking to the Russians - even though him speaking to the Russians in his role as National Security Advisor to the President-elect was not only totally legal, it was the norm. And this took place in December, after the election. ..."
"... So the 2 main players have been charged with things that have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, and lets not forget the point of the investigation is to find out if Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election. Manafort's charges related to before working for the Trump campaign whilst Flynn's came after Trump won the Presidency, neither of which have anything to do with the election. As much as I wish Trump wasn't President, don't get your hopes up that this is going anywhere ..."
"... Gross hypocrisy on the US governments side. They have, since WW2 interfered with other countries elections, invaded, and killed millions worldwide, and are still doing so. Where were the FBI investigations then? Non existent. US politicians and the military hierarchy are completely immune from any prosecutions when it comes down to overseas illegal interference. ..."
"... America like all governments are narcissistic, they will cheat, steal, kill, if it benefits them. It's called national interest, and it's number one on any leader's job list. Watch fog of war with Robert McNamara, fantastic and terrifying to see how it works. ..."
"... The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a 'rival', most people should be able to agree on that ..."
"... Gallup have been polling Americans for the past couple of decades on this. The last time I read about it a couple of years ago 70% of Americans had unfavourable views of Russia, ranging from those who saw them as an enemy (a smaller amount) through to those who saw them as a threat. ..."
Mueller will have to thread very carefully because he is maneuvering on a very politically
charged terrain. And one cannot refrain from comparing the current situation with the many
free passes the democrats were handed over by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the
media which make the US look like a banana republic.
The mind blowing fact that Clinton sat
with the Attorney General on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport "to chit-chat" and not to
discuss the investigation on Clinton's very wife that was being overseen by the same AG,
leaves one flabbergasted.
And the fact that Comey essentially said that Clinton's behaviour,
tantamount in his own words to extreme recklessness, did not warrant prosecution was just
inconceivable.
Don't forget that Trump has nearly 50 M gun-toting followers on Tweeter and
that he would not hesitate to appeal to them were he to feel threatened by what he could
conceive as a judicial Coup d'Etat. The respect for the institutions in the USA has never
been so low.
...a judge would decide if the evidence was sufficient to warrant a trial.
Actually, in the U.S. a grand jury would decide if the evidence was sufficient to warrant
formal charges leading to a trial. There is also the possibility that Mueller has uncovered
both Federal and NY State offenses, so charges could be brought against Kushner at either
level. Mueller has been sharing information from his investigation with the NY Attorney
General's Office. Trump could pardon a federal offense, but has no jurisdiction to pardon
charges brought against Kushner by the State of NY.
I watched RT for 24 months before the US election. They favoured Bernie Saunders strongly
before he lost to Hilary. Then they ran hustings for the smaller US parties, eg Greens, and
the Libertarians , which could definitely be seen as an interference in the US election, but
which as far as I know, was never mentioned in the US. They were anti Hilary but not pro
Trump. And indeed, their strong anti capitalist bias would have made such support unlikely.
What's he lying about? More like he's denying the story peddled by the Democrats in some vain attempt at reducing his
legitimacy over smashing Hillary in the elections.
Obama and Hillary met hundreds of foreign officials. Were they colluding as well?
The most anger in the media against the POTUS seems to be directed against Russia gate.
Time and energy is wasted on conjecture, most 'probables will not stand in a court of law. This media hysteria deflects from the destruction of the affordable healthcare act and the
tax changes good for the rich against the many.
I think the people are being played.
In the 1990s and 2000s a large section of the American establishment was effectively
bought off by people like Prince Bandar. These are the ones that are determined that the
anti-Russian policy then instigated be continued, even at the cost of slandering the current
President's son-in-law. The irony is that in the meantime an effective regime change has
taken place in Saudi and Bandar's bandits are mostly locked up behind bars.
It's all too funny.
True, and not just hypocrisy either. This has to be seen in the context of a war, cold for
now, on Russia - with China, via Iran and NK, next in line. Dangerous times, as a militarily
formidable empire in economic decline looks set to take us all out. For the few who think and
resist the dominant narrative - and are thereby routinely called out as 'kremlin trolls' - it
is dismaying how easily folk are manipulated.
Your points are valid but, alas, factual truths
are routinely trumped (!) by powerful mythology. Fact is, despite an appalling record since
WW2, Washington and its pet institutions - IMF/World Bank/WTO - are still seen as good guys.
How? Because (a) all western states have traded foreign policy independence for favoured
status in Washington, (b) English as global lingua franca means American soft propaganda is
lapped up across the world via its entertainment industry, and (c) all 'our' media are owned
by billionaire corps or as with BBC/Graun, subject to government intimidation/market forces.
Truth is, DRT is not some horrifically new entity. (Let's not forget how HRC's 'no fly
zone' for Syria promised to take us into WW3, nor her demented "we came, we saw, he died - ha
ha" response to Gaddafi's sodomisation by knife blade, and more importantly to Libya's
descent into hell.) As John Pilger noted, "the obsession with Trump the man – not Trump
as symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of
us".
I missed Jill Abramson's column about all the meetings the Obama administration held -- quite
openly -- with foreign governments during the transition period between his election and his
first inauguration.
But since she's been demonstrably and laughably wrong about predicting future political
events in the USA (see her entire body of work during the 2016 election campaign), why should
she start making sense now?
It's completely possible, of course, that some as-yet-to-be-revealed piece of evidence
will prove collusion -- before the election and by candidate Trump -- with the
Russians. But the Flynn testimony certainly isn't it. All the heavy breathing and hysteria is
simply a sign of how the media, yet again, always gravitates toward the news it wishes were
true, rather than what really is true. If all Meuller has is Flynn and the Russians during
the transition period, he's got nothing.
Flynn was charged with far more serious crimes which were all dropped and he was left with a
charge that if he spends any time in prison, it will be about 6 months. Now, you could say
for him to agree to that, he must have some juicy info - and he probably does - but what that
juicy info is is just speculation. And if we are speculating, then maybe what he traded it
for was nothing to do with Trump? After all, one of the charges against him was failing to
register as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkey.
It's alleged that Turkey wanted Flynn to
extradite Gullen for his alleged involvement in Turkey's failed coup. Just this weekend,
Turkey have issued an arrest warrant for a former CIA officer in relation to the failed coup.
So, IF the CIA were behind the failed coup and Flynn knows this - well, a good way to silence
him would be to charge him with some serious crimes and then offer to drop them in return for
his silence. But, like your theory, it's just speculation.
Still no evidence of Russian collusion in Trump campaign BEFORE the election...... whatever
happened after being president elect is not impeachable unless it would be after taking
office.
The secret deep state security forces haven't been this diminished since Carter cleared
the stables in the 70's - they fought back and stopped his second term ...
Seeing how the case against Trump and Flynn is based on 'probable' and not hard proof its
'probable that the anti Trump campaign is directed from within the murky enclaves of the US
intelligence community.
Trumps presidency could have the capability of galvanising a powerful resistance against
the 2 party state for 'real change, like affordable healthcare and affordable education for
ALL its people. But no its not happening, Trump is attacked on probables and undisclosed
sources. A year has passed and nothing has been revealed.
Hatred against Trump deflects the anger, see the system works the US is still a
democracy. Well it isn't, its a sick oligarchy run by the mega rich who own the media, 90% is
owned by 5 corporations. Americans are fed the lie that their vast military empire with its
800 overseas bases are to defend US interests.
Well their not, their only function is, is to spend tax dollars that otherwise would be
spent on education, health, infrastructure, things that would 'really' benefit America.
Disagree, well go ahead and accuse me of being a conspiracy nut-job, in the meantime China is
by peaceful means getting the mining rights in Africa, Australia, deals that matter.
The tax legislation for the few against the many is deflected by the anti-Trump hysteria
based on conjecture and not proof.
Crimea was and is Russian.
Your mask is slipping, Vlad .
Your ignorance is showing.
I have no connection to Russia what so ever.
Crimea was legally ceded to Russia over 200 years ago, by the Ottomans to Catherine the
Great.
Russia has never relinquished control.
What the criminal organization the USSR did under Ukrainian expat Khrushchev, is
irrelevant.
And as Putin said , any agreement about respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity was
negated when the USA and the EU fomented and financed a rebellion and revolution.
Australia, Canada, and S. Africa supply the lion's share of gold bullion that London survives
on. And the best uranium in the world. All sorts of other precious commodities as well.
If you're not toeing the line on US foreign policies religiously, the Yanks will drop you.
You are selectively choosing to refer to this one instance, but even here Obama
administration were still in charge - so not very legal, was it.
I am "selectively choosing to refer to this one instance" because that's all Flynn has
been charged with. Oh, and it is totally legal for a member of the incoming administration to
start talks with their foreign counterparts. Here's a quote from an op-ed piece in The Hill
from a law professor at Washington University.
the interest of (Russian Ambassador) Kislyak in determining the position of the new
administration on sanctions is not unheard of in Washington, or necessarily untoward to
raise with one of the incoming national security advisers. Ambassadors are supposed to
seek changes in policies and often seek to influence officials in the early stages of
administrations before policies are established. Flynn's suggestion that the Russians wait
as the Trump administration unfolded its new policies is a fairly standard response of
an incoming official .
"The problem is charging Flynn for lying. A technicality.
But not charging Hillary for email server.
Another technicality.
That's all the public will see if no collusion proved, and will ruin credibility of the FBI
and the Dems"
It's not just collusion is it, what about the rampant, naked nepotism, last seen on this
unashamed scale in ancient Rome?
He then pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN
security council.
So he lobbied for Israel not Russia then? Whoops.
How does the author even know where Mueller's probe is heading, and which way Flynn
flipped?
Flynn worked much longer for the Obama administration than for Trump's.
You can easily impeach Trump for bombing Syria's military airfield, which is by UN definition
war crime of war aggression, starting war without the Congress approval; and doing so by
supporting false flag of AQ, is support of terrorists and so on
Oh you can't do it, of course, it was so - so presidential to bomb another country and it
is just old habit and no war declaration, if country is too weak to bomb you back. And you
love this exiting crazy balance of global nuclear annihilation too much, so you prefer
screaming Russia, Russia to keep it hot, for wonderful military contracts.
Oh, and I have to be supporter of Putin's oligarchy with dreams of great tsars of Russia,
if I care about humans survival on this planet and have very bad opinion about suicidal fools
playing this stupid games.
If the US wanted to do itself a massive favour it should shine the spotlight on Robert
Mueller, the man now in charge of investigating the President of these United States for
"collusion" with Russia and possible "obstruction of justice" himself obstructed a
congressional investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Dealing with western backed coups on its own doorstep and being the only country actually to
be legally fighting in Syria - a war that directly threatens its security - does not amount
to global belligerence.
The logan act is a dead law no one will be prosecuted for a act that has never been used...
plus the president elect can talk to any foreign leader he or she wishes to use and even talk
deals even if a current president for 2 months is still in office...
I am not sure any level of scandal will make much difference to Trump or his supporters.
They simply see this as an elitist conspiracy and not amount of evidence of wrongdoing will
have an impact.
So far the level of scandal is below that of Whitewater/Lewinsky, and that was a very low
level indeed. What "evidence of wrongdoing" is there? Nothing, that's why they charged Flynn
with lying to investigators. It's important to keep in mind that the he did nor lie about
actual crimes. Perhaps that's going to change as the investigation proceeds, but so far this
is nothing more than a partisan lawfare fishing expedition.
Because they attempted to covertly influence a general election in order to weaken the
US.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? As for countries trying to influence elections in other countries, I'm all for it
particularly when one of the candidates is murderous, arrogant and stupid.
BTW, in Honduras after supporting a coup against the democratically-elected president
because he sought a referendum on allowing presidents to serve two terms, you'd think the
United States would interfere when his non-democratically-elected replacement used a "packed"
supreme court to change the constitution to allow presidents to serve more than one term to
at least stop him stealing an election as he is now doing/has done. But they didn't and that
hasn't stopped the United States whining that Evo Morales is being undemocratic by trying to
extend the number of terms he can serve.
Because they attempted to covertly influence a general election in order to weaken the
US.
Should all countries which try to influence elections be treated as enemies? Where do you
set the threshold? If we go by the actual evidence, Russia seems to have bought some Facebook
ads and was allegedly involved in exposing HRC's meddling with the Democratic primaries.
Compare that to the influence that countries like Israel and the Gulf Arabs exert on American
politics and elections. Are you seriously claiming that Russia's influence is bigger or more
decisive?
The goal of weakening the US is also highly debatable. Accepting for a moment that Russia
tried to tip the balance in favor of Trump, would America be stronger if it were engaged more
actively in Syria and Ukraine? Is there a specific example where Trump's administration
weakened the American position to the advantage of Russia? And how is the sustained
anti-Russian information warfare helping anyone but the Chinese?
The clues that Kushner has been pulling the strings on Russia are everywhere... He then
pushed Flynn hard to try to turn Russia around on an anti-Israel vote by the UN security
council.
And Russia didn't turn, so hardly a clue that Kushner was pulling strings with any effect.
What this clue does suggest however, is that Israel pressured/colluded with the Trump Team to
undermine the Obama administrations policy towards a UN resolution on illegal settlements.
The elephant in the room is Israels influence on US politics.
Can someone please actually tell us what Flynn/Jared/Trump is supposed to have done.
In relation to the "lying" charge - In December, Flynn (in his role as incoming National
Security Advisor) was told to talk to the Russians by Kushner (in his role as incoming
special advisor). In these conversations, Flynn told the Russians to be patient regarding
sanctions as things may change when Trump becomes President. All of this is totally legal and
is what EVERY new adminstration does. Flynn had his phoned tapped by the FBI so they knew he
had talked to the Russian about sanctions - they also knew the conversation was totally legal
- but when they asked him about it, he said he didn't discuss sanctions. So Flynn is being
charged about lying about something that was totally legal for him to do. That's it.
These days "US influence" seems to consist of bombing Middle Eastern countries back to the
bronze age for reasons that defy easy logic.
Anything that reduces that kind of influence would be welcome.
The Logan Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948]) is a single federal statute making it a crime
for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States.
Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the
United States without authorization. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Logan+Act
All those thinking this is the beginning of the end of Trump are going to be disappointed.
Just look at the charges so far. Manafort has been charged with money laundering and not
registering as a foreign agent - however, both of those charges pre-date him working for
Trump. Flynn has been charged with lying to the FBI about speaking to the Russians - even
though him speaking to the Russians in his role as National Security Advisor to the
President-elect was not only totally legal, it was the norm. And this took place in December,
after the election.
So the 2 main players have been charged with things that have nothing to do with the Trump
campaign, and lets not forget the point of the investigation is to find out if Trump's
campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election. Manafort's charges related to before
working for the Trump campaign whilst Flynn's came after Trump won the Presidency, neither of
which have anything to do with the election. As much as I wish Trump wasn't President, don't
get your hopes up that this is going anywhere.
Gross hypocrisy on the US governments side. They have, since WW2 interfered with other
countries elections, invaded, and killed millions worldwide, and are still doing so. Where
were the FBI investigations then? Non existent. US politicians and the military hierarchy are
completely immune from any prosecutions when it comes down to overseas illegal interference.
But now this Russian debacle, and at last they've woken up, because another country had the
temerity to turn the tables on them. And I think if this was Bush or Obama we would never
have heard a thing about it. Everybody hates the Dotard, because he's an obese dick with an
IQ to match.
Nothing will happen to Trump, It's all bollocks. You've all watched too many Spielberg films,
bad guys win, and they win most of the time.
Trump is the real face of America, America like all governments are narcissistic, they will
cheat, steal, kill, if it benefits them. It's called national interest, and it's number one
on any leader's job list. Watch fog of war with Robert McNamara, fantastic and terrifying to
see how it works.
when American presidents were rational, well balanced with progressive views we had....
decent American healthcare? Equality of opportunity? Gun laws that made it safe to
walk the streets?
Say who, what an a where now????????? Since when has the US EVER had any of
the three things that you mentioned???
If ever, then it was a loooooong time before the pilgrim fathers ever landed.
The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most
Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a
'rival', most people should be able to agree on that.
That is the bottom line, yes. People view the world through west = good and Russia = bad,
while both make economic and political decisions that serve the interests of their people
respectively. Ultimately, I think people are scared that the West's monopoly on global
influence is slipping, to as you said, a rival.
You are right that calling Russia the US enemy needs justification, but these threads often
deteriorate into arguments of the yes it is/no it isn't variety.
Gallup have been polling Americans for the past couple of decades on this. The last time I
read about it a couple of years ago 70% of Americans had unfavourable views of Russia,
ranging from those who saw them as an enemy (a smaller amount) through to those who saw them
as a threat.
It's certain that their ideals and goals run counter to those generally held in the US in
many ways. But let's not forget that the US' ideals are often, if not generally, divergent
from their interests and US foreign policy since 1945 has been responsible for countless
deaths, perhaps more than Russia's.
The US has also been meddling in other countries elections for years, and doubtless most
Americans neither know or care about that! So it's perhaps it's best to simply term them a
'rival', most people should be able to agree on that.
How the liberals and the Democrats don't give a damm about the USA or the world's political
scene, just some endless 'sore loser' witch hunt.
So much could be achieved by the improving of relations with Russia.
Crimea was and is Russian.
Let Trump have a go as POTUS and then judge him.
He wants to befriend Putin and if done it would help solve Syrian, Nth Korean and other
global problems.
They simply see this as an elitist conspiracy and not amount of evidence of wrongdoing
will have an impact
Whereas if it's a Democrat in the spotlight, these same dipshits see it as an
élitist cover-up and no lack of evidence of wrongdoing will have an impact. If
anything, lack of evidence is evidence of cover-up which is therefore proof of evidence.
These cynical games they play with veracity and human honesty are a very pure form of
evil.
Guardian in Russia coverage acts as MI6 outlet. Magnitsky probably was MI6 operation, anyway.
Notable quotes:
"... The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so. ..."
"... What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them. ..."
"... In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as" a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact. Which it isn't. ..."
"... No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks. ..."
The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing
anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. Take a look at
this gem :
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill Browder of being a "serial killer" –
the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.
But Putin has not been reported anywhere else as making any recent statement about Browder whatever, and the Observer article
makes no further mention of Putin's supposed utterance or the circumstances in which it was supposedly made.
As the rest of the article makes clear, the suspicions against Browder were actually voiced by Russian police investigators and
not by Putin at all.
The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic
journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented
an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so.
What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with
all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent
Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them.
When, as in this case, the required substitution of the demonised leader for their country can't be wrung out of the facts even
through the most vigorous twisting, a disreputable fake news site like The Guardian/Observer is free to simply make up new, alternative
facts that better fit their disinformative agenda. Because facts aren't at all sacred when the official propaganda line demands lies.
In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as"
a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported
claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact.
Which it isn't.
No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials
can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks.
The above falsifications were brought to the attention of the Observer's so-called Readers Editor – the official at the Guardian/Observer
responsible for "independently" defending the outlet's misdeeds against outraged readers – who did nothing. By now the article has
rolled off the site's front page, rendering any possible future correction nugatory in any case.
Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda
narrative about the case. Magnitsky
was actually an accountant .
A trifecta of fakery in one article! That makes crystal clear what the Guardian meant in
this article , published at precisely the same moment as the disinformation cited above, when it said:
"We know what you are doing," Theresa May said of Russia. It's not enough to know. We need to do something about it.
By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another.
From the 'liberal' Guardian/Observer wing of the rightwing bourgeois press, spot the differences with the article in the Mail
on Sunday by Nick Robinson?
This thing seems to have been cobbled together by a guy called Nick Robinson. The same BBC Nick Robinson that hosts the Today
Programme? I dunno, one feels really rather depressed at how low our media has sunk.
I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was
their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq.
The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember. Nothing happened afterwards. There
was no tribunal to examine the media's role in that massive international crime against humanity and things actually got worse
post Iraq, which the attack on Libya and Syria illustrates.
Exactly: in my opinion there should be life sentences banning scribblers who printed lies and bloodthirsty kill, kill, kill
articles from ever working again in the media.
Better still, make them go fight right now in Yemen. Amazing how quickly truth will spread if journalists know they have
a good chance of dying if they print lies and falsehoods ..
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and
the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the
political right . amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas
and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation.
The Guardian's writers get so much, so wrong, so often it's staggering and nobody gets the boot, except for the people who
allude to the incompetence at the heart of the Guardian. They fail dismally on Trump, Brexit and Corbyn and yet carry on as if
everything is fine and dandy. Nothing to complain about here, mover along now.
I suppose it's because they are actually media aristocrats living in a world of privilege, and they, as members of the ruling
elite, look after one another regardless of how poorly they actually perform. This is typical of an elite that's on the ropes
and doomed. They choose to retreat from grubby reality into a parallel world where their own dogmas aren't challenged and they
begin to believe their propaganda is real and not an artificial contruct. This is incredibly dangerous for a ruling elite because
society becomes brittle and weaker by the day as the ruling dogmas become hollow and ritualized, but without traction in reality
and real purpose.
The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF
symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush
it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this
is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems.
All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not
enough anymore.
All our problems are pathetically and conviniently blamed on the Russians and their Demon King and his vast army of evil Trolls.
It's like a political version of the Lord of the Rings.
Don't expect the Guardian to cover the biggest military build-up (NATO) on Russia's borders since Hitler's 1941 invasion.
John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda
system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonising Russia, I would
propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any
day.
The Guardian is trying to rescue citizens from 'dreadful dangers that we cannot see, or do not understand' – in other words they
play a central role in 'the power of nightmares'
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LlA8KutU2to
So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia?
If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia
in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template
of economic imperialism?
In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported
the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic
conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making
$100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral
damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave
..
I do not know the trurh about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organising mass
genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians
as murdering savages ..
It's perfectly possible, in fact the norm historically, for people to believe passionately in the existence of invisible threats
to their well-being, which, when examined calmly from another era, resemble a form of mass-hysteria or collective madness. For
example; the religious faith/dogma that Satan, demons and witches were all around us. An invisible, parallel, world, by the side
of our own that really existed and we were 'at war with.' Satan was our adversary, the great trickster and disseminator of 'fake
news' opposed to the 'good news' provided by the Gospels.
What's remarkable, disturbing and frightening is how closely our media resemble a religious cult or the Catholic Church in
the Middle Ages. The journalists have taken on a role that's close to that of a priesthood. They function as a 'filtering' layer
between us and the world around us. They are, supposedly, uniquely qualified to understand the difference between truth and lies,
or what's right and wrong, real news and propaganda. The Guardian actually likes this role. They our the guardians of the truth
in a chaotic world.
This reminds one of the role of the clergy. Their role was to stand between ordinary people and the 'complexities' of the
Bible and separate the Truths it contained from wild and 'fake' interpretations, which could easily become dangerous and undermine
the social order and fundamental power relationships.
The big challenge to the role of the Church happened when the printing press allowed the ordinary people to access the information
themselves and worst still when the texts were translated into the common language and not just Latin. Suddenly people could access
the texts, read and begin to interpret and understand for themselves. It's hard to imagine that people were actually burned alive
in England for smuggling the Bible in English translation a few centuries ago. That's how dangerous the State regarded such a
'crime.'
One can compare the translation of the Bible and the challenge to the authority of the Church and the clergy as 'guardians
of the truth' to what's happeing today with the rise of the Internet and something like Wikileaks, where texts and infromation
are made available uncensored and raw and the role of the traditional 'media church' and the journalist priesthood is challenged.
We're seeing a kind of media counter-reformation. That's why the Guardian turned on Assange so disgracefully and what Wikileaks
represented.
A brilliant historical comparison. They're now on the legal offensive in censoring the internet of course, because in truth
the filter system is wholly vulnerable. Alternative media has been operating freely, yet the majority have continued to rely on
MSM as if it's their only source of (dis)information, utilizing our vast internet age to the pettiness of social media and prank
videos. Marx was right: capitalist society alienates people from their own humanity. We're now aliens, deprived of our original
being and floating in a vacuum of Darwinist competition and barbarism. And we wonder why climate change is happening?
Apparently we are "living in disorientating times" according to Viner, she goes on to say that "championing the public interest
is at the heart of the Guardian's mission".
Really? How is it possible for her to say that when many of the controversial articles which appear in the Guardian are not
open for comment any more. They have adopted now a view that THEIR "opinion" should not be challenged, how is that in the public
interest?
In the Observer on Sunday a piece also appeared smearing RT entitled: "MPs defend fees of up to £1,000 an hour to appear
on 'Kremlin propaganda' channel." However they allowed comments which make interesting reading. Many commenter's saw through their
ruse and although the most vociferous critics of the Graun have been banished, but even the mild mannered ones which remain appear
not the buy into the idea that RT is any different than other media outlets. With many expressing support for the news and op-ed
outlet for giving voice to those who the MSM ignore – including former Guardian writers from time to time.
Why Viner's words are so poisonous is that the Graun under her stewardship has become a agitprop outlet offering no balance.
In the below linked cringe worthy article there is no mention of RT being under attack in the US and having to register itself
and staff as foreign agents. NO DEFENCE OF ATTACKS ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS by the US state is mentioned.
Surely this issue is at the heart of championing public interest?
For the political/media/business elites (I suppose you could call them 'the Establishment') in the US and UK, the main problem
with RT seems to be that a lot of people are watching it. I wonder how long it will be before access is cut. RT is launching a
French-language channel next month. We are already being warned by the French MSM about how RT makes up fake news to further Putin's
evil propaganda aims (unlike said MSM, we are told). Basically, elites just don't trust the people (this is certainly a constant
in French political life).
It's not just that they don't allow comments on many of their articles, but even on the articles where CiF is enabled, they ban
any accounts that disagree with their narrative. The end result is that Guardianistas get the false impression everyone shares
their view and that they are in the majority. The Guardian moderators are like Scientology leaders who banish any outsiders
for fear of influencing their cult members.
Everyone knows that Russia-gate is a feat of mass hypnosis, mesmerized from DNC financed lies. The Trump collusion myth is
baseless and becoming dangerously hysterical: but conversely, the Clinton collusion scandal is not so easy to allay. Whilst
it may turn out to be the greatest story never told: it looks substantive enough to me. HRC colluded with Russian oligarchy
to the tune of $145m of "donations" into her slush fund. In return, Rosatom gained control of Uranium One.
A curious adjunct to this corruption: HRC opposed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Given her subsequent rabid Russophobia: you'd
have thought that if the Russians (as it has been spun) arrested a brave whistleblowing tax lawyer and murdered him in prison
– she would have been quite vocal in her condemnation. No, she wanted to make Russia
great again. It's amazing how $145m can focus ones
attention away from ones natural instinct.
[Browder and Magnitsky were as corrupt as each other: the story that the Russians took over Browder's hedge fund and implicated
them both in a $230m tax fraud and corruption scandal is as fantastical as the "Golden Shower" dossier. However, it seems to me
Magnitsky's death was preventable (he died from complications of pancreatitis, for which it seems he was initially refused treatment
) ]
So if we turn the clock back to 2010-2013, it sure looks to me as though we have a Russian collusion scandal: only it's not
one the Guardian will ever want to tell. Will it come out when the FBI 's "secret" informant (William D Cambell) testifies to
Congress sometime this week? Not in the Guardian, because their precious Hillary Clinton is the real scandal here.
This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false
in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media.
In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes.
I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as
Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after
whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up.
Some months ago you saw tweets saying Russophobia had hit ridiculous levels. They hadn't seen anything yet. It's scary how easily
people can be brainwashed.
The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or
the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which
they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell
us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy.
The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc
etc.
Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the
Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket..
This outbreak is reaching the dimensions of the sort of mass hysteria that gave us St Vitus' dance. Oh and the 'sonic' terrorism
practised against US diplomats in Havana, in which crickets working for the evil one (who he?) appear to have been responsible
for a breach in diplomatic relations. It couldn't have happened to a nicer empire.
"... The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. ..."
"... Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda narrative about the case. Magnitsky was actually an accountant . ..."
"... By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another. ..."
"... I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq. The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember. ..."
"... At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the political right . Amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation. ..."
"... The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not enough anymore. ..."
"... John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonizing Russia, I would propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any day. ..."
"... So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia? If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template of economic imperialism? ..."
"... In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making $100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave. ..."
"... I do not know the truth about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organizing mass genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians as murdering savages ..."
"... Browder is a spook. ..."
"... This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media. ..."
"... In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes ..."
"... I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up. ..."
"... The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy. ..."
"... The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc etc. Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket.. ..."
"... The Canary is publishing mainstream russophobia? ..."
Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time
The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing
anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. Take a look at
this gem :
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill Browder of being a "serial killer" –
the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.
But Putin has not been reported anywhere else as making any recent statement about Browder whatever, and the Observer article
makes no further mention of Putin's supposed utterance or the circumstances in which it was supposedly made.
As the rest of the article makes clear, the suspicions against Browder were actually voiced by Russian police investigators and
not by Putin at all.
The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic
standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary
statement from him so they could conveniently do so.
What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all
officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent
Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them.
When, as in this case, the required substitution of the demonised leader for their country can't be wrung out of the facts even
through the most vigorous twisting, a disreputable fake news site like The Guardian/Observer is free to simply make up new, alternative
facts that better fit their disinformative agenda. Because facts aren't at all sacred when the official propaganda line demands lies.
In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as"
a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported
claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact.
Which it isn't.
No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials
can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks.
The above falsifications were brought to the attention of the Observer's so-called Readers Editor – the official at the Guardian/Observer
responsible for "independently" defending the outlet's misdeeds against outraged readers – who did nothing. By now the article has
rolled off the site's front page, rendering any possible future correction nugatory in any case.
Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda
narrative about the case. Magnitsky
was actually an accountant .
A trifecta of fakery in one article! That makes crystal clear what the Guardian meant in
this article , published at precisely the same moment as the disinformation cited above, when it said:
"We know what you are doing," Theresa May said of Russia. It's not enough to know. We need to do something about it.
By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another.
From the 'liberal' Guardian/Observer wing of the rightwing bourgeois press, spot the differences with the article in the Mail
on Sunday by Nick Robinson?
This thing seems to have been cobbled together by a guy called Nick Robinson. The same BBC Nick Robinson that hosts the Today
Programme? I dunno, one feels really rather depressed at how low our media has sunk.
I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was their
dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq. The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many,
people still remember.
Nothing happened afterwards. There was no tribunal to examine the media's role in that massive international
crime against humanity and things actually got worse post Iraq, which the attack on Libya and Syria illustrates.
Exactly: in my opinion there should be life sentences banning scribblers who printed lies and bloodthirsty kill, kill, kill articles
from ever working again in the media.
Better still, make them go fight right now in Yemen. Amazing how quickly truth will spread if journalists know they have a good chance of dying if they print lies and falsehoods
..
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and the
breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the political
right . Amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas and opinions
and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation.
The Guardian's writers get so much, so wrong, so often it's staggering and nobody gets the boot, except for the people who
allude to the incompetence at the heart of the Guardian. They fail dismally on Trump, Brexit and Corbyn and yet carry on as if
everything is fine and dandy. Nothing to complain about here, mover along now.
I suppose it's because they are actually media aristocrats living in a world of privilege, and they, as members of the ruling
elite, look after one another regardless of how poorly they actually perform. This is typical of an elite that's on the ropes
and doomed. They choose to retreat from grubby reality into a parallel world where their own dogmas aren't challenged and they
begin to believe their propaganda is real and not an artificial contruct. This is incredibly dangerous for a ruling elite because
society becomes brittle and weaker by the day as the ruling dogmas become hollow and ritualized, but without traction in reality
and real purpose.
The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF
symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush
it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this
is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems.
All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not
enough anymore.
All our problems are pathetically and conviniently blamed on the Russians and their Demon King and his vast army of evil Trolls.
It's like a political version of the Lord of the Rings.
Don't expect the Guardian to cover the biggest military build-up (NATO) on Russia's borders since Hitler's 1941 invasion.
John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda
system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonizing Russia, I would
propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any
day.
The Guardian is trying to rescue citizens from 'dreadful dangers that we cannot see, or do not underdstand' – in other words they
play a central role in 'the power of nightmares'
So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia?
If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia in
the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template
of economic imperialism?
In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported the
rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic
conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making
$100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral
damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave.
I do not know the truth about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organizing mass
genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians
as murdering savages ..
It's perfectly possible, in fact the norm historically, for people to believe passionately in the existence of invisible threats
to their well-being, which, when examined calmly from another era, resemble a form of mass-hysteria or collective madness. For
example; the religious faith/dogma that Satan, demons and witches were all around us. An invisible, parallel, world, by the side
of our own that really existed and we were 'at war with.' Satan was our adversary, the great trickster and disseminator of 'fake
news' opposed to the 'good news' provided by the Gospels.
What's remarkable, disturbing and frightening is how closely our media resemble a religious cult or the Catholic Church in
the Middle Ages. The journalists have taken on a role that's close to that of a priesthood. They function as a 'filtering' layer
between us and the world around us. They are, supposedly, uniquely qualified to understand the difference between truth and lies,
or what's right and wrong, real news and propaganda. The Guardian actually likes this role. They our the guardians of the truth
in a chaotic world.
This reminds one of the role of the clergy. Their role was to stand between ordinary people and the 'complexities' of the Bible
and seperate the Truths it containedf from wild and 'fake' interpretations, which could easily become dangerous and undermine
the social order and fundamental power relationships.
The big challenge to the role of the Church happened when the printing press allowed the ordinary people to access the information
themselves and worst still when the texts were translated into the common language and not just Latin. Suddenly people could access
the texts, read and begin to interpret and understand for themselves. It's hard to imagine that pepeople were actually burned
alive in England for smuggling the Bible in english translation a few centuries ago. That's how dangerous the State regarded such
a 'crime.'
One can compare the translation of the Bible and the challenge to the authority of the Church and the clergy as 'guardians
of the truth' to what's happeing today with the rise of the Internet and something like Wikileaks, where texts and infromation
are made available uncensored and raw and the role of the traditional 'media church' and the journalist priesthood is challenged.
We're seeing a kind of media counter-reformation. That's why the Guardian turned on Assange so disgracefully and what Wikileaks
represented.
A brilliant historical comparison. They're now on the legal offensive in censoring the internet of course, because in truth the
filter system is wholly vulnerable. Alternative media has been operating freely, yet the majority have continued to rely on MSM
as if it's their only source of (dis)information, utilising our vast internet age to the pettiness of social media and prank videos.
Marx was right: capitalist society alienates people from their own humanity. We're now aliens, deprived of our original being
and floating in a vacuum of Darwinist competition and barbarism. And we wonder why climate change is happening?
Apparently we are "living in disorientating times" according to Viner, she goes on to say that "championing the public interest
is at the heart of the Guardian's mission".
Really? How is it possible for her to say that when many of the controversial articles which appear in the Guardian are not
open for comment any more. They have adopted now a view that THEIR "opinion" should not be challenged, how is that in the public
interest?
In the Observer on Sunday a piece also appeared smearing RT entitled:
"MPs defend fees of up to £1,000 an hour to appear on 'Kremlin propaganda' channel"
However they allowed comments which make interesting reading. Many commenter's saw through their ruse and although the most vociferous
critics of the Graun have been banished, but even the mild mannered ones which remain appear not the buy into the idea that RT
is any different than other media outlets. With many expressing support for the news and op-ed outlet for giving voice to those
who the MSM ignore – including former Guardian writers from time to time.
Why Viner's words are so poisonous is that the Graun under her stewardship has become a agitprop outlet offering no balance.
In the below linked cringe worthy article there is no mention of RT being under attack in the US and having to register itself
and staff as foreign agents. NO DEFENCE OF ATTACKS ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS by the US state is mentioned.
Surely this issue is at the heart of championing public interest?
For the political/media/business elites (I suppose you could call them 'the Establishment') in the US and UK, the main problem
with RT seems to be that a lot of people are watching it. I wonder how long it will be before access is cut.
RT is launching a French-language channel next month. We are already being warned by the French MSM about how RT makes up fake
news to further Putin's evil propaganda aims (unlike said MSM, we are told).
Basically, elites just don't trust the people (this is certainly a constant in French political life).
It's not just that they don't allow comments on many of their articles, but even on the articles where CiF is enabled, they ban
any accounts that disagree with their narrative. The end result is that Guardianistas get the false impression everyone shares
their view and that they are in the majority.
The Guardian moderators are like Scientology leaders who banish any outsiders for fear of influencing their cult members.
Everyone knows that Russia-gate is a feat of mass hypnosis, mesmerized from DNC financed lies. The Trump collusion myth is baseless
and becoming dangerously hysterical: but conversely, the Clinton collusion scandal is not so easy to allay. Whilst it may turn
out to be the greatest story never told: it looks substantive enough to me. HRC colluded with Russian oligarchy to the tune of
$145m of "donations" into her slush fund. In return, Rosatom gained control of Uranium One.
A curious adjunct to this corruption: HRC opposed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Given her subsequent rabid Russophobia: you'd
have thought that if the Russians (as it has been spun) arrested a brave whistleblowing tax lawyer and murdered him in prison
– she would have been quite vocal in her condemnation. No, she wanted to make Russia
great again. It's amazing how $145m can focus ones
attention away from ones natural instinct.
[Browder and Magnitsky were as corrupt as each other: the story that the Russians took over Browder's hedge fund and implicated
them both in a $230m tax fraud and corruption scandal is as fantastical as the "Golden Shower" dossier. However, it seems to me
Magnitsky's death was preventable (he died from complications of pancreatitis, for which it seems he was initially refused treatment
) ]
So if we turn the clock back to 2010-2013, it sure looks to me as though we have a Russian collusion scandal: only it's not
one the Guardian will ever want to tell. Will it come out when the FBI 's "secret" informant (William D Cambell) testifies to
Congress sometime this week? Not in the Guardian, because their precious Hillary Clinton is the real scandal here.
This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false
in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media.
In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes.
I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as
Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after
whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up.
Some months ago you saw tweets saying Russophobia had hit ridiculous levels. They hadn't seen anything yet. It's scary how easily
people can be brainwashed.
The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or
the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which
they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell us
with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy.
The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc
etc.
Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the Polish
government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket..
This outbreak is reaching the dimensions of the sort of mass hysteria that gave us St Vitus' dance. Oh and the 'sonic' terrorism
practised against US diplomats in Havana, in which crickets working for the evil one (who he?) appear to have been responsible
for a breach in diplomatic relations.
It couldn't have happened to a nicer empire.
This is a simply a brilliant article. Probably the best written on the subject so far. Kudos to Max Blumenthal
Thinks tanks are really ideological tanks -- formidable weapon in propaganda wars that crush everything on its way. And taken
together far right think tanks financed by defense sector or intelligence agencies are really a shadow far right political party with
its own neocon agenda. Actually subverting the will of American people (who elected Trump) for more peaceful relations (aka detente)
with Russia in favor of interest of weapon manufactures and the army of "national security parasites".
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and
the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers those think tanks decides to create a fake
narrative and blame Russians. Is not this a classic variant of projection ?
The slow strangulation of the US MSM means the crisis of confidence. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and
is ready to brush it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or
opposition, well, this is a sign of of degradation of the ruling elite. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of
solutions to social problems. All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and
status, as well as intelligence agencies spying on everybody.
Now all those well paid ( and sometimes even talented) war propagandist intend to substitute the real crisis of neoliberalism in
the USA demonstrated during the recent Presidential Elections for the artificial problem of Russian meddling. And they are succeeding
in this unfair and evil substitution. The also manage to "poison the well" -- relation between two nations were now at the
level probably lower then during Cold War (when many Russians were sympathetic to the USA). I think 70% of Democratic voters now
are convinced the Russia was meddling in the USA election and about 30% of Republican voters also think so. For the creators of
'artificial reality" such numbers signify big success. A very big success to be exact.
Notable quotes:
"... In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearings, and the most overlooked, Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer who had branded himself an expert on Russian meddling, appeared before a nearly empty Senate chamber. Watts conjured up a stark landscape of American carnage, with shadowy Russian operatives stage managing the chaos ..."
"... The spectacle perfectly illustrated the madness of Russiagate, with liberal lawmakers springboarding off the fear of Russian meddling to demand that Americans be forbidden from consuming the wrong kinds of media ..."
"... A former U.S. Army officer who spent years in obscurity at a defense industry funded think tank called the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), Watts has become a go-to source for cable news producers and print journalists on the subject of Russian bots, always available with a comment that reinforces the sense that America is under sustained cyborg attack. This September, his employers at FPRI hailed him as "the leading expert on developments related to Russian-backed efforts to not only influence the 2016 presidential election, but also to inflame racial and cultural divisions within the U.S. and across Europe." ..."
"... Watts boasts an impressive-looking bio that is replete with fancy sounding fellowships at national security-oriented outfits, including George Washington University's Center Cyber and Homeland Security. His bio also indicates that he served on an FBI Joint Terror Task Force. ..."
"... Though Watts is best known for his punditry on Russian interference, it's fair to say he is as much an expert on Russian affairs as Harvey Weinstein is a trusted voice on feminism. Indeed, Watts appears to speak no Russian, has no record of reporting or scholarship from inside Russia, and has produced little to no work of any discernible academic value on Russian affairs. ..."
"... Whether or not he has the substance to support his claims of expertise, Watts has proven a talented salesman, catering to popular fears about Russian interference while he plies credulous lawmakers with ease. ..."
"... In the widely publicized testimony, Watts explained to the panel of senators that he first noticed the pernicious presence of Russian social media bots after he co-authored an article in 2014 in Foreign Affairs titled, " The Good and The Bad of Ahrar al Sham ." The article urged the US to arm a group of Syrian Salafi insurgents known for its human rights abuses , sectarianism and off-and-on alliances with Al Qaeda. Watts and his co-authors insisted that Ahrar al-Sham was the best proxy force for wreaking havoc on the Syrian government weakening its allies in Iran and Russia. Right below the headline, Watts and his co-authors celebrated Ahrar al-Sham as "an Al Qaeda linked group worth befriending." ..."
"... Watts rehashed the same argument at FPRI a year later, urging the U.S. government to harness jihadist terror as a weapon against Russia. "The U.S. at a minimum, through covert or semi-covert platforms, should take advantage and amplify these free alternative [jihadist] narratives to provide Russia some payback for recent years' aggression," he wrote. In another paper, Watts asked , "Why shouldn't the U.S. redirect some of the jihadi hatred towards those with the dirtiest hands in the Syrian conflict: Russia and Iran?" Watts did not specify whether the theater of covert warfare should be limited to the Syrian battlefield, or if he sought to encourage jihadists to carry out terrorist acts inside Russia and Iran. ..."
"... Next, Watts introduced his signature theme, claiming that Russia manipulated civil rights protests to exploit divisions in American society. Declaring that "pro-Russian" outlets were spreading "chaos in Black Lives Matter protests" by deploying active measures, Watts did not bother to say what those measures were. ..."
"... Watts then moved to the main course of his testimony, focusing on how Trump employed Russian "active measures" to attack his opponents. Watts told the Senate panel that the Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik had produced a false report on the U.S. airbase in Incirlik, Turkey being "overrun by terrorists." He presented the Russian stories as the anchor for a massive influence operation that featured swarms of Russian bots across social media. And he claimed that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort invoked the incident to deflect from negative media coverage, suggesting that Trump was coordinating strategy with the Kremlin. In reality, it was Watts who was spreading the fake news. ..."
"... Watts has pushed his bogus narrative of RT and Sputnik's Incirlik coverage in numerous outlets, including Politico . Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen echoed Watts' false account on the Senate floor while arguing for legislation to force RT out of the U.S. market on political grounds. And Jim Rutenberg, the New York Times' media correspondent, reproduced Watts' distorted account in a major feature on RT and Sputnik's "new theory of war." Almost no one, not one major media organization or public figure, has bothered to fact check these false claims, and few have questioned the agenda behind them. ..."
"... The episode began during a Trump rally at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump read out an email purportedly from longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal (the father of this writer), hoping to embarrass Clinton over Benghazi. The text of the email turned out to be part of a column written by the pro-Clinton Newsweek columnist Kurt Eichenwald, not an email by Blumenthal. ..."
"... The source of Trump's falsehood appeared to have been a report by Bill Moran, then a reporter for Sputnik, the news service funded by the Russian government. Having confused Eichenwald's writing for a Blumenthal email, Moran scrubbed his erroneous article within 20 minutes. Somehow, Moran's retracted article had found its way onto the Trump campaign's radar, a not atypical event for a campaign that had relied on material from far-out sites like Infowars to undercut its opponents. ..."
"... In his column at Newsweek, Eichenwald framed Moran's honest mistake as the leading edge of a secret Russian influence operation. With help from pro-Clinton elements, Eichenwald's column went viral, earning him slots on CNN and MSNBC, where he howled about the nefarious Russian-Trump-Wikileaks plot he believed he had just exposed. (Glenn Greenwald was perhaps the only reporter with a national platform to highlight Eichenwald's falsifications .) Moran was fired as a result of the fallout, and would have to spend the next several months fighting to correct the record. ..."
"... When Moran appealed to Eichenwald for a public clarification, Eichenwald staunchly refused. Instead, he offered Moran a job at the New Republic in exchange for his silence and warned him, "If you go public, you'll regret it." (Eichenwald had no role at the New Republic or any clear ability to influence the magazine's hiring decisions.) Moran refused to cooperate, prompting Eichenwald to publish a follow-up piece painting himself as the victim of a Russian "active measures" campaign, and to cast Moran once again as a foreign agent. ..."
"... Representing himself in court, Moran elicited a settlement from Newsweek that forced the magazine to scrub all of Eichenwald's articles about him -- a tacit admission that they were false from top to bottom. This meant that the most consequential claim Watts made before the Senate was also a whopping lie. ..."
"... The day after Watts' deception-laden appearance, he was nevertheless transformed from an obscure national security into a cable news star, with invites from Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Meet the Press, and the liberal comedian Samantha Bee, among many others. His testimony received coverage from the gamut of major news outlets, and even earned him a fawning profile from CNN. From out of the blue, Watts had become the star witness of Russiagate, and one of corporate media's favorite pundits. ..."
"... Dr. Strangelove ..."
"... It was not until this summer, however, that the influence operation Watts helped establish reached critical capacity. He had approached one of Washington's most respected think tanks, the German Marshall Fund, and secured support for an initiative called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The new initiative became responsible for a daily blacklist of subversive, "pro-Russian" media outlets, targeting them with the backing of a who's who of national security honchos, from Bill Kristol to former CIA director and ex-Hillary Clinton surrogate Michael Morrell, along with favorable promotion from some of the country's most respected news organizations. ..."
Nearly a year after the presidential election, the scandal over accusations of Russian political interference in the 2016 election
has gone beyond Donald Trump and reached into the nebulous world of online media. On November 1, Congress held hearings on "Extremist
Content and Russian Disinformation Online." The proceedings saw executives from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube subjected to tongue-lashings
from lawmakers like Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who howled about Russian online trolls "spread[ing] stories about abuse of black
Americans by law enforcement."
In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearings, and the most overlooked, Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer who
had branded himself an expert on Russian meddling,
appeared before a nearly empty Senate chamber.
Watts conjured up a stark landscape of American carnage, with shadowy Russian operatives stage managing the chaos.
"Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," he proclaimed. "America's war with itself has already begun. We
all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations
and easily transform us into the Divided States of America."
Next, Watts suggested a government-imposed campaign of media censorship: "Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing
on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced: silence the guns and the barrage will
end."
The censorious overtone of Watts' testimony was unmistakable. He demanded that government news inquisitors drive dissident media
off the internet and warned that Americans would spear one another with bayonets if they failed to act. And not one member of Congress
rose to object. In fact, many echoed his call for media suppression in the House and Senate hearings, with Democrats like Sen. Dianne
Feinstein and
Rep. Jackie Speier agreeing the most vehemently. The spectacle perfectly illustrated the madness of Russiagate, with liberal
lawmakers springboarding off the fear of Russian meddling to demand that Americans be forbidden from consuming the wrong kinds of
media -- including content that amplified the message of progressive causes like Black Lives Matter.
Details of exactly what transpired vis a vis Russia and the U.S. in social media in 2016 are still emerging. This year, the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a declassified version of the intelligence community's report on "Assessing
Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," written by CIA, FBI and NSA, with its central conclusion that Russian
efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine
the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."
To be sure, there is ample evidence that Russian-linked trolls have attempted to exploit wedge issues on social media platforms.
But the impact of these schemes on real-world events appears to have been exaggerated. According to
Facebook's data
, 56 percent of Russian-linked ads appeared after the 2016 presidential election, and another 25 percent "were never shown to
anyone." The ads were said to have "reached" over 100 million people, but that assumes that Facebook users did not scroll through
or otherwise ignore them, as they do with most ads. Content emanating from "Russia-linked" sources on YouTube, meanwhile, managed
to rack up hit totals in the hundreds , not
exactly a viral smash.
Facebook posts traced to the infamous Internet Research Agency troll factory in Russia amounted to only 0.0004 percent of total
content that appeared on the social network. (Some of these posts
targeted "animal
lovers with memes of adorable puppies," while another hawked an LGBT-themed "
Buff Bernie coloring book for Berniacs.") According
to its " deliberately
broad" review , Twitter found that only 0.74 percent of its election-related tweets were "Russian-linked." Google, for its part,
documented a grand total of $4,700 of "Russian-linked
ad spending" during the 2016 election cycle. While some have argued that the Russian-linked ads were micro-targeted, and could have
shifted key electoral voting blocs, these ads appeared in a media climate awash in a multi-billion dollar deluge of political ad
spending from both established parties and dark money super PACs.
However, a blitz of feverish corporate media coverage and tension-filled congressional hearings has convinced a whopping
82 percent of Democrats
that "Russian-backed" social media content played a central role in swinging the 2016 election. Russian meddling has even earned
comparisons by lawmakers to Pearl Harbor, to "acts of war," and by Hillary Clinton to the
attacks of 9/11
. And in an inadvertent way, these overblown comparisons were apt.
As during the aftermath of 9/11, the fallout from Russiagate has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry of pundits and self-styled
experts eager to exploit the frenetic atmosphere for publicity and profits. Many of these figures have emerged out of the swamp that
flowed from the war on terror and are gravitating toward the growing Russia fearmongering industrial complex in search of new opportunities.
Few of these characters have become as prominent as Clint Watts.
So who is Watts, and how did he emerge seemingly from nowhere to become the star congressional witness on Russian meddling?
Dubious Expertise, Impressive Salesmanship
A former U.S. Army officer who spent years in obscurity at a defense industry funded think tank called the Foreign Policy
Research Institute (FPRI), Watts has become a go-to source for cable news producers and print journalists on the subject of Russian
bots, always available with a comment that reinforces the sense that America is under sustained cyborg attack. This September, his
employers at FPRI
hailed him as "the leading expert on developments related to Russian-backed efforts to not only influence the 2016 presidential
election, but also to inflame racial and cultural divisions within the U.S. and across Europe."
Watts boasts an impressive-looking bio that is replete with fancy sounding fellowships at national security-oriented outfits,
including George Washington University's Center Cyber and Homeland Security. His bio also indicates that he served on an FBI Joint
Terror Task Force.
Though Watts is best known for his punditry on Russian interference, it's fair to say he is as much an expert on Russian affairs
as Harvey Weinstein is a trusted voice on feminism. Indeed, Watts appears to speak no Russian, has no record of reporting or scholarship
from inside Russia, and has produced little to no work of any discernible academic value on Russian affairs.
Whether or not he has the substance to support his claims of expertise, Watts has proven a talented salesman, catering to
popular fears about Russian interference while he plies credulous lawmakers with ease.
Before Congress, a String of Deceptions
Back on March 30, as the narrative of Russian meddling gathered momentum, Watts made his first appearance before the Senate Select
Intelligence Committee.
Seated at the front of a hearing room packed with reporters, Watts introduced Congress to concepts of Russian meddling that were
novel at the time, but which have become part of Beltway newspeak. His testimony turned out to be a signal moment in Russiagate,
helping transition the narrative of the scandal from Russia-Trump collusion to the wider issue of online influence.
In the widely publicized testimony, Watts explained to the panel of senators that he first noticed the pernicious presence
of Russian social media bots after he co-authored an article in 2014 in Foreign Affairs titled, "
The Good and The Bad
of Ahrar al Sham ." The article urged the US to arm a group of Syrian Salafi insurgents known for its
human rights abuses , sectarianism and
off-and-on alliances
with Al Qaeda. Watts and his co-authors insisted that Ahrar al-Sham was the best proxy force for wreaking havoc on the Syrian
government weakening its allies in Iran and Russia. Right below the headline, Watts and his co-authors celebrated Ahrar al-Sham as
"an Al Qaeda linked group worth befriending."
Watts rehashed the same argument at FPRI a year later,
urging the
U.S. government to harness jihadist terror as a weapon against Russia. "The U.S. at a minimum, through covert or semi-covert platforms,
should take advantage and amplify these free alternative [jihadist] narratives to provide Russia some payback for recent years' aggression,"
he wrote. In another paper, Watts
asked
, "Why shouldn't the U.S. redirect some of the jihadi hatred towards those with the dirtiest hands in the Syrian conflict: Russia
and Iran?" Watts did not specify whether the theater of covert warfare should be limited to the Syrian battlefield, or if he sought
to encourage jihadists to carry out terrorist acts inside Russia and Iran.
The premise of these op-eds should have raised serious concerns about Watts and his colleagues, and even questions about their
sanity. They had marketed themselves as national security experts, yet they were lobbying the US to "befriend" the allies of Al Qaeda,
the group that brought down the Twin Towers. (Ahrar al-Sham was founded by Abu Khalid al-Suri, a Madrid bombing suspect who was
named by Spanish
investigators as Osama bin-Laden's courier.) Anyone cynical enough to put such ideas into public circulation should have expected
a backlash. But when the inevitable wave of criticism came, Watts dismissed it all as a Russian bot attack.
Addressing the Senate panel, Watts said that those who took to social media to mock and criticize his Foreign Affairs article
were, in fact, Russian bots. He provided no evidence to support the claim, and
a look at his single tweet promoting the
article shows that he was criticized only once (by @Navsteva, a Twitter user known for defending the Syrian government against regime
change proponents, not an automated bot). Nevertheless, Watts painted the incident as proof that Russia had revived a Cold War information
warfare strategy of "Active Measures," which was supposedly aimed at "crumbl[ing] democracies from the inside out [by] creating political
divisions."
Next, Watts introduced his signature theme, claiming that Russia manipulated civil rights protests to exploit divisions in
American society. Declaring that "pro-Russian" outlets were spreading "chaos in Black Lives Matter protests" by deploying active
measures, Watts did not bother to say what those measures were. In fact, the only piece of proof he offered (in a Daily Beast
transcript of his testimony) was a
single link
to an RT article that factually documented
a squabble between Black Lives Matter protesters and white supremacists -- an incident that had been widely covered by other outlets,
from the
Houston
Chronicle to the
Washington Post . Watts did not explain how this one report by RT sowed any chaos, or whether it had any effect at all on actual
events.
Watts then moved to the main course of his testimony, focusing on how Trump employed Russian "active measures" to attack his
opponents. Watts told the Senate panel that the Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik had produced a false report on the U.S.
airbase in Incirlik, Turkey being "overrun by terrorists." He presented the Russian stories as the anchor for a massive influence
operation that featured swarms of Russian bots across social media. And he claimed that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
invoked the incident to deflect from negative media coverage, suggesting that Trump was coordinating strategy with the Kremlin. In
reality, it was Watts who was spreading the fake news.
In the articles
cited
by Watts during his testimony, neither
RT nor
Sputnik made
any reference to "terrorists" taking over Incirlik Airbase. Rather, these outlets compiled tweets by Turkish activists and sourced
their coverage to a report by Hurriyet, one of Turkey's largest mainstream papers. In fact, the incident was reported by virtually
every major Turkish news organization (
here ,
here ,
here and
here ). What's more,
the events appeared to have taken place approximately as RT and Sputnik reported it, with protesters readying to protect the airbase
from a coup while Turkish police sealed the base's entrances and exits. A look at RT's coverage shows the network even downplayed
the severity of the event,
citing a tweet by a U.S.-based national security analysis group stating, "We are not finding any evidence of a coup or takeover."
This stands entirely at odds with Watts' claim that RT exaggerated the incident to spark chaos.
Watts has pushed his bogus narrative of RT and Sputnik's Incirlik coverage in numerous outlets, including
Politico . Democratic
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
echoed Watts'
false account on the Senate floor while arguing for legislation to force RT out of the U.S. market on political grounds. And Jim
Rutenberg, the New York Times' media correspondent,
reproduced
Watts' distorted account in a major feature on RT and Sputnik's "new theory of war." Almost no one, not one major media organization
or public figure, has bothered to fact check these false claims, and few have questioned the agenda behind them.
Questions emailed to Watts via his employers at FPRI received no reply.
Another Watts Deception, This Time Discredited in Court
During his Senate testimony, Watts introduced a second, and even more distorted claim of Trump employing Russian "active measures"
to attack his political foes. The details of the story are complex and difficult for a passive audience to absorb, which is probably
why Watts has been able to get away with pushing it for so long.
Watts' testimony was the culmination of a mainstream media deception that forced an aspiring reporter out of his job, drove him
to contemplate suicide, and ultimately prompted him to take matters into his own hands by suing his antagonists.
The episode began during a Trump rally at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump read out an email purportedly
from longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal (the father of this writer), hoping to embarrass Clinton over Benghazi.
The text of the email turned out to be part of a column written by the pro-Clinton Newsweek columnist Kurt Eichenwald, not an email
by Blumenthal.
The source of Trump's falsehood appeared to have been a report by Bill Moran, then a reporter for Sputnik, the news service
funded by the Russian government. Having confused Eichenwald's writing for a Blumenthal email, Moran
scrubbed
his erroneous article within 20 minutes. Somehow, Moran's retracted article had found its way onto the Trump campaign's radar,
a not atypical event for a campaign that had relied on material from far-out sites like Infowars to undercut its opponents.
In his column at Newsweek, Eichenwald framed Moran's honest mistake as the leading edge of a secret Russian influence operation.
With help from pro-Clinton elements, Eichenwald's column went viral, earning him slots on CNN and MSNBC, where he howled about the
nefarious Russian-Trump-Wikileaks plot he believed he had just exposed. (Glenn Greenwald was perhaps the only reporter with a national
platform to
highlight Eichenwald's falsifications .) Moran was fired as a result of the fallout, and would have to spend the next several
months fighting to correct the record.
When Moran appealed to Eichenwald for a public clarification, Eichenwald staunchly refused. Instead, he
offered
Moran a job at the New Republic in exchange for his silence and warned him, "If you go public, you'll regret it." (Eichenwald
had no role at the New Republic or any clear ability to influence the magazine's hiring decisions.) Moran refused to cooperate, prompting
Eichenwald to publish a follow-up piece painting himself as the victim of a Russian "active measures" campaign, and to cast Moran
once again as a foreign agent.
When Watts revived Eichenwald's bogus version of events in his Senate testimony, Moran began to spiral into the depths of depression.
He even entertained thoughts of suicide. But he ultimately decided to fight, filing a lawsuit against Newsweek's parent company for
defamation and libel.
Representing himself in court, Moran elicited a settlement from Newsweek that forced the magazine to scrub all of Eichenwald's
articles about him -- a tacit admission that they were false from top to bottom. This meant that the most consequential claim Watts
made before the Senate was also a whopping lie.
The day after Watts' deception-laden appearance, he was nevertheless transformed from an obscure national security into a
cable news star, with
invites
from Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Meet the Press, and the liberal comedian Samantha Bee, among many others. His testimony received
coverage from the gamut of major news outlets, and even earned him a fawning profile from CNN. From out of the blue, Watts had become
the star witness of Russiagate, and one of corporate media's favorite pundits.
FPRI, a Pro-War Think Tank Founded by White Supremacist Eugenicists
Before he emerged in the spotlight of Russiagate, Watts languished at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, earning little name
recognition outside the insular world of national security pundits. Based in Philadelphia, the FPRI has been
described by journalist Mark Ames as "one of the looniest (and spookiest) extreme-right think tanks since the early Cold War
days, promoting 'winnable' nuclear war, maximum confrontation with Russia, and attacking anti-colonialism as dangerously unworkable."
Daniel Pipes, the arch-Islamophobe pundit and former FPRI fellow, offered a
similar characterization
of the think tank, albeit from an alternately opposed angle. "Put most baldly, we have always advocated an activist U.S. foreign
policy," Pipes said in a 1991 address to FPRI. He added that the think tank's staff "is not shy about the use of force; were we members
of Congress in January 1991, all of us would not only have voted with President Bush and Operation Desert Storm, we would have led
the charge."
FPRI was co-founded by Robert Strausz-Hupé, a far-right Austrian emigre, with help from conservative corporations and covert funding
from the CIA From the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, Strausz-Hupé gathered a "Philadelphia School" of Cold War hardliners
to develop a strategy for protracted war against the Soviet Union. His brain trust included FPRI co-founder Stefan Possony, an Austrian
fascist who was a board member of the World Anti-Communist League, the international fascist organization
described by journalists
Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson as a network of "those responsible for death squads, apartheid, torture, and the extermination
of European Jewry." True to his fascist roots, Possony co-authored a racialist tract, "
The Geography of Intellect
," that argued that blacks were biologically inferior and that the people of the global South were "genetically unpromising."
Strausz-Hupé seized on Possony's racialist theories to inveigh against anti-colonial movements led by "populations incapable of rational
thought."
While clamoring for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union -- and acknowledging that their preferred strategy would cause
mass casualties in American cities -- Strausz-Hupé and his band of hawks developed a monomaniacal obsession with Russian propaganda.
By the time of the Cuban missile crisis, they were stricken with paranoia, arguing on the pages of the New York Times that filmmaker
Stanley Kubrick was a Soviet useful idiot whose film, Dr. Strangelove , advanced "the principal Communist objectives to
drive a wedge between the American people and their military leaders."
Ultimately, Strausz-Hupé's fanaticism cost him an ambassadorship, as Sen. William Fulbright scuttled his appointment to serve
in Morocco on the grounds that his "hard line, no compromise" approach to communism could shatter the delicate balance of diplomacy.
Today, he is remembered fondly
on FPRI's website as "an intellectual and intellectual impresario, administrator, statesman, and visionary." His militaristic
legacy continues thanks to the prolific presence -- and bellicose politics -- of Watts.
The Paranoid Style
This year, FPRI dedicated its annual gala to honoring Watts' success in mainstreaming the narrative of Russian online meddling.
Since I first transcribed a Soundcloud recording of Watts' keynote address, the file has been
mysteriously scrubbed
from the internet. It is unclear what prompted the removal, however, it is easy to understand why Watts would not want his comments
examined by a critical listener. His speech offered a window into a paranoid mindset with a tendency for overblown, unverifiable
claims about Russian influence.
While much of the speech was a rehash of Watts' Senate testimony, he spent an unusual amount of time describing the threat he
believed Russian intelligence agents posed to his own security. "If you speak up too much, you'll get knocked down," Watts said,
claiming that think tank fellows who had been too vocal about Russian meddling had seen their laptops "burned up by malware."
"If someone rises up in prominence, they will suddenly be -- whoof! -- swiped down out of nowhere by some crazy disclosure from
their email," Watts added, referring to unspecified Russian retaliatory measures. As usual, he didn't produce concrete evidence or
offer any examples.
"Anybody remember the reporters that were outed after the election? Or maybe they tossed up a question to the Clinton campaign
and they were gone the next day?" he asked his audience. "That's how it goes."
It was unclear which reporters Watts was referring to, or what incident he could have possibly been alluding to. He offered no
details, only innuendo about the state of siege Kremlin actors had supposedly imposed on him and his freedom-fighting colleagues.
He even predicted he'd be "hacked and cyber attacked when this recording comes out."
According to Watts, Russian "active measures" had singlehandedly augmented Republican opinion in support of the Kremlin. "It is
the greatest success in influence operations in the history of the world," Watts confidently proclaimed. He contrasted Russia's success
with his own failures as an American agent of influence working for the U.S. military, a saga in his career that remains largely
unexamined.
Domestic Agent of Influence
"I worked in influence operations in counter-terrorism for 15 years," Watts boasted to his audience at FPRI. "We didn't break
one or two percent [increase in the approval rating of US foreign policy] in fifteen years and we spent billions a year in tax dollars
doing it. I was paid off of those programs. We had almost no success throughout the Middle East."
By Watts' own admission, he had been part of a secret propaganda campaign aimed at manipulating the opinions of Middle Easterners
in favor of the hostile American military operating in their midst. And he failed massively, wasting "billions a year in tax dollars."
Given his penchant for deception, this may have been yet another tall tale aimed at burnishing his image as an internet era James
Bond. But if the story was even partially true, Watts had inadvertently exposed a severe scandal that, in a fairer world, might have
triggered congressional hearings.
Whatever took place, it appears that Watts and his Cold Warrior colleagues are now waging another expensive influence operation,
this time directed against the American public. By deploying deceptions, half-truths and hyperbole with the full consent of Congress
and in collaboration with the mainstream press, they have managed to convince a majority of Americans that Russia is "trying to knock
us down and take us over," as Watts remarked at the FPRI's gala.
In just a matter of months, public consent for an unprecedented array of hostile measures against Russia, from sanctions and
consular raids to arbitrary
crackdowns on Russian-backed news organizations, has been assiduously manufactured.
It was not until this summer, however, that the influence operation Watts helped establish reached critical capacity. He had
approached one of Washington's most respected think tanks, the German Marshall Fund, and secured support for an initiative called
the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The new initiative became responsible for a daily blacklist of subversive, "pro-Russian" media
outlets, targeting them with the backing of a who's who of national security honchos, from Bill Kristol to former CIA director and
ex-Hillary Clinton surrogate Michael Morrell, along with favorable promotion from some of the country's most respected news organizations.
In the next installment of this investigation, we will see how a collection of cranks, counter-terror retreads and online vigilantes
overseen by the German Marshall Fund have waged a search-and-destroy mission against dissident media under the guise of combating
Russian "active measures," and how the mainstream press has enabled their censorious agenda.
"... Pentagon "weaponised information" years ago: " Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media ".) ..."
"... The collapse of the Fusion GPS operation will unravel the whole construction. And it's coming . ( And don't forget Awan .) All this because the Dems fixed their nomination and then lost anyway. ..."
So the anti-Russian campaign probably started after Sochi Olympics if nor earlier. Now we see just a new stage of it.
Notable quotes:
"... Western media, analysts and commentator spew the same inane nonsense regarding Russia. Either Putin is the new Hitler or he is just like Stalin or trying to become a new Tsar. Western experts accuse Putin of trying to revive the USSR one day only to accuse Putin re-establishing the Russian Empire the day afterwards. ..."
"... West media oscillates from Russia is about collapse to Russia is about to invade Europe and conquer the world! ..."
"... For nearly two hours, the Russian president reeled off a litany of resentments. The west had proclaimed victory in the cold war. It had cheated Moscow by expanding the EU and Nato right to Russia's borders. It had ignored international rules to pursue reckless policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. ..."
"... So far, the sanctions have acted as what one US official calls an "accelerant" to the unexpected plunge in oil prices, pushing Russia into a deep economic crisis. The rouble has tumbled, leaving Russia facing recession and spiralling inflation, challenging its ability to fund its costly stealth war in Ukraine (where the Kremlin insists there are no Russian soldiers on the ground, despite ample evidence to the contrary [Where is the evidence? Please state what the evidence is.]). ..."
"... I stopped reading the FT years ago . For the financial stuff it was quite good (!) and had a good level for people not accompli in such matters, but it always sucked ass * politically as it is generally to the far right of Ghengis Khan (my apologies to him as I am probably one of the descendents of the many beautiful ladies he porked – apparently 1 in 7 of us are). ..."
Western media, analysts and commentator spew the same inane nonsense regarding Russia. Either
Putin is the new Hitler or he is just like Stalin or trying to become a new Tsar. Western experts
accuse Putin of trying to revive the USSR one day only to accuse Putin re-establishing the Russian
Empire the day afterwards.
West media oscillates from Russia is about collapse to Russia is about to invade Europe and
conquer the world!
Extracts from the FT article: "Battle for Ukraine:
How the west lost Putin"
It was past 10pm and the German chancellor was sitting in a Hilton hotel conference room
in Brisbane, Australia. Her interlocutor was the implacable Vladimir Putin. For nearly two hours,
the Russian president reeled off a litany of resentments. The west had proclaimed victory in the
cold war. It had cheated Moscow by expanding the EU and Nato right to Russia's borders. It had
ignored international rules to pursue reckless policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
The chancellor steered the conversation back to eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists
were engaged in a bloody struggle against the western-backed government in Kiev, according
to a person familiar with the meeting [WHO? No names, no pack drill?]. Since
the crisis began, Ms Merkel [Why Ms? She is "Frau" and she is married. Does the journalist
not know that? Does he think that Bundeskanzlerin Merkel wants to keep her marital status a secret?
Fucking PC crap!] had worked hard to extract some sense from Mr Putin of what he wanted - something
she could use to construct an agreement. When he finally offered a solution, she was shocked.
Mr Putin declared Kiev should deal with the rebels the way he had dealt with Russia's breakaway
Chechnya region: by buying them off with autonomy and money. A reasonable idea, perhaps, to an
ex-KGB colonel. But for an East German pastor's daughter, with a deeply-ingrained sense of fairness,
this was unacceptable.
Ms Merkel had asked her closest advisers to stay outside during the Brisbane meeting,
on November 15 last year. "She wanted to be alone . . . to test whether she could get Putin to
be more open about what he really wants",says someone briefed on the conversation [WHO?].
"But he wouldn't say what his strategy is, because he doesn't know".
For Moscow, too, something snapped. Weeks later, a Kremlin official [WHO?]
dismissed the notion, often cited in diplomatic circles, that there had ever been a "special relationship"
between the two leaders. "Putin and Merkel could never stand each other", he told the Financial
Times. "Of course, they are professionals, so they tried to make the best of it for a long time.
But that seems to have changed now."
The Merkel-Putin encounter in Australia marked a turning point. After a year of crisis,
the west realised that it had been pursuing an illusion: for all its post-communist tribulations,
Russia was always seen to be on an inexorable path of convergence with Europe and the west - what a senior German official [WHO?]
calls the notion that "in the end,
they'll all become like us".
So far, the sanctions have acted as what one US official calls an "accelerant" to the
unexpected plunge in oil prices, pushing Russia into a deep economic crisis. The rouble has tumbled,
leaving Russia facing recession and spiralling inflation, challenging its ability to fund its
costly stealth war in Ukraine (where the Kremlin insists there are no Russian soldiers on the
ground, despite ample evidence to the contrary [Where is the evidence? Please state
what the evidence is.]).
According to a senior Washington official [WHO?], Mr Poroshenko,
the oligarch elected Ukraine's president in May, was anxious to hold face-to-face meetings with
Mr Putin. But he wanted other leaders in the room capable of holding Mr Putin to commitments.
Ms Merkel was the obvious choice. "The administration's view is that she's the best interlocutor
that we have in the west with Putin," says an ex-US diplomat [WHO?].
US President Barack Obama has held his own share of calls with Mr Putin, but he has largely
taken a back seat. US insiders [WHO?] say the president feels Mr Putin
was unresponsive to efforts to build a relationship. "Obama sees the world in win-win terms, Putin
sees it in zero-sum terms", says the ex-diplomat. The two have a visible lack of chemistry. In
Mr Obama's words, Mr Putin has a "kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the
classroom".
Diplomats suspect [WHICH DIPLOMATS?] Mr Putin is surrounded
by yes-men afraid to give him the unvarnished truth. They suggest, for example, that he has been
surprised by the strength of EU unity over sanctions.
She prepares meticulously, studying maps of eastern Ukraine and poring over them in meetings
and phone calls with Mr Putin. "There are maps and charts, with roads and checkpoints", says a European diplomat [WHO?]. "She has these details. She knows about
them."
In public, Ms Merkel has not said Mr Putin has lied, but she has in private
[TO WHOM?]. "'He's lying', that's what she says to all the other leaders," says
the EU diplomat.
A partygoer [WHO?] close to Ms Merkel recalls her saying little
about the disaster. "The chancellor doesn't like to speak about something until she is sure of
her facts. But she was shaken. It was horrendous."
"The Russians just weren't credible. They got beaten", says a senior Washington official
[WHO?].
Asked why Mr Putin did not turn MH17 into an opportunity for reconciliation, a
former senior Kremlin official [WHO?] said: "Because he was insulted. He acted emotionally.
Because your side came out before anything was clear, accusing him of all sorts of things".
and on and on and on.
I've just got fed up of noting the unsubstantiated statements. And to make all this even more
annoying,each time I cut and pasted, I received the following notification off FT:
"High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others
using the link below, do not cut & paste the article."
I stopped reading the FT years ago. For the financial stuff it was quite good (!) and had
a good level for people not accompli in such matters, but it always sucked ass*
politically as it is generally to the far right of Ghengis Khan (my apologies to him as I am probably
one of the descendents of the many beautiful ladies he porked – apparently 1 in 7 of us are).
The thing is, none of this should surprise us as established journalism has only got
worse. Alternative media fortunately has grown on the back of this atrophy of the circle jerk
club. What this goes to show is that the discerning news consumer now looks elsewhere for its
news because the Pork Pie News Networks are so transparently bullshit in the extreme and even
more unapologetic when they are caught with their pants down pretending to be milking grandma's
cow in the middle of the night.
If Putin became 'emotional' every time he was insulted by the west, he wouldn't have gotten out
of bed since about 2003. Jeez, the crap these guys write.
Know that when they speak of
Kyrzbekistan, they're not just stenographers, they're incompetent stenographers.
Take what
they say, turn it upside down, and you'll have a better take on reality.
THE MERKEL MYSTERY. I, like many, thought, when the Ukraine crisis began, that German Chancellor
Merkel would prove to be key in settling it. This has not proved to be the case at all; in fact
she often throws more fuel on the fire. I believe that
Gilbert Doctorow may have
the answer. In essence, he believes that Berlin dreams the "pre-WWI dream of Mitteleuropa"
with cheap, docile workers in Poland, Ukraine and the others forever. Of course, it hasn't worked
out very well, but that, he thinks, was the plan. There was no "End
of History" after all; a rebirth of history it seems.
"... By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus. ..."
By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats
hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and
middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus.
Victories in state-level elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Nov. 7 have buoyed
Democratic hopes for an anti-Trump wave among the population that will lead to a big victory in
next year's mid-term elections, and permanently damage President Trump heading towards 2020.
Yet there is significant risk in hoping that anti-Trump sentiment will be enough for the
Democrats to return to power.
The danger is that the considerable differences between the centrist faction, which for the
most part controls the party structure, and the progressive wing of the party, will be swept
under the rug in the name of unity, perpetuating the substantive problems that have alienated
important sections of the population from the party.
The power of opposition to Trump has been on display from the very beginning: It was more
than a bit ironic to see feminist protestors – properly exercising their right to protest
against a President who has made many derogatory comments towards women – hold up signs
defending the CIA during the Women's March on Inauguration Day Yes, in their zeal to oppose
Trump, both the center and the far left have been willing to embrace the battle led by a
limited but powerful grouping in the intelligence community to stop the President from his
stated intention of improving relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
This has become such a cause célèbre that people who would normally
look suspiciously at the motives of the CIA or other similar agencies seem unable to recognize
that the basic "crime" Trump is accused of is favoring diplomacy with a country most of the
institutions consider an enemy. With the media's help, it has apparently been decided that this
President does not have the right to influence policy, if the majority of the establishment
disagrees with his positions.
The major issue in the Democratic Party is obviously the economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders,
officially an Independent from Vermont, won 43 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic
primaries because he pushed a "populist," anti-system message that was heavily critical of
globalization, Wall Street and trade deals that have weakened the American middle class.
By riding hatred of President Trump and spurring on the Russia-gate hysteria, Democrats
hope to win in 2018 without a serious examination of why they lost support of key working- and
middle-class voting blocs, says Andrew Spannaus.
Victories in state-level elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Nov. 7 have buoyed
Democratic hopes for an anti-Trump wave among the population that will lead to a big victory in
next year's mid-term elections, and permanently damage President Trump heading towards 2020.
Yet there is significant risk in hoping that anti-Trump sentiment will be enough for the
Democrats to return to power.
The danger is that the considerable differences between the centrist faction, which for the
most part controls the party structure, and the progressive wing of the party, will be swept
under the rug in the name of unity, perpetuating the substantive problems that have alienated
important sections of the population from the party.
The power of opposition to Trump has been on display from the very beginning: It was more
than a bit ironic to see feminist protestors – properly exercising their right to protest
against a President who has made many derogatory comments towards women – hold up signs
defending the CIA during the Women's March on Inauguration Day Yes, in their zeal to oppose
Trump, both the center and the far left have been willing to embrace the battle led by a
limited but powerful grouping in the intelligence community to stop the President from his
stated intention of improving relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
This has become such a cause célèbre that people who would normally
look suspiciously at the motives of the CIA or other similar agencies seem unable to recognize
that the basic "crime" Trump is accused of is favoring diplomacy with a country most of the
institutions consider an enemy. With the media's help, it has apparently been decided that this
President does not have the right to influence policy, if the majority of the establishment
disagrees with his positions.
The major issue in the Democratic Party is obviously the economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders,
officially an Independent from Vermont, won 43 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic
primaries because he pushed a "populist," anti-system message that was heavily critical of
globalization, Wall Street and trade deals that have weakened the American middle class.
Brennan is probably one of the key figures in color revolution against Trump that was launched after the elections...
Looks like both Brennan and Clapper suffer from the acute case of Anti-Russian paranoia along with Full Spectrum Dominance
hallucinations.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the leaders of this campaign. ..."
"... The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations ..."
"... So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions? ..."
"... There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact." ..."
"... Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria. ..."
"... In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." . ..."
"... Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference" in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News) ..."
"... So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it? ..."
"... Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program ..."
"... So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA ..."
"... As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say. ..."
"... From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper. ..."
"... Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington establishment will never allow to happen. ..."
"... What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons. ..."
"... Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. ..."
"... Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it. ..."
"... Professional liars. But, there was some question/doubt about this? ..."
"... As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. ..."
On Sunday, Former CIA Director John Brennan and Former National Intelligence Director (NID) James Clapper appeared on CNN's morning
talk show, State of the Union, to discuss Donald Trump's brief meeting with Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. The two ex-Intel chiefs were
sharply critical of Trump and wondered why the president did not "not acknowledge and embrace" the idea that Russia meddled in the
2016 elections. According to Brennan, Russia not only "poses a national security problem" for the US, but also "Putin is committed
to undermining our system, our democracy, and our whole process."
Naturally, CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, never challenged Brennan or Clapper on any of the many claims they made regarding Russia nor
did he interrupt either man while they made, what appeared to be, carefully scripted remarks about Trump, Putin and the ongoing investigation.
There were no surprise announcements during the interview and neither Brennan or Clapper added anything new to the list of allegations
that have been repeated ad nauseam in the media for the last year. The only time Tapper veered off course at all was when he asked
Brennan whether he thought "any laws were broken by the Trump campaign? Here's what Brennan said:
I'm just a former intelligence officer. I never had the responsibility for determining whether or not criminal actions were
taken. But, since leaving office on the 20th of January, I think more and more of this iceberg is emerging above the surface of
the water, some of the things that I knew about, but some of the things I didn't know about, in terms of some of the social media
efforts that Russia employed. So, I think what Bob Mueller, who, again, is another quintessential public servant, is doing is
trying to get to the bottom of this. And I think we're going to find out how large this iceberg really is.
In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small
army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted
on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a
case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the
leaders of this campaign.
The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over
again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called
Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence
of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that
cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations. Here's the money-quote from the report:
Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected
information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.
So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such
judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the
entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately
trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions?
Here's Brennan again on Sunday:
I think Mr. Trump knows that the intelligence agencies, specifically CIA, NSA and FBI, the ones that really have responsibility
for counterintelligence and looking at what Russia does, it's very clear that the Russians interfered in the election. And it's
still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it, and also push back hard against Mr. Putin. The Russian
threat to our democracy and our democratic foundations is real.
There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings
of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows
something to be a fact."
Why is it so hard for Brennan to wrap his mind around that simple, unambiguous statement? The reason Brennan's intelligence analysts
admit that they have no proof, is because they have no proof. That might sound obvious, but we have to assume that it isn't given
that both Houses of Congress and a Special Counsel are still bogged down in an investigation that has yet to provide even a solid
lead let alone any compelling evidence.
We also have to assume that most people do not understand that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the massive investigations
that are currently underway. (What probable cause?) Adds placed in Facebook do not constitute hard evidence of foreign espionage
or election rigging. They indicate the desperation of the people who are leading the investigation. The fact that serious people
are even talking about social media just underscores the fact that the search for proof has produced nothing.
These investigations are taking place because powerful elites want to vilify an emerging geopolitical rival (Russia) and prevent
Trump from normalizing relations with Moscow, not because there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. As the Intel analysts themselves
acknowledge, there is no proof of criminal wrongdoing or any other wrongdoing for that matter. What there is, is a political agenda
to discredit Trump and demonize Russia. That's the fuel that is driving the present campaign.
Russia-gate is not about 'meddling', it's about politics. And Brennan and Clapper are critical players in the current drama. They're
supposed to be the elder statesmen who selflessly defend the country from foreign threats. But are they or is this just role-playing
that doesn't square with what we already know about the two men? Here's thumbnail sketch of Clapper written by former-CIA officer
Ray McGovern that will help to clarify the point:
Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid
the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no
WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.
In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans.
After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was
clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." .
Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference"
in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices
of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever,
which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News)
So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing
on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it?
He also lied about spying on the American people. Why? Why would he do that? And why should we trust someone who not only spied
on us but also paved the way to war in Iraq?
And the rap-sheet on Brennan is even worse than Clapper's. Check out this blurb from Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian:
"Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and
rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping
program
Obama then appointed him as his top counter-terrorism adviser . In that position, Brennan last year got caught outright lying
when he claimed Obama's drone program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year .
Brennan has also been in charge of many of Obama's most controversial and radical policies, including "signature strikes" in
Yemen – targeting people without even knowing who they are – and generally seizing the power to determine who will be marked for
execution without any due process, oversight or transparency .." ("John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director
nomination", Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian)
So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone
attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing
apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA
These radical militias have been defeated largely due to Russian military intervention. Do you think that this defeat at the hands
of Putin may have shaped Brennan's attitude towards Russia?
Of course, it has. Brennan never makes any attempt to conceal his hatred for Putin or Russia.
As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust
what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a
compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are
shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say.
Which is why the Russia-gate narrative is beginning to unravel.
From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than
that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper.
Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington
establishment will never allow to happen.
What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or
less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could
have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing
away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing
his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons.
Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. He is an extreme leftist
and there should be an investigation into how this wacko was allowed to join the CIA – he openly admits voting for CPUSA chief
Gus Hall in 1976. Brennan is, besides, a resentful CIA failure.
He was denied entry to the elite Directorate of Operations (or couldn't cut the mustard and was banished from it) and spent
his career stewing away in anger as a despised analyst at CIA headquarters.
Brennan spent his time at CIA attempting to undermine the organization.
Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee
brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still
at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the
FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it.
We all know that the Russiagate narrative isn't starting to unravel and this and other (wholly untrustworthy) internet authors'
claims are not proved by simply repeating them over and over again (to borrow a phrase!). In fact, Russiagate is expanding. It
has gone from mere Russian interference in the election to dubious financial transactions between wealthy Americans, including
Trump, and, to put it very politely, "dubious" Russians. It has also expanded to Europe.
What is emerging, therefore, is a collusion between wealthy Americans, no doubt with major investments in Russia, US internet
sites, probably financed by the aforementioned wealthy Americans, dubious Russian financiers, Putin, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage
and no doubt others to manipulate, perhaps rig, elections and referenda in the US and Europe. It's not about politics. It's about
money and conflicts of interest.
We also get the now standard argument that Trump is just dying to "normalize" relations with Russia but is being held back
by some dastardly group or other. As we all know, of course, "normalizing relations with Moscow" in Orwellian translates into
English as "capitulating to Putin in Ukraine". Putin's frantic attempts to get Trump to let him win in Syria is why this old line
is suddenly back on the table.
Finally, the idea of the Russian Federation as an emerging geopolitical rival is amusing. That country has existed as a sovereign
state only for about 25 years and is merely the largest piece of wreckage from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a world that
is slowly being dominated by China, Russia is a very minor player.
Brennan and Clapper are agent provocateurs for the Zionists who control the U.S. government and the 17 gestapo agencies which
in fact are controlled by dual citizen Zionists ie ISRAEL.
Brennan and Clapper are under Zionist control and thus are traitors to the constitution of America and should be tried and
sent to prison for life.
It's not about politics. It's about money and conflicts of interest.
And since when are the three not related?
It's too bad that good people, like MW, need to waste their time and energy investigating and publishing what's obviously state
sponsored utter rubbish designed to support some of the money bag crowd in one way or another.
Why does it even need to be stated that most of what's supposed to be a big deal to us prols, peasants and piss ants is nothing
but propaganda, and of a particularly transparent and low grade variety,even?
Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister.
Clapper told some whoppers while he was head of all our intelligence agencies under Obama. But you are correct that Brennan
is far more toxic. He was this way under Obama and post-Obama. He has been one of the biggest Trump saboteurs. And most effective.
One ugly customer!
Why should we care if the russians spent billions on trying to exert their influence on us, we do it we have an alphabet soup
of projects to do exactly that and god knows what else to every nation on earth.In fact we do it to our own people these social
websites and "news" sites universities media etc are nothing but one huge propaganda machine intended to render democracy nothing
more than a distraction so elites can go about doing what they want.
Long ago, when car radio's still had antennae long enough to receive long wave transmissions, I often listened to BBCW radio,
848 Mhz.
I still remember the statement 'you can always tell when a politician lies, he then moves his lips'.
Capitulating to Putin in Ukraine. The assertion is that the CIA spent five billion dollar in Ukraine in order to overthrow
the legitimate democratic government. Of course nobody can prove the assertion. What is crystal clear is that the members of EU
parliament Verhofstadt, Van Baalen and Timmermans held speeches in Kiev urging the people to overthrow the government.
Their speeches could be seen live on tv, or were rebroadcast.
Timmermans held the crocodile tears speech at the UN about the MH17 victims. How, why, and through whom over 300 people were
killed in Ukraine airspace we do not know until now. All there is is vague insinuations towards Russia, the country for which
the disaster was a disaster, EU sanctions all of a sudden were possible.
That the political annexation by the west failed is best seen in E Ukraine, where the wealth is, in gas and oil. A son, and
a son in law, of Biden, and Kerry were promised well paid jobs as CEO's of companies who were to exploit the E Ukrainian wealth,
they are still waiting for the jobs.
I remember when they actually prosecuted for someone for lying to Congress. Unfortunately, it was a former baseball player
named Roger Clemons over the vitally important question of whether or not he had taken steroids. Obviously a vital question that
every sports tabloid wants to know.
I just hope that the Russians realize that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. I hope that they'll choose the next
US president wisely.
There is real danger there is -- now that we know that the Russians can elect pretty much anyone in the US – that come the
next elections, some charismatic, possibly independent candidate, might seduce the Russians with promises of improved ties, and
after they elect him, he might turn to be a real wacko job who might end up not only worsening the ties between the superpowers,
but he might end up destroying the world. Be cautious, Russians.
If we want to talk about meddling in the election ..
Lets compare CNN giving hours and hours of free and very favorable air time to the Hillary campaign?
versus
A news website paying for a handful of thousand dollar adds on Twitter?
I remember studies that showed that during the crooked, corrupt and rigged Democratic Primaries, that there was a large disparity
in favorable stories about Hillary versus the number that were favorable for Bernie. And CNN happily seemed to give lots of airtime
to any Hillary surrogate who wanted to red bait and smear Bernie as a socialist.
We saw the same sort of disparity in the amount of favorable coverage of Trump vs Hillary. Likewise, any Hillary surrogate
who wanted to spread the official campaign message that Trump was a racist, was a fascist, and said some rude things about women
was always welcome on the CNN airwaves.
And, just recently, we had the web page editor for the NYT state publicly that they deliberately tilted their web page stories
to convince voters to vote against Trump.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg if we want to talk about how the American corporate (aka mainstream) media tried very
hard to tilt the whole election towards putting the Crooked Clintons back into the White House.
But, OMG, the story in the same corrupt media is that awful and evil RT spend a whole thousand dollars on an ad trying to promote
their website.
As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can
take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press
Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine.
Hillary is the one who spend BILLIONS trying to become President. The only thing that so far has been traced to Russia is a
few hundred thousand in Twitter Ads that otherwise served the legitimate purpose of trying to promote the web news sites. And
most of those ads didn't concern political stories, but instead stories about cute puppies to draw clicks.
The interesting development is that, after no proof for the "Russian hacking" allegations could be found, they turned to simple
ads (for amounts that are extremely small compared to what the campaigns spent) and social media postings. This was accompanied
by loosening the criteria, they did not even pretend any more that they had indications that these social media activities were
connected to the Russian state, they just had to be "Russia-linked". In the case of Twitter, this includes anyone who has ever
logged in from Russia, uses Cyrillic signs in the account metadata (that could also be connected with a number of other countries),
logged in from a Russian IP address, paid something with a Russian credit card etc., and only one condition had to be fulfilled
for an account to be counted as "Russia-linked".
Of course, with such a large country, there are certainly some social media activities that are "linked" with it. There can
be many reasons – people who travel, migrants in both directions, or simply Russians with an interest in US politics. From what
is known, the ads and postings were so diverse – some right-wing and pro-Trump, some leftwing or critical of Trump, and many not
directly linked to the elections – and distributed over a large time with many after the elections that it does not seem too unlikely
as a result of social media activities of random people who have some connection with Russia.
Of course, we may speculate in each case, why someone posted something or bought an ad. But before speculating, it would be
necessary to have data about ads and social media postings linked to other countries. For example, it could be determined with
the same criteria which ads and postings were Brazile-linked, Germany-linked, and Philippines-linked. Probably, there, a similar
random collection would emerge. Only if there is something special about the Russia-linked ads and postings, it would even make
sense to speculate about the reasons.
We don't know whether these "Russia-linked" ads and social media positings were just random activities by people related to
Russia (e.g. about 2% of the US population have Russian as their native language, some may not have many contacts with Russia
any more and don't travel there regularly, but others do) or whether a part of them was the result of an organized campaign, but
in any case, from what was written in the media, the volume of these social media activities does not seem to be very large (but
in order to judge that, social media activities linked to other countries with the same criteria would be needed).
What I find hilarious is how people sometimes try to insert a collusion angle even if it is not about hacking, but about social
media ads and postings. This becomes completely absurd. Then, the idea is that Russians contacted the Trump campaign in order
to find out which ads they should buy and what they should post on social media. Why should they do so? If the Trump campaign
had ideas about what to post and what kind of ads to buy, why didn't they just do it themselves or via an American company? What
would be the point of the Trump campaign spending $564 million on the campaign, but then do a small part of the campaign via Russians
who then spent a few thousand dollars for buying ads and posting messages the Trump campaign had advised them to via "collusion"?
After all, if they had done it themselves or via an American intermediary, there would be nothing nefarious or suspicious about
this, this idea that for a very small part of their campaign, they colluded with Russians and told them what to post and which
ads to buy almost sounds as if they deliberately wanted to behave in a strange way that could then fit a preconceived collusion
narrative. And even if they had outsourced some small part of their campaign to a Russian company for some odd reasons, would
that make it nefarious?
I think the Russiagate theorists should at least make sure that their theories don't violate basic principles of common sense.
If they want to use the hacking story, the involvement of Russian secret services might theoretically make sense – it might not
be so easy for the Trump campaign to hack servers themselves (though phishing is hardly something so sophisticated that only secret
services can do it, we're not talking about something like Stuxnet), and something illegal would be involved. That is a theory
that could in principle make sense, the only problem is, that no evidence for this is available (and the Russians are certainly
not the only ones who might have had an interest in these mails, another plausible theory is that it was an insider who disliked
how the Clinton campaign took over the DNC early on and created better conditions for Clinton than for Sanders, and it could have
been any hacker who, for some reason disliked Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and Podesta). If the Russiagate theorists switch over
to simple social media activity because there is no evidence for Russian secret services being responsible for giving e-mails
to Wikileaks, they also have to sacrifice the whole "collusion" part of the story. It might be that some Russians used social
media in an organized way, but to invent a story that the Trump campaign "colluded" with Russians for a small part of their social
media election campaign hardly makes sense.
The only condition under which it might somehow make sense would be if someone thought Russians are intellectually vastly superior
to Americans and know much better what potential voters care about, and their capabilities are even vastly above Cambridge Analytics.
Then, it might somehow make sense for the Trump campaign to hand over a part of the social media activities to Russians, and this
might somehow be seen as an unfair advantage – but again, if, with that assumption, the Russians are intellectually so vastly
superior that can have a significant influence with very small amounts of money and works while the Trump and Clinton campaigns
spend billions, why would they have to "collude" with the Trump campaign, people who would be intellectually so much below them
according to that assumption? Maybe real genius for targeting potential voters only emerges when Americans and Russians with complementary
abilities collaborate? In any case, it is already very difficult just to construct a version of that theory that does not violate
basic principles of common sense.
Sarcasm is probably the only way to deal with it. I find myself all the time asking people if they are serious or joking. Sadly,
many claim they are serious.
Currently it seems that peaceful and productive relations with a foreign power are Bad Things.
Mr Putin did amusingly say one time to a ditzy US 'journalist':
"Have you all lost your minds over there?"
I really truly believe that the only way to force the stupids who came up with that ridiculous story about "Russia influencing
the elections" – to drop it – is to make incessantly fun of them until they finally realize how really truly stupid they are.
The facts support this viewpoint, including the dual citizen element of it. By the way, I oppose the death penalty except if
it is applied to major serial war criminals. I recognize that all legal systems are too corrupt to be given the power of life
and death, and that this is particularly true of the US system, which sets the benchmark for corruption. The corruption of the
US political system, meanwhile, is revealed by the fact that this absurd Russiagate story is still being peddled and is accepted
as received wisdom despite the manifold evidence proving its absurd falsity. What the article shows is that Clapper and Brennan
are serial war criminals and that their latest gambit threatens our very existence. We would be better off if the utopia of a
legal system incorruptible enough to allow for the death penalty did exist in the US rather than the corrupt system allowing somebody
like Mueller to act extra-legally on this absurd basis was continuing in operation. By the way, the Canadian satellite media is
still publishing stories trying to resuscitate the Steele dossier paid by the DNC and the yankee government as factual. The whole
thing would be comical if it were not deadly serious. Those still backing the story publicly are either dangerously deluded or
criminal themselves.
The U.S. gov is a criminal organization ran by criminal for criminals and sexual perverts and pedophiles , if interested, read
these two books , THE FRANKLIN COVERUP by the late John DeCamp and THE TRANCE FORMATIO of AMERICA by Cathy Obrien and see their
interviews on YouTube, the books can be had on amazon.com.
The books reveal a shocking look at the top ones in the demonrat and republicon parties, and I do mean shocking.
"The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired as
a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) last week, still have not paved its way to the international
mainstream media.
The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers They claim
that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to
be paid 5000 USD after the "job is done", they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and
Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command
of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger. The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous
Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car The weapons came on
stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. "There were three or four weapons in
each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges." – witnesses Nergadze.
The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos.
"I listened to the screams," recalls Revazishvili. "There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was
to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart."
Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment
and have decided to tell the truth about those who "used and abandoned" them."
Well that was a clear picture of a sausage-making during the US-sponsored regime change in Ukraine. The neo-Nazi in the US-supported
"government" in Kiev came about naturally.
An addition to the previous post.
The Maidan revolution and its neo-Nazi consequence makes an amazing monument to the Kagans' clan:
"Thousands of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists marched in Kiev, Thursday, celebrating the 106th birthday of the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader Stepan Bandera [famous Nazis collaborator]. Among the main organisers were representatives
of Right Sector and Svoboda." https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a7_1420142767#gDHooVSL6b0yQ1SG.99
"Members of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov volunteer battalion and their ultranationalist civilian sympathizers have conducted
a torchlit procession in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, held under the slogan "coming after you!"
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_72571.shtml
The wide-spread desecration of Jewish cemetries by Ukrainian thugs (a post-Maidan phenomenon) has spilled to Poland: "Yet another
case of vandalism by Ukrainian nationalists is on the record in Poland. This time, an old Jewish cemetery in Kraków became the
target of thugs from the neighboring state. The graves of Polish Jews who died over a century ago were destroyed by those hot-blood
Ukrainians."
https://www.reddit.com/r/antisemitism/comments/5npnj5/ukrainian_nationalists_stand_behind_desecration/
"Vandals desecrated the Korinovskaya Jewish Cemetery in Kiev. They destroyed two entire sections: 27 and 28. These acts of
vandalism are very systematic: every night they destroy one or two headstones. According to the elderly women who look after the
place, these vandals are usually drunken youths who come there to wreak destruction. The Zaddik of Chernobyl is buried in this
cemetery. These vandals destroyed his gravestone, smearing Satanic Cult symbols on it."
At some point quantity of duplicity turns into quality. and affect international relations. Economic decline can speed this process
up. The US elite has way too easy life since 1991. And that destroyed the tiny patina of self-restraint that it has during Cold War
with negative (hugely negative) consequences first of all for the US population. Empire building is a costly project even if it supported
by the dominance of neoliberal ideology and technological advances in computers and telecommunication. . The idea of "full spectrum
dominance" was a disaster. But the realization of this came too late and at huge cost for the world and for the US population. Russia
decimated its own elite twice in the last century. In might be the time for the USA to follow the Russia example and do it once in XXI
century. If we thing about Hillary Clinton Jon McCain, Joe Biden, Niki Haley, as member of the US elite it is clear that "something
is rotten in the state of Denmark).
Notable quotes:
"... How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous. ..."
"... There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious. ..."
"... The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya. ..."
"... Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. ..."
"... Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking. ..."
"... This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine. ..."
"... One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate. ..."
"... "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard." ..."
"... Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it. ..."
"... He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough. ..."
"... U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill. ..."
"... When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America. ..."
How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.
For any country, the foundation of successful diplomacy is a reputation for credibility and reliability. Governments are wary
of concluding agreements with a negotiating partner that violates existing commitments and has a record of duplicity. Recent U.S.
administrations have ignored that principle, and their actions have backfired majorly, damaging American foreign policy in the process.
The consequences of previous deceit are most evident in the ongoing effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to the North Korean
nuclear crisis. During his recent trip to East Asia, President Trump
urged
Kim Jong-un's regime to "come to the negotiating table" and "do the right thing" -- relinquish the country's nuclear weapons and
ballistic missile programs. Presumably, that concession would lead to a lifting (or at least an easing) of international economic
sanctions and a more normal relationship between Pyongyang and the international community.
Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have
abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the
deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in
2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision
to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that
Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous.
North Korea is likely focused on another incident that raises even greater doubts about U.S. credibility. Libyan dictator Muammar
Qaddafi capitulated on the nuclear issue in December of 2003, abandoning his country's nuclear program and reiterating a commitment
to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and welcomed Libya
back into the community of respectable nations. Barely seven years later, though, Washington and its NATO partners double-crossed
Qaddafi, launching airstrikes and cruise missile attacks to assist rebels in their campaign to overthrow the Libyan strongman. North
Korea and other powers took notice of Qaddafi's fate, making the already difficult task of getting a de-nuclearization agreement
with Pyongyang
nearly
impossible.
The Libya intervention sullied America's reputation in another way. Washington and its NATO allies prevailed on the UN Security
Council to pass a resolution endorsing a military intervention to protect innocent civilians. Russia and China refrained from vetoing
that resolution after Washington's assurances that military action would be limited in scope and solely for humanitarian purposes.
Once the assault began, it quickly became evident that the resolution was merely a fig leaf for another U.S.-led regime-change war.
Beijing, and especially Moscow, understandably felt duped. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates
succinctly described Russia's reaction, both short-term and long-term:
The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds
that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets
steadily grew, it became obvious that very few targets were off-limits, and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced
they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad
in Syria.
The Libya episode was hardly the first time the Russians concluded that U.S. leaders had
cynically
misled them . Moscow asserts that when East Germany unraveled in 1990, both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German
Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher offered verbal assurances that, if Russia accepted a unified Germany within NATO, the alliance
would not expand beyond Germany's eastern border. The official U.S. position that there was nothing in writing affirming such a limitation
is correct -- and the clarity, extent, and duration of any verbal commitment to refrain from enlargement are certainly
matters of
intensecontroversy . But invoking
a "you didn't get it in writing" dodge does not inspire another government's trust.
There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been
part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully
tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which
would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious.
The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another
example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia,
a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo
for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West
would use subsequently in Libya.
Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt
for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear
that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition
of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial
move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their
own.
Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing
international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State
for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point
explicitly in a February 2008 State Department
briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking.
It is painful for any American to admit that the United States has acquired a well-deserved reputation for duplicity in its foreign
policy. But the evidence for that proposition is quite substantial. Indeed, disingenuous U.S. behavior regarding NATO expansion and
the resolution of Kosovo's political status may be the single most important factor for the poisoned bilateral relationship with
Moscow. The U.S. track record of duplicity and betrayal is one reason why prospects for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue
through diplomacy are so bleak.
Actions have consequences, and Washington's reputation for disingenuous behavior has complicated America's own foreign policy
objectives. This is a textbook example of a great power shooting itself in the foot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books,
the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs.
you are dead ON! I have been saying this since IRAQ
fiasco (not one Iraqi onboard on 9/11) we should have invaded egypt and saudi arabia. how the foolish american public(sheep) just
buys the american propaganda is beyond me.. don't blame the Russians one spittle!!
Excellent piece. The US really has destroyed its credibility over the years.
This points Ted Galen Carpenter makes in this piece go a long way toward explaining Russia's destabilizing behavior in recent
years.
One point in particular jumped out at me:
"Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian
(and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly
bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU
members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. Russia's leaders
protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent.
Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique."
This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia
is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and
the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and,
more famously, in Ukraine.
You have made a reasonable case that the US and Europe have not always been reliable, but the expansion of NATO is not one
of them. No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a
Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard.
The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic which Russia invoked with the Medvedev Doctrine in 2008. This is currently
on display in Ukraine. Russia is aggressively denying Ukraine their sovereignty. Who could possibly blame former Soviet Block
countries for hightailing it to NATO during a lull in Russian aggression?
One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts
to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess.
Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate.
The whole weakness of the author's argument is a classic American one: very few Americans seem to be able to get their heads around
the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 26 years ago! They are still totally locked into their cold war mentality. He thus
unquestioningly accepts Putin's pre-1789 "sphere of influence" theory in which there are "superior" and "inferior" races, with
only the superior races being entitled to have a sovereign state and the inferior races being forced to submit to being ruled
by foreigners. Mr Carpenter really needs to put his cold war mentality aside and come into the 21st century!
Most seriously
of all, Mr Carpenter offers no solution for improving relations between the US and Russia. Saying that past US actions were wrong,
even if true, says nothing about the present and offers nothing for the future. At best, Mr Carpenter's article is empty moralising.
And the unspoken, but perfectly obvious, subtext, namely that the US should "atone for its sins" by capitulating to Putin,
is morally reprehensible and politically unrealistic. Since, by Mr Carpenter's own account, the problem is caused by US wrongdoing,
isn't it for the US to put things right (for example, by getting Putin out of Ukraine) and not simply make a mess in someone else's
country and then run for home with its tail between its legs? Who gave Americans the right to give away other people's countries?
The one problem with your argument if, you are an american as I am, is that Russia is not acting in our names. If the US government,
supposedly a government of, by, and for the people breaks its word, then you and I are foresworn oathbreakers as well because
the government is (theoretically, at least) acting on OUR authority.
Really?! "Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."
I think that if you look at a map or a globe, you will find that this is not a belief but a fact. How you could overlook this,
I don't know.
"The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic "
If you are going to try and use history to influence opinion, it is best to check your facts. This is a very old concept.What
do you think the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in Central Asia was about? For that matter, what we
call the Byzantine Commonwealth was a clearly attempt by the Romaoi to establish a political, cultural, and religious sphere of
influence to support the power of the Empire, much as the United States has been doing over the past several decades.
You could make the case that Iraq too in 2003 is another reason why the Russians and the North Koreans distrust the US.
At this point, it is fairly certain that the Bush Administration knew that Saddam was not building nuclear weapons of mass
destruction, which is what Bush strongly implied in his ramp up to the war.
One other takeaway that the North Koreans mag have from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that the US will lie any way to get what
it wants.
Not saying that Russia or North Korea are perfect. Far from it. But the US needs to take a hard look in the mirror.
Re: craigsummers, "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries
feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad
or backyard."
Except both here and abroad, the Global Cop Elites in Washington shape the strategy space through propaganda, fear-mongering
and subversion. Moreover, the Eastern European countries are happy to join NATO when it's the American taxpayers who foot a large
percentage of the bill.
Standard U.S. MO: create the threat, inflate the threat, send in the War Machine at massive cost to sustain the threat.
Rather than being broadened, NATO should have been ratcheted back after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. military
presence in Europe massively reduced. Then normalized relations between Europe and Russia would have been designed and developed
by Europe and Russia. Not the 800 pound Gorilla Global Cop that is good at little more than breaking things. (And perversely,
after flushing TRILLIONS of tax dollars down the toilet, duping Americans to wildly applaud the "Warrior-Heroes" for a job well
done.)
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was, per observers at the time, in Russian word and thought directly linked to the Balkan
's precedent.
The subtext here – of nation states, sovereignty, separatism and secessionist movements – is even more relevant with respect
to US-China relationships. Since WW2 and that brief, transient monopoly on nuclear weapons, US foreign policy has eroded the Peace
of Westphalia while attempting to erect an "international order" of convenience on top if it.
Both China and Russia know that nothing will stop the expansionism of US "national interests". In response to the doctrinal
aspirations of the Soviets, the US has committed itself to an ideology that is just a greedy and relentless. In retrospect, it
is hard to tell how many decades ago the Cold War stopped being about opposition to Soviet ideology, and instead became about
"projecting" – in every sense of the word – an equally globalist US ideology.
We are the redcoats now. Now wonder the neocons and neolibs are shouting "Russia!" at every opportunity.
I am amazed how many masochistic conservatives are in USA conservative circles especially in the CATO institute. Mr. T. G. Carpenter,
as is clear from not only this and other articles, is a staunch defender of Yalta and proponent of Yalta 2 after the Cold War
ended. As far as I remember Libya was the hatchet job of the Europeans especially the French and British. B. Obama at first didn't
want to attack Libya but gave in after lobbying by the French, British and the neoliberal/neo-conservative lobby and supporters
of the Arab Spring in the USA. America lost credibility after and only since the conservatives neoliberals and neocons manipulated
USA and the West's foreign politics for thirty plus years. USA is still a democratic country so it is easy to blame everything
on the US. In today's Putin's Russia similar critics of the Russian politics wouldn't be so "easy".
The Central Europe doesn't want Russia's sphere of influence precisely because of centuries of Russian occupation and atrocities
in there especially after WW2, brutal and bloody invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Crisis, Afghanistan, Chechnya
etc. Now you have infiltration by Russia of the American electoral process and political system and some conservatives still can't
connect the dots and see what is going on. I wonder why the western conservatives and US in particular are such great supporters
of Russia. If Russia should be allowed to keep her sphere of influence after the Cold War then what was the reason to fight the
Cold War in the first place. Wouldn't it be easier to surrender to Russia right after WW2.
One other observation about Russia that should be made but isn't is that the Russia-phobes can't point to an actual motive for
Russian military aggression. There is no "Putin Plan" for conquest and domination by Russia like in Das Kapital or Hitler's
Mein Kampf . What strategic value would Russia see from overrunning Poland and then having to perpetually suppress 35
million resistors? Or retaking the Baltic states that have only minority ethnic Russian populations?
Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia
as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that
construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision
and Putin knows it.
In the gangster movies, a mob boss often says that he hates bloodshed because it's bad for business. That's Putin. He's
been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove
(former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks
whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough.
U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending
the befuddled taxpayers the bill.
"And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym
for "oral."
I imagine you thought you were being funny; and you were, just not in the way you foresaw. In fact, verbal is a synonym for
oral; to wit, "spoken rather than written; oral. "a verbal agreement". Synonyms: oral, spoken, stated, said, verbalized, expressed."
Of course anyone who attempts to portray the United States as duplicitous and sneaky (those are synonyms!)is immediately branded
a "Russian apologist". As if there are certain countries which automatically have no rights, and can be assumed to be lying every
time they speak. Except they're not, and the verbal agreement that NATO would not advance further east in exchange for Russian
cooperation has been acknowledged by western principals who were present.
As SteveM implies, NATO's reason for being evaporated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and was dead as a dodo with
the breakup of the Soviet Union. Everything since has been a rationalization for keeping it going, including regular demonizations
of imaginary enemies until they become real enemies. You can't just 'join NATO' because it's the in-crowd, you know. No, there
are actually criteria, one of which is the premise that your acceptance materially enhances the security of the alliance. Pretty
comical imagining Montenegro in that context, isn't it?
When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine
where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its
foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America.
"... The recent exchanges over the Russia-US relationship exhibit perfectly how the Deep State operates to control the message. ..."
"... Beyond twisting narratives, Russiagate is also producing potentially dangerous collateral damage to free speech, as one of the objectives of those in the Deep State is to rein in the current internet driven relatively free access to information. In its most recent manifestations, an anonymous group produced a phony list of 200 websites that were "guilty" of serving up Russian propaganda, a George Soros funded think tank identified thousands of individuals who are alleged to be "useful idiots" for Moscow, and legitimate Russian media outlets will be required to register as foreign agents. ..."
"... Hegemonic Empire always attacks those nations who are perceived to be weaker than the Empire. ..."
"... Never in my long life have I ever seen such twistedness in the mainstream media. In the days of Nixon and Watergate, there was a media agenda. But it was based in truth. This crap we get now is complete Deep State party line. ..."
"... I wonder if there ever was a time in history where the media in a country was so full of fabrication and propaganda. If there was, I would be interested in hearing how they had a downfall. It seems the media in this country can be so completely covered in deceit and lies and false claims, yet somehow not be accountable for it. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate bullshite has once again destroyed the credibility of the intel agencies and the media. Really old idiots are in charge of these things. ..."
It is not possible to overstate the power of certain constituencies and corporate lobbies in the United States.
These pressure groups, joined by powerful government agencies, many of which have secret agendas that focus on national security,
constitute what is increasingly being recognized as "Deep State America." Deep State is the widespread belief that there exists in
many countries an entrenched and largely hidden infrastructure that really controls the national narrative and runs things. It explains
why, for example, a country like the United States is perpetually at war even though the wars have been disastrous failures ever
since Korea and have not made the nation more secure.
To be sure, certain constituencies have benefitted from global instability and conflict, to include defense industries, big government
in general, and the national security state . They all work together and hand-in-hand with the corporate media to sustain the narrative
that the United States is perpetually under threat, even though it is not.
The recent exchanges over the Russia-US relationship exhibit perfectly how the Deep State operates to control the message.
American President Donald Trump briefly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. Putin
reportedly told Trump
that Russia "absolutely had not meddled" in the 2016 US election and Trump then told reporters that he believed the Russian leader
meant what he said, "which is good." As détente with Russia is not considered desirable by the Deep State, there was an immediate
explosion of a contrary narrative, namely that Trump believes a Russian "enemy" and does not trust what his own intelligence agencies
have told him about 2016 because
he is being "played" by Putin.
This story was repeated both on television news and in all the mainstream newspapers without exception, eventually forcing Trump
to recant and say that he does believe in US intelligence.
Not a single major media outlet in the US reported that it just might be possible that Putin was telling the truth and that the
intelligence community, which has been wrong many times over the past twenty years, might have to look again at what it considers
to be evidence. No journalist had the courage to point out that the claims of the Washington national security team have been remarkably
devoid of anything credible to support the conclusions about what the Russian government might or might not have been up to. That
is what a good journalist is supposed to do and it has nothing to do with whether or not one admires or loathes either Putin or Trump.
That the relationship between Moscow and Washington should be regarded as important given the capability of either country to
incinerate the planet would appear to be a given, but the Washington-New York Establishment, which is euphemism for Deep State, is
actually more concerned with maintaining its own power by marginalizing Donald Trump and maintaining the perception that Vladimir
Putin is the enemy head of state of a Russia that is out to cripple American democracy.
Beyond twisting narratives, Russiagate is also producing potentially dangerous collateral damage to free speech, as one of
the objectives of those in the Deep State is to rein in the current internet driven relatively free access to information. In its
most recent manifestations, an anonymous group produced a phony list of
200 websites that were "guilty" of serving up Russian propaganda, a George Soros funded
think tank
identified thousands of individuals who are alleged to be "useful idiots" for Moscow, and legitimate Russian media outlets will be
required to register as foreign agents.
Driven by Russophobia over the 2016 election, a group of leading social media corporations including Facebook, Google, Microsoft
and Twitter have been experimenting with ways
to self-censor their product to keep out foreign generated or "hate" content.
They even have a label for it:
"cyberhate"
. Congress is also toying with legislation that will make certain viewpoints unacceptable or even illegal, including a so-called
Anti-Semitism Awareness Act that would potentially penalize
anyone who criticizes Israel and could serve as a model for banning other undesirable speech. "Defamatory speech" could even eventually
include any criticism of the government or political leaders, as is now the case in Turkey, which is the country where the "Deep
State" was invented.
Fear is the order of the day. Be very, very afraid of that militarily-weak nation on the other side of the world, who poses
no legitimate and imminent threat to the US. Hegemonic Empire always attacks those nations who are perceived to be weaker
than the Empire. It represents the death knell of Empire, and is typically the final stage of economic and political collapse.
Howard Beale: "We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all
ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think
that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you
eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In
God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them
off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now.
Turn them off!"
-- Network
If you are too young to have heard of this movie, now you know.
Never in my long life have I ever seen such twistedness in the mainstream media. In the days of Nixon and Watergate, there
was a media agenda. But it was based in truth. This crap we get now is complete Deep State party line.
I wonder if there ever was a time in history where the media in a country was so full of fabrication and propaganda. If
there was, I would be interested in hearing how they had a downfall. It seems the media in this country can be so completely covered
in deceit and lies and false claims, yet somehow not be accountable for it.
The only thing in history that I know that would compare to this is the Pravda in the old Soviet days of Brezhnev. And I'm
not sure how that came finally tumbling down.
The whole Russiagate bullshite has once again destroyed the credibility of the intel agencies and the media. Really old
idiots are in charge of these things.
Daily
Caller
Sarah
Abdallah @ sahouraxo
<img alt="Faith could bring us together. But too often it divides us"
src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/191121180252-20191121-fractured-states-religious-leaders-large-169.jpg">
By 
Note that the candidate swears to be "faithful" to the "interests, welfare and success of
the Democratic Party," but not to its principles. That's because there aren't any.
Entangling
alliances or scoring at home? Why US went out of its way with Russian diplomat expulsions
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from my deep purple state of NH both, voted to allow the bill to proceed. And of course my esteemed congress critter, Annie Kuster, did her bit in congress. Only 968 days until I can exact my retribution on Shaheen at the polls, first and foremost for her vote in favor of fast track, but damned if she doesn't give me another good reason on almost a daily basis.